"With (a) male you shall not lie (the) lyings of a woman. (An) abomination is that." Huh. Would "don't be the penetrated partner" be another way of interpreting that, with the implication that being the penetrating partner in a male homosexual coupling is fine? And since it says "with a male", a man being pegged by a woman would be fine as well?

Few very good points here. However I fail to grasp the significance of "as" which according to you was needlessly added by the translators. I don't see how it lessens the crime in any way, or how this would lead anyone in any way to the OP's conclusion.

The LXX which is a far closer translation to the Hebrew both in time and scholarship as the writers were bilingual in both ancient Hebrew and Greek makes it very clear how the Hebrew is to be read and understood. The Bible is against Sodomy Jude 7 calls it unnatural desires/lust or strange flesh. There is no justification for sodomy. It was not part of the original design. It was a perversion of the fall sons of God that taught men to lay with men and was common among the nations.

@Bach - Consider the difference between "Don't eat food as your dog eats" and "Don't eat food your dog eats". One is talking about HOW you eat, the other is talking about WHAT you eat. That said, it's not so much "you should remove the 'as' because it wasn't in the Hebrew", but "the absence of something equivalent to 'as' in the hebrew makes the translation suspect".

@NihilSineDeo - once again, when you only look at the English translation, you often miss important details. Indeed, some translations of Leviticus 18:22 says do not have homosexual relations... even though that's broader than "don't lie with a man as with a woman" because the latter doesn't address female-female relations. But more than that, you have just determined that, since Jude 7 says "unnatural desires"/"lust"/"strange flesh", it must mean homosexual activity... but those terms could just as easily apply to rape, or sex with non-humans, or fetishes.

@NihilSineDeo - I also don't see how the assertion that Jude 7 establishes that homosexuality is a sin therefore must mean that Leviticus 18:22 must therefore be referring to the same thing. The bible certainly has both narrow and broad laws established on the same topic. If your only evidence that 18:22 refers to homosexual relations generally is that general homosexual relations are condemned somewhere else in the bible, then you've put forward an incredibly weak argument.

Glen O I agree. But the OP asked specifically about ritual sex and how it relates to homosexuality in Leviticus. In your post you imply that the statement "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman", somehow leads to the OP's question or confusion with the matter. I fail to see how. The way I see it, the point you make is completely irrelevant to the subject.

@GlenO there is such a thing as context and history. Applying modern English grammar to the text when it’s not required in the Hebrew isn’t an argument. The Hebrew may not contain the word as which is required in English for proper translation to make sense but the Hebrew doesn’t need the word ‘as’ anywhere else where as is added into translation because it is understood in the Hebrew. The words are clear “you shall not lay with a man” whether it’s as with a woman or like a woman the first portion is clear, don’t have sex with a man. EVER!!!

By your argument we could say, well it doesn’t say to have sex, it technically says don’t get in bed with a man. So if you have sex with a man but not in bed it’s ok. Or you can’t be in the same bed with another man but that doesn’t mean sex is prohibited between men. That’s not how language works. Just because Hebrew was not vulgar doesn’t mean that those reading the text understood this verse to mean don’t lay in bed with a man but having sex with a man is fine. This is a desperate effort to revive a slaughtered sacred cow of sodomy, oral sex and perversion. It’s a sin.

From my reading of the Hebrew, the traditional translation seems quite warranted. The "as" is there because the Hebrew translated in your translation as "lyings of a woman" is actually a construct chain of two nouns, "beds of a woman," (here a euphemism for sexual intercourse with a woman) and this is the object of the sentence. From my understanding, "lie" is an intransitive verb, and thus we insert a preposition, "as", to make a coherent English sentence. The meaning remains the same.

@Bach - the relevance is that, where the interpretation with the "as" (or equivalents) could be a blanket statement, "Not having sex with women applies equally to sex with men" is unlikely to be intended as a blanket statement - it's a lot easier to read the blanket statement as being intended to cover all situations (rather than the ritualistic ones) than it is for the restricted reading.

@NihilSineDeo - You really must stop building strawmen. At no point did I say anything about the "lyings" language - it is clearly intended as a reference to sex, given context and logic. However, translating between languages gets tricky when they don't use the same constructions - in this case, the Hebrew does not clearly distinguish between the two plausible readings of "don't have sex with men in the way that one has sex with women" and "in the same way as don't have sex with the women, don't have sex with the men". Thus the uncertainty.

@NihilSineDeo - The point, here, is that the "as" is introduced to make it "work" in English, but it is not the only reasonable interpretation of the Hebrew. This is much like the fact that translating the "sin of Sodom" from Hebrew to English can be done in many ways, and many references in the bible to the sin of Sodom refers to pride, violence and lack of care for the poor (Ezekiel 16:49-50, for example). Imagine the same story of Sodom, except that the angels are female - every single other detail stays the same. Was Sodom still evil? Is the story now a prohibition against hetero sex?

@JohnDumancic - The problem, here, is that "as" carries connotations in English that aren't built into the Hebrew. And Ramban and Aquinas interpreting it that way doesn't mean that it was meant that way, thousands of years earlier. As for the Septuagint, it seems just as unclear as the Hebrew, with regards to the issues at hand. Translation is often coloured by biases. 2 Samuel 23:5 has translations that say "Although my house be not so with God", and translations that say "For does not my house stand so with God?", which is the exact opposite connotation.

@NihilSineDeo "The words are clear “you shall not lay with a man” whether it’s as with a woman or like a woman the first portion is clear, don’t have sex with a man. EVER!!!" There's a significant difference between "don't lie with a male as you would lie with a woman" and "don't lie with a male as a woman would". It's the difference between "pitching" and "catching", respectively.

There is nothing “tricky” @GlenO in understanding “don’t have sex with a man”. It is only tricky when you want the text to say “have sex with a man” and it doesn’t, anywhere. If you think the Bible is taking the time to instruct men that their sex should be different than with women, you are kidding yourself. You love your sin and you take pleasure in it. Just admit it, throw your Bible away and deny God. Go practice sodomy like with a woman or unlike with a woman or however unnatural way you want. But stop trying to say the Bible allows sodomy when it doesn’t. Stop deceiving yourself.

@NihilSineDeo Parsing the Bible down into snippets of sentences isn't an authentic way of understanding its meaning. You have to take into account context and the fact it was written in a different language, in a different culture with a different understanding of the world. If you don't understand what the culture that wrote it would have understood the passage to mean, you are liable to misinterpret its meaning. The fact is, that passage doesn't say "don't have sex with men", and if God had intended it to say that, that's what it would have said.

@NihilSineDeo My primary beef with you here isn't your position on homosexuality, it's with you taking passages of the Bible out of context and using them to support your position.

I do not mean to imply that you do not have a desire to perform exegesis.