Why Male-Male Sexual Intercourse is Prohibited in Leviticus

In the previous post I looked at the philological argument in Saul M. Olyan’s essay “’And with a Male You Shall Not Lie the Lying down of a Woman’: On the Meaning and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13,” in the Journal of the History of Sexuality 5 (1994): 179-206. There I suggested that Olyan’s conclusion regarding what is prohibited in Leviticus (not homoerotic acts generally but specifically anal intercourse; not only intercourse that would shame a free citizen by his taking the ‘feminine’ role but all intercourse between males regardless of status or role) is correct but based on two questionable assumptions.

In his essay  “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Who is Doing What To Whom?,” JBL 120 (2001): 201-209,  Jerome T. Walsh rightly alerted us to one of these assumptions, namely that “knowing” and “lying down (with)” (“performing”) משכבי אשה are the same thing. But Walsh overlooked the other assumption, namely that אשה signals the one who “performs” the acts implied in the משכבים. It seems more likely that אשה complements the verbal notion so that the construct chain does not refer to “a woman lying down” but to “lying down with a woman.” The one who lies down with a male in the manner of lying down with a woman is therefore the one who makes the other experience משכב זכר.[1]

If the conventional rendering of Lev. 18:22 (and 20:13) is correct, e.g., “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (KJV) or “You must not have sexual intercourse with a male as one has sexual intercourse with a woman; it is a detestable act” (NET Bible), the prohibition addresses the one who penetrates another man rather than the receptive partner.[2]

Olyan argues that within Israel receptivity was “constructed as appropriate exclusively to females; it is gendered as feminine” (p. 188). By contrast laws in Athens, Rome and Assyria restrict behaviour in relation to status rather than biological sex. In other words, within Israel the one who penetrates had to be male, the one who receives had to be female. But elsewhere the critical thing was not biological sex but that the one who penetrates had a higher status than the one penetrated. Free male citizens penetrated legal inferiors, namely women but also slaves, foreigners or young men. “The receptive and insertive roles were primarily status-bound in both the Athenian and Roman contexts, though the language of gender played an important role in the manner in which these roles were discussed…to be penetrated was to be feminized, to surrender male status and authority” (p. 191).[3]

Olyan stresses that the Levitical laws themselves offer no reason as to why biological sex is seen as determinative. There is no explicit allusion to the “structure of creation” although he admits that the legislators “might well have had access to the creation story of the Priestly source with its command to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ …or to something similar” (pp. 188-89) and that later rabbinic commentators made the link between biology and “creation’s scheme” (p. 189).

Did the issue of shaming a male by relating to him as a female play no role at all in Israel? Not necessarily. As Olyan points out, a sense of the equality of all male residents may explain that Israelite men are prohibited not only from penetrating another male citizen (“your neighbour”) but any “male” (young or old, free or slave, Israelite or foreigner). But, as Olyan admits, this remains speculative. “In the final form of Lev. 18 and 20, issues of defilement are clearly paramount” (pp. 196-97, cf. p. 205).

This brings us to the question how the prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 relate to the other laws in these chapters. What if anything unites them?

First, Olyan discusses the “idolatry” approach of N. H. Smith and John Boswell. This “is probably the least convincing of the four to be discussed. It depends on the presence of Lev. 18:21, which refers to child sacrifice to an alleged god Molek, and/or a restricted and inaccurate understanding of [תועבה], the so-called abomination, a word that occurs in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 with reference to the male-male intercourse described and in the framing materials of 18:26-30 with reference to all the violations enumerated in the chapter.” (p. 198). Olyan considers it “very likely” that Lev. 18:21 is secondary but in any case it seems to have been attached to a series of laws prohibiting sexual acts because of “a shared idiom and key word in verse 20” (p. 198) and not in order to associate all these acts with idolatry. 

Secondly, Thomas M. Thurston argues that Lev. 18:22 is best understood as reflecting a concern with living creatures conforming to their class (cf. Mary Douglas): “boundaries are blurred when a male plays the receptive role.” Olyan finds this attractive but rejects it on the grounds that “the lack of focus on the receptive partner” in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 makes it “unlikely that the laws were ever motivated by a concern that the anally receptive male conforms to his class” (p. 199). I am maybe a little less convinced that we should make much of who is being addressed when it is clearly the act as such which is condemned (and for which the more active partner is maybe naturally made more immediately responsible).

