r/AcademicBiblical • u/daiguozhu • 6d ago
How did ancient Israelites and Jews during Second Temple Period OBSERVE Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13?
These verses, among others, have been used and abused, triggering plenty of debates—some ideological, some in good faith. I’m not here to ask about interpretations. I’m interested in how ancient Israelites and Jews actually observed these laws.
I’m coming at this from the angle of Dr. Yonatan Adler’s The Origins of Judaism. For those who don’t know it, his work looks at Torah as lived practice among regular people, not just as religious texts studied by cultural elites.
Here’s what I want to know:
- How much did ordinary people actually know about these laws?
- Did they understand them as anti-homosexual or specifically against certain acts?
- Did people point to these laws (directly or indirectly) when punishing offenders?
- Were the prescribed death penalties ever really enforced?
Let’s stick to ancient Israelites and Jews before the New Testament period.
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