"man shall not lie with boy?"

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Philomena

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I received this from a high schooler…‘in the original translation of the Bible, it states"‘man shall not lie with boy’, not man shall not lie with man", so pedophilia is a sin, not being gay.’ I responded by asking her what translation, from which language? I know this is probably an erroneous translation, but I am not a Greek, Latin or Hebrew scholar. Can anyone help me respond to her? Thank you!
 
I presume this is from Leviticus in the Old Testament. The wording doesn’t matter, as Catholics do not follow Leviticus or other Old Testament Jewish law.

Catholic teaching is that lying with anybody that you are not married to is a sin.
A man cannot marry a man or a boy because marriage is between a man and a woman.
This is fully explored in the Catechism section on marriage, which contains references to appropriate scripture and tradition. (I’m not seeing any Leviticus in the Scripture footnotes.)

Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether the original translation said man or boy. It doesn’t matter what Leviticus said at all.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
It doesn’t matter what Leviticus said at all.
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It matters quite a lot - it is Sacred Scripture… God will not say something false there. That doesn’t mean it’s exhaustive (and neither is the New Testament)… but it certainly matters.
 
It doesn’t matter for purposes of answering the OP’s question.

It matters for our understanding of the Jewish Biblical history and tradition and law of Moses.

We don’t follow it as any sort of moral code. Otherwise we’d also have to not eat pork and make sure our clothing didn’t ever mix two fibers together.

Jesus gave us the New Covenant, and the only part of the Law of Moses we follow is the 10 Commandments.

We also don’t base our apologetics regarding marriage being between a man and a woman upon the vagaries of Leviticus translations.
 
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I think what she meant was that Leviticus doesn’t matter to the topic at hand - even if the original translation says ‘boy’ it wouldn’t refute church teaching, since the church’s teaching doesn’t come from Leviticus.
 
SPBlitz said:
I think what she meant was that Leviticus doesn’t matter to the topic at hand - even if the original translation says ‘boy’ it wouldn’t refute church teaching, since the church’s teaching doesn’t come from Leviticus.
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Yes, exactly. Thank you for reading thoughtfully and in context. 🙂
 
The Church’s teaching certainly does “come from Leviticus” - as the New Covenant is the upshot of all that is contained in Leviticus.

But I’m not even sure this text is from Leviticus - I would think it’s actually from Deuteronomy.
 
Well I haven’t read all of the Old Testament but one thing doesn’t exclude another. It could be a mistranslation as there are a lot of mistranslations also in the New Testament but just because it says man shall not lie with boy it doesn’t exclude that man shall not lie with man.
 
It’s most defiinitely in Leviticus 18:22.

Having said that, Deuteronomy contains many of the same teachings as in Leviticus.

And my exact answer applies to Deuteronomy as well. Simply replace “Leviticus” with “Deuteronomy” or with “Deuteronomy and Leviticus”.

I will be leaving the thread now as I have answered the OP’s question and there is no need to further split hairs or consider ancillary topics not on point to her question. Have a blessed day.
 
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@Philomena, you’re right and the highschooler is wrong. The quotation is from Leviticus 20:13, which reads : If a man (Hebrew ish) lies with a man (Hebrew zakar.) Zakar means male, as opposed to female. It can refer to a human male or to a male animal, as in the passages about the kinds of animal to be sacrificed, but it has nothing to do with age, or with being a boy instead of a man. In grammar, it’s the term for the masculine gender. Elsewhere in the Pentateuch, it’s the word for male in Genesis 1:27, for example, “male and female created he them.”
 
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BartholomewB said:
If a man (Hebrew ish )
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In addition to @BartholomewB’s excellent response, I will add that some people might misconstrue the meaning of זָכָר zakar due expressions such as יָלַד לַזּכָר אוֹ לָנְּקֵבָה yalad lazzakar 'o lan’qvah ‘to bear a male or female’ (as in Lev 12:7). For stylistic purposes, English translations use ‘male child’ or ‘boy’ to translate zakar when it is the direct object of יָלַד yalad ‘to bear, beget’ and when the subject is a woman. Otherwise, the phrase ’ she bore a male’ in English sounds very odd indeed.
 
I have a Hebrew - English copy of the Torah, translated and published by the Jewish Publication Society - who should know something about Old Testament Hebrew. Their translation of Leviticus 20:13 is “If a man lies with a MALE as one lies with a woman, the two of them have done an abhorrent thing…” That high schooler better get back to class.
 
Here’s a great comment I saved from Reddit:

That’s a bit mangled. The first part, that no Bible translation included the words “homosexual”/“homosexuality”/etc (or their cognates in other languages) until sometime in the 1940s is correct. (I don’t know if it was 1946 exactly, but it doesn’t really matter.)

The second part, that “the word it replaced translate to pedophile”, is less accurate. In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Tim 1:10, the Greek text features the word ἀρσενοκοῖται, which literally means something like “man-bedders”. The KJV translates it as “abusers of themselves with mankind” (1 Cor) or “them that defile themselves with mankind” (1 Tim). Martin Luther translated it into German in his 1545 Bible as knabenschander, which means something like “boy-molester”. Luther is reading the element of “boy” into the Greek text, which isn’t clearly present in the original (ἀρσενο means “man”, it usually refers to an adult male, it doesn’t explicitly refer to a boy or male adolescent). You then are summarising knabenschander as “pedophile”, which is even less accurate, since the English word “pedophile” is not gender-specific (it is used to refer to adults who abuse girls), whereas both knabenschander and ἀρσενοκοῖται facially are.

If you look at English Bibles, there is basically no tradition in English of translating ἀρσενοκοῖται in a way which suggests a link with pedophilia (or ephebophilia/pederasty), at least prior to the mid-20th century. (I’m sure by now someone has done it.) The tradition of translating the word in a way which suggests such a link is primarily German, not English.
 
As it has already been pointed out, the word in question in the Hebrew text is transliterated ‘zakar’ in both Lev. 18:22 and 19:13 and it means male as opposed to being female such as its use in Gen. 1:27 in the creation of man “male (zakar) and female He created them”. Depending on context, ‘zakar’ can mean a male human or animal of whatever age, an adult male, or child male. In Lev. 18:22 and 19:13, ‘zakar’ is generally translated ‘male’ or sometimes ‘man’. The translation of ‘male’ can refer to either an adult or child male, for a man to lie with either is sinful and an abomination to the Lord. I don’t think these verses refer to male animals because in both cases the following verses go on to mention the sinfulness of intercourse with animals.
 
Thank you! This is the kind of information I was looking for. The girl who sent it to me is in one of those non denominational Christian youth groups. Do you know what the Greek word for boy would be? Is there a difference in wording to indicate young male or adult male?? I appreciate the time you all took to answer my question!
 
Hebrew would be “yeh’-led” (יֶלֶד), or “na’ar” (נַעַר) - Greek would be “p’is” (παῖς) which can mean boy or girl (or young slave)… there is no Koine Greek word specifically for “boy,” strangely enough.

The word used in Leviticus 18:22 is “zakar” (זָכָר): Leviticus 18 (RSV) - You shall not lie with

See all of its other usages here (using the RSV-Hebrew concordance):


Note especially that only 4 times, in the KJV at least (you can take a look at other translations) is the word used to indicate a “boy” specifically as opposed to a male in general.
 
So… even if that were true, so what?

You have lots of other places where men lying with men was specifically outlawed (Paul is waving ‘Hi’).

As well as the magisterium and the idea that the only ‘lying with’ that can happen licitly is with one’s spouse, and the only spouse one can have licitly is of the opposite sex.
 
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