17. Is God Good? - Part 1
This is the seventeenth article in the series From Particles to Angels. If you are interested in this article you should read the previous articles in the series in order, beginning with the first (On Happiness).
Religion might be questioned from the point of view of its factuality; that is, whether it is true or not. For instance, was the universe created in just 7 days in the year 3761 BC at the end of what scientists call the "Stone Age", could Noah's ark really have contained two of each animal in the world (Genesis 6:19), or: who did the children of Adam and Eve marry (Genesis 4-5)? We might also question religion from the point of view of whether it is good or not. So far in these articles we have been mostly focusing on whether religion is true, on its plausibility. In this article we look at the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Along the way we will consider some questions of morality in general. In the article on Suffering we considered God's culpability in human suffering. Here we consider morality as recommended or imposed by the Judeo-Christian Bible.
If the Judeo-Christian Bible is the word of God, it should teach us how to behave. It should teach us right from wrong ... right? The Bible is thought by some to be a perfect document, where every phrase can be mulled over as containing inexhaustibly deep secrets, like an intricate code.
"For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."
(Matthew 5:18)
The New Testament is two thousand years old; some of the Old Testament is perhaps thousands of years older. There is not much written in those ancient times that we would use as a guide today. Some people reading the Bible, instead of seeing perfect and divine, eternal truths; see rather, the cruel and intolerant morals of a brutal and primitive age.
In the "Religion and Truth" section of the In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 article, particularly, we were led to treat the literal truthfulness of religious texts as highly suspect; but asserted nevertheless the value of these texts as sources of truth. Here we examine whether morality in the Bible can be treated as perfect, as right and good in an absolute sense.
If there is such a thing as eternal, perfect truth, then such a truth is true for all time. It is not just true at one time, only to become superseded at another. And yet some people compare the morality of the modern (civilised) world to that of the past, and suggest that modern morality is better, kinder, wiser, more tolerant and more just. There is a fundamental paradox in the Christian Bible, in the fact that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament. If the Old Testament was a perfect and complete guide, what need was there of a New Testament? A Jew might highlight this paradox of Christianity. But then we might also say that if the Pentateuch of Moses was perfect and complete, what need was there of the prophets? Was the Tanakh incomplete until all the prophets were added? Of course the existence of two true pieces of information does not suggest that either is incomplete in itself. Each can be sufficiently self contained. We might even suggest that a piece of information is complete and self contained if a second piece of information expands on our understanding of the first. But what are we to make of two moral propositions that give rise to two distinctly different behaviours?
Was the Old Testament somehow incomplete? If the Old Testament was incomplete, and waited for and required the New Testament for its completion, is the Bible complete and perfect now, or is there more to come? Will those future testaments give some very different picture of morality to what we see in the Bible of today: as different from each other as is the morality of the Old and the New Testaments of today? Because despite the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5:18 quoted above, declaring the continuity of the Old and the New Testaments, the morality of the Old and New Testaments, as we will see below, are very different. In the Old Testament it is "an eye for an eye".
"Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbour is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury."
(Leviticus 24:17-20, see also Exodus 21:23-24 and Deuteronomy 19:21
"Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it."
(Numbers 35:33)
The eye for an eye concept dates back to at least the Code of Hammurabi (c.1754 BC) where it appeared as Law #196. The New Testament by contrast has this.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
(Matthew 5:38-42)
The Koran makes a similar but somewhat less thorough revision with the following.
"We ordained therein for them [the Jews in the Torah]: 'Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal.' But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself."
(Koran 5:45, see also 2:178)
The Christian concept is different to mere charity or mercy.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
(Matthew 5:43-48, see also Luke 6:27-36)
We might describe the difference as that between "mercy" and "forgiveness". It is "mercy" to cut off someone's hands when what you really want to do is cut off their head. It is retaliation scaled down. But forgiveness is total. It is to let your enemy off scott free, indeed to do good by them in place of evil ("Recompense to no man evil for evil" (Romans 12:17) but: "Bless them which persecute you" (Romans 12:14)). This is an important moral innovation. One of the shortcomings of "an eye for an eye" is that it offers no way out of the blood feud. While "eye for eye" refers specifically to punishment of the perpetrator of a crime, the concept gets generalised to members of a class, such as a family, tribe, race or nationality, religion or political persuasion; so that a sin committed by one member of a class, can be exacted against any other member of the same class ("prescribed for you is legal retribution for those murdered - the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female" (Koran 2:178)). A member of class X is murdered by a member of class Y. The associates of the murdered member of class X cannot find the murderer, but retaliate by killing another member of class Y. The associates of the murdered member of class Y do not accept this as just, and therefore feel entitled to retaliate in kind against another randomly chosen member of class X. By this logic the blood feud can be made eternal while all parties after the first murderer believe themselves to be committing justice; the number of those encompassed by the blood feud expands with each iteration of the process. Thus we have the quote frequently attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”. Jesus is not merely fleshing out the detail of the old law, but bringing something new.
(2 Corinthians 5:17)
At the same time that he declares: "not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law", asserting the consistency of his teachings with those already existing: he also suggests the following.
"Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins."
(Matthew 9:17)
In the "Religion and Truth" section of the In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 article it was suggested that religious truth is approximate and evolutionary. It should be remembered that the religion we have is the religion that has been preserved by man. For all we know there may have been countless other, better revelations given to people down through the ages, that we have never heard of because no one preserved them for posterity. When we criticise the quality of God's revelations we should remember this. What use is a prophet no one listens to? Religious revelation is not only limited to what human beings can understand, but also to what they will accept. What is not accepted is labelled "apocrypha" or disappears entirely. We have seen vividly how hard it is to replace old ideas with new ideas.
When early Christian councils were determining what books would be included in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation almost did not make it. The Council of Laodicea (363 AD) omits it, though the later councils (Council of Rome (382 AD), Synod of Hippo (in 393 AD), Council of Carthage (397 AD and 419 AD)) include it. The Syriac Bible excluded 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation until the early 5th century. Martin Luther called the Book of Revelation "neither apostolic nor prophetic" in 1522, but later revised his position. We have already encountered such suppression in the case of the Old Testament: 1 Esdras, 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manesseh (see: "the Great Schism of 1054") and the Book of Enoch. The Protestant New Testament likewise leaves out the books of Tobit (Tobias), Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. The bible itself is the product of contention, not delivered whole as a perfect unity, a finished piece of clockwork, but an anthology by a variety of human authors. Since the content of the Christian Bible was established have been recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels (Nag Hammadi Library) revealing lost doctrines.
(Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Jesus suggested that those inclined to heed his message naturally recognised the truth of it. It resonated with them.
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me"
(John 10:14)
The law of the Old Testament has been superseded by a moral intuition among human beings in general, by which they are able to recognise the good, at least in its big brush strokes, although the ideals of the New Testament have not yet been attained.
(The 6th Commandment - Exodus 20:13)
That is the NIV version of the passage. The King James version has "Thou shalt not kill", but this is perhaps too restrictive. The word "murder" has more the sense of wrongful killing, as opposed to justified killing. The Hebrew word (תִרְצָח) can be taken either way. The word "murder" is more consistent with the rest of the content of the Bible. Although God asserts "vengeance is mine", nevertheless there are circumstances where people are permitted to kill.
"It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."
(Deuteronomy 32:35)
"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
(Romans 12:19)
Less than a hundred Israelites, the whole nation at that time, had originally left Canaan and gone down to live in Egypt (Genesis 46:27). While there, their population grew, and this became a cause of concern to the Egyptians who then began to oppress them (Exodus 1). After the Israelites fled Egypt, they headed back for Canaan. The children of Israel had not lived in Canaan for centuries, and others lived there, a nation of people. As they massed on the border (over 600,000 men (Numbers 26:51)), Moses received direction from God.
"On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the Lord said to Moses, 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: "When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places. Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. Distribute the land by lot, according to your clans. To a larger group give a larger inheritance, and to a smaller group a smaller one. Whatever falls to them by lot will be theirs. Distribute it according to your ancestral tribes.
"'"But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them."'" (Numbers 33:50-56)
So the Israelites invade Canaan and are rewarded with a string of victories.
"'Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his country. Begin to take possession of it and engage him in battle. This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because of you.'" (Deuteronomy 2:24-25)
"When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors. But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. From Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, and from the town in the gorge, even as far as Gilead, not one town was too strong for us. The Lord our God gave us all of them." (Deuteronomy 2:32-36)
By this means this holy people took possession of the land. Similar events played out after the Second World War. The Jews have been a stateless people on three separate occasions. The first was the Egyptian captivity, the second the Babylonian/Persian captivity, and the third was after the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation which ended in 136 AD with the destruction of the Jewish state and the scattering of the Jewish people. In the wake of the misfortunes committed against the Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War, there was sympathy in the West for the resurrection of a defensible Jewish state, although the state of Israel had not existed for more than 1,800 years. As in the case of previous Jewish returns, misfortune befell those who already occupied the land at the time, on this occasion the Palestinians.
Aside from Israel having intermittently served as the ancestral home of the Jewish race, the Jewish claim on this area of land goes back to the patriarch Abram (later called Abraham). Abram originally lived in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq. One day, traditionally dated to sometime in the early 2nd millennium BC, Abram's father Terah, packs up his belongings and his family and sets off to find a new place to live, and settles in a place called Harran. While there, Abram meets God who tells him: "Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation.... To your offspring I will give this land." (Genesis 12:1-7) The land was Canaan. From Abram descended the Jewish race.
Mass migrations, invasions and the destruction and displacement of peoples are not uncommon in history. The European invasion of the continents of Australia and America in the name of the spread of Christendom and for the acquisition of land and other resources being other well documented examples. Killing was also justified as punishment for certain crimes, and not only in accordance with the "life for a life" rule.
"If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid." (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
"Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death." (Leviticus 20:9)
"A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:27)
"Do not allow a sorceress to live." (Exodus 22:18)
"Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed." (Exodus 22:20)
"For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death." (Exodus 35:2, see also Exodus 31:14)
"While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.' So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses." (Numbers 15:32-36)
"Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: "Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor."' The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, 'You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.'" (Exodus 32:25-29)
"Then the Lord said to Moses: 'Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: "Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death."'" (Leviticus 24:13-16)
It is not merely the fact of capital punishment, but the seemingly trivial nature of some of the crimes being punished, such as the crime of "stubbornness". Permission to kill people for being stubborn presents all kinds of possibilities. Also striking is the shocking absence of parental feeling amid the murderous rage over disobedience. Let's get all the parents together to throw rocks at our fat, lazy son. We will see other examples in what follows.
The punishments for these crimes vary. Some are relatively mild. If a man marries his sister or the daughter of his father or mother, they will both be publicly removed from their people and "held responsible". If a man has sex with the sister of his mother or father, they will both be "held responsible". If a man marries his brother's wife "they will be childless". But if a man has sex with his father's wife or his daughter-in-law, both the man and woman are to be put to death. If a man has sex with both a woman and her daughter, both he and they "must be burned in the fire". (Leviticus 20:11-21)
There is also a prohibition against having sex with a woman during her period, punished by both of them being "cut off from their people". (Leviticus 18:19, Leviticus 20:18)
"If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal. If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:15-16)
"If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:13)
"Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.'" (Genesis 19:4-5)
After this: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens." (Genesis 19:24) It's difficult to know the Bible's attitude to anal sex because sodomy is usually mentioned in relation to homosexuality, so that it is not clear whether it is homosexuality or anal sex that is being criticized. The phrase: "as one does with a woman" might seem to imply the former, that is, that anal sex with a woman is not necessarily a crime, but since the word "sodomy" was later used to refer to anal sex, this then is made to seem to imply the latter. That is, the sin of the Sodomites was sodomy, and that is why Sodom was destroyed.
"Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire." (Jude 1:7)
"Sexual immorality and perversion" presumably refers to the sexual sins defined in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 22. "Sexual immorality" is a common phrase in the New Testament (Matthew 5:32,15:19,19:9, Mark 7:21, Acts 15:20,15:29,21:25, Romans 1:26-27, 13:13, 1 Corinthians 5:1,6:12,6:13,6:18,7:2,10:8, Galatians 5:19, Ephesians 5:3, Colossians 3:5, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Jude 1:7, Revelation 2:14,2:20,9:21), but it is not defined there. Nowhere is it suggested that rape was the sin of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
"But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also." (Genesis 38:9)
One might be inclined to think that Onan's sin was that he "will not build up his brother’s family line" (Deuteronomy 25:9) in accordance with Jewish law, but regardless of the lack of a biblical basis, the tradition grew up that the sin of Onan was the wastage of semen, and apparently whether by "coitus interruptus" or by masturbation was just as bad. Either of these came to be termed "onanism". Arousal was identified as the source of the problem. Eventually Western medicine would apply the scientific method and bring some sanity to the discussion. Volume 3 of "The Eclectic Journal of Medicine" of 1839 presents (pp.145-51) "A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-Pollution, and other Excesses" by L Deslandes, M. D., Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine at Paris, and other Learned Societies. I quote it at length.
"Among the special symptoms caused by venereal excesses, are loss of flesh, which is one of the most constant symptoms, and is attended with a loss of strength. The countenance, especially of the onanist, 'instead of the vermillion glow of health, is pale and without freshness, or of a yellowish, earthy, leaden, and livid tint; the lips lose their colour, a bluish circle surrounds the eyes, the eyelids are puffed out with aedema; the flesh is soft and flaccid; the pulse is small and feeble; upon the slightest motion, or during sleep, the forehead, chest, and palms of the hands are bathed with profuse perspiration: in some patients the hands and feet are aedematous: in short, the symptoms are those of general atony, which are attended with a slow hectic fever, denoting that the economy does not yield without reaction to the destructive disease.' The disturbance and derangement of the digestive apparatus are also notably and painfully experienced. But, as might be expected from the known and immediate influence of the venereal act on the nervous system, we can readily believe that in this latter will be found the most numerous and distressing effects of excesses and unlicensed indulgence. Hypochondriasis, hysteria, chorea, epilepsy, apoplexy, and palsy, constitute part of the list of dire maladies induced or immediately excited, by onanism and immoderate or ill-timed coition. The memory and the intellectual faculties, in general, are enfeebled, and there are instances of complete idiocy, brought on by early and continued onanism, and of insanity from similar excesses later in life.' Numerous, and some of them curious cases, illustrative of this part of the subject, are given in the volume before us. During the digestion of a full meal, or in old age, are circumstances which greatly increase the danger of apoplectic seizure in coition. 'Deep and chronic lesions have been observed in the encephalon of onanists, much more frequently than acute diseases.'
"'Chronic alterations have frequently been found in the cerebellum of onanists. They have been mentioned by some as the cause, by others as the effect of onanism.' Dr. Deslandes thinks 'it would be impossible, in most of the cases of which we speak, to distinguish whether the cerebral affection or the masturbation had precedence. The only thing positively known is their coincidence; and this latter has appeared too frequently not to attract attention.' He then proceeds to mention several instances of this coincidence, related by Gall, Combe, Serrurier, &c.
