An Analysis of Six Critical Texts Used To Condemn Homosexuality

by: Royce Buehler

TOEVAH A couple of years later, in 1996, a number of new English versions of the book of Genesis were published. I heard a radio interviewer ask one of the translators (I no longer remember which) what he found to be the most challenging piece of his task. He replied that it was translating the word toevah. No English word, he said, could capture its full connotation. The dictionary translation would simply be "something detestable." But it carries a vivid suggestion of detestable religious practices, of idolatry and ritual orgies. It also conveys the idea of something wildly dangerous, something you want to put at as great a distance as possible. At one point, he said, he was thinking of translating it as "radioactive". I thought his commentary was very interesting, coming as it did from someone with no special stake in the conversation about Leviticus 18 and 20. It reconfirmed what I had learned two years before. Another source with no stake, which I had on hand in those days (although I recognize he's not thought of as a major scholarly authority - for one thing, his heavy reliance on etymologically determined definitions makes him a little suspect), was Strong. Toevah is Strong's number 8441: to'ebah - fem. act. participle of 8581 [ta'ab, to loathe, detest]; prop. something disgusting (mor.), i.e. (as noun) an abhorrence; esp. idolatry or (concr.) an idol. Given this, Leviticus might be naming either of two reasons for the prohibition: it is wrong becuase it is "disgusting" to God (which wouldn't tell us why it is disgusting, and wouldn't get us much further, but maybe there isn't any further to get to), or it is wrong because it is a form of idolatry. So far, so good. Which of these two meanings is more likely? Well, a word is ultimately defined by its use. So (though we'll want to return to study this particular use in its context), the question resolves to: which of these two meanings is more commonly used? Which meaning would have sprung first to the mind of a contemporary of the writer? So I conducted an exhaustive word study on toevah in the Old Testament. It is important to recognize that word usage changes over the course of centuries. And despite wide differences of opinion on many specific dates, conservative and liberal bible scholars are agreed that the OT was composed over the course of several centuries. Nor do they disagree that the Pentateuch and the pre-exilic prophets preceded the post-exilic prophets; and that the post-exilic prophets preceded the wisdom literature (in particular, the book of Proverbs). So if we want to know how the word toevah was used when the Pentateuch was composed, we will get the best idea from writings prior to the post-exilic prophets. Those writings use the term (not counting the two Leviticus chapters in question) 51 times. The term is used by two post-exilic prophets (43 times by Ezekiel, once by Malachi). It is used twenty-odd times in Proverbs, and once in Psalms. (I'll place Psalms with the wisdom literature; it would drop out of my final count in any case.) Linguists generally expect that terms with strong negative or positive connotation will expand to wider and looser applications as time goes on. Accordingly, we would expect to find toevah linked specifically to themes of separation, contamination, and idolatry more often in the early books, with less frequency in Ezekiel, and with less frequency still in Proverbs; and that is what we find. For brevity, and taking advantage of hindsight, I will tally only the 'idolatry' theme here. Here is a quick breakdown: All early books: Idolatry or other strictly ritual offenses are specifically implicated in 38 out of 51 instances. Four other instances are too vague to determine what the offense may have been. Six instances apparently involve purely ethical offenses. The remaining three appear to be simple instances of detestation, with no ethical content. (I say "appear" in these last nine cases because in most of them there seems to be an issue of contamination, and perhaps of ritual contamination, driving the choice of word. For example, in Exodus 8:26, Moses tells Pharoah that the sacrifices the Hebrews will offer are toevah to the Egyptians. Therefore, he says, we must go three days' journey into the desert to offer them. Talk about "radioactive"! For another example, Deuteronomy 24:4 calls remarriage after divorce toevah . At first glance, this is an ethical consideration, and of course it is at least that; but it goes on, "because she has been defiled"; so a kind of ritual contamination is hovering in the background.) Summing up, of 44 instances of toevah which refer to specific offenses, 38 (or 86%) name offenses of idolatry or other ritual impurity. In Ezekiel, the breakdown is: Idolatry or other strictly ritual offenses named in 35 out of 43 cases. Two are too vague to determine the offense; six name only purely ethical offenses. The usage for toevah has gravitated slightly toward the moral, but its primary significance is still worship of idols. I haven't gone back to retabulate Proverbs precisely, but in this one late book the linguistic change is complete. About half of the references mention no specific offenses at all; almost all the rest mention moral failings. Very well. With fairly high probability, then (something like 86%), when Leviticus uses the word toevah , it is using the word as it is most often used before the exile; it is referring to the worship of idols. With that in mind, I'll turn next to the full text of Leviticus 18 and 20. What do they contain to confirm or disconfirm a connection with idolatry, or to indicate what a connection with idol worship might be? ORGANIZATION OF THE LEVITICUS TEXTS The proper immediate context for the two verses under study is the whole of chapter 18 and the whole of chapter 20. Chapter 11and verse divisions were introduced late in the Bible's history, and ordinarily shouldn't be taken very seriously. In Leviticus, however, beginning with chapter 11, our chapter divisions result from clear markers in the Hebrew text, which is organized as a series of oracles, each introduced by a slight variant of the phrase, "The Lord said to Moses..." I rely on several study bibles. The one closest to hand as I write is the St. Joseph edition of the New American Bible. Its usually helpful section headings read, for Leviticus 18, "The Sanctity of Sex". Most study bibles give it a similar heading. Those who follow the tradition of dividing OT laws into "civil, ritual, and moral" tend to assert that the law against lying with a man as with a woman is a moral law, because it appears in a chapter of sexual laws. On a slightly closer look, Leviticus 18 seems to have this basic structure: An introduction exhorting obedience (vv. 1-5), a set of prohibitions against incest, listing various degrees of consanguinity (vv. 6-18), a mixed bag of laws against various forms of sexual immorality (vv. 19-23), and a homily about avoiding all these things so the land won't spit you out as it spat out the former peoples (vv. 24-30). But the first of those laws against sexual immorality, v. 19, prohibits relations with a woman during the ritual period of "uncleanness" due to menstruation. Not exactly sexual immorality. And the third of those laws against sexual immorality, v. 21, is "You shall not offer any of your offspring to be immolated to Molech, thus profaning the name of your God. I am the Lord." What's that doing here? And if we turn to Leviticus 20, we find that it repeats every prohibition on the odd list which appeared in chapter 18. It is obviously just a slight rewriting of chapter 18, and presumably has the same central concerns. It reorders the prohibitions by severity (or at least by severity of punishment); it places much greater emphasis on forbidding child sacrifice (placed first, and comprising four verses); it adds one more law - against mediums nd fortunetellers - which it repeats it in the last verse, so that examples of idolatry frame the chapter. Finally, in its summary, it urges the Israelites not to contaminate themselves with ritually unclean foods. If the organizing principle of Leviticus 18 is really a discussion of laws "about" sexual morality, the same must be true of Leviticus 20. Yet no one makes this claim about Leviticus 20. (For example, my NAB labels chapter 20 "Penalties for Various Sins".) The themes of idolatry and ritual purity are simply too prominent there. Chapter 20 has a summary which echoes chapter 18's very closely: its theme is that Israel is not to adopt the customs of the nations which formerly inhabited the land. They are to keep themselves separate and apart, not committing toevah, so that they will not also be cast out of the land. In other words, the central concern here is not about things which the Israelites might do of their own accord, prompted by their ordinary human desires. The concern is about things which they might do by imitating the surrounding cultures. This accounts, incidentally, for the placement of the incest laws here. Israel regarded the border nations of Ammon and Moab as hotbeds of incest. For one thing, Genesis describes how, after the destruction of Sodom, Lot's daughters made him drunk and seduced him. The children of these two incestuous unions are named Ammon and Moab [Gen. 19:36-38]. Deuteronomy places side by side the law which excludes Ammonites and Moabites from the congregation [Deut. 23:4] and the law which excludes the children of an incestuous union [Deut. 23:3]; both may be allowed in after the third generation.) The Israelites were human. They did not need other cultures to show them how to engage in adultery. Nor, unless they were radically different from every other society in history, how to engage in homosexual behavior. But they did need outside examples to learn how to engage in adultery and homosexual behavior as part of a religious cult. "THEIR ORDINANCES" The introduction to Leviticus 18 frames all this still more clearly. 18:3. (KJV) "After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, ye shall not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall you walk in their ordinances." These things that are about to be described are not just things that the Egyptians or the Canaanites did because they individually succumbed to various desires. They were things that they did by ordinance. They were religious laws of those peoples. The language here only suggests this, but Deuteronomy spells it out unmistakably: Deut. 12:30. (NRSV) Do not inquire concerning their gods, saying, "How did these nations worship their gods? I also want to do the same." 31. You must not do the same for the Lord your God, because every toevah that the Lord hates they have done for their gods." (Emphasis mine.) The Egyptians are mentioned first, then the Canaanites. The Egyptian state religion involved royal brother-sister incest, and the incest laws are mentioned first. Then comes a list of five "thou shalt nots". The literary form thus suggests that these laws reject Canaanite religious practices. The suggestion is reinforced by the fact that verses 26, 27, 29 and 30 refer to the items on this list as toevah; and we know that toevah usually means idolatry. It is further reinforced if we consider whether each of the "thou shalt nots" fits with what we know about the milieu of strictly religious practices within which Leviticus was written. Item one is intercourse with a woman "while she is unclean from menstruation". This is clearly a matter of ritual purity, and of fear of ritual contamination. (The menstruating woman is required in OT law to go off at a distance from the male community for a ritual period of seven days. Here we see the "radioactive" sense of toevah come into play again.) Item two is "Having carnal relations with your neighbour's wife, defiling yourself with her." In "defiling" the theme of fear of ritual contamination is sounded again briefly. But the important thing to note is that the "ordinances" of the Canaanites did indeed require participation in free-for-all fertility rites. Archaeology confirms this, but we can learn it straight from the Bible: see the account in Numbers 25 of the orgiastic feast that payed tribute to Baal; and recall that Baal is the Hebrew word for "husband". Item three forbids sacrifice of children to Molech - obviously a matter of idolatry. Item four is our prime text, forbidding 'lying with a man as with a woman'. There is no dispute that male temple prostitution was a prominent feature of Canaanite religious practice; we'll go through the relevant texts in detail later in this series. Item five forbids mating with animals. I conjecture that ritual sex with animals believed to incarnate a god (or with priests dressed as such animals) was a cultic practice in Canaan. Certainly such practices are well documented in a variety of cultures. [I would be interested to learn information anyone has, pro or con, on this question. The Bible never gives an example of a violation of this particular provision.] For biblical inerrantists, of course, no archaeological evidence is necessary. They will know that the Canaanites mated with animals as part of their religion, since Leviticus lists it with the abominations, and Deuteronomy states that they did every one of their abominations for their gods. Joe Dallas, in "A Strong Delusion", puts forth the counterargument that if Leviticus prohibits homosexuality only within the context of idolatry, the other practices it prohibits must also be deemed morally unobjectionable outside that context. His counterargument fails, since the OT forbids again in other contexts every item forbidden in Leviticus 18 and 20 - with the sole exception of "lying with a man as with a woman". continued . . . ECHOS AND SILENCES THE OVERLOOKED FIVE SUMMATION POSTSCRIPT - THE NEW TESTAMENT REVISITED

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