Who Says Homosexuality is a Sin?

This is a question Joel Hoffman has asked.  And the answer is:  "The NLT does, right there in its 'translation' to Leviticus 18:22."

"Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin."

Hoffman goes on to say "that’s not what the Hebrew says" and explains how "what the NLT has here is an interpretation, not a translation."

I think how translator Robert Alter translates and how he explains is also useful:

With a male you shall not lie as one lies with a woman. It is an abhorrence.

The explicitness of this law–the Hebrew for ‘as one lies’ is the plural construct noun mishkevei, ‘bedding,’ used exclusively for sexual intercourse–suggests that it is a ban on intercourse and intercrural intercourse (the latter often practiced by the Greeks). Other forms of homosexual activity do not seem of urgent concern. The evident rationale for the prohibition is the wasting of seed in what the law appears to envisage as a kind of grotesque parody of heterosexual intercourse [i.e., for procreation primarily?]. (Lesbianism, which surely must have been known in the ancient Near East, is nowhere mentioned, perhaps because of no wasting of seed is involved, though the reason for the omission remains unclear). There is scant textual evidence to support the apologetic claim of some recent interpreters that the ban on homosexual congress is limited to the preceding list of incestuous unions. One may apply here the proposal of Mary Douglas that this is a culture that likes to keep lines of categorical distinction clear: no human-beast couplings are allowed (in contrast to the imaginative freedom on this topic of Greek myth), and any simulation of procreative heterosexual intercourse by the insertion of the male member in an orifice or fleshy crevice of another male is abhorrent.

Now, here's the Hebrew (at least it's the MT).  And then with all that Greek talk, we might compare the Greek (remembering how Aristotle, or at least a pseudo-sound-alike Aristotle used the word βδελυροὶ to express his disgust when discussing the shapes of women's body parts when they are unshapely and when they compare by his objective standard, sometimes, to κίναιδοι, or "catamites"):

וְאֶת־זָכָר לֹא תִשְׁכַּב מִשְׁכְּבֵי אִשָּׁה תֹּועֵבָה הִוא׃

καὶ μετὰ ἄρσενος οὐ κοιμηθήσῃ κοίτην γυναικός βδέλυγμα γάρ ἐστιν

Is Alter's translation a myopic one?  Is the Greek translation, if it's a translation, a myopic one?  Isn't the NLT something else altogether (committing what Alter calls the "heresy of explanation" as if the explanation is a good one)? 

I'm out of time for now, but as always am interested in what you see and how you feel about these sorts of things.

Of women and -μένη

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J. R. Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology posts on what "ἐνεργουμένη means" and how theology of the translators motivates their renderings.  This has led to a number of other posts many of which Peter Kirk links to over at BBB here, where several still "are looking in particular at the Greek verb, actually a participle, energoumene, a present participle, feminine singular nominative, of the middle or passive voice of the verb energeo."  The word seems odd, a neologism perhaps, because in our extant Greek texts it only appears twice used once a piece by two different authors.  Where would they get this form from, and why?

Well, quite unrelated (probably) is the "present participle, feminine singular nominative, of the middle or passive voice of" two other Greek verbs I found.  Each has the suffix -μένη.

I don't really have time to say much of what I think about this, but I'd certainly welcome any comments.  The main thing to note, of course, is the wordplay here.

The Greek is a playful translating of Hebrew.  And the Hebrew seems full of wordplay (if the Masoretic text is what was being translated).  So here it is.  Please tell me what you see, and I promise as time allows to come back to talk with you and to make of it anything else we might see together.

Leviticus 21:7 and 21:14 (ΛΕΥΕΙΤΟΚΟΝ / ויקרא)

γυναῖκα πόρνην καὶ βεβηλωμένην οὐ λήμψονται καὶ γυναῖκα ἐκβεβλημένην ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἅγιός ἐστιν τῷ κυρίῳ θεῷ αὐτοῦ

χήραν δὲ καὶ ἐκβεβλημένην καὶ βεβηλωμένην καὶ πόρνην ταύτας οὐ λήμψεται ἀλλ᾽ ἢ παρθένον ἐκ τοῦ γένους αὐτοῦ λήμψεται γυναῖκα

אִשָּׁה זֹנָה וַחֲלָלָה לֹא יִקָּחוּ וְאִשָּׁה גְּרוּשָׁה מֵאִישָׁהּ לֹא יִקָּחוּ כִּֽי־קָדֹשׁ הוּא לֵאלֹהָֽיו׃

אַלְמָנָה וּגְרוּשָׁה וַחֲלָלָה זֹנָה אֶת־אֵלֶּה לֹא יִקָּח כִּי אִם־בְּתוּלָה מֵעַמָּיו יִקַּח אִשָּֽׁה׃

Here's Lancelot Brenton's solo translation of the Greek into English followed by Julia E. Smith's solo translation of the Hebrew into English (both completed in the nineteenth century):

They shall not take a woman who is a harlot and profaned, or a woman put away from her husband; for he is holy to the Lord his God.


But a widow, or one that is put away, or profaned, or a harlot, these he shall not take; but he shall take for a wife a virgin of his own people.

They shall not take a woman, harlot, or profane; and they shall not take a wife driven away from her husband, for he is holy to his God.

A widow, and the driven away, and profane, and an harlot, these he shall not take: but a virgin of his people shall he take a wife.

Why these translations?  What motivates the Hebrew, the Hellene translation?  How do they mirror one another, and in what way do they play with interpretation and with performance and with playfulness in different ways?

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