Dead Pig Football

President Josiah Bartlet:

Here’s one that’s really important because we’ve got a lot of sports fans in this town: touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

The question assumes that it is important that people avoid becoming unclean. Why should that be? Uncleanness is not a punishable crime. If a member of the Israelite covenant community touched the skin of a dead pig, they were unclean until the evening (verse 39) which means they could not come to the sanctuary on the same day. If they handled the skin, they should also wash their clothes (verse 40) which, one might assume, football players would do anyway after a match. Given that the use of pig skin is hardly essential to playing American football, ancient Israelites would presumably have used a different leather if they had played American football but they would not have had to call off a match against the Moabites just because the ball was made of dead pig skin.

What’s more the function of these laws was to set apart the Israelites as a holy people of YHWH (cf. verses 44-45; see also Lev 20:24-26). Laws touching all of life were a constant reminder that Israel was to be distinct from other nations. But this does not mean that all the laws were of equal weight and significance. Idolatry and immorality whose seriousness is underlined by the punishment specified for them are the real deal, as it were. Dietary laws were YHWH’s forget-me-not and forget-not-that-you-are-to-be-holy.

The different cultures suggested by the reference to three football clubs [*] highlights how strange it would be to make dietary laws a universal norm, thereby erasing cultural distinctives. It would be like requiring all teams to wear the same jerseys. The church has always made a distinction between, on the one hand, laws which reflect God’s character which God’s people are to imitate at all times and in all places, and on the other hand, laws which were given to Israel specifically to mark them out as distinct and remind them of the call to be holy to YHWH.

See also Hayim Donin's comments on the dietary laws.

[*] The Washington Redskins, founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves and renamed “Redskins” after they moved to Fenway Park, were under pressure from major sponsors to change their name and since July 2020 are the Washington Football Team.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football team is the intercollegiate football team representing the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana.

West Point is The United States Military Academy in New York.

Defining Holiness

 

Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (London: SCM Press, 2008), 204.

Leviticus 20:13 Again

 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). 

Man, Bed, Woman - Analysing a Hebrew Idiom

With neither the book of Leviticus nor homosexuality being one of my specific research interests, I had not read Jerome T. Walsh’s “Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13: Who is Doing What To Whom?,” JBL 120 (2001): 201-209,  when it first came out. But I did some work on Leviticus recently and a blog post comment by Jerome T. Walsh whetted my appetite for his contribution.  In it he draws attention to 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.

The two verses in question are widely understood to condemn gay sex but there remains disagreement as to whether the law specifically refers to anal intercourse or to homoerotic acts generally, and if the former whether only the penetrative role is prohibited or both the penetrative and receptive roles.

Comparing the idiom משכבי אשה with משכב זכר in Num. 31:17-18, 35 and Judg. 21:11-12, Olyan argues that Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 specifically refer to intercourse. Observing that in biblical law the verb “to lie down with” always has the penetrative partner as its subject, he concludes that Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 address the one who penetrates. He argues further that the emphasis on the guilt of both parties in Lev. 20:13 is the result of later editorial activity of the sort also evident in Lev. 20:10.

Olyan then notes

“The general proscription of male-male intercourse in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 is striking in light of the evidence from Athens, Rome, and the Middle Assyrian Laws. In the classical cultural contexts, status plays a significant part in determining licit and illicit couplings between males and in the bounding of the receptive and insertive roles: a nonfreeborn male could be legitimately penetrated by any man; in contrast, a freeborn male could not be penetrated by another of equal status, nor by a male of lower status. In the Middle Assyrian Laws, , status, coercion, and repeated acts of receptivity appear to play a part in constructing the boundaries between sanctioned and prohibited behaviors among men. In contrast, Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 ban all male couplings involving anal penetration, seemingly those coerced and those voluntary; those with men of higher status, equal status, or lower status; those with men of one’s own community or another community. The comprehensive character of the prohibitions appears to antedate the activity of the final H redactors; there is no evidence that the two formulations were anything but general in scope” (pp. 194-95).

Olyan observes that “a rhetoric of inclusivity permeates much of H’s material” (p. 195) and suggests that this emphasis on equal status before the law “may be one reason why the prohibition of male-male intercourse…[is] apparently unrelated to the status of the insertive and receptive partner” (p. 196). He notes the use of the general designation “male” rather than the more specific “your neighbour” (which would point to equal status).

Walsh appreciates and accepts Olyan’s argument for reading these two verses as specifically prohibiting anal intercourse but takes issue with the claim that Leviticus is distinctive within the ancient world for its general disapproval of male-male intercourse without regard to status or role.

