The Holiness Code: Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13
"You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination."
Leviticus 18:22
"If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."
Leviticus 20:13
The alternate name for Leviticus in Judaism is torath kohanim, or the "Law of the Priests." Included among this collective writing is a portion considered distinct by many scholars that has come to be known as "The Holiness Code" containing chapters 17-26. The Holiness Code covers instruction and prohibitions governing not only sexual behavior but everything that ordered daily life from food to clothing and includes the two passages used by some to oppose homosexuality.
As described by the biblical text itself the intention of the Holiness Code was to set the people of Israel apart from all other nations. Leviticus 18:1-3 opens with "The LORD said to Moses, "Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'I am the LORD your God. You must not do as they do in Egypt, where you used to live, and you must not do as they do in the land of Canaan, where I am bringing you. Do not follow their practices" and concludes in Leviticus 18:30 with the instruction to "Keep my requirements and do not follow any of the detestable customs that were practiced before you came and do not defile yourselves with them. I am the LORD your God."
Within the very nature of any group of individuals is the necessity to define itself in a way that describes those who belong while separating itself from those who don't belong. Boundaries of distinction are used to separate the "us" from "them" and more often than not this boundary language describes the "them" in negative terms. Both in history and in our current context the world is ripe with examples. Consider how America perceived of the Soviet Union prior to the fall of communism. Turn on the television and listen as an evangelical tele-evangelist highlights the difference between real Christians (conservatives) and the "other" Christians (liberals). Look no further than how gays and lesbians are described by certain groups within our society using negative stereotypes that speak nothing to who we actually are. Every group uses language to define and separate themselves. This is what we see happening throughout the book of Leviticus with the continual command to avoid all behavior that would blur the lines between the Israelites and the inhabitants of Canaan.
And what were these detestable customs and evil practices of the Canaanites? While some pro-gay scholars have argued this is referring to cultic prostitution among the Canaanites, there appears no substantial evidence to prove this historical claim and what little evidence can be gathered is nearly all related to female prostitution. With the lack of historical evidence it seems reasonable that as we have modern day examples of the villianization of one group by another to separate the "us" from the "them" this might well be the case in this passage. Whatever the Canaanites were or were not doing, the point of these prohibitions was to separate the Israelites from either the real or imagined customs and practices of the Canaanites.
I'm going to spend some time looking briefly at purity and dishonor in the ancient worldview and their application to this passage of Scripture.
THE ROLE OF PURITY WITHIN ANCIENT ISRAEL
The Holiness Code, in all it's diversity of prohibitions deals with the historical uncleanness of the people of Israel. It was the uncleanness of Israel in an earlier time that caused them to be "vomited out" of the land, referring to the exile of Israel and its captivity into Egypt. Now Israel, having returned to the land, is being warned not only to avoid these same acts of uncleanness (Leviticus 26:21-39) but through the Holiness Code is also being given a way to deal with the unclean acts of individuals so as to escape yet another corporate punishment into exile. Often the way to find repentance from the sins of the individual is to exact a death penalty for the one who transgresses.
What does it mean historically to be unclean? A person was unclean when they were no longer pure and that's why the Holiness Code is also known as the Purity Codes. Unclean. Holiness. Purity. These are all words familiar to us and yet their meaning in antiquity had very different implications. To be unclean meant to not be clean. To be clean was to be pure. To be pure was to be whole. To be whole was to be complete. To be clean or pure or complete was to be holy.
To explain this chain and its relationship to the Holiness Code I refer to an excellent book entitled Dirt, Greed and Sex: Sexual Ethics in the New Testament and their Implications for Today, by L.William Countryman. While this topic might sound somewhat tedious and unrelated to the topic at hand I'd encourage you to stick with me because it will all make sense in the end....I hope!
To be unclean is to be dirty and according to the cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas "dirt is essentially disorder or matter out of place" (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 12). Countryman illustrates the difference between purity (cleanliness) and impurity (uncleanness) through the example that "the coffee in a cup is clean, but the pair of pants I spill the coffee on is dirty." The coffee in the cup and the coffee spilled on the pants is the same coffee and yet when the coffee is where it's suppose to be it's clean and when it's out of place it's dirty." (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 13). Even as small children we learn that food spilled on your clothes is no longer food but has been somehow transformed into dirt, something that is unclean because it is out of place. When your shirt was covered with peanut butter you'd hear "Change your shirt Honey. It's dirty." So uncleanness is disorder, things out of place, things not as they're suppose to be or usually are.
What determines what is clean or what is unclean is strongly affected by cultural and historical location. In France, eschargo is considered a delicacy while in the mind of at least this one American the notion of eating snails is repugnant. Likewise, to the ancient Israelites pig was seen as unclean while in our present context most of us enjoy the taste of a good BLT with extra mayo. There is no single code of purity regarding sexual behavior anymore than there is toward food. For example, it was unclean for a husband to have sexual relations with his wife during menstruation in ancient Israel and yet as far as I'm aware that's no longer considered sinful within our current worldview. Countryman suggests concerning sexual ethics that 1) certain acts were right in and of themselves and this is in fact the reflection of purity values we've drawn from our culture; 2) purity systems change and we cannot assume that ours is identical with that of our ancestral cultures, Israel and Greece; and 3) purity systems not only differ in detail from culture to culture but also differ in the coherence with which they are organized and the intensity with which they are held (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 18).
