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This article criticizes the traditional perception of early modern elite male attitudes regarding menstruation as misogynist, arguing that a fuller and more nuanced analysis of these attitudes is needed. It proposes that this be reached through the heuristic application of a taboo subject to an analysis of one of the sources of elite religious attitudes toward menstruation: Leviticus 15, 18:19, and 20:18. It compares linguistic changes in the expression of menstrual taboos found in Leviticus 15, 18, and 20 among 35 Catholic and Protestant Bibles between 1530 and 1768 and in 22 contemporary dictionaries. It refutes the idea that the Levitical texts were misogynistic and argues that the early modern Catholic and Protestant translators placed the menstrual and seminal taboos in the context of procreation and conjugal sexuality. Far from expressing hatred or disgust for the menstruating woman, early modern French theologians and lexicographers respected the gender neutral tone of Leviticus 15. In early modern France, Levitical taboos were part of a “procreative theology? rather than an attempt to justify a view of women as inferior.