"The irritation, and even the disorganization, on occasions, of the spinal marrow as an effect of the depraved habits in question, are passed in review ; as manifested by sensations more or less acute along the vertebral column, also a feeling 'of cold, of numbness, and formication in the limbs, particularly the lower extremities, constant trembling, or convulsive motions in these parts; a kind of tetanic stiffness; gradual debility of the lower half of the body; and finally paraplegia.'"
Concerned sufferers may be relieved to learn that: "Excision of some portion of the erectile tissue has been advised and practised, for the cure of the disease of onanism; and cures are on record in which the removal of the clitoris has had the desired effect." Also: "Extirpation of the ovaries and testicles has been practised, though rarely, to allay and prevent the recurrence of salacious desires." As well: "Chauffard, Voisin, and Londe, have made applications directly in the region of the cerebellum." Among less severe precautionary measures are clothing that is "loose about the pelvis and thighs" and "Dr. Deslandes cautions against company, and the free social intercourse between the sexes", as well as avoiding "voluptuous sights, riding" and "a soft and warm bed". If these methods fail: "Bandages and other mechanical contrivances are mentioned by the author as physical means to prevent the performance of the act", as well as: "Enemeta of cold water" and "free and regular ablution of the parts" (which one might have imagined would have the opposite of the desired effect). The author warns that "the pernicious and debasing habit of masturbation is a more common and extensive evil with youth of both sexes, than is usually supposed" and alludes to "the circumstances which may induce suspicion of a child or young person indulging in this diseased habit" so that we can once and for all be free of "this depraved habit". It is a testament to our time I think that it is enough to quote these passages without the need to editorialise them, though with the proviso that there probably is such a thing as "venereal excess".
Contraception and abortion are also lumped together with these ideas of the wastage of semen and the improper use of sex for pleasure.
"When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.' And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?'"
At first glance we might presume that nudity ceased to be innocent because it now might illicit lustful thoughts. But since Adam and Eve were already tasked with being fruitful and multiplying (Genesis 1:28), presumably sexual desire was already a part of their innocent, pre-fall life. On the surface it appears that nakedness and presumably therefore also sexual desire were evil, but Adam and Eve just didn't know it, and this ignorance constituted their innocence. Might other evils such as murder also be classed innocence in the absence of the knowledge of good and evil? Though we might wonder whether what is meant by the changed state is that now they only judge their lustful thoughts to be wrong, not that they are intrinsically so. That is, we might interpret the passage to be a gentle suggestion that nakedness and sexuality are not intrinsically wrong, but are only judged to be so for certain indirect reasons, such as certain personal and social problems that tend to be caused by them. Covering nakedness performs a social function, to help avoid strife. It is plausibly suggested the Eden that Adam and Eve were cast out of was the state of childhood before the moral consciousness emerges, the egocentric condition where anything the child wants to do is intrinsically and unquestioningly right, where a child might strangle the cat for fun without the realisation of doing wrong. The purity of the sociopath, feelings void of memory. It is a sad and disillusioning period as the moral consciousness emergences and self-criticism must set in as we begin to realise the consequences of our actions on the world around us. The child begins unaware that there is anything wrong with its nakedness, but the parent frets over how others might perceive the child's nakedness, and therefore convinces the child that it must cover itself, as if there is something wrong with it. Thus the Eden story seems a mixed bag of moral contemplations. All of these subtleties are lost when nakedness is simply condemned as an inspiration for the evil of sexual arousal.
The only other significant mention of nudity is when Noah's children discover him laying naked and drunk shortly after surviving the flood.
"The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
"Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
"When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.'"
(Genesis 9:18-27)
In other words, the Canaanite's clearly deserve whatever is coming to them. Nakedness is often referred to figuratively, seeming to refer to the exposure of one's inner motives and secrets, such as in the following passages. Nakedness might also refer to poverty which may also be shameful, or as a generic reference to a lack of something one should have.
"Your nakedness will be exposed and your shame uncovered." (Isaiah 47:3)
"I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame." (Nahum 3:5)
"let your nakedness be exposed!" (Habakkuk 2:16)
What counts as an unmentionable part of the human body has varied over time.
"In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, God knows, anything goes."
"Shakspeare’s an infernal humbug, Pip! What’s the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip? There’s a lot of feet in Shakspeare’s verse, but there an’t any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare’s plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of ‘em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know about it, Pip. Why, in that respect they’re all Miss Biffins to the audience, Pip. I’ll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be lectured? No, Pip. If I wanted that, I’d go to church. What’s the legitimate object of the drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces, Pip, and I’ll stand by you, my buck!”
"I cannot conclude this chapter without adverting to one or two points peculiar to the Americans. They wish, in everything, to improve upon the Old Country, as they call us, and affect to be excessively refined in their language and ideas: but they forget that very often in the covering, and the covering only, consists the indecency; and that, to use the old aphorism—'Very nice people are people with very nasty ideas.'
"They object to everything nude in statuary. When I was at the house of Governor Everett, at Boston, I observed a fine cast of the Apollo Belvidere; but in compliance with general opinion, it was hung with drapery, although Governor Everett himself is a gentleman of refined mind and high classical attainments, and quite above such ridiculous sensitiveness. In language it is the same thing. There are certain words which are never used in America, but an absurd substitute is employed. I cannot particularise them after this preface, lest I should be accused of indelicacy myself. I may, however, state one little circumstance which will fully prove the correctness of what I say.
"When at Niagara Falls I was escorting a young lady with whom I was on friendly terms. She had been standing on a piece of rock, the better to view the scene, when she slipped down, and was evidently hurt by the fall: she had, in fact, grazed her shin. As she limped a little in walking home, I said, 'Did you hurt your leg much?' She turned from me, evidently much shocked, or much offended,—and not being aware that I had committed any very heinous offence, I begged to know what was the reason of her displeasure. After some hesitation, she said that as she knew me well, she would tell me that the word leg was never mentioned before ladies. I apologised for my want of refinement, which was attributable to having been accustomed only to English society; and added, that as such articles must occasionally be referred to, even in the most polite circles in America, perhaps she would inform me by what name I might mention them without shocking the company. Her reply was, that the word limb was used; 'nay,' continued she, 'I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.'"
("Diary in America, Series One", Captain Marryat (1839))
Islam has detailed but not entirely consistent rules about what parts of the body are permitted to be visible. Passages such as the following are sometimes cited as evidence that Moslem women are not required to wear a veil or Burka.
“When a young lady begins to menstruate, it is not correct that anything should be seen of her except her face and hands excluding the wrist.”
But it's a slippery slope. First the face, then what? Islamic rules around what parts of a woman's body may be visible vary by context: whether at prayer, alone, in front of her husband, in front of muslim women, in front of close muslim male relatives, close non-muslim male relatives, other muslim males, other males. So the religious specialist invests in mastering rules that seem unworthy of anyone's attention.
"And sweetheart, your shorts are shrinking by the second, okay? Cold water, air dry, please."
Just because a religious society has certain cultural laws, does not mean that those laws are derived from their religion. They may be traditions that are independent of or even predate their primary religious texts. Pragmatic considerations around nudity are very ancient, and the inclination to control the behaviour of members of society are social and political rather than religious. Sexual activity can have profound consequences for a society and its members. In a religious society, these considerations will seek to reconcile themselves with religious revelation, and will seek support from that religious revelation, whether such support is present or not.
We have seen for instance that there is precious little in the Judeo-Christian Bible specifying how men and women should dress and what parts of the human body should be covered, and yet we find allusions to practices already present in the culture of the time.
"Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, 'Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?' 'He is my master,' the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself."
(Genesis 24:64-65, see also 38:14)
"Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday. Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends?"
(Song of Songs 1:7, see also 4:1-3 and Isaiah 47:2)
Despite this heritage, the Jews have not been tempted to reinstate the veil in modern times. The dress codes found in some Islamic societies have their origin in culture rather than religion.
"Qur'an is very clear about the dress code for the believers. Innovations and fabrication introduced Hijab (veil) to Islam. Hijab (veil) is a traditional, not religious head cover that dates back to ancient civilizations, and is not supported or advocated by the Qur'an. Islam is mostly concerned with the integrity of woman, with the safeguarding of her morals and morale and with the protection of her character and personality (Qur'an, 24:30-31)."
("Women and the Social Laws of the Qur'an", PhD thesis by Farhat Naz Rahman,
"Tell the believing men to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what they do.
"And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed."
(Qur'an 24:30-31)
The rules for concubines and slave girls in Islamic society were not so restrictive. These were permitted to go around bare chested.
"Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." (Genesis 2:25) This raises the question: "Should we?" Do we throw a tarpaulin over a garden to cover it, or avert our eyes from the beauty of a sunset? Must we be protected from the corrupting influence of these? Because the beauty of people inspire lustful thoughts, we punish the one who is beautiful for the lustful thoughts of others. All those who are angry at not being able to possess the one who is beautiful. We make beauty into something sordid and sinful. If we require those with hateful, jealous and callous minds to own their own thoughts instead of blaming them on another, we can impose our restrictions where they belong. In the prevention of rape, harassment and sexual exploitation. Making a community in which it is safe for beauty to shine out for the benefit of everyone.
"Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house."
(Matthew 5:15)
"No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open."
(Luke 8:16-17)
Because of the power that beauty has, women are robbed of some of this power in the name of "modesty", to protect the arrogance of men from the arrogance of women, and to support the resentment of the less attractive toward the more attractive. Modesty is a mental condition not determined by a mode of dress. One can still be arrogant under a hijab, burka or niqab, though it is certainly humiliating to be subject to the will of another. Modesty is not the province of the ugly and unseen. The Urantia Book suggests that beauty is neither superficial nor trivial, but one of the three primary values and elements of deity.
"Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love...."
(The Urantia Book 56:6.3)
"The Supreme is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value."
(The Urantia Book 117:1.1)
"Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values."
(The Urantia Book 100:2.4)
"Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth."
"One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more."
(The Urantia Book 101:8.1)
To betray one of these is to betray all. Similarly, when religion opposes evident truth, it defies one of these three pillars of value.
"For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life ... no one who touches her will go unpunished.... But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and his shame will never be wiped away. For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge." (Proverbs 6:26-34)
There are warnings about the character of the adulterous woman.
"For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.... Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house, lest you lose your honor to others and your dignity to one who is cruel, lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another. At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent." (Proverbs 5:3-11)
"Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life." (Proverbs 2:16-19)
There is clear prohibition against adultery.
“You shall not commit adultery." (The 7th Commandment - Exodus 20:14)
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife". (The 10th Commandment - Exodus 20:17)
There is cruel punishment for breaking the commandment.
"If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel." (Deuteronomy 22:22)
Numbers 5:11-31 provides a way to determine the guilt or innocence of a wife suspected of adultery. She is brought before the priest who will: "have her stand before the Lord. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.... Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, 'If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband ... may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell....' The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse.... If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children." The Talmud (Sotah 19b) discusses whether it is appropriate that: "A hook made of iron is forcibly placed into her mouth, so that if the scroll was erased and she said: I will not drink, she is forced to drink against her will."
"If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, 'I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,' then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin.... Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
"If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
The possibility that a new wife might be accused by her husband of not being a virgin, meant that Jewish culture must take care to collect evidence of her virginity after the first act of intercourse by the newly married couple. This took the form of the blood-stained cloth presented to witnesses.
"It should be noted that the claim of not finding the woman to be a virgin is not simple from a physiological point of view. Some women do not have a hymen and sometimes the blood supply to the hymen is minimal, which results in very little blood available to be shown as evidence of virginity.... The fact that adult men were marrying pubescent girls or girls just prior to puberty makes it more likely that the so-called proof of virginity was actually evidence of a vaginal tear because sufficient hormonal stimulation to the vaginal mucosa was not yet available to allow vaginal expansion during arousal to accommodate penetration without injury."
("Legal-Religious Status of the Virgin" by Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh),
"virginity tests automatically gave origin to the professional prostitute classes; they were the rejected brides"
(The Urantia Book, 82:4.5)
If the cultural practice of "the cloth" was not implemented; for instance within Christian culture; the wife was vulnerable to false accusations by her husband, having "no proof" of her virginity. Jewish culture permitted widows and divorced women to remarry, so that they were not required to be virgins on their second marriage. There were also other exceptions defined in the Talmudic literature.
"A proselyte [a convert to Judaism], a captive, and a maidservant, who have been ransomed, converted, or freed at [an age of] more than three years and one day, ... are not subject to the claim of [her lack of] virginity."
There was no requirement that a man be a virgin when he married.
"If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
The concern here seems to be with the loss of the woman's virginity and the fact that she will now find it difficult to find a husband, having been defiled. The Bible takes a: "You break it, you buy it" approach. "Welcome home dear, how was your day? You don't want to talk? You just want to have sex again? I guess we will do that then." "Rape" was not defined within the context of marriage. As Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh) points out: "This should not be surprising, since rape within marriage was recognized as a crime only within about the last fifty years in North America. Prior to that time, it was understood that marriage constituted the ongoing consent of the woman to have sexual relations." ("Legal-Religious Status of the Virgin")
There are practical warnings against going to prostitutes.
"A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth." (Proverbs 29:3)
Under certain circumstances prostitution was treated as a very serious crime, for instance, for the daughter of a priest.
"If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire." (Leviticus 21:9)
The recurring problem of the Israelite people worshipping the Canaanite gods included the fact that temples of the goddess Asherah may incorporate temple prostitutes.
"Judah [the southern State of Israel] did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites." (1 Kings 14:22-24)
"He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah." (2 Kings 23:7)
"No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute. You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both." (Deuteronomy 23:17-18)
"The godless in heart ... die in their youth, among male prostitutes of the shrines." (Job 36:13-14)
“I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—a people without understanding will come to ruin!" (Hosea 4:14)
Temple prostitutes were treated somewhat harshly.
"Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his ancestors had made." (1 Kings 15:11-12)
"He rid the land of the rest of the male shrine prostitutes who remained there even after the reign of his father Asa." (1 Kings 22:46)
It appears to be the combining of prostitution with religion that the prophets considered unacceptable. Thus while prostitution was tolerated, temple prostitutes were not, and neither was the daughter of a Jewish priest becoming a prostitute (because it reflected badly on her father). This consideration of how a woman's behaviour reflects on other members of her family is similar to the occasional practice in some Islamic (and other) communities where a daughter will be murdered by her family when it is felt that her behaviour brings disgrace upon it. Occasionally a prostitute is portrayed in a positive light in the Bible.
"Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day." (Joshua 6:24-25)
There is an odd little story in Genesis 38 where Tamar (widow of Er and Onan who we met earlier (each of her first two husbands: "was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death")) disguises herself and is mistaken for a shrine prostitute by the Jewish patriarch Judah (the kingdom of Judah in southern Israel was derived from the descendants of Judah), father of Er and Onan and therefore her father-in-law. This was after the death of Judah's wife. He offered Tamar a goat to have sex with him. Judah had promised Tamar that he would give her as wife to his third son Shelah, but because he was worried Shelah might meet the same fate as his older brothers Judah had procrastinated. Judah didn't have a goat with him, so Tamar asked him for his “seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand” in lieu of the goat. When Judah returns later with the goat he is unable to find her.
When the widow Tamar is later found pregnant she is accused of prostitution and Judah dutifully declares: "Bring her out and have her burned to death!” Tamar declares: “I am pregnant by the man who owns these.... See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.” Judah relents, stating: “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” Tamar gave birth to twin boys: Perez and Zerah.