Thirdly, S. F. Bigger argued for a concern with maintaining the “sexual purity of the individual” and suggested that the laws concern a misuse of semen, including the mixing of different types of semen (cf. the use of תבל, confusion in 18:23 and 20:12).[4] H. Eilberg-Schwartz suggested a concern with “threat to the integrity of the Israelite lineage” and D. Biale argued along similar lines that “the laws in question all proscribe acts that threaten procreation or its results (i.e., living children) or do not lead to it” (in Olyan’s words, p. 201). In her words (cited by Olyan, ibid.):

"What unifies all these acts is that they are considered affronts to procreation, either because they are sterile (homosexuality and bestiality), produce illegitimate progeny (adultery, incest), destroy progeny (sacrifice to Molech), or represent rebellion against the source of one’s own legitimacy (insulting one’s parents).”

Olyan finds Bigger’s theory “appealing”  and well grounded in the conceptual world of the text but considers his treatment of Lev. 18:22 “wholly inadequate.” He considers Eilberg-Schwartz’s presentation “more thoroughgoing and bolder” but laments the absence of concern for “mixing” in his argument. Maybe most importantly, these conceptualisations do not take into account that Lev. 18:22 “refer specifically to intercourse” (p. 202). If the concern were for “productive sexual relations…one might expect other genital acts that result in ejaculation but do not lead to conception to be proscribed” (ibid.).

Finally, Olyan himself suggests that “the reason for the proscription of male-male intercourse in the final form [of the text might] be to prevent two otherwise defiling agents – excrement and semen – from mingling in the body of the receptive partner” (p. 203). “Perhaps menstruation, parturition, ejaculation, and other events causing defilement according to P were only mildly defiling according to H, unthreatening to the continued presence of Israel in the land as long as no mixing with other defiling emissions was involved.” Olyan finds evidence of the seriousness with which H looked at such mixing by comparing Lev. 15:24 (P) with 20:18 (H) but it seems possible that 15:24 envisages the onset of menstruation during sexual intercourse, while 20:18 concerns sexual intercourse during menstruation. In other words, there may be a difference between deliberate and accidental infringement.

Ezek. 4:9-15 does indeed provide evidence for the view that (human rather than animal?) excrement was considered defiling by some priests (at least in connection with food) and we may compare Deut. 23:14 for the requirement to relieve oneself outside the camp. But excrement does not in fact play a role in Levitical law and even if one accepts that Lev. 18:22 refers specifically to anal intercourse, the move from “lying down with a male as with a woman” to the comingling of excrement and semen is maybe not as obvious as one might expect, if Olyan were right. I note that blood is considered very differently, depending on whether it is inside the body (“the life is in the blood”) or outside (shed blood = extinguished life = death). It seems to me questionable therefore that Israelite priests had a concept of defiling excrement inside the body, and more so as the defiling aspect of excrement outside the body is not raised in priestly law.

If this were my research project, I would now go to look at Thomas M. Thurston, “Leviticus 18:22 and the Prohibition of Homosexual Acts,” in Homophobia and the Judaeo-Christian Tradition, ed. M. L. Stemmeler and J. M. Clark (Dallas: Monument Press, 1990), pp. 7–23, as the proposal which appears to have the most merit.

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[1] Later, however, the idiom is used differently. In 1QSa 1.10 (The Rule of the Congregation, also referred to as The Messianic Rule) משכבי זכר is parallel to “approaching a woman to know her.” So here משכבי זכר refers to what a man experiences with a woman. But the context is unambiguous allowing for greater flexibility. משכבי זכר may have been preferred because the focus is on the coming-of-age of the young man, the point (at twenty years of age) at which he is allowed to act the זכר.

[2] He speculates that “receptivity, if viewed as passivity, would perhaps have rendered them guiltless at a stage before the work of the final H tradents. In the final form of the laws of Lev. 18 and 20, purity concerns are paradigmatic: all the violations enumerated cause defilement and threaten the Israelite presence in the land” (p. 189).

