An anonymous blogpost hosted by Ian Paul asks Are there Two Types of Men in Leviticus 20:13? questions the answer given to this question by David Instone-Brewer in an essay of the same title.
I agree with the author of the blog post and commented to that effect: David Instone-Brewer offers a highly speculative and implausible solution to a non-existent problem.
It is worth noting that îš is never the object of the active verb škb (to lie with) or the subject of the relevant passive stems of the verb (nifal, pual) in any ancient Hebrew text known to us. While the same is true for zākār, when it comes to the verbal noun derived from the root, we do find miškab zākār (Num 31:17, 18, 35; Judg 21:11-12) but never miškab îš. In other words, the activity of ‘lying with a man’ is elsewhere expressed by using zākār, not îš. This would seem to favour the use of zākār as the object of the verb škb. (By contrast, the verb ydʿ can be used for sexual knowing of a man with îš as the object.)
In addition, if Lev 20:13 (which Instone-Brewer identifies as the verse on which Lev 18:22 is dependent) had been phrased with îš as the verb’s object, the result would have been quite some mouthful: wəʾîš ʾăšer yiškab ʾet- îš miškəbê ʾiššâ. For purely euphonic reasons, an author might want to use zākār alongside îš.
In the light of this, and the similarity of îš and iššâ, David Instone-Brewer’s premise that ‘if the purpose of the law was to forbid sexual activity between two people of the same sex, we would expect two identical terms for “man” to emphasise their similarity’ is unfounded.
Reading both zākār and îš with their standard meaning in such contexts (‘male’ and ‘man’) works perfectly well to describe sexual activity between two people of the male sex.
Instone-Brewer notes that ‘Millard has suggested that zakar may indicate “male of any age”, in distinction to ’ish which is normally used only for adult men, so that the force of law is to prohibit pederasty as well as same-sex activity between adults’ and acknowledges it as ‘an intriguing possibility.’ He objects to it on the grounds that ‘zakar is used of children only when there is a clear emphasis on maleness’ but maleness is an issue in Lev 20:13 and Millard rightly does not claim that the law has only pederasty in view.
While I consider Millard’s suggestion unnecessary, it would distinguish between zākār and îš, if one were to insist on a distinction, in a much more straightforward manner than Instone-Brewer’s attempt to postulate a new meaning for zākār.
Cf. my 2015 posts Men, Bed, Woman - Analysing a Hebrew Idiom and Why Male-Male Sexual Intercourse is Prohibited in Leviticus
In a comment on the blog post Wolter Rose points out that 'evidence is slim for the idea that Mesopotamian figures like the assinnu were sexually active with same-sex partners as part of the cult of Ishtar' and that this view has been abandoned by scholars who had previously been open to it. See, e.g. Nissinen (2018, 397) and Peled (2018, 59).