Walsh observes that Olyan made no distinction between the verb used in Num. 31:17-18, 35 and Judg. 21:11-12 (“to know,” i.e. “to experience”) and the one used in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 (“to lie down,” namely with someone). Walsh argues that we must contrast “know” (experience of someone else’s action) with “lie down” (perform the action implied in משכב). In other words, to know משכב זכר (experience the penetration of a male) is the same as to perform משכבי אשה (act as the receptive partner) and to know משכבי אשה (experience a receptive partner) is the same as to perform משכב זכר (act as the male who penetrates). On this view, the prohibition in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 could have been phrases as “You must not know משכב זכר“ (in analogy to Num. 31:18, 35; Judg. 21:11) or “You must not know a man למשכב זכר“ (in analogy to Num. 31:17; Judg. 21:12).

Walsh believes that the “male” with whom the addressee of Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 is forbidden to lie down must be the penetrator and hence “the person addressed by the laws is the receptive partner” (p. 205). In other words, what Walsh believes to be at stake in the law is not male-male sexual intercourse generally but the feminisation (surrender of male status and authority) of the free, male citizen of Israel who allows himself to be penetrated.

In fact, Olyan’s philological analysis lacked precision also in another respect which was overlooked by Walsh. Olyan observes that when a woman experiences משכב זכר, she can be said to experience “male penetration.” It is easy to conclude from this that משכב זכר means “male penetration” and therefore should be rendered along the lines of “a male having sex (with her)” but this is a fallacy because the alternative rendering “she having sex with a male” is also possible. The experience is the same but the grammatical description is different.

In terms of Num. 31:17 and Judg. 21:12 where the phrase is introduced with ל, i.e. “every woman who has known a man with regard to having sex with a male / a male having sex,” we could say that Olyan has failed to raise the question whether the construct chain משכב זכר specifies the object of the verb (knowing a man, namely knowing him as a male going to bed [with you]) or the verb itself (knowing a man, namely knowing a man in the sense of going to bed with a male). He apparently assumes the former but both ways of describing the experience would seem possible. On Olyan’s reading of the texts, it is not necessary to rule out decisively one of the options because the law condemns both the action of penetrating a male and a male being penetrated. But for Walsh’s argument it is absolutely critical that the construct chain can only be understood in one way, namely with the second noun (the postconstructus) specifying the performer of the action implied in the first noun (the constructus).

In favour of reading the construct chain משכב זכר with the male (זכר) as the agent of the verbal act implied inמשכב  is the observation that it is more commonly a man who is said to lie down with a woman rather than the other way round. But in Gen. 19:32-33 and 2 Sam. 13:11 women are said to lie down with a man, so it is clear that the idiom can work both ways. In favour of the more conventional reading “has known a man by sleeping with him” (NRSV, by way of example) is the observation that in every single occurrence in which the verb שכב refers to sexual intercourse in the Hebrew Bible the verb has an object, either in the form of a direct object (marked with את) or a complement, i.e. an oblique object introduced with a preposition (את or עם, the latter nearly always in direct speech, maybe suggesting a different register). Therefore, given that along with the act the agent is implied in the construct noun, we may expect the postconstructus to offer the complement. If so, the construct chain would work similarly to the one in 2 Sam. 4:5 which seems to be the only place other than the ones mentioned above in which משכב carries a strong verbal notion and is used in a construct chain.[1]

If משכב זכר can be read either way, as “bedding a male” (male = object) or “the bedding that a male does” (male = subject), it is difficult to argue that משכבי אשה cannot mean “the beddings of a woman” (woman = object) but must be read as “the beddings that a woman does” (woman = subject), as Walsh assumes.

In fact, the argument above in favour of reading משכב זכר as “the bedding that a male does,” namely the observation that it is more commonly the man who is said to bed the woman, now works against reading משכבי אשה as “the beddings of a woman” and especially so given the surrounding legal context in which the subject of the cognate verb is always a man. This leaves Walsh’s parsing of the construct chain without an argument in its favour, while the argument against remains, namely that in cases where משכב  refers to sexual intercourse we would expect a complement to be specified.

In sum, Olyan’s philological analysis can be questioned but his conclusion that  Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 ban all male couplings involving anal penetration appears to be sound.

I have offered a similar line of reasoning, focused on Walsh’s essay, in a guest blog post on Ian Paul’s blog.

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[1] Ishboshet is said to “lie down the lying-down-of-noonday.” So if משכב הצהרים is the lying down “at noonday,” it should not be difficult to read משכב זכר as the laying down “with a male.” Elsewhere משכב refers to a place rather than an action, e.g. in 2 Sam. 4:7, 11.  

Jacob Milgrom on Homosexuality

Excerpts from Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22: A New Translation With Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible, vol. 3; Yale University Press, 2007):

     Thus the difference between the biblical legislation and other Near Eastern laws must not be overlooked: the Bible allows for no exceptions; all acts of sodomy are prohibited, whether performed by rich or poor, higher or lower status, citizen or alien.