Purity also means to be whole or complete. In antiquity there was an ideal for every species in creation. When a member of a species met the ideal it was considered pure or whole. The ideal for land animals was that they have cloven hoofs and this meant that while ox, sheep and goats were clean, pigs and camels were considered unclean. A blemish on an animal prevented it from being offered as a sacrifice because the blemish rendered the animal outside of the ideal since all members of that species didn't have a blemish. Equally, there was an ideal of what constituted cleanliness or uncleanness in humanity and apparently one of these was that a whole or complete human being should be of one single skin color (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 25). This is illustrated in Leviticus 13:12-13 where a partial outbreak of leprosy (which included a variety of skin rashes and maladies beyond what we understand as leprosy today) renders a priest unclean and yet "if the leprosy has covered all his body, he shall pronounce him clean of the disease; it has all turned white and he is clean."
Purity is wholeness which, according to Mary Douglas demands two things: "first, that every individual should be a complete and self-contained specimen of its kind, and second, that there should be no mixing of kinds." This would explain many of the prohibitions of Leviticus. A menstruating woman was considered unclean, not because of hygienic considerations but because "her normal wholeness and completeness was being violated by the loss of something proper to her" (Dirt, Greed and Sex, page 26). This also applied to a hemorrhaging woman or a woman in childbirth. Something from their wholeness was being lost and therefore they were less whole or impure. Mixing two kinds of fabric (Leviticus 19:19) is blending two wholes that are complete in themselves. This mixing brings about confusion and disorder. Despite our own reasons for deploring the notion of bestiality as perversion, in the prohibition of Leviticus the reason was again the confusion of trying to mix two complete but unrelated kinds together.
This brings us to the passages in Leviticus used by some to condemn homosexuality. The passage reads that it's an abomination for a man to lie with another man "as with a woman."(A better translation of the Hebrew word used in the text would be "wife.") It's helpful at this point to catch a glimpse of how sex was defined in antiquity and which has already been discussed briefly. In antiquity sex was always understood as being between a naturally dominant partner and a naturally passive partner. Acceptable sexual relations always involved the penetration of a passive partner by a dominant partner or in more modern terminology, a top and a bottom. Because a male was considered naturally dominant he was always the dominant partner while the woman fulfilled the role of the passive partner. A relationship between equals had no place in antiquity so for a man to have sex with a man required that one take on the role of the woman and in doing so one of the men was making himself a combination of kinds (male and female) and was therefore unclean.The other man was unclean for coming in contact with what was unclean.
Has this interpretation been concocted by contemporary pro-gay scholars to strengthen their position? Hardly. Philo, a Jewish writer and contemporary of the Apostle Paul, wrote concerning this passage in Leviticus "In fact, the transformation of the male nature to the female is practised by them as an art and does not raise a blush. These persons are rightly judged worthy of death by those who obey the law, which ordains that the man-woman who debases the sterling coin of nature should perish unavenged, suffered not to live for a day or even an hour, as a disgrace to himself, his house, his native land and the whole human race. And the lover of such may be assured that he is subject to the same penalty. He pursues an unnatural pleasure and does his best to render cities desolate and uninhabited by destroying the means of procreation." (The Special Laws, III: 37-39). Philo considered that the sin was that the submissive man was no longer a pure male but a man-woman. The abandonment of his position of male was a sin. In addition, Philo believed the other man was sinful because he was engaged in sexual activity that didn't lead to procreation. Few Christians would argue that procreation is either a requirement or the purpose for sex within marriage.
THE ROLE OF DISHONOR IN ANCIENT ISRAEL
Purity was a critical consideration in the prohibitions found within the Holiness Code and so is the dishonoring of the male. As was already mentioned, our current objection toward bestiality is because we consider it perverse and unnatural while it was deplored in antiquity as a mixing of two whole kinds thus resulting in confusion and uncleanness. They abhorred bestiality as we do but for reasons different than our own, at least within the context of the Holiness Code. Likewise, we have strong objections concerning incest particularly when it involves a younger child by a parent or any adult family member. We consider the child a victim, fully defenseless against the physical advances and mental manipulations of the adult. Incest is considered abusive because the child is at risk. Leviticus 18:6 -18 offers a list of incestuous prohibitions but the focus is primarily on the male and his honor in every prohibition. For a male to have sex with his mother is a dishonoring of her husband, the male's father, and not the mother. It dishonors a brother to have sex with his wife. It dishonors a son to have sex with his wife. It dishonors the father to have sex with his sister, the male's aunt. In having sex with a neighbor's wife, one wasn't dishonoring the sanctity of marriage but was dishonoring the neighbor by violating his property, that being his wife.