[3] It is more difficult to establish the reasoning behind the Middle Assyrian Laws (see pp. 192-95) but status and coercion as well as repeated acts play a role and so they certainly differ from Leviticus in qualifying the prohibition of male-male couplings.

[4] I do not think that the rendering of תבל as “confusion” or “mixing” is sufficiently certain to offer a good foundation for this argument but a concern with intermingling of what does not belong together is evident throughout biblical law. 

David Runcorn Reads Leviticus 18

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:22, NRSV)

In his contribution to the Pilling Report David Runcorn attempts to show that “it is at least questionable whether the concern here is with homosexuality at all.”

This is part of an argument that seeks to demonstrate that what is condemned in Scripture has no relationship to the “contemporary phenomenon” of faithful, committed, and we may now add egalitarian, relationships.

DR postulates that “the setting” of Leviticus 18 is “a culture in which male role, status and behaviour is the sole, driving concern.” Even overlooking the unwarranted use of the qualifiers “sole” and “driving,” we should ask whether this is the only factor of its setting which is relevant here. The justification for the limits on sexual activity given in Lev 18 itself, in the frame in verses 1-5 and 24-30. These limits were meant to differentiate Israel from the Canaanites whose behaviour in this realm is judged abominable.

This raises, possibly unanswerable, historical questions but certainly should caution us against painting the whole of antiquity with the same brush of obsession with “male ownership and possession” – attitudes to homosexuality in ancient Canaanite, Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts need to be compared with what we find in Scripture.

What is, however, even more remarkable is that DR then makes it sound as if “the controlling belief in male dominance and superiority” is not only the setting but also the intent of this biblical law. Is a prior conviction that all strictures on homosexual activity express a concern with male status the reason for thinking such a concern lies behind Lev 18? Or is there anything in Lev 18 itself which would point us in this direction?

DR appeals to difficulties in translating Lev 18:22 but believes that “the concern here seems to be men behaving ‘like women’ (ie passive/submissive) in same sex intercourse.” In fact, it seems to be reasonably uncontroversial to say that the text condemns “a man treating another man sexually as he would treat a woman.” DR interprets “the insertion of the penis” as an “act of male possession” and suggests that it would have been considered inappropriate for a man to take possession of another male in this way.

DR offers no evidence for the claim that penetration equals possession in biblical law but an argument to that effect can be found in Gareth Moore, A Question of Truth: Christianity and Homosexuality (London: Continuum, 2003). Given that biblical laws concerning slavery allow for men becoming the possession of another man, it might have been useful to explain what exactly –in this view– was abominable about a sexual act of possession in the cultural context postulated.

The view also fails to explain the rationale of the next half-verse. If sexual penetration is all about possession, it makes sense to prohibit the penetration of a woman by an animal (Lev 18:23b) but it is less clear why the penetration of an animal by a man (Lev 18:23a) is condemned. This suggests that maybe there is more here than a concern with property and hierarchy.

The concern with penetration does, however, explain the absence of condemnation of lesbian sex in Lev 18 and Garteh Moore is right to point out that Lev 18 does not prohibit, e.g., men kissing each other.

Seeking to understand the logic behind a condemnation is a good thing. Moore offers a helpful illustration (Question of Truth, pp 63-65). But we should not dismiss the relevance of a text on the assumption that it was driven by a concern which is no longer ours. We have not yet fully understood and heeded Scripture, if we content ourselves with ignoring a text because we know ourselves more enlightened today.

As a self-professed evangelical, DR needs to face the question whether God’s instructions for Israel were indeed concerned with strengthening male status and on what grounds this was appropriate then but is not appropriate now. Why did God apparently reveal laws which were not merely designed to function in a male-dominated society but actually shaped to further strengthen male status?

Given the rationale for the condemnations in Lev 18 offered in the passage itself, should we conclude that Canaanite culture was insufficiently androcentric in God’s eyes? Maybe reducing this text to a concern for male status is ill advised in the light of textual features which are thereby ignored.