The following passage trivializes the harm of prostitution in comparison with the seriousness of adultery.
"For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life." (Proverbs 6:26)
There seems to be some uncertainty around the precise translation, and therefore the intention, of this passage, and it is translated slightly differently in some versions of the Bible.
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread." (King James Version)
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought down to a piece of bread." (21st Century King James Version)
"For on account of a prostitute one is reduced to a piece of bread." (Amplified Bible)
"A prostitute will treat you like a loaf of bread" (Expanded Bible and New Century Version)
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is reduced to a piece of bread." (Jubilee Bible 2000)
"For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a piece of bread." (Modern English Version)
"For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread" (New American Standard Bible)
"For on account of a prostitute one is brought down to a loaf of bread." (New English Translation)
"For by means of a harlot A man is reduced to a crust of bread." (New King James Version)
"For because of a woman who sells the use of her body, one is brought down to a loaf of bread." (New Life Version)
"For on account of a prostitute one is reduced to a loaf of bread." (Tree of Life Version)
"For a prostitute reduces you to a piece of bread." (World English Bible)
The implication of some of these alternatives is that the man's income will be reduced such that all he has left is enough to buy a loaf of bread, and this would be consistent with Proverbs 29:3 shown above. But some of these alternative translations seem to imply something a little more interesting. Sex in the context of marriage is supposed to be with someone who loves you. But all a client is to a prostitute is money, or whatever she intends to spend that money on (such as a loaf of bread). The man is therefore reduced in the eyes of the prostitute and objectified. This in turn has an impact on the man himself.
The desire for sex and the desire for love, the provision of sex and the provision of love, tend to shade into each other, so that the prostitute may seem called upon to supply a counterfeit love embodied in the modern term: "Girlfriend Experience" (GFE). The man without love is left to wonder if he is unworthy of it (since he is worth no more than a loaf of bread to a woman). Going to prostitutes can therefore be a detour from the task of earning love if this is not being sought independently. Since "worthy of love" is likely to equate to "beautiful, rich or talented" in some way, that is, to desirable traits, the commerce of love and of prostitution shade into each other there as well. Since not everyone finds love, whether or not they deserve it, prostitution serves as an alternative means for obtaining some of the advantages of marriage and relationships, in the form of a mutually agreed and beneficial transaction. Even if it is not love, it can be friendly and affectionate if that is what is desired, pleasurable and perhaps the next best thing to a love relationship, to the real thing. Women do not cease to be women when they become prostitutes. For some men it is the only time they will ever have sex with a beautiful woman.
"The hookers are nice."
(From the movie "Outland" (1981), starring Sean Connery.)
The Bible leaves no doubt about its view on the seriousness of adultery. It is given an extensive and unambiguous treatment. The importance of marriage is asserted early on in Genesis 2:24 when it is stated: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." Marriage is therefore treated as a sacred bond. But it is unclear in the Bible whether it is adultery when a married man goes to a prostitute. The warning against adultery is that it "arouses a husband’s fury", that is, the husband of the married woman. It is the "adulterous [that is, married] woman" who poses the danger to a man, not the unwed prostitute or maidservant. The sacredness of the marriage bond therefore may have more to do with the "husband’s fury" than the breaking of a spiritual union, particularly in the context of biblical polygamy and concubinage. The idea of a sacred union between monogamous sex partners harkens back to Genesis 2:24, but is not consistently or equitably maintained throughout the Bible. The union itself can be supposed to grow up over time between a couple committed to each other and it is this which is harmed in the course of adultery.
"You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4)
"[The nation state of] Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god." (Malachi 2:11)
"I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek [a Canaanite god]. I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people." (Leviticus 20:5-6)
Ezekiel 23 gives a long metaphorical portrayal of the two Jewish states; Samaria and Jerusalem; as two prostitutes called Oholah and Oholibah.
"Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled." (Ezekiel 23:19-21)
In the section above on "Pre-marital sex", the woman's crime was apparently: "being promiscuous while still in her father’s house", and her husband being deceived into believing he was marrying a virgin. What is being so violently punished is the deception rather than the sex act itself. The deception was apparently necessary because potential husbands were only interested in marrying virgins. The unmarried promiscuous woman who is not living in her father's house might become a prostitute, or seek out someone who didn't mind that she was not a virgin, someone presumably outside of respectable society, or perhaps a foreigner. There was no particular prohibition against this. If we recall that freed maidservants were exempt from the requirement of being virgins if marrying, the whole idea of being a virgin bride was limited to a certain sector of society. There is no specific commandment along the lines of: "Thou shalt not have sex outside of wedlock". Rather it is implied by the rejection of the female non-virgin by the respectable marriage market. While there are no comparable textual indications in relation to unmarried men, the idea of the virgin bridegroom in Jewish society may grow up out of a sense of fairness, and because seeing prostitutes was discouraged (which in practical terms is often discouraged over concern of sexually transmitted diseases), involvement with unwed sexually active women who might fall pregnant.
Morality can originate in divine revelation, but frequently it originates in mundane practical considerations. The gender inequality in relation to virginity can be interpreted as no more than the desire of parents not to be burdened with looking after daughters who are unmarried mothers; but to be able instead to reliably hand over responsibility for the care of her and her offspring to a husband of her own. All the fire and brimstone around the dangers of sex before marriage are merely a means of steering the young towards this practical end. The sacredness of the marriage bond is a means of cementing the effectiveness of this child rearing institution.
In the modern world, by men setting aside the requirement that their brides be virgins, and with the help of technologies such as contraception and abortion (abortion is a topic for another time), and government programs for the support of unwed mothers, promiscuity loses much of its threat. But the sacred bond of monogamy has not lost its practical value or its appeal, since the wandering sexual being still craves its depth and intimacy, the meaningfulness of family, and also a harbour for old age. So that even the sexually free may desire eventually to "settle down" as part of the natural maturation process. Demands that people be married before being allowed to have sex then, therefore seem unnecessary, and possibly ill-advised.
"Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.'
"Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
"When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, 'You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.'
"'Your slave is in your hands,' Abram said. 'Do with her whatever you think best.' Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
"The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, 'Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?'
"'I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,' she answered.
"Then the angel of the Lord told her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her.' The angel added, 'I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.'"
Hagar bore Abram a son called Ishmael, but later Sarai (now called Sarah) became pregnant and gave birth to a son called Isaac. (Genesis 21:3)
"Milkah bore these eight sons to Abraham’s brother Nahor. His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also had sons" (Genesis 22:23-24).
Abraham's son Isaac married Rebekah (Genesis 24:67), who was the "daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom Milkah bore to him" (Genesis 24:47) Rebekah gave birth to twin sons: Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25:24-26).
After the death of Sarah (Genesis 23), "Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah." (Genesis 25:1)
Jacob marries two sisters: Leah and Rachel, who are the daughters of his mother's brother: Laban (Genesis 29).
"When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, 'Give me children, or I’ll die!'
"Jacob became angry with her and said, 'Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?'
"Then she said, 'Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.'
"So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, and she became pregnant and bore him a son. Then Rachel said, 'God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.' Because of this she named him Dan.
"Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, 'I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.' So she named him Naphtali.
"When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, 'What good fortune!' So she named him Gad.
"Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, 'How happy I am! The women will call me happy.' So she named him Asher."
After the Jews fled the captivity in Egypt, they were instructed by god that the Israelite king "must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray" (Deuteronomy 17:17).
"If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love." (Deuteronomy 21:15-16)
"If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money." (Exodus 21:7-11)
One of the great (but imperfect) Israelite kings was David.
"After he left Hebron, David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him." (2 Samuel 5:13)
"This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own." (2 Samuel 12:7-10)
Another great (but imperfect) Israelite king was Solomon.
"King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been." (1 Kings 11:1-4)
The Urantia Book makes the following comment on monogamy. It refers to monogamy as an "ideal".
"Monogamy is monopoly; it is good for those who attain this desirable state, but it tends to work a biologic hardship on those who are not so fortunate."
(Urantia Book 83:6.1)
"Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."
(Exodus 21:20-21)
What is meant by "punished" is not specified. The Urantia Book offers the following explanation for Jesus' silence on the subject of slavery in the New Testament.
"Half the population of the Roman state were slaves; many were superior individuals and quickly made their way up among the free proletariat and even among the tradesmen. The majority were either mediocre or very inferior.
"Slavery, even of superior peoples, was a feature of Roman military conquest. The power of the master over his slave was unqualified. The early Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves.
"Superior slaves often received wages and by saving their earnings were able to purchase their freedom. Many such emancipated slaves rose to high positions in state, church, and the business world. And it was just such possibilities that made the early Christian church so tolerant of this modified form of slavery.
"There was no widespread social problem in the Roman Empire in the first century after Christ. The major portion of the populace regarded themselves as belonging in that group into which they chanced to be born. There was always the open door through which talented and able individuals could ascend from the lower to the higher strata of Roman society, but the people were generally content with their social rank. They were not class conscious, neither did they look upon these class distinctions as being unjust or wrong. Christianity was in no sense an economic movement having for its purpose the amelioration of the miseries of the depressed classes."
(Urantia Book 121:3.6-9)
The New Testament is divided into the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and the Book of Revelation. In my 1,010 page Bible the Book of Revelation occupies only 14 pages (6% of the 235 pages of the New Testament). The Book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse) gives the strange vision of someone called John. The collection of writings called the Epistles (formal letters) constitutes just over a third of the New Testament (35%). These comprise the writings of a number of early Christians. The remainder of the New Testament comprise the Gospels (107 pages (46%)) and Acts of the Apostles (32 pages (14%)). The Gospels tell the story of Jesus, presenting his life and teachings. So that Jesus occupies 107 of the 1,010 pages of the Christian Bible (11%). However, the Gospels consists of 4 books, each by a different author: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They constitute 4 slightly different versions of the story of Jesus. Matthew is 30 pages in length, Mark 20 pages, Luke 33 pages, and John 24 pages. So if we take out the duplication and splice the 4 books into a single version, it might be about 50 pages long, or say, 5% of the Bible. Acts tells the story of the early followers of Christ after his death. The New Testament does not form part of the Hebrew religion. In Islam, Jesus is considered a prophet, equal in status to the other Hebrew prophets.
13 of the 21 Epistles (60 of the 83 pages (72% or nearly three-quarters)) were written by one man: Paul the Apostle. We can see then that a sizeable percentage of the New Testament consists of the writings of Paul the Apostle. Which raises the question: "Who was Paul the Apostle?"
Saul of Tarsus was born around the same time as Jesus. He made tents for a living (Acts 18:3). Three Hebrew religious sects were prominent at the time of Jesus: the Pharisees, Sadducees and the Essenes. The Essenes were a fringe group of ascetics. The Sadducees were comprised of aristocrats. They wished to adhere closely to religious doctrine as recorded in the text of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). The Pharisees were more aligned with oral legal and religious traditions that had grown up among the Jews over time; rather as the Islamic Sunnah is to the Koran. Because of the way they are described by Jesus in the Bible, the word "pharisee" now also has the meaning: "sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical". Saul was a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5, Acts 23:6). As a good Pharisee he was violently opposed to the emerging Christian cult.
"You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors." (Galatians 1:13-14)
"And while the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him." (Acts 22:20)
"That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. Devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison." (Acts 8:1-3)
In his 30s, Saul was suddenly converted to Christianity as a result of a profound supernatural encounter with Jesus. Saul did not meet Jesus while Jesus lived in the flesh, so that this brief meeting after Jesus' crucifixion was the first, and apparently only, time he met Jesus.
"Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?'
"'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked.
"'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.'"
(Acts 9:1-6)
Saul changed his name to Paul (Acts 13:9) and became a Christian apostle.
Just because Jesus chooses someone to be his spokesman does not necessarily mean they will perform this function well. One of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, famously betrayed him (Matthew 26:14-16, Luke 22:3-6). What a person does, depends upon what the person decides to do, regardless of any encounters with deity. After the conversion of Saul, he became as active and effective promoter of Christianity, as he had been its suppressor previously. Jesus did not leave any writings. The four Gospels are thought to have either been written by Jesus' Disciples as given in the name of each of the four books, or written by someone who knew them. There is little of the personal views of these painstakingly trained disciples in the Gospels, which describe instead simply the acts and words of Jesus. Saul did not feel such a reticence to proclaim his own interpretation of the will of Jesus, and as a consequence, a fair amount of what we today call "Christianity", are the views of the Jewish tentmaker Paul. If we accept the premise that Jesus was the son of god, his words should carry tremendous weight. But Saul is just some guy. The premise however that the Bible is a perfect book with every word in it an absolute truth, is also applied to the letters written by Saul. If the Bible as a whole is "the word of God", "His Word", then so is the word of Saul. In the same way that the Catholic Popes to follow would be declared "infallible". This is not to question Saul's sincerity, only his capacity to speak for Jesus. To be fair, his encounter with Jesus was not Paul's only supernatural credential. He is also credited with miraculous powers.
"One day the evil spirit answered them, 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?'"
(Acts 19:15)
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
(Matthew 5:27-28)
(Matthew 5:31-32)
(Matthew 19:4-6)
"He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.... All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given."
(Matthew 19:7-11)
"'No one, sir,' she said.
"'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'"
(John 8:2-11)
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."
(Matthew 5:17-20)
He treats the description of sin as the whole of the law, while ignoring entirely the prescribed punishments. So that while "not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law", we can simply ignore the cruel parts. I suspect the followers of Judaism likewise do not enforce any of these laws, in opposition to their own holy scripture. So that even in the absence of a New Testament there is a general understanding that these ancient laws no longer apply. Some Christians seem inclined to interpret this in the context of: "vengeance is mine saith the Lord", assuming that while the terrible punishments should not be meted out by us, they will be by God in a hail of divine retribution in the afterlife. So that the Christian who offers: "I will pray for you" may be declaring that they think you need someone to pray for you because you are clearly destined for the fires of hell, while they are content to stand by innocently on the bank warmed in the glow of vindication. Yet this does not appear to be what Jesus is saying in: "neither do I condemn you". It would be misleading for him to make this statement if all it means is: "I won't condemn you, my Father will." Jesus' attitude to prostitution may be gauged by the following.
"Jesus said to them [the chief priests and the elders of the people], 'Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.'"
(Matthew 21:31-32)
The Urantia Book 133:3.6-7 describes an encounter between Jesus and some courtesans in Corinth. Although Mary Magdalene was not one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, she was prominent among his inner circle. The tradition has grown up that she was a prostitute, though there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest it. The Urantia Book however does seem to support the view (150:2.2).
Jesus does make reference to "sexual immorality". But he does not specify what he means by it.
"For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."
(Matthew 15:19, see also Mark 7:21)
His comments that he has come to fulfil the law of the prophets seems to suggest that sexual immorality refers to those acts defined as such in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 22. But we have seen that Jesus' idea of fulfilling the law of the prophets is not always a literal adoption. What then might he mean by sexual immorality? We might suggest that he refers to sexual acts which inflict (non-consensual) physical or emotional harm on another, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation. Sexual encounters that cause emotional harm to a third party. Sexual obsession. Notably absent from the Bible are considerations of sexual violence and sexual exploitation, what we today would consider to be real sexual crimes. Instead, the sexual crimes condemned in the Old Testament are all consensual acts. The only exception is the consideration of an unmarried woman who is raped, where the primary concern is in finding a husband for damaged goods.
