Sex and the Bible

Since America has certain politicians and their supporters pushing their interpretations of the Bible's ideas about human sexuality into secular law, I thought I would discuss some of the principal sections in the Bible that would demonstrate the sexual culture of the Ancient Hebrews. I will be citing the Hebrew (Old) Testament, since that is the foundation for all Judaeo-Christian notions of sexual behavior.

First of all, there is a key episode in the life of Lot, the righteous nephew of the Patriarch Abraham. In the story he receives two men of comely bearing (who are really angels). He offers them the ancient right of hospitality. Shortly a ravening mob of the city of Sodom where he lives lays siege to his house, demanding he give up the guests to them (which had been observed entering his home) for their coercive orgy, so Lot dutifully seeks to protect his guests from being raped. His guests then reveal their angelic identity by using their supernatural power to stymie the sexual madness of the crowd. Non-consensual sex is the featured sin of this story, and for this foul proclivity (among other recalcitrant inhumanities committed by that city), Sodom ends up being destroyed by Divine Wrath.

Adultery is a major sexual issue in the Hebrew Testament. It is first revealed in the life of Abram, when, fleeing famine in his own country, he repeatedly seeks to elude being murdered by his hosts by passing his wife Sarai off as his sister, because he knows men of power will covet her for her physical attractiveness. It would seem that the rule against adultery was universal in that region of the world, but that people tried to get around it by murdering (!) the husband. However, the moral sentiment of the Bible against adultery is most dramatically told in the story of David and Bathsheba. King David sees her being bathed by her maidservant from his rooftop. He falls in lust with her, but he cannot take her for a wife (though Hebrew society then did permit polygamy) because she is already married -- and to his own military commander, Uriah the Hittite. However, Uriah is away at the front, so David arranges a secret tryst with Bathsheba and they make love. She conceives, and so later informs him. David tries to elude discovery by calling Uriah back from the war to take a furlough at home with his wife, so that her conception can be rationalized as being from Uriah's lying with her. However, Uriah is too dutiful a soldier. His conscience cannot bear being given respite from the war while his fellow soldiers are suffering on the battlefield, and so he demands to be sent back. So David orders his officers to put Uriah into the battle lines where the fighting is thickest. Uriah is killed. David marries his widow. Their baby dies, and David is punished with family discord that results in a dynastic war. David repents of his sins, so God allows him to conceive another child with Bathsheba who becomes the great Solomon, and ironically, his dynastic successor.

The story of Onan is perhaps the most culturally distorted by Christians. Onan's brother died, and under the ancient laws of the time, Onan was expected to help his brother's childless widow to conceive in the absence of another male, by becoming her reproductive mate, in the event that she desired to conceive children. She implicitly did, as having children was a mark of distinction and fulfillment for women in Ancient Hebrew society. Onan, however, did not want to provide his brother's wife with heirs. Onan wanted to inherit her property, so, when he had relations with her, he pulled out before orgasm, thus dodging insemination. He died unexpectedly, and his kinfolk decided he had been struck dead by God for his selfishness. The sin here was greed for his brother's property, and robbing his brother's widow of the opportunity to have children.

Then we have the Song of Songs, an entirely poetic section of the Bible, which is attributed in authorship to King Solomon, which is why it is also known as the Song of Solomon. This is erotic poetry. It has been said that it is a metaphor for the "marriage" of the Kingdom of Israel with God. Even if it is, it uses erotic metaphors, and if these erotic expressions had been considered indecent to use between regular men and women in love, they would certainly not have been used to describe the love of God for his people of the land of Israel. And if this poem would have been considered indecent to be read literally (which many scholars think it actually was, even back when it was first written), it would not have been given the supremely grand title of "Song of Songs", whose implication puts it at the heart or center of things. It's like saying, the "Poem of Poems". Love and sex here are put on a high pedestal, and there is no discussion of procreation -- just sexual love and sexual attraction, and all in lush Semitic imagery.

The Torah portions of the Bible deal with sex in terms of ritual cleanliness in order for a person to be permitted to engage in worship and sanctified acts of devotion. Sex is implicitly accepted as a normal part of human behavior, and good hygiene is indicated to follow sexual activity. The Torah, of course, has a rule against adultery (not surprising considering the stories related above), but it also grants the right of divorce (and most especially if the marriage is barren, though it does not require that divorce be the response -- witness the decades-long childlessness of the mutually loyal Abram and Sarai). What the Torah portions of the Bible say about homosexuality must be understood in terms of the fragility of the human population in the Ancient World (indeed for most of human history). For comparison, we have pagan writings from those times where homosexuality was not considered immoral, but interestingly, we find that pagan homosexuals of means took wives and had children by them so that they could have heirs to inherit their property and to teach their offspring the worldly skills that had brought them financial success or stability. The Ancient Hebrews, being a minority (even when they had their own sovereign country) amidst neighbors of much larger populations, could not afford to have any fertile male or fertile female not participate in adding to the population of their nation. This is not a problem the human race has today. The world today is bursting at the seams with people, and economies are not growing to accommodate all this increase. Take my point where you will.

So, does the Bible teach us to be celibate? No, unless we are talking about the Pauline Epistles of the Christian (New) Testament, and that is a matter at odds with the rest of the Bible! Does it teach us to be asexual? No. Does it teach us to use sexual relations only mechanically for procreation and not for pleasure? No, unless (again) you are talking to the Apostle Paul, who was an ascetic Neoplatonist. Does it teach us to hate homosexuals? No -- just the failure to reproduce in a former society that had a high mortality (and infant mortality) rate. Does it teach us to vent our spleen against masturbation? No, it is not a topic of any importance. Does it condemn feelings of sexual attraction? No, it celebrates them. In sum, the Bible on sexual matters is most principally against rape, and against having sex with another person's spouse: adultery. It also has sacred laws which protect the innocence of children, and protects the physical integrity of animals against sexual violation by humans. The Bible points to a humane path in matters of sexuality, and must not be misinterpreted or narrowly read. The Bible is also a product of the necessities of the times in which its various books were written. Unlike the sexual legislation done in the name of God by American politicians, the Bible is not about meanspiritedness.

In light of all this, we must reconsider how we as Christians and Jews deal with the increasingly important issue of homosexuality and the civil rights of homosexuals. Science has proven it exists as a genetically-coded behavior in all species of intelligent animals. Among primates (the biological family we humans belong to), homosexual apes and monkeys have been observed as helpful protectors and caretakers of the young. We should not condemn homosexuals for not heterosexually reproducing offspring in today's society. However, if a homosexual couple are good-hearted human beings, we should not prevent them from adopting children to bring up as their own, or if they are lesbians, from receiving artificial insemination in order to have a child they can raise and nurture for themselves. Today in America, mainstream Jewish sects, like Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, and progressive Christian sects, like Episcopalianism, Lutheranism and Presbyterianism, do not condemn homosexuals. Mutual love between any two human beings is sacred in the eyes of God.