So it appears that incest prohibitions were for the protection of male honor rather than protection of the woman, whether child or adult. This leads to a disturbing reality of the distinction between gender roles in the Bible. The hierarchical understanding of the divine order of creation was that God was the most supreme Being, followed in order by men, women, children, and finally slaves. To be born a male was to be a superior being or as the Psalmist declared "man is only a little lower than the angels." To be born a female was a curse for she was an inferior being and a source of greater impurity. This is seen through the Scriptures and no place more clearly than in the prohibitions found throughout Leviticus such as seen in Leviticus 12 where a woman's time of impurity following the birth of a female child was twice as long as following the birth of a male child.
Misogyny is defined as a hatred or disdain of women and according to Phyllis Byrd in Homosexuality, Science, and the "Plain Sense" of Scripture, this is what serves as the basis for the prohibition that a man not lie with another man "as with a woman." In doing so both were dishonored. The passive partner was made to take the position of the inferior female thus dishonoring himself and the dominant partner was dishonored by bringing dishonor to his kinsman, the passive partner. It was an abomination because a superior man was lowering himself to the place of a woman. While some might argue that this is only one possible way to understand this prohibition it is a hypothesis that seems to fit this verse with the passages surrounding it and as Phyllis Byrd asks "Is misogyny a reasonable ground for a prohibition against homosexuality?"
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSISTENCY
I realize from my own encounters that when it comes to having discussions on homosexuality with conservative Christians, particularly those among our circle of family, friends, and church, most of the information covered above will be discounted. After all, the argument goes, "The words are clear and you're just trying to complicate things to justify homosexuality. The Bible says 'A man will not lie with another man as with a woman.' That's clearly about homosexuality and you're deceiving yourself to think otherwise."
Okay then, let's suspend everything already discussed and assume for a moment that yes, Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 are clear-cut prohibitions against all homosexual relationships. The issue at this point becomes much more simple and much more difficult to answer. If we are to bring these passages into our current setting, putting aside the reasons why they were put in place originally and what type of worldview on gender and sexuality served as the basis for their establishment, then the only way we can remain consistent as Christians in the treatment of the Biblical text is to do the same with all the surrounding passages. To carry one prohibition across the centuries requires that we carry all the prohibitions along with it. This raises a problem for many Christians since most ignore the prohibitions against eating pork or shelled fish, shaving their hair near the temples, not marking their bodies with a tattoo, not touching a pigskin, wearing blended fabrics or having sexual relations between a husband and wife during menstruation among a long laundry list of other requirements and prohibitions.
Not only do we need to be consistent in treating all the law equally but we need to be consistent in applying the prescribed penalty for disobedience to the law. There exists a radical fringe of anti-gay people who call for the "death of homosexuals." Most Christians, even those who oppose homosexuality, are appalled by their violent rhetoric and yet, to truly honor the mandate of Leviticus concerning this prohibition, the radical fringe, no matter how offensive their position, are arguing for consistency in obeying all the law. How can the church decide the prohibition is in place and yet not the penalty for its violation? If they insist that this passage is still in place within our world then so must the penalty be, including death for those who engage in homosexuality as well as stoning for children who curse their parents..
A simple reality is that as Christians the Bible is the basis for our personal sexual ethics and yet there are vast differences between our sexual ethics and those of the Bible. In his article "Homosexuality and the Bible" in Homosexuality and the Christian Faith, Walter Wink highlights the inconsistencies in our use of the Bible as being authoritative to our lives.
"Most modern readers would agree with the Bible in rejecting incest (Note: The Bible actually offers no rejection or mention of father-daughter incest, mainly because in antiquity the father owned the daughter as one owns property), rape, adultery, and intercourse with animals. But we disagree with the Bible on most other sexual mores. The Bible condemned or discouraged the following behaviors which we generally allow: intercourse during menstruation, celibacy (some texts), exogamy (marriage with non-Israelites), naming sexual organs, nudity (under certain conditions), masturbation (some Christians still condemn this) and birth control. The Bible regarded semen and menstrual blood as unclean which most of us do not. Likewise, the Bible permitted behaviors that we today condemn or have discontinued: prostitution, polygamy, levirate marriage, sex with slaves, concubinage, treatment of women as property, and very early marriage (ages 11-13 for the girl). The Old Testament accepted divorce, Jesus forbade it."
"Why do we appeal to proof texts in Scripture in the case of homosexuality alone, when we feel perfectly free to disagree with Scripture regarding most other sexual practices. Obviously many of our choices in these matters are arbitrary." (Homosexuality and the Christian Faith, page 43) The full article, Homosexuality and the Bible, is available to read online.
Despite the claims of many Christians, there seems to be a tendency to pick and choose from Scriptural law, those which most fit with our existing belief system on what is right and what is wrong sexually.
In conclusion, how does the Christian Testament refer to the Law? Jesus declared he hadn't come to do away with a portion of the Law but to fulfill all the Law (Matthew 5:17-18). Paul said that "Christ is the end of the Law for righteousness to all who believe" (Romans 10:4) and he tells us that we have been released from the Law and are dead to that which had us bound (Romans 7:6). Finally, in a passage familiar to all of us we read an exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees where they asked: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments" (Matthew 22:36-40). The question left to ask then is does the love between a gay or lesbian couple violate the first and greatest commandment?
Continue on to According to Paul: Romans
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