     Many theories have been propounded to provide a rationale for this prohibition. One must surely exist, since this absolute ban on anal intercourse is unique not only in the Bible but, as shown in Olyan’s (1994; 1997a) recent, comprehensive study, in the entire ancient Near Eastern and classical world. To be sure, a rationale is given with staccato emphasis—the pollution of the land—in the concluding exhortation (vv. 25, 27, 28), but it does not explain the individual prohibitions in the list, which, as shown (see introduction) must be older. Olyan (1994: 197–204) faults the regnant explanations, namely, idolatry (Snaith 1967; Boswell 1980), blurring of boundaries (Douglas 1966: 41–57; Thurston 1990), wasting of male seed (Eilberg-Schwartz 1990: 183; Biale 1992: 29), and mixing of semen with other defiling liquids (Bigger 1979), on the grounds that either they do not share the same universe of discourse of the list or, conversely, their rationale for the list does not fit this very prohibition. (page 1566)

     The common denominator of all the prohibitions, I submit, is that they involve the emission of semen for the purpose of copulation, resulting in either incest and illicit progeny or, as in this case, lack of progeny (or its destruction in the case of Molek worship, v. 21). In a word, the theme (with Ramban) is procreation. This rationale fully complements (and presupposes) P’s laws of 15:16–18. Semen emission per se is not forbidden; it just defiles, but purificatory rites must follow. But in certain cases of sexual congress, it is strictly forbidden, and severe consequences must follow.

     Indeed, it is the assumption that H is fully cognizant of P that throws light on an anomaly that, to my knowledge, no previous scholar has dealt with: Why is masturbation—the willful spilling of seed—not proscribed? (page 1567)

     An ancillary question concerns birth control. May a married couple practice coitus interruptus? The example of Onan (Gen 38:8–10) is irrelevant. His act is condemned because he refused to act as the levir and thus denied an heir to his deceased brother. Analogously to the case of masturbation, the silence of our text would permit the inference that birth control was not prohibited as long as the couple reproduced itself…

     Female sexual relations are nowhere prohibited in Scripture, nor anywhere else (to my knowledge) in the ancient Near East. Surely, lesbianism was known! Gerstenberger’s (1996: 297) conjecture that these prohibitions, composed by men for men, evidence neither knowledge nor interest in female relations is a stab in the dark; besides, it is refuted by one of the main rationales behind these prohibitions (see note on “to uncover nakedness,” v. 6). Hebrew Scriptures ignored it (contrast Rom 1:26) because in the act no bodily fluids are lost (cf. Pope 1976: 417). The legal reason for interdicting anal intercourse (see below) is the waste, the nonproductive spilling, of seed—the equivalence of Onanism (Gen 38:9–10)—which, in this case, does not occur.

     Finally, it is imperative to draw the logical conclusion of this discussion for our time. If my basic thesis is correct that the common denominator of the entire list of sexual prohibitions, including homosexuality, is procreation within a stable family, then a consolatory and compensatory remedy is at hand for Jewish gays (non-Jews, unless they live within the boundaries of biblical Israel, are not subject to these laws; see chap. 20, comment d): if gay partners adopt children, they do not violate the intent of the prohibition. The question can be asked: Why didn’t the biblical legist propose this remedy? The answer simply is that this option was not available, since ancient Israel did not practice adoption (cf. Tigay 1972; Knobloch 1992; the alleged cases of Est 2:7; Ezra 10:44 [the latter MT is suspect; cf. Williamson 1985] reflect foreign practice). (pages 1568-69)

[Milgrom observes that Lev 18:22 "must indicate anal penetration" and believes that the plural indicates "the context of illicit carnal relations" from which he wants to draw the following conclusion:]

     Thus since illicit carnal relations are implied by the term miškĕbê ʾiššâ, it may be plausibly suggested that homosexuality is herewith forbidden for only the equivalent degree of forbidden heterosexual relations, namely, those enumerated in the preceding verses (D. Stewart). However, sexual liaisons occurring with males outside these relations would not be forbidden. And since the same term miškĕbê ʾiššâ is used in the list containing sanctions (20:13), it would mean that sexual liaisons with males, falling outside the control of the paterfamilias, would be neither condemnable nor punishable. Thus miskĕbê ʾiššâ, referring to illicit male—female relations, is applied to illicit male—male relations, and the literal meaning of our verse is: do not have sex with a male with whose widow sex is forbidden. In effect, this means that the homosexual prohibition applies to Ego with father, son, and brother (subsumed in v. 6) and to grandfather—grandson, uncle—nephew, and stepfather—stepson, but not to any other male. (page 1569)