We should treat Jesus as a politician, a social engineer seeking to sway the opinions of a populace. Beginning from where they are now, he seeks to lead them somewhere else. Rather than detailing specific laws, he outlines a few general principles which should, eventually, have the effect of generating appropriately kind and just detailed laws. We might also interpret the phrase "sexual immorality" to refer to whatever your community defines as sexual immorality, a cultural characteristic rather than an objective moral absolute. When a person indulges in something that is deemed sexual immorality by their community, they are cut off from that community, isolated by the secret they must protect and hide. They live in danger of punishment, shame and blackmail. All this undermines a person's social functioning. In this case there is less sexual immorality as society progresses because fewer things are deemed to be so by the community. We take up this subject again in Is God Good? - Part 2.
"Now for the matters you wrote about: 'It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.' But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
"To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife."
(1 Corinthians 7:1-11)
"Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this."
(1 Corinthians 7:25-28)
"I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord."
(1 Corinthians 7:32-35)
"The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."
(1 Corinthians 6:13-20)
The figures of the Old Testament are sensuous. Their goal is the good life: feasting, wine, large families, wealth and victory over their enemies. When they are happy, they kiss and hug. When they are sad they wail, tear their clothes, fall to the ground and rub dust in their hair. By contrast, Paul seems a sterile figure. We can see in Paul the views of sex characteristic of the Middle Ages and through to the Victorian era. The debauchery of Rome had its opposite counterpart in cults that sought to turn their back on sensuality: Neo-Platonism, Mithraism, and the influx of Buddhism from the East offered "liberation" from the sufferings of desire and the promise of a reality transcending physicality. Paul's pronouncements on gender also had lasting impact.
"Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord." (Ephesians 5:22)
"Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord." (Colossians 3:18)
Do we see anything comparable in the views of Jesus? Some might see in the following a turning away from the world of the senses. But only if we assume that "heaven" is not sensuous.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal."
(Matthew 6:19-20)
The following also suggests a certain unworldliness, in some sense. But the passage seems more about compromising what is right for popularity or success.
"You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."
(James 4:4)
Some might see in the following, allusions to a pure existence of celibacy. Can we assume that "not married" means "celibate"? Jesus' comments on divorce might seem to imply so. But those comments refer those who have broken a marriage contract, a contract that was made. What of sexual beings who never were married, who never made a contract of exclusivity?
"At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."
(Matthew 22:30, see also Mark 12:25)
Paul assumes that “the two will become one flesh” merely by performing the sex act, rather than by forming a meaningful union over time. Jesus also makes what appear to be some mildly disapproving comments to the woman of Samaria. However what is or is not a husband in this passage is murky. The implications of such passages may be only that in casual relationships one of the parties is often exploited, desiring something of more substance but not getting it, while the other preys on that desire. But this is hardly necessarily so. In which case it becomes difficult to see what the problem is. This in turn leads us back to the view that what is being spoken of is marriage partners rather than merely sex-partners. The problem perhaps with the Samaritan woman is that she forms somewhat enduring monogamous relationships without taking the final step of committing to any of them (see 143:5 for The Urantia Book account of this event).
"He told her, 'Go, call your husband and come back.'
"'I have no husband,' she replied.
"Jesus said to her, 'You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.'"
(John 4:16-18)
Paul's vision would lead to ideals of matrimony such as the following vividly described wedding night of the Christian martyr Saint Cecilia.
"After the banquet, matrons guided Cecilia's trembling steps to the door of the nuptial chamber, decorated with all the effeminacy of Roman luxury, and rendered still more imposing by its silence and obscurity. Valerian followed the virgin. When they were alone, Cecilia, strengthened by divine grace, addressed her husband these gentle and touching words: 'My generous friend, I have a secret to confide to thee; swear that thou wilt respect it.' Valerian vehemently protested that he would preserve the secret of his bride, and that nothing should ever force him to reveal it. 'Listen, then,' resumed Cecilia, 'I am under the care of an angel whom God has appointed protector of my virginity. If thou shouldest violate it, his fury will be enkindled against thee, and thou wilt fall a victim to his vengeance. If on the other hand, thou wilt respect it, he will favor thee with his love, and obtain for thee many blessings.'"
("Life of Saint Cecilia" by Reverend Prosper Gueranger, 1866, pp.65-66)
The Christian martyr Saint Agnes of Rome provides a model of ideal love and marriage: The Platonic Marriage.
"I have vowed to be entirely his. Milk and honey flow from his lips. I have felt his chaste embrace. His body was united to mine, and 'the blood from his stricken cheek has impressed itself on mine.' But know that his mother was a virgin that he was begotten by the Father from all eternity. I can love him and remain chaste, press him to my heart and rest pure, receive him as my Spouse and still be a virgin."
("The Life of St. Agnes of Rome", 1856, pp.14-15)
The Urantia Book has the following to say about cults of celibacy.
"Early in social evolution peculiar and celibate orders of both men and women arose; they were started and maintained by individuals more or less lacking normal sex urge."
It has the following to say about Paul specifically.
"The continence cult originated as a ritual among soldiers prior to engaging in battle; in later days it became the practice of “saints.” This cult tolerated marriage only as an evil lesser than fornication. Many of the world’s great religions have been adversely influenced by this ancient cult, but none more markedly than Christianity. The Apostle Paul was a devotee of this cult, and his personal views are reflected in the teachings which he fastened onto Christian theology: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I myself.” “I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teachings were not a part of Jesus’ gospel, and his acknowledgment of this is illustrated by his statement, “I speak this by permission and not by commandment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his personal opinions have long influenced the teachings of a great world religion. If the advice of the tentmaker-teacher were to be literally and universally obeyed, then would the human race come to a sudden and inglorious end. Furthermore, the involvement of a religion with the ancient continence cult leads directly to a war against marriage and the home, society’s veritable foundation and the basic institution of human progress. And it is not to be wondered at that all such beliefs fostered the formation of celibate priesthoods in the many religions of various peoples. Someday man should learn how to enjoy liberty without license, nourishment without gluttony, and pleasure without debauchery. Self-control is a better human policy of behavior regulation than is extreme self-denial. Nor did Jesus ever teach these unreasonable views to his followers."
(Urantia Book: 89:3.6-7)
Today, the cult of celibacy as represented by the priesthood of the organised religions seems like an object lesson in sexual and institutional malformation. See for instance the movie "Spotlight" (2015). This distortion of the natural human sexuality, by which nature perpetuates the human race, gave rise to the celibate priesthood, that gave rise to the priesthood of homosexual paedophiles who were to serve as Christendom's moral authorities. So we might question the wisdom of aggregating men together for life into monasteries, and in general, of segregating the sexes. While homosexuality itself is natural, it is only natural for those who are naturally that way, not for those who have merely been denied the alternative. Monasteries and Nunneries did not set the institution of the Church on a healthy course.
It does not seem implausible to suggest that Paul, exploiting the reflected authority of Jesus, "on Jesus' coat-tails" so to speak, was able singlehandedly to fuck up half the world for millennia, in what might be called: "The Great Pauline Detour" in the sexual history of planet Earth. The fault is not all Paul's, but derives chiefly from the decision of the churches to declare the Bible as a whole as: "The Word of God", in every "smallest letter" and "least stroke of a pen".
Some take the fact that Jesus was an apparently virgin thirty-year-old single man to imply the virtues of celibacy, so that imitating the life Jesus means living this way. But if Jesus is an eternal being, thirty years spent in Palestine is the blink of an eye: a quick business trip. If the Urantia Book is correct Jesus already has a divine consort (see "The Urantia Book" section of In the Beginning: Water - Part 1). Would it have been appropriate for Jesus to have a human wife and children given the fact that he would be leaving soon? What human woman would be his equal? Unfortunately the Urantia Book does seem to confirm the non-sexual nature of post resurrection life, making an explicit connection between "not marry" and non-sexual being.
"Though seraphim are very affectionate and sympathetic beings, they are not sex-emotion creatures. They are much as you will be on the mansion worlds, where you will 'neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be as the angels of heaven.'"
(Urantia Book 38:2.2)
So if you want to have sex, now is the time to do it. Although it does also say the following.
"As mortal creatures ascend the universe, passing from the material to the spiritual realms, they never lose their appreciation for, and enjoyment of, their former levels of existence."
(Urantia Book 15:7.4)
Perhaps it is necessary to make a distinction between the aesthetic and emotional elements of eroticism and the chemical reactions leading to and involved in the physical sex act or imagination. When sensation becomes an object of fear and prudishness a virtue, people start trying to out-prude each other. Those with an inclination to tell others how to live must come up with something new to declare, to carve out a niche of authority for themselves, to set themselves apart from all the other would-be moral authorities. So the field of immoral behaviour spreads into new territory and behaviours once accepted are banned in the scramble for social status, recognition and power, like the Pharisees of old. Religious societies can thereby become more restrictive than the revelatory documents that founded them. A good antidote to anti-sensuality in Christianity is the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). Interpreting the song as a spiritual metaphor does not undermine its approving sensuality. Finding spiritual meaning in an event does not diminish the event.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers....
"While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance. My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi. How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves. How handsome you are, my beloved! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant....
"Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon; your mouth is lovely. Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built with courses of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of incense. You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you....
"Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits....
"Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, 'I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.' May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine....
"I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment."
(Matthew 5:21-22)
Jesus' focus was on the cultivation of true civility. Shortly after the crucifixion Paul busied himself with handing Christendom over to the authoritarian institution, and created the suffocating Medieval mind. Obedience to authority meant also adoption of the ideology of that authority.
"Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience."
(Romans 13:1-5)
It is difficult to reconcile this view with the fact that Jesus had just been crucified by the authorities of the day.
"As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the people of Israel are disgraced—they, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets." (Jeremiah 2:26)
"From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit." (Jeremiah 6:13)
"The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the peoples of the world, that enemies and foes could enter the gates of Jerusalem. But it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed within her the blood of the righteous." (Lamentations 4:12-13)
"The more priests there were, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness." (Hosea 4:7-8)
"As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes." (Hosea 6:9)
"Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money." (Micah 3:11)
“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.” (Malachi 2:7-9)
We saw in the "Woe to Hypocrites" section of the Suffering article that this criticism continues into the New Testament, in the words of Jesus at least.
"The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin [a Jewish council] were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death." (Matthew 26:59)
"Jesus replied, 'And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them.... Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.'" (Luke 11:46-52)
In the State as defined by Paul, there was no tolerance for such dissent, which was duly silenced for the long dark ages. King or Pope is assumed to be the unquestionable instrument of God's will merely by virtue of receiving and keeping or taking and holding power. The virtue of Paul was his effectiveness. He was a get it done kind of guy. One wonders if Christianity would have had the same impact if it had been left to Jesus' cautious disciples. But Paul had no grasp of the potential consequences of overlaying Christianity with his own assumptions and theories, where the choice of one turn of phrase over another could change the course of future history.
The biblical prophets were typically not officially part of some religious institution. They were freelance social critics, believing themselves appointed personally by God to announce God's views on the condition of Israel at the time, as was Moses. It's not entirely clear from the Bible how priests in the usual sense came about, though every religion has them. They are just there. The first mention of a priest in the Bible is Genesis 14:18, referring to Melchizedek: "He was priest of God Most High", in the time of Abraham (Abram). Moses' father-in-law was a priest (Exodus 3:1), and at Exodus 19:6 God declares of the state of Israel: "you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation". Among this kingdom of priests are some priests proper (Exodus 19:22). At Exodus 28:1 God formally appoints Moses' brother Aaron and his two sons "to serve me as priests", and at Exodus 28:43 that: "This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants." Their role was not originally as teachers and interpreters of religious doctrine, but to perform the religious rituals. There was a distinction then between priests, who performed the religious rituals; and prophets who spoke on behalf of God to communicate God's will and opinions to the people. The priests were part of an institution, with an occupation of priest. Prophets may be eccentrics who lived outside of normal society. As religion evolved it came to be increasingly text based. The priests were guardians not only of ritual, but also of religious texts, and therefore the doctrines they contained. They therefore, like the prophets, came to act as intermediaries between God and ordinary people, interpreting the will of God for the community. But whereas prophets were inspired, delivering divine revelation directly, priests were working from the written word, becoming the instruments of the cult of The Book.
In the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, we have at least as many warnings about corrupt priests and false prophets as we do about adulterous women. Jesus seems to bypass this dangerous class to some extent when he says: "my sheep know me" (John 10:14), placing authority into the hands of each member of the community directly. But his apostle model of religious teacher also readily evolved into a priesthood.
The individual churches tend to define themselves by what distinguishes them from every other church, so that membership in any church is likely to require acceptance of some obscure and contentious piece of doctrine about which all the other churches are wrong, rather than those doctrines that churches have in common, and which are usually more reliable and important. The need to accept the authority of the church's representatives is cultivated by persistently emphasising the need to believe, believe, believe. Believe or die. Institutional obedience is formalised in open-ended and ultimately meaningless contract-like slogans: "Do you accept Jesus as your personal saviour?" Institutional loyalty manifests as hatred of every other religious institution and finds its pinnacle in religious war.
Religious teachers are important to preserve and disseminate religious information, so that a priesthood is valuable, but should be treated with some degree of suspicion by those guided or controlled by them, particularly where followers are told not to think for themselves. The message is clear: "Beware the priests".
Jesus' comments about: "You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence" (Matthew 23:25) or: "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean" (Matthew 23:27) differentiate the outward signs of righteousness and religion from inward states of goodness. What do we mean when we refer to a person as "holy", a holy man? Do we mean he has supernatural powers or special communication with God? Is he only someone familiar with the religion's scripture, or who performs its ritual? Is he someone who obeys God's laws and leads a good life? It is possible to do all the trappings of religion: attend Church sixteen times a week, pray loudly twenty seven times a day, recite passages from scripture, dress in the prescribed religious uniform; and yet be inwardly hateful and petty, so it is all for nothing. However if you are inwardly patient and kind, and outwardly engaged in good works, you can dispense with the trappings of ritual. What does repeating the same phrase over and over again do for you or god? What is it but a contentless demonstration to the world of how religious you are? The only true holiness is good works flowing from good intent. The trappings of religious ritual do not confer or represent goodness. Ritual stems from a desire for communion with the holy. This is its meaning for those who find meaning in it. For the rest it is empty motions. If holy men don't actually glow in the dark, their holiness is indistinguishable from secular virtue. The desire for communion with the holy can become a craving. The desire can flow into good works, or it can flow into religious hysteria or the pursuit of the supernatural for its wonder.
We continue our consideration of the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the next article: Is God Good? - Part 2.
Any comments welcome.
Religion might be questioned from the point of view of its factuality; that is, whether it is true or not. For instance, was the universe created in just 7 days in the year 3761 BC at the end of what scientists call the "Stone Age", could Noah's ark really have contained two of each animal in the world (Genesis 6:19), or: who did the children of Adam and Eve marry (Genesis 4-5)? We might also question religion from the point of view of whether it is good or not. So far in these articles we have been mostly focusing on whether religion is true, on its plausibility. In this article we look at the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible. Along the way we will consider some questions of morality in general. In the article on Suffering we considered God's culpability in human suffering. Here we consider morality as recommended or imposed by the Judeo-Christian Bible.
If the Judeo-Christian Bible is the word of God, it should teach us how to behave. It should teach us right from wrong ... right? The Bible is thought by some to be a perfect document, where every phrase can be mulled over as containing inexhaustibly deep secrets, like an intricate code.
"For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished."
(Matthew 5:18)
The New Testament is two thousand years old; some of the Old Testament is perhaps thousands of years older. There is not much written in those ancient times that we would use as a guide today. Some people reading the Bible, instead of seeing perfect and divine, eternal truths; see rather, the cruel and intolerant morals of a brutal and primitive age.
In the "Religion and Truth" section of the In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 article, particularly, we were led to treat the literal truthfulness of religious texts as highly suspect; but asserted nevertheless the value of these texts as sources of truth. Here we examine whether morality in the Bible can be treated as perfect, as right and good in an absolute sense.
If there is such a thing as eternal, perfect truth, then such a truth is true for all time. It is not just true at one time, only to become superseded at another. And yet some people compare the morality of the modern (civilised) world to that of the past, and suggest that modern morality is better, kinder, wiser, more tolerant and more just. There is a fundamental paradox in the Christian Bible, in the fact that there is an Old Testament and a New Testament. If the Old Testament was a perfect and complete guide, what need was there of a New Testament? A Jew might highlight this paradox of Christianity. But then we might also say that if the Pentateuch of Moses was perfect and complete, what need was there of the prophets? Was the Tanakh incomplete until all the prophets were added? Of course the existence of two true pieces of information does not suggest that either is incomplete in itself. Each can be sufficiently self contained. We might even suggest that a piece of information is complete and self contained if a second piece of information expands on our understanding of the first. But what are we to make of two moral propositions that give rise to two distinctly different behaviours?
Was the Old Testament somehow incomplete? If the Old Testament was incomplete, and waited for and required the New Testament for its completion, is the Bible complete and perfect now, or is there more to come? Will those future testaments give some very different picture of morality to what we see in the Bible of today: as different from each other as is the morality of the Old and the New Testaments of today? Because despite the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5:18 quoted above, declaring the continuity of the Old and the New Testaments, the morality of the Old and New Testaments, as we will see below, are very different. In the Old Testament it is "an eye for an eye".
"Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death. Anyone who takes the life of someone’s animal must make restitution—life for life. Anyone who injures their neighbour is to be injured in the same manner: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. The one who has inflicted the injury must suffer the same injury."
(Leviticus 24:17-20, see also Exodus 21:23-24 and Deuteronomy 19:21
(in relation to manslaughter, that is, accidental killing, see Numbers 35:9-30))
"Bloodshed pollutes the land, and atonement cannot be made for the land on which blood has been shed, except by the blood of the one who shed it."
(Numbers 35:33)
The eye for an eye concept dates back to at least the Code of Hammurabi (c.1754 BC) where it appeared as Law #196. The New Testament by contrast has this.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
(Matthew 5:38-42)
The Koran makes a similar but somewhat less thorough revision with the following.
"We ordained therein for them [the Jews in the Torah]: 'Life for life, eye for eye, nose or nose, ear for ear, tooth for tooth, and wounds equal for equal.' But if any one remits the retaliation by way of charity, it is an act of atonement for himself."
(Koran 5:45, see also 2:178)
The Christian concept is different to mere charity or mercy.
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
(Matthew 5:43-48, see also Luke 6:27-36)
We might describe the difference as that between "mercy" and "forgiveness". It is "mercy" to cut off someone's hands when what you really want to do is cut off their head. It is retaliation scaled down. But forgiveness is total. It is to let your enemy off scott free, indeed to do good by them in place of evil ("Recompense to no man evil for evil" (Romans 12:17) but: "Bless them which persecute you" (Romans 12:14)). This is an important moral innovation. One of the shortcomings of "an eye for an eye" is that it offers no way out of the blood feud. While "eye for eye" refers specifically to punishment of the perpetrator of a crime, the concept gets generalised to members of a class, such as a family, tribe, race or nationality, religion or political persuasion; so that a sin committed by one member of a class, can be exacted against any other member of the same class ("prescribed for you is legal retribution for those murdered - the free for the free, the slave for the slave, and the female for the female" (Koran 2:178)). A member of class X is murdered by a member of class Y. The associates of the murdered member of class X cannot find the murderer, but retaliate by killing another member of class Y. The associates of the murdered member of class Y do not accept this as just, and therefore feel entitled to retaliate in kind against another randomly chosen member of class X. By this logic the blood feud can be made eternal while all parties after the first murderer believe themselves to be committing justice; the number of those encompassed by the blood feud expands with each iteration of the process. Thus we have the quote frequently attributed to Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”. Jesus is not merely fleshing out the detail of the old law, but bringing something new.
"the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here"
(2 Corinthians 5:17)
At the same time that he declares: "not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law", asserting the consistency of his teachings with those already existing: he also suggests the following.
"Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins."
(Matthew 9:17)
In the "Religion and Truth" section of the In the Beginning: Water - Part 1 article it was suggested that religious truth is approximate and evolutionary. It should be remembered that the religion we have is the religion that has been preserved by man. For all we know there may have been countless other, better revelations given to people down through the ages, that we have never heard of because no one preserved them for posterity. When we criticise the quality of God's revelations we should remember this. What use is a prophet no one listens to? Religious revelation is not only limited to what human beings can understand, but also to what they will accept. What is not accepted is labelled "apocrypha" or disappears entirely. We have seen vividly how hard it is to replace old ideas with new ideas.
When early Christian councils were determining what books would be included in the New Testament, the Book of Revelation almost did not make it. The Council of Laodicea (363 AD) omits it, though the later councils (Council of Rome (382 AD), Synod of Hippo (in 393 AD), Council of Carthage (397 AD and 419 AD)) include it. The Syriac Bible excluded 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation until the early 5th century. Martin Luther called the Book of Revelation "neither apostolic nor prophetic" in 1522, but later revised his position. We have already encountered such suppression in the case of the Old Testament: 1 Esdras, 4 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manesseh (see: "the Great Schism of 1054") and the Book of Enoch. The Protestant New Testament likewise leaves out the books of Tobit (Tobias), Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach and Baruch. The bible itself is the product of contention, not delivered whole as a perfect unity, a finished piece of clockwork, but an anthology by a variety of human authors. Since the content of the Christian Bible was established have been recent discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels (Nag Hammadi Library) revealing lost doctrines.
Let us assume for the moment that the moral instruction given in the Bible is perfect and complete, instead of relative, partial and evolutionary. What is that instruction and how good is it? If right and wrong are absolutes, then which is the Christian Bible: right or wrong? By the measure of absolute truth, if the instruction is wrong today then it always was. We will therefore put the Bible and its God on trial. We will measure the goodness of the Bible, not against some written doctrine handed down as divine revelation, but as judged by the compassion of our own ordinary human hearts. Because: not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law: "until everything is accomplished", that is, when the written law is superseded by something else. The Jewish prophet Jeremiah who was active around 600 BC, sensed that religion was, or was potentially, an innate human (or at least Jewish) ability which would one day, to some extent or other, render prophets and other religious teachers unnecessary, becoming a natural intuition.
"'I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, "Know the Lord," because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,' declares the Lord."
(Jeremiah 31:33-34)
Jesus suggested that those inclined to heed his message naturally recognised the truth of it. It resonated with them.
"I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me"
(John 10:14)
The law of the Old Testament has been superseded by a moral intuition among human beings in general, by which they are able to recognise the good, at least in its big brush strokes, although the ideals of the New Testament have not yet been attained.
Murder and the Old Testament
"You shall not murder."(The 6th Commandment - Exodus 20:13)
That is the NIV version of the passage. The King James version has "Thou shalt not kill", but this is perhaps too restrictive. The word "murder" has more the sense of wrongful killing, as opposed to justified killing. The Hebrew word (תִרְצָח) can be taken either way. The word "murder" is more consistent with the rest of the content of the Bible. Although God asserts "vengeance is mine", nevertheless there are circumstances where people are permitted to kill.
"It is mine to avenge; I will repay. In due time their foot will slip; their day of disaster is near and their doom rushes upon them."
(Deuteronomy 32:35)
"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."
(Romans 12:19)
Less than a hundred Israelites, the whole nation at that time, had originally left Canaan and gone down to live in Egypt (Genesis 46:27). While there, their population grew, and this became a cause of concern to the Egyptians who then began to oppress them (Exodus 1). After the Israelites fled Egypt, they headed back for Canaan. The children of Israel had not lived in Canaan for centuries, and others lived there, a nation of people. As they massed on the border (over 600,000 men (Numbers 26:51)), Moses received direction from God.
"On the plains of Moab by the Jordan across from Jericho the Lord said to Moses, 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: "When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places. Take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have given you the land to possess. Distribute the land by lot, according to your clans. To a larger group give a larger inheritance, and to a smaller group a smaller one. Whatever falls to them by lot will be theirs. Distribute it according to your ancestral tribes.
"'"But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live. And then I will do to you what I plan to do to them."'" (Numbers 33:50-56)
So the Israelites invade Canaan and are rewarded with a string of victories.
"'Set out now and cross the Arnon Gorge. See, I have given into your hand Sihon the Amorite, king of Heshbon, and his country. Begin to take possession of it and engage him in battle. This very day I will begin to put the terror and fear of you on all the nations under heaven. They will hear reports of you and will tremble and be in anguish because of you.'" (Deuteronomy 2:24-25)
"When Sihon and all his army came out to meet us in battle at Jahaz, the Lord our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army. At that time we took all his towns and completely destroyed them—men, women and children. We left no survivors. But the livestock and the plunder from the towns we had captured we carried off for ourselves. From Aroer on the rim of the Arnon Gorge, and from the town in the gorge, even as far as Gilead, not one town was too strong for us. The Lord our God gave us all of them." (Deuteronomy 2:32-36)
By this means this holy people took possession of the land. Similar events played out after the Second World War. The Jews have been a stateless people on three separate occasions. The first was the Egyptian captivity, the second the Babylonian/Persian captivity, and the third was after the Jewish revolt against Roman occupation which ended in 136 AD with the destruction of the Jewish state and the scattering of the Jewish people. In the wake of the misfortunes committed against the Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War, there was sympathy in the West for the resurrection of a defensible Jewish state, although the state of Israel had not existed for more than 1,800 years. As in the case of previous Jewish returns, misfortune befell those who already occupied the land at the time, on this occasion the Palestinians.
Aside from Israel having intermittently served as the ancestral home of the Jewish race, the Jewish claim on this area of land goes back to the patriarch Abram (later called Abraham). Abram originally lived in the city of Ur in what is now Iraq. One day, traditionally dated to sometime in the early 2nd millennium BC, Abram's father Terah, packs up his belongings and his family and sets off to find a new place to live, and settles in a place called Harran. While there, Abram meets God who tells him: "Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation.... To your offspring I will give this land." (Genesis 12:1-7) The land was Canaan. From Abram descended the Jewish race.
Mass migrations, invasions and the destruction and displacement of peoples are not uncommon in history. The European invasion of the continents of Australia and America in the name of the spread of Christendom and for the acquisition of land and other resources being other well documented examples. Killing was also justified as punishment for certain crimes, and not only in accordance with the "life for a life" rule.
"If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid." (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
"Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death." (Leviticus 20:9)
"A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:27)
"Do not allow a sorceress to live." (Exodus 22:18)
"Whoever sacrifices to any god other than the Lord must be destroyed." (Exodus 22:20)
"For six days, work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of sabbath rest to the Lord. Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death." (Exodus 35:2, see also Exodus 31:14)
"While the Israelites were in the wilderness, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the Lord said to Moses, 'The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.' So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the Lord commanded Moses." (Numbers 15:32-36)
"Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him. Then he said to them, 'This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: "Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor."' The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, 'You have been set apart to the Lord today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day.'" (Exodus 32:25-29)
"Then the Lord said to Moses: 'Take the blasphemer outside the camp. All those who heard him are to lay their hands on his head, and the entire assembly is to stone him. Say to the Israelites: "Anyone who curses their God will be held responsible; anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them. Whether foreigner or native-born, when they blaspheme the Name they are to be put to death."'" (Leviticus 24:13-16)
It is not merely the fact of capital punishment, but the seemingly trivial nature of some of the crimes being punished, such as the crime of "stubbornness". Permission to kill people for being stubborn presents all kinds of possibilities. Also striking is the shocking absence of parental feeling amid the murderous rage over disobedience. Let's get all the parents together to throw rocks at our fat, lazy son. We will see other examples in what follows.
Sex and the Old Testament
The Bible's attitude to sex is interesting in its own right, but we should also compare in what follows, the attitude to sex to the attitude toward depriving someone of life in horrific fashion.Sex with Family Members
There are many prohibitions against having sex with any close relative: your mother, your father's wife, your sister, your father's or mother's daughter, your son's or daughter's daughter, the daughter of your father's wife, your father's or mother's sister, your father's brother's wife, your daughter-in-law, your brother's wife, a woman and her daughter, her son's or daughter's daughter, etc. (Leviticus 18:6-17)The punishments for these crimes vary. Some are relatively mild. If a man marries his sister or the daughter of his father or mother, they will both be publicly removed from their people and "held responsible". If a man has sex with the sister of his mother or father, they will both be "held responsible". If a man marries his brother's wife "they will be childless". But if a man has sex with his father's wife or his daughter-in-law, both the man and woman are to be put to death. If a man has sex with both a woman and her daughter, both he and they "must be burned in the fire". (Leviticus 20:11-21)
There is also a prohibition against having sex with a woman during her period, punished by both of them being "cut off from their people". (Leviticus 18:19, Leviticus 20:18)
Bestiality
"Do not have sexual relations with an animal and defile yourself with it. A woman must not present herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it; that is a perversion." (Leviticus 18:23)"If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he is to be put to death, and you must kill the animal. If a woman approaches an animal to have sexual relations with it, kill both the woman and the animal. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:15-16)
Homosexuality
"Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." (Leviticus 18:22)"If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." (Leviticus 20:13)
Anal sex
In English, the word "Sodomy" means "anal sex", and someone who has anal sex can be called a "Sodomite". The word Sodomite was usually used the refer to homosexual men, but the word is archaic now and not often used. Sodom was a city destroyed by god in the Bible, to punish it for its wrongdoing, including homosexuality (Genesis 19). When two angels visited Sodom to see for themselves how bad it was, a man called Lot kindly offered them a bed for the night."Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom—both young and old—surrounded the house. They called to Lot, 'Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them.'" (Genesis 19:4-5)
After this: "Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens." (Genesis 19:24) It's difficult to know the Bible's attitude to anal sex because sodomy is usually mentioned in relation to homosexuality, so that it is not clear whether it is homosexuality or anal sex that is being criticized. The phrase: "as one does with a woman" might seem to imply the former, that is, that anal sex with a woman is not necessarily a crime, but since the word "sodomy" was later used to refer to anal sex, this then is made to seem to imply the latter. That is, the sin of the Sodomites was sodomy, and that is why Sodom was destroyed.
"Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave themselves up to sexual immorality and perversion. They serve as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire." (Jude 1:7)
"Sexual immorality and perversion" presumably refers to the sexual sins defined in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 22. "Sexual immorality" is a common phrase in the New Testament (Matthew 5:32,15:19,19:9, Mark 7:21, Acts 15:20,15:29,21:25, Romans 1:26-27, 13:13, 1 Corinthians 5:1,6:12,6:13,6:18,7:2,10:8, Galatians 5:19, Ephesians 5:3, Colossians 3:5, 1 Thessalonians 4:3, Jude 1:7, Revelation 2:14,2:20,9:21), but it is not defined there. Nowhere is it suggested that rape was the sin of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Cross-dressing
"A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this." (Deuteronomy 22:5) It is strange to imagine Moses listening to God's long legal monologues: "And the Lord said: 'You know what else I hate? ...'".Masturbation
Masturbation used to be called "onanism" or "the sin of Onan". This name was based on a passage in the Old Testament. Tamar was the wife of Onan's brother Er. "But Er, Judah’s firstborn, was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death" (Genesis 38:7). By Jewish law (Deuteronomy 25:5), Onan was to take his brother's widow as his own wife."But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also." (Genesis 38:9)
One might be inclined to think that Onan's sin was that he "will not build up his brother’s family line" (Deuteronomy 25:9) in accordance with Jewish law, but regardless of the lack of a biblical basis, the tradition grew up that the sin of Onan was the wastage of semen, and apparently whether by "coitus interruptus" or by masturbation was just as bad. Either of these came to be termed "onanism". Arousal was identified as the source of the problem. Eventually Western medicine would apply the scientific method and bring some sanity to the discussion. Volume 3 of "The Eclectic Journal of Medicine" of 1839 presents (pp.145-51) "A Treatise on the Diseases produced by Onanism, Masturbation, Self-Pollution, and other Excesses" by L Deslandes, M. D., Member of the Royal Academy of Medicine at Paris, and other Learned Societies. I quote it at length.
"Among the special symptoms caused by venereal excesses, are loss of flesh, which is one of the most constant symptoms, and is attended with a loss of strength. The countenance, especially of the onanist, 'instead of the vermillion glow of health, is pale and without freshness, or of a yellowish, earthy, leaden, and livid tint; the lips lose their colour, a bluish circle surrounds the eyes, the eyelids are puffed out with aedema; the flesh is soft and flaccid; the pulse is small and feeble; upon the slightest motion, or during sleep, the forehead, chest, and palms of the hands are bathed with profuse perspiration: in some patients the hands and feet are aedematous: in short, the symptoms are those of general atony, which are attended with a slow hectic fever, denoting that the economy does not yield without reaction to the destructive disease.' The disturbance and derangement of the digestive apparatus are also notably and painfully experienced. But, as might be expected from the known and immediate influence of the venereal act on the nervous system, we can readily believe that in this latter will be found the most numerous and distressing effects of excesses and unlicensed indulgence. Hypochondriasis, hysteria, chorea, epilepsy, apoplexy, and palsy, constitute part of the list of dire maladies induced or immediately excited, by onanism and immoderate or ill-timed coition. The memory and the intellectual faculties, in general, are enfeebled, and there are instances of complete idiocy, brought on by early and continued onanism, and of insanity from similar excesses later in life.' Numerous, and some of them curious cases, illustrative of this part of the subject, are given in the volume before us. During the digestion of a full meal, or in old age, are circumstances which greatly increase the danger of apoplectic seizure in coition. 'Deep and chronic lesions have been observed in the encephalon of onanists, much more frequently than acute diseases.'
"'Chronic alterations have frequently been found in the cerebellum of onanists. They have been mentioned by some as the cause, by others as the effect of onanism.' Dr. Deslandes thinks 'it would be impossible, in most of the cases of which we speak, to distinguish whether the cerebral affection or the masturbation had precedence. The only thing positively known is their coincidence; and this latter has appeared too frequently not to attract attention.' He then proceeds to mention several instances of this coincidence, related by Gall, Combe, Serrurier, &c.
"The irritation, and even the disorganization, on occasions, of the spinal marrow as an effect of the depraved habits in question, are passed in review ; as manifested by sensations more or less acute along the vertebral column, also a feeling 'of cold, of numbness, and formication in the limbs, particularly the lower extremities, constant trembling, or convulsive motions in these parts; a kind of tetanic stiffness; gradual debility of the lower half of the body; and finally paraplegia.'"
Concerned sufferers may be relieved to learn that: "Excision of some portion of the erectile tissue has been advised and practised, for the cure of the disease of onanism; and cures are on record in which the removal of the clitoris has had the desired effect." Also: "Extirpation of the ovaries and testicles has been practised, though rarely, to allay and prevent the recurrence of salacious desires." As well: "Chauffard, Voisin, and Londe, have made applications directly in the region of the cerebellum." Among less severe precautionary measures are clothing that is "loose about the pelvis and thighs" and "Dr. Deslandes cautions against company, and the free social intercourse between the sexes", as well as avoiding "voluptuous sights, riding" and "a soft and warm bed". If these methods fail: "Bandages and other mechanical contrivances are mentioned by the author as physical means to prevent the performance of the act", as well as: "Enemeta of cold water" and "free and regular ablution of the parts" (which one might have imagined would have the opposite of the desired effect). The author warns that "the pernicious and debasing habit of masturbation is a more common and extensive evil with youth of both sexes, than is usually supposed" and alludes to "the circumstances which may induce suspicion of a child or young person indulging in this diseased habit" so that we can once and for all be free of "this depraved habit". It is a testament to our time I think that it is enough to quote these passages without the need to editorialise them, though with the proviso that there probably is such a thing as "venereal excess".
Contraception and abortion are also lumped together with these ideas of the wastage of semen and the improper use of sex for pleasure.
Nudity
The treatment of nudity is interesting, because initially: "Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." (Genesis 2:25) It was only after having been tempted by the serpent to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowing good and evil that this changes."When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” He answered, 'I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.' And he said, 'Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?'"
(Genesis 3:6-11)
At first glance we might presume that nudity ceased to be innocent because it now might illicit lustful thoughts. But since Adam and Eve were already tasked with being fruitful and multiplying (Genesis 1:28), presumably sexual desire was already a part of their innocent, pre-fall life. On the surface it appears that nakedness and presumably therefore also sexual desire were evil, but Adam and Eve just didn't know it, and this ignorance constituted their innocence. Might other evils such as murder also be classed innocence in the absence of the knowledge of good and evil? Though we might wonder whether what is meant by the changed state is that now they only judge their lustful thoughts to be wrong, not that they are intrinsically so. That is, we might interpret the passage to be a gentle suggestion that nakedness and sexuality are not intrinsically wrong, but are only judged to be so for certain indirect reasons, such as certain personal and social problems that tend to be caused by them. Covering nakedness performs a social function, to help avoid strife. It is plausibly suggested the Eden that Adam and Eve were cast out of was the state of childhood before the moral consciousness emerges, the egocentric condition where anything the child wants to do is intrinsically and unquestioningly right, where a child might strangle the cat for fun without the realisation of doing wrong. The purity of the sociopath, feelings void of memory. It is a sad and disillusioning period as the moral consciousness emergences and self-criticism must set in as we begin to realise the consequences of our actions on the world around us. The child begins unaware that there is anything wrong with its nakedness, but the parent frets over how others might perceive the child's nakedness, and therefore convinces the child that it must cover itself, as if there is something wrong with it. Thus the Eden story seems a mixed bag of moral contemplations. All of these subtleties are lost when nakedness is simply condemned as an inspiration for the evil of sexual arousal.
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| "Adam and Eve Driven out of Eden", by Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adam_and_Eve_Driven_out_of_Eden.png
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The only other significant mention of nudity is when Noah's children discover him laying naked and drunk shortly after surviving the flood.
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| "Drunkenness of Noah", by Giovanni Bellini (1515) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunkenness_of_Noah
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
"The sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham and Japheth. (Ham was the father of Canaan.) These were the three sons of Noah, and from them came the people who were scattered over the whole earth.
"Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.
"When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said, 'Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers.' He also said, 'Praise be to the Lord, the God of Shem! May Canaan be the slave of Shem. May God extend Japheth’s territory; may Japheth live in the tents of Shem, and may Canaan be the slave of Japheth.'"
(Genesis 9:18-27)
In other words, the Canaanite's clearly deserve whatever is coming to them. Nakedness is often referred to figuratively, seeming to refer to the exposure of one's inner motives and secrets, such as in the following passages. Nakedness might also refer to poverty which may also be shameful, or as a generic reference to a lack of something one should have.
"Your nakedness will be exposed and your shame uncovered." (Isaiah 47:3)
"I will show the nations your nakedness and the kingdoms your shame." (Nahum 3:5)
"let your nakedness be exposed!" (Habakkuk 2:16)
What counts as an unmentionable part of the human body has varied over time.
"In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, but now, God knows, anything goes."
("Anything Goes", by Cole Porter (1934))
"Shakspeare’s an infernal humbug, Pip! What’s the good of Shakspeare, Pip? I never read him. What the devil is it all about, Pip? There’s a lot of feet in Shakspeare’s verse, but there an’t any legs worth mentioning in Shakspeare’s plays, are there, Pip? Juliet, Desdemona, Lady Macbeth, and all the rest of ‘em, whatever their names are, might as well have no legs at all, for anything the audience know about it, Pip. Why, in that respect they’re all Miss Biffins to the audience, Pip. I’ll tell you what it is. What the people call dramatic poetry is a collection of sermons. Do I go to the theatre to be lectured? No, Pip. If I wanted that, I’d go to church. What’s the legitimate object of the drama, Pip? Human nature. What are legs? Human nature. Then let us have plenty of leg pieces, Pip, and I’ll stand by you, my buck!”
("Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit", by Charles Dickens (1844))
"I cannot conclude this chapter without adverting to one or two points peculiar to the Americans. They wish, in everything, to improve upon the Old Country, as they call us, and affect to be excessively refined in their language and ideas: but they forget that very often in the covering, and the covering only, consists the indecency; and that, to use the old aphorism—'Very nice people are people with very nasty ideas.'
"They object to everything nude in statuary. When I was at the house of Governor Everett, at Boston, I observed a fine cast of the Apollo Belvidere; but in compliance with general opinion, it was hung with drapery, although Governor Everett himself is a gentleman of refined mind and high classical attainments, and quite above such ridiculous sensitiveness. In language it is the same thing. There are certain words which are never used in America, but an absurd substitute is employed. I cannot particularise them after this preface, lest I should be accused of indelicacy myself. I may, however, state one little circumstance which will fully prove the correctness of what I say.
"When at Niagara Falls I was escorting a young lady with whom I was on friendly terms. She had been standing on a piece of rock, the better to view the scene, when she slipped down, and was evidently hurt by the fall: she had, in fact, grazed her shin. As she limped a little in walking home, I said, 'Did you hurt your leg much?' She turned from me, evidently much shocked, or much offended,—and not being aware that I had committed any very heinous offence, I begged to know what was the reason of her displeasure. After some hesitation, she said that as she knew me well, she would tell me that the word leg was never mentioned before ladies. I apologised for my want of refinement, which was attributable to having been accustomed only to English society; and added, that as such articles must occasionally be referred to, even in the most polite circles in America, perhaps she would inform me by what name I might mention them without shocking the company. Her reply was, that the word limb was used; 'nay,' continued she, 'I am not so particular as some people are, for I know those who always say limb of a table, or limb of a piano-forte.'"
("Diary in America, Series One", Captain Marryat (1839))
Islam has detailed but not entirely consistent rules about what parts of the body are permitted to be visible. Passages such as the following are sometimes cited as evidence that Moslem women are not required to wear a veil or Burka.
“When a young lady begins to menstruate, it is not correct that anything should be seen of her except her face and hands excluding the wrist.”
(Abu Dawood)
But it's a slippery slope. First the face, then what? Islamic rules around what parts of a woman's body may be visible vary by context: whether at prayer, alone, in front of her husband, in front of muslim women, in front of close muslim male relatives, close non-muslim male relatives, other muslim males, other males. So the religious specialist invests in mastering rules that seem unworthy of anyone's attention.
"And sweetheart, your shorts are shrinking by the second, okay? Cold water, air dry, please."
("Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014))
Just because a religious society has certain cultural laws, does not mean that those laws are derived from their religion. They may be traditions that are independent of or even predate their primary religious texts. Pragmatic considerations around nudity are very ancient, and the inclination to control the behaviour of members of society are social and political rather than religious. Sexual activity can have profound consequences for a society and its members. In a religious society, these considerations will seek to reconcile themselves with religious revelation, and will seek support from that religious revelation, whether such support is present or not.
We have seen for instance that there is precious little in the Judeo-Christian Bible specifying how men and women should dress and what parts of the human body should be covered, and yet we find allusions to practices already present in the culture of the time.
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| Rebecca Sees Isaac, woodcut from the Pictorial Bible by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1860) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
"Rebekah also looked up and saw Isaac. She got down from her camel and asked the servant, 'Who is that man in the field coming to meet us?' 'He is my master,' the servant answered. So she took her veil and covered herself."
(Genesis 24:64-65, see also 38:14)
"Tell me, you whom I love, where you graze your flock and where you rest your sheep at midday. Why should I be like a veiled woman beside the flocks of your friends?"
(Song of Songs 1:7, see also 4:1-3 and Isaiah 47:2)
Despite this heritage, the Jews have not been tempted to reinstate the veil in modern times. The dress codes found in some Islamic societies have their origin in culture rather than religion.
"Qur'an is very clear about the dress code for the believers. Innovations and fabrication introduced Hijab (veil) to Islam. Hijab (veil) is a traditional, not religious head cover that dates back to ancient civilizations, and is not supported or advocated by the Qur'an. Islam is mostly concerned with the integrity of woman, with the safeguarding of her morals and morale and with the protection of her character and personality (Qur'an, 24:30-31)."
("Women and the Social Laws of the Qur'an", PhD thesis by Farhat Naz Rahman,
Department of Islamic Learning, University of Karachi, p.158)
"Tell the believing men to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. Indeed, Allah is Acquainted with what they do.
"And tell the believing women to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts and not expose their adornment except that which [necessarily] appears thereof and to wrap [a portion of] their headcovers over their chests and not expose their adornment except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands' fathers, their sons, their husbands' sons, their brothers, their brothers' sons, their sisters' sons, their women, that which their right hands possess, or those male attendants having no physical desire, or children who are not yet aware of the private aspects of women. And let them not stamp their feet to make known what they conceal of their adornment. And turn to Allah in repentance, all of you, O believers, that you might succeed."
(Qur'an 24:30-31)
The rules for concubines and slave girls in Islamic society were not so restrictive. These were permitted to go around bare chested.
"Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame." (Genesis 2:25) This raises the question: "Should we?" Do we throw a tarpaulin over a garden to cover it, or avert our eyes from the beauty of a sunset? Must we be protected from the corrupting influence of these? Because the beauty of people inspire lustful thoughts, we punish the one who is beautiful for the lustful thoughts of others. All those who are angry at not being able to possess the one who is beautiful. We make beauty into something sordid and sinful. If we require those with hateful, jealous and callous minds to own their own thoughts instead of blaming them on another, we can impose our restrictions where they belong. In the prevention of rape, harassment and sexual exploitation. Making a community in which it is safe for beauty to shine out for the benefit of everyone.
"Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house."
(Matthew 5:15)
"No one lights a lamp and hides it in a clay jar or puts it under a bed. Instead, they put it on a stand, so that those who come in can see the light. For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open."
(Luke 8:16-17)
Because of the power that beauty has, women are robbed of some of this power in the name of "modesty", to protect the arrogance of men from the arrogance of women, and to support the resentment of the less attractive toward the more attractive. Modesty is a mental condition not determined by a mode of dress. One can still be arrogant under a hijab, burka or niqab, though it is certainly humiliating to be subject to the will of another. Modesty is not the province of the ugly and unseen. The Urantia Book suggests that beauty is neither superficial nor trivial, but one of the three primary values and elements of deity.
"Mortal man must, through the recognition of truth, the appreciation of beauty, and the worship of goodness, evolve the recognition of a God of love...."
(The Urantia Book 56:6.3)
"The Supreme is the beauty of physical harmony, the truth of intellectual meaning, and the goodness of spiritual value."
(The Urantia Book 117:1.1)
"Spirituality enhances the ability to discover beauty in things, recognize truth in meanings, and discover goodness in values."
(The Urantia Book 100:2.4)
"Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth."
(The Urantia Book 130:1.5)
"One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more."
(The Urantia Book 101:8.1)
To betray one of these is to betray all. Similarly, when religion opposes evident truth, it defies one of these three pillars of value.
Adultery
There are pragmatic warnings against the dangers of adultery."For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life ... no one who touches her will go unpunished.... But a man who commits adultery has no sense; whoever does so destroys himself. Blows and disgrace are his lot, and his shame will never be wiped away. For jealousy arouses a husband’s fury, and he will show no mercy when he takes revenge." (Proverbs 6:26-34)
There are warnings about the character of the adulterous woman.
"For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave. She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.... Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house, lest you lose your honor to others and your dignity to one who is cruel, lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another. At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent." (Proverbs 5:3-11)
"Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman, from the wayward woman with her seductive words, who has left the partner of her youth and ignored the covenant she made before God. Surely her house leads down to death and her paths to the spirits of the dead. None who go to her return or attain the paths of life." (Proverbs 2:16-19)
There is clear prohibition against adultery.
“You shall not commit adultery." (The 7th Commandment - Exodus 20:14)
"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife". (The 10th Commandment - Exodus 20:17)
There is cruel punishment for breaking the commandment.
"If a man is found sleeping with another man’s wife, both the man who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel." (Deuteronomy 22:22)
Numbers 5:11-31 provides a way to determine the guilt or innocence of a wife suspected of adultery. She is brought before the priest who will: "have her stand before the Lord. Then he shall take some holy water in a clay jar and put some dust from the tabernacle floor into the water.... Then the priest shall put the woman under oath and say to her, 'If no other man has had sexual relations with you and you have not gone astray and become impure while married to your husband, may this bitter water that brings a curse not harm you. But if you have gone astray while married to your husband and you have made yourself impure by having sexual relations with a man other than your husband ... may the Lord cause you to become a curse among your people when he makes your womb miscarry and your abdomen swell....' The priest is to write these curses on a scroll and then wash them off into the bitter water. He shall make the woman drink the bitter water that brings a curse.... If, however, the woman has not made herself impure, but is clean, she will be cleared of guilt and will be able to have children." The Talmud (Sotah 19b) discusses whether it is appropriate that: "A hook made of iron is forcibly placed into her mouth, so that if the scroll was erased and she said: I will not drink, she is forced to drink against her will."
Pre-marital sex
A woman having sex before marriage was brutally punished. For a woman not to be a virgin when she marries was an "evil"."If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, 'I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,' then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin.... Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, and the elders shall take the man and punish him. They shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
"If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you." (Deuteronomy 22:13-21)
The possibility that a new wife might be accused by her husband of not being a virgin, meant that Jewish culture must take care to collect evidence of her virginity after the first act of intercourse by the newly married couple. This took the form of the blood-stained cloth presented to witnesses.
"It should be noted that the claim of not finding the woman to be a virgin is not simple from a physiological point of view. Some women do not have a hymen and sometimes the blood supply to the hymen is minimal, which results in very little blood available to be shown as evidence of virginity.... The fact that adult men were marrying pubescent girls or girls just prior to puberty makes it more likely that the so-called proof of virginity was actually evidence of a vaginal tear because sufficient hormonal stimulation to the vaginal mucosa was not yet available to allow vaginal expansion during arousal to accommodate penetration without injury."
("Legal-Religious Status of the Virgin" by Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh),
in the Jewish Women's Archive)
"virginity tests automatically gave origin to the professional prostitute classes; they were the rejected brides"
(The Urantia Book, 82:4.5)
If the cultural practice of "the cloth" was not implemented; for instance within Christian culture; the wife was vulnerable to false accusations by her husband, having "no proof" of her virginity. Jewish culture permitted widows and divorced women to remarry, so that they were not required to be virgins on their second marriage. There were also other exceptions defined in the Talmudic literature.
"A proselyte [a convert to Judaism], a captive, and a maidservant, who have been ransomed, converted, or freed at [an age of] more than three years and one day, ... are not subject to the claim of [her lack of] virginity."
(Mishnah Ketubot 1:4)
There was no requirement that a man be a virgin when he married.
Rape
The treatment of rape is peculiar. If an unmarried woman is raped, she is given as a wife to her rapist for life."If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives." (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)
The concern here seems to be with the loss of the woman's virginity and the fact that she will now find it difficult to find a husband, having been defiled. The Bible takes a: "You break it, you buy it" approach. "Welcome home dear, how was your day? You don't want to talk? You just want to have sex again? I guess we will do that then." "Rape" was not defined within the context of marriage. As Tirzah Meacham (leBeit Yoreh) points out: "This should not be surprising, since rape within marriage was recognized as a crime only within about the last fifty years in North America. Prior to that time, it was understood that marriage constituted the ongoing consent of the woman to have sexual relations." ("Legal-Religious Status of the Virgin")
Prostitution
We have seen that the Bible takes adultery very seriously ("both the man who slept with her and the woman must die" and: "None who go to [the adulterous woman] return or attain the paths of life"), and also takes very seriously that a woman must be a virgin when she marries (otherwise: "her town shall stone her to death"). When it comes to the actual punishments prescribed, aside from a few exceptions, the Old Testament is not so harsh in relation to prostitution; although it is discouraged, and it is said of prostitutes that "God detests them" (Deuteronomy 23:18). Since a nation must have its prostitutes, they were despised but permitted to exist. The unmarried female non-virgin could therefore become a prostitute, and likely had few other options.There are practical warnings against going to prostitutes.
"A man who loves wisdom brings joy to his father, but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth." (Proverbs 29:3)
Under certain circumstances prostitution was treated as a very serious crime, for instance, for the daughter of a priest.
"If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire." (Leviticus 21:9)
The recurring problem of the Israelite people worshipping the Canaanite gods included the fact that temples of the goddess Asherah may incorporate temple prostitutes.
"Judah [the southern State of Israel] did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites." (1 Kings 14:22-24)
"He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes that were in the temple of the Lord, the quarters where women did weaving for Asherah." (2 Kings 23:7)
"No Israelite man or woman is to become a shrine prostitute. You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the Lord your God to pay any vow, because the Lord your God detests them both." (Deuteronomy 23:17-18)
"The godless in heart ... die in their youth, among male prostitutes of the shrines." (Job 36:13-14)
“I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—a people without understanding will come to ruin!" (Hosea 4:14)
Temple prostitutes were treated somewhat harshly.
"Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as his father David had done. He expelled the male shrine prostitutes from the land and got rid of all the idols his ancestors had made." (1 Kings 15:11-12)
"He rid the land of the rest of the male shrine prostitutes who remained there even after the reign of his father Asa." (1 Kings 22:46)
It appears to be the combining of prostitution with religion that the prophets considered unacceptable. Thus while prostitution was tolerated, temple prostitutes were not, and neither was the daughter of a Jewish priest becoming a prostitute (because it reflected badly on her father). This consideration of how a woman's behaviour reflects on other members of her family is similar to the occasional practice in some Islamic (and other) communities where a daughter will be murdered by her family when it is felt that her behaviour brings disgrace upon it. Occasionally a prostitute is portrayed in a positive light in the Bible.
"Then they burned the whole city and everything in it, but they put the silver and gold and the articles of bronze and iron into the treasury of the Lord’s house. But Joshua spared Rahab the prostitute, with her family and all who belonged to her, because she hid the men Joshua had sent as spies to Jericho—and she lives among the Israelites to this day." (Joshua 6:24-25)
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"Rahab Helping the Two Israelite Spies",
from "Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us", by Charles Foster,
illustrated by Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1897)
|
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bible_Pictures_with_brief_descriptions_by_Charles_Foster
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
There is an odd little story in Genesis 38 where Tamar (widow of Er and Onan who we met earlier (each of her first two husbands: "was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death")) disguises herself and is mistaken for a shrine prostitute by the Jewish patriarch Judah (the kingdom of Judah in southern Israel was derived from the descendants of Judah), father of Er and Onan and therefore her father-in-law. This was after the death of Judah's wife. He offered Tamar a goat to have sex with him. Judah had promised Tamar that he would give her as wife to his third son Shelah, but because he was worried Shelah might meet the same fate as his older brothers Judah had procrastinated. Judah didn't have a goat with him, so Tamar asked him for his “seal and its cord, and the staff in your hand” in lieu of the goat. When Judah returns later with the goat he is unable to find her.
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| "Judah and Tamar", by Horace Vernet (1840) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamar_(Genesis)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
When the widow Tamar is later found pregnant she is accused of prostitution and Judah dutifully declares: "Bring her out and have her burned to death!” Tamar declares: “I am pregnant by the man who owns these.... See if you recognize whose seal and cord and staff these are.” Judah relents, stating: “She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn’t give her to my son Shelah.” Tamar gave birth to twin boys: Perez and Zerah.
The following passage trivializes the harm of prostitution in comparison with the seriousness of adultery.
"For a prostitute can be had for a loaf of bread, but another man’s wife preys on your very life." (Proverbs 6:26)
There seems to be some uncertainty around the precise translation, and therefore the intention, of this passage, and it is translated slightly differently in some versions of the Bible.
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread." (King James Version)
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is brought down to a piece of bread." (21st Century King James Version)
"For on account of a prostitute one is reduced to a piece of bread." (Amplified Bible)
"A prostitute will treat you like a loaf of bread" (Expanded Bible and New Century Version)
"For by means of a whorish woman a man is reduced to a piece of bread." (Jubilee Bible 2000)
"For by means of a harlot a man is reduced to a piece of bread." (Modern English Version)
"For on account of a harlot one is reduced to a loaf of bread" (New American Standard Bible)
"For on account of a prostitute one is brought down to a loaf of bread." (New English Translation)
"For by means of a harlot A man is reduced to a crust of bread." (New King James Version)
"For because of a woman who sells the use of her body, one is brought down to a loaf of bread." (New Life Version)
"For on account of a prostitute one is reduced to a loaf of bread." (Tree of Life Version)
"For a prostitute reduces you to a piece of bread." (World English Bible)
The implication of some of these alternatives is that the man's income will be reduced such that all he has left is enough to buy a loaf of bread, and this would be consistent with Proverbs 29:3 shown above. But some of these alternative translations seem to imply something a little more interesting. Sex in the context of marriage is supposed to be with someone who loves you. But all a client is to a prostitute is money, or whatever she intends to spend that money on (such as a loaf of bread). The man is therefore reduced in the eyes of the prostitute and objectified. This in turn has an impact on the man himself.
The desire for sex and the desire for love, the provision of sex and the provision of love, tend to shade into each other, so that the prostitute may seem called upon to supply a counterfeit love embodied in the modern term: "Girlfriend Experience" (GFE). The man without love is left to wonder if he is unworthy of it (since he is worth no more than a loaf of bread to a woman). Going to prostitutes can therefore be a detour from the task of earning love if this is not being sought independently. Since "worthy of love" is likely to equate to "beautiful, rich or talented" in some way, that is, to desirable traits, the commerce of love and of prostitution shade into each other there as well. Since not everyone finds love, whether or not they deserve it, prostitution serves as an alternative means for obtaining some of the advantages of marriage and relationships, in the form of a mutually agreed and beneficial transaction. Even if it is not love, it can be friendly and affectionate if that is what is desired, pleasurable and perhaps the next best thing to a love relationship, to the real thing. Women do not cease to be women when they become prostitutes. For some men it is the only time they will ever have sex with a beautiful woman.
"The hookers are nice."
(From the movie "Outland" (1981), starring Sean Connery.)
The Bible leaves no doubt about its view on the seriousness of adultery. It is given an extensive and unambiguous treatment. The importance of marriage is asserted early on in Genesis 2:24 when it is stated: "That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." Marriage is therefore treated as a sacred bond. But it is unclear in the Bible whether it is adultery when a married man goes to a prostitute. The warning against adultery is that it "arouses a husband’s fury", that is, the husband of the married woman. It is the "adulterous [that is, married] woman" who poses the danger to a man, not the unwed prostitute or maidservant. The sacredness of the marriage bond therefore may have more to do with the "husband’s fury" than the breaking of a spiritual union, particularly in the context of biblical polygamy and concubinage. The idea of a sacred union between monogamous sex partners harkens back to Genesis 2:24, but is not consistently or equitably maintained throughout the Bible. The union itself can be supposed to grow up over time between a couple committed to each other and it is this which is harmed in the course of adultery.
Promiscuity
Promiscuity, adultery and prostitution were sometimes used symbolically in the Old Testament to refer to faithlessness, disloyalty and compromised morals in general, and particularly in religion by chasing after gods other than the Jewish god."You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God." (James 4:4)
"[The nation state of] Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god." (Malachi 2:11)
"I myself will set my face against him and his family and will cut them off from their people together with all who follow him in prostituting themselves to Molek [a Canaanite god]. I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people." (Leviticus 20:5-6)
Ezekiel 23 gives a long metaphorical portrayal of the two Jewish states; Samaria and Jerusalem; as two prostitutes called Oholah and Oholibah.
"Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled." (Ezekiel 23:19-21)
In the section above on "Pre-marital sex", the woman's crime was apparently: "being promiscuous while still in her father’s house", and her husband being deceived into believing he was marrying a virgin. What is being so violently punished is the deception rather than the sex act itself. The deception was apparently necessary because potential husbands were only interested in marrying virgins. The unmarried promiscuous woman who is not living in her father's house might become a prostitute, or seek out someone who didn't mind that she was not a virgin, someone presumably outside of respectable society, or perhaps a foreigner. There was no particular prohibition against this. If we recall that freed maidservants were exempt from the requirement of being virgins if marrying, the whole idea of being a virgin bride was limited to a certain sector of society. There is no specific commandment along the lines of: "Thou shalt not have sex outside of wedlock". Rather it is implied by the rejection of the female non-virgin by the respectable marriage market. While there are no comparable textual indications in relation to unmarried men, the idea of the virgin bridegroom in Jewish society may grow up out of a sense of fairness, and because seeing prostitutes was discouraged (which in practical terms is often discouraged over concern of sexually transmitted diseases), involvement with unwed sexually active women who might fall pregnant.
Morality can originate in divine revelation, but frequently it originates in mundane practical considerations. The gender inequality in relation to virginity can be interpreted as no more than the desire of parents not to be burdened with looking after daughters who are unmarried mothers; but to be able instead to reliably hand over responsibility for the care of her and her offspring to a husband of her own. All the fire and brimstone around the dangers of sex before marriage are merely a means of steering the young towards this practical end. The sacredness of the marriage bond is a means of cementing the effectiveness of this child rearing institution.
In the modern world, by men setting aside the requirement that their brides be virgins, and with the help of technologies such as contraception and abortion (abortion is a topic for another time), and government programs for the support of unwed mothers, promiscuity loses much of its threat. But the sacred bond of monogamy has not lost its practical value or its appeal, since the wandering sexual being still craves its depth and intimacy, the meaningfulness of family, and also a harbour for old age. So that even the sexually free may desire eventually to "settle down" as part of the natural maturation process. Demands that people be married before being allowed to have sex then, therefore seem unnecessary, and possibly ill-advised.
Polygamy and Concubinage
The Jewish people are descended from a man called Abram (later called Abraham). His wife's name was Sarai (later called Sarah)."Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, 'The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.'
"Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
"When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, 'You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.'
"'Your slave is in your hands,' Abram said. 'Do with her whatever you think best.' Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
"The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, 'Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?'
"'I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,' she answered.
"Then the angel of the Lord told her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her.' The angel added, 'I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.'"
(Genesis 16:1-10)
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| "Sarah presenting Hagar to Abraham", by Adriaen van der Werff (1699) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adriaen_van_der_Werff_Sarah_presenting_Hagar_to_Abraham.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Hagar bore Abram a son called Ishmael, but later Sarai (now called Sarah) became pregnant and gave birth to a son called Isaac. (Genesis 21:3)
"Milkah bore these eight sons to Abraham’s brother Nahor. His concubine, whose name was Reumah, also had sons" (Genesis 22:23-24).
Abraham's son Isaac married Rebekah (Genesis 24:67), who was the "daughter of Bethuel son of Nahor, whom Milkah bore to him" (Genesis 24:47) Rebekah gave birth to twin sons: Esau and Jacob (Genesis 25:24-26).
After the death of Sarah (Genesis 23), "Abraham had taken another wife, whose name was Keturah." (Genesis 25:1)
Jacob marries two sisters: Leah and Rachel, who are the daughters of his mother's brother: Laban (Genesis 29).
"When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, 'Give me children, or I’ll die!'
"Jacob became angry with her and said, 'Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?'
"Then she said, 'Here is Bilhah, my servant. Sleep with her so that she can bear children for me and I too can build a family through her.'
"So she gave him her servant Bilhah as a wife. Jacob slept with her, and she became pregnant and bore him a son. Then Rachel said, 'God has vindicated me; he has listened to my plea and given me a son.' Because of this she named him Dan.
"Rachel’s servant Bilhah conceived again and bore Jacob a second son. Then Rachel said, 'I have had a great struggle with my sister, and I have won.' So she named him Naphtali.
"When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob as a wife. Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a son. Then Leah said, 'What good fortune!' So she named him Gad.
"Leah’s servant Zilpah bore Jacob a second son. Then Leah said, 'How happy I am! The women will call me happy.' So she named him Asher."
(Genesis 30:1-13)
After the Jews fled the captivity in Egypt, they were instructed by god that the Israelite king "must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray" (Deuteronomy 17:17).
"If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love, when he wills his property to his sons, he must not give the rights of the firstborn to the son of the wife he loves in preference to his actual firstborn, the son of the wife he does not love." (Deuteronomy 21:15-16)
"If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money." (Exodus 21:7-11)
One of the great (but imperfect) Israelite kings was David.
"After he left Hebron, David took more concubines and wives in Jerusalem, and more sons and daughters were born to him." (2 Samuel 5:13)
"This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own." (2 Samuel 12:7-10)
Another great (but imperfect) Israelite king was Solomon.
"King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been." (1 Kings 11:1-4)
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| "The Visit Of The Queen Of Sheba To King Solomon" (1 Kings 10), by Edward John Poynter (1890) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The Urantia Book makes the following comment on monogamy. It refers to monogamy as an "ideal".
"Monogamy is monopoly; it is good for those who attain this desirable state, but it tends to work a biologic hardship on those who are not so fortunate."
(Urantia Book 83:6.1)
Slavery
There is no criticism of slavery in the Bible, but the following reasonable limit is imposed since, after all, slave owners are not savages."Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies as a direct result, but they are not to be punished if the slave recovers after a day or two, since the slave is their property."
(Exodus 21:20-21)
What is meant by "punished" is not specified. The Urantia Book offers the following explanation for Jesus' silence on the subject of slavery in the New Testament.
"Half the population of the Roman state were slaves; many were superior individuals and quickly made their way up among the free proletariat and even among the tradesmen. The majority were either mediocre or very inferior.
"Slavery, even of superior peoples, was a feature of Roman military conquest. The power of the master over his slave was unqualified. The early Christian church was largely composed of the lower classes and these slaves.
"Superior slaves often received wages and by saving their earnings were able to purchase their freedom. Many such emancipated slaves rose to high positions in state, church, and the business world. And it was just such possibilities that made the early Christian church so tolerant of this modified form of slavery.
"There was no widespread social problem in the Roman Empire in the first century after Christ. The major portion of the populace regarded themselves as belonging in that group into which they chanced to be born. There was always the open door through which talented and able individuals could ascend from the lower to the higher strata of Roman society, but the people were generally content with their social rank. They were not class conscious, neither did they look upon these class distinctions as being unjust or wrong. Christianity was in no sense an economic movement having for its purpose the amelioration of the miseries of the depressed classes."
(Urantia Book 121:3.6-9)
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| Detail of a fresco from the Isis Temple in Pompeii, first century AD. Photograph provided to Wikipedia by ho visto nina volare. |
(This image is taken from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Frescos_from_Isis_Temple_of_Pompeii_(Naples)
where it is available for use on condition that source is credited.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Frescos_from_Isis_Temple_of_Pompeii_(Naples)
where it is available for use on condition that source is credited.)
The Structure of the Bible
Jesus occupies only a small part of the Christian Bible. The Bible is divided into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament corresponds to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), but has a few extra books, and comprises the bulk of the Christian Bible. For instance, of my 1,010 page King James Bible, the first 775 pages (77%) comprise the Old Testament. The Old and New Testaments are each divided into "Books". The first 5 books of the Old Testament are referred to as the Pentateuch (meaning "five books"), or Torah, or "The Law". They are traditionally ascribed to Moses as author. Moses dies during the last book, so presumably someone else finished it off. They tell the early history of the world, from the creation of the world and Adam and Eve, to the arrival of the Israelites into Canaan after fleeing the captivity in Egypt. Most of the rest of the Old Testament consists of "The Prophets", collections of the words and deeds of various prophets. The prophets are divided into the earlier and the latter prophets. The Prophets also give the history of Israel from its foundation, through the reigns of King David and King Solomon, and ending with the return of the Jews to Palestine, before 500 BC, after a second captivity, this time at the hands of the Babylonians/Persians. Between the earlier and the latter prophets are the "Wisdom books": Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs). There is a gap in time between the Old and the New Testaments. When the New Testament begins, Israel is under the control of the Romans.The New Testament is divided into the Gospels, Acts, Epistles and the Book of Revelation. In my 1,010 page Bible the Book of Revelation occupies only 14 pages (6% of the 235 pages of the New Testament). The Book of Revelation (or The Apocalypse) gives the strange vision of someone called John. The collection of writings called the Epistles (formal letters) constitutes just over a third of the New Testament (35%). These comprise the writings of a number of early Christians. The remainder of the New Testament comprise the Gospels (107 pages (46%)) and Acts of the Apostles (32 pages (14%)). The Gospels tell the story of Jesus, presenting his life and teachings. So that Jesus occupies 107 of the 1,010 pages of the Christian Bible (11%). However, the Gospels consists of 4 books, each by a different author: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. They constitute 4 slightly different versions of the story of Jesus. Matthew is 30 pages in length, Mark 20 pages, Luke 33 pages, and John 24 pages. So if we take out the duplication and splice the 4 books into a single version, it might be about 50 pages long, or say, 5% of the Bible. Acts tells the story of the early followers of Christ after his death. The New Testament does not form part of the Hebrew religion. In Islam, Jesus is considered a prophet, equal in status to the other Hebrew prophets.
13 of the 21 Epistles (60 of the 83 pages (72% or nearly three-quarters)) were written by one man: Paul the Apostle. We can see then that a sizeable percentage of the New Testament consists of the writings of Paul the Apostle. Which raises the question: "Who was Paul the Apostle?"
Who is Paul?
The first thing we need to do is differentiate between an Apostle and a Disciple. Jesus had 12 disciples: Peter, Andrew, James (son of Zebedee), John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James (son of Alphaeus), Judas Thaddeus, Simon, and Judas Iscariot. His disciples were hand picked by Jesus as his students. They travelled with him and he provided them with extensive training over a long period to serve as the teachers and disseminators of Christianity after his death. Among the Jews of the time, an "apostle" was someone sent on a foreign mission. After Jesus' death, his Twelve Disciples became the Twelve Apostles, spreading his teachings in other lands. Other Christian apostles followed.Saul of Tarsus was born around the same time as Jesus. He made tents for a living (Acts 18:3). Three Hebrew religious sects were prominent at the time of Jesus: the Pharisees, Sadducees and the Essenes. The Essenes were a fringe group of ascetics. The Sadducees were comprised of aristocrats. They wished to adhere closely to religious doctrine as recorded in the text of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible). The Pharisees were more aligned with oral legal and religious traditions that had grown up among the Jews over time; rather as the Islamic Sunnah is to the Koran. Because of the way they are described by Jesus in the Bible, the word "pharisee" now also has the meaning: "sanctimonious, self-righteous, or hypocritical". Saul was a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5, Acts 23:6). As a good Pharisee he was violently opposed to the emerging Christian cult.
"You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors." (Galatians 1:13-14)
"And while the blood of your witness Stephen was shed, I myself was standing by, approving and keeping the coats of those who killed him." (Acts 22:20)
"That day a severe persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria. Devout men buried Stephen and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house; dragging off both men and women, he committed them to prison." (Acts 8:1-3)
In his 30s, Saul was suddenly converted to Christianity as a result of a profound supernatural encounter with Jesus. Saul did not meet Jesus while Jesus lived in the flesh, so that this brief meeting after Jesus' crucifixion was the first, and apparently only, time he met Jesus.
"Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?'
"'Who are you, Lord?' Saul asked.
"'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,' he replied. 'Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.'"
(Acts 9:1-6)
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| "Conversion on the Way to Damascus", by Caravaggio (1601) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Saul changed his name to Paul (Acts 13:9) and became a Christian apostle.
Just because Jesus chooses someone to be his spokesman does not necessarily mean they will perform this function well. One of Jesus' disciples, Judas Iscariot, famously betrayed him (Matthew 26:14-16, Luke 22:3-6). What a person does, depends upon what the person decides to do, regardless of any encounters with deity. After the conversion of Saul, he became as active and effective promoter of Christianity, as he had been its suppressor previously. Jesus did not leave any writings. The four Gospels are thought to have either been written by Jesus' Disciples as given in the name of each of the four books, or written by someone who knew them. There is little of the personal views of these painstakingly trained disciples in the Gospels, which describe instead simply the acts and words of Jesus. Saul did not feel such a reticence to proclaim his own interpretation of the will of Jesus, and as a consequence, a fair amount of what we today call "Christianity", are the views of the Jewish tentmaker Paul. If we accept the premise that Jesus was the son of god, his words should carry tremendous weight. But Saul is just some guy. The premise however that the Bible is a perfect book with every word in it an absolute truth, is also applied to the letters written by Saul. If the Bible as a whole is "the word of God", "His Word", then so is the word of Saul. In the same way that the Catholic Popes to follow would be declared "infallible". This is not to question Saul's sincerity, only his capacity to speak for Jesus. To be fair, his encounter with Jesus was not Paul's only supernatural credential. He is also credited with miraculous powers.
"One day the evil spirit answered them, 'Jesus I know, and Paul I know about, but who are you?'"
(Acts 19:15)
Sex in the New Testament
We have already seen that Jesus' preoccupation is to replace rules about outward behaviours with rules about inward states. He pursues a similar line in his consideration of adultery.“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
(Matthew 5:27-28)
In the process the rules become more thoroughgoing and difficult to live up to. This statement of Jesus can be interpreted in many ways of varying degree. For instance, what is the difference between looking at a beautiful woman, and looking at a beautiful woman lustfully? Is a woman reading a bodice ripping romance committing adultery? Many of these interpretations seem extreme, but we can probably agree on a baseline consisting of the notion of a psychological loyalty to your partner in addition to the omission of physical adultery. A modern person might also insert a proviso that "adultery" implies a betrayal. For instance, a couple who mutually desire an open marriage are not betraying each other, and therefore not committing adultery. In such a case one might also question whether the relationship constitutes a true marriage. Jesus' proscriptions regarding the physical acts of adultery are also broader and more rigorous.
"It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery."
(Matthew 5:31-32)
This hearkens back to the "one flesh" of Adam and Eve.
"And he answered and said unto them, have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."
(Matthew 19:4-6)
It treats of marriage as a firm contract that either party betrays by ever opting out of it. However, Jesus accepts that many will find this rigour impossible to meet. It is rather an ideal.
"They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?
"He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.... All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given."
(Matthew 19:7-11)
Although Jesus expands the consideration of sin beyond sinful action to include sinful intention and disposition, he shows little interest in the punishments prescribed by the law (The Urantia Book account of this event appears at 162:3).
"At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, 'Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?' They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, 'Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.' Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, 'Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?'
"'No one, sir,' she said.
"'Then neither do I condemn you,' Jesus declared. 'Go now and leave your life of sin.'"
(John 8:2-11)
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| "The Adulterous Woman", by Lorenzo Lotto (1480 - 1557) |
(This image is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lorenzo_Lotto
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven."
(Matthew 5:17-20)
He treats the description of sin as the whole of the law, while ignoring entirely the prescribed punishments. So that while "not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law", we can simply ignore the cruel parts. I suspect the followers of Judaism likewise do not enforce any of these laws, in opposition to their own holy scripture. So that even in the absence of a New Testament there is a general understanding that these ancient laws no longer apply. Some Christians seem inclined to interpret this in the context of: "vengeance is mine saith the Lord", assuming that while the terrible punishments should not be meted out by us, they will be by God in a hail of divine retribution in the afterlife. So that the Christian who offers: "I will pray for you" may be declaring that they think you need someone to pray for you because you are clearly destined for the fires of hell, while they are content to stand by innocently on the bank warmed in the glow of vindication. Yet this does not appear to be what Jesus is saying in: "neither do I condemn you". It would be misleading for him to make this statement if all it means is: "I won't condemn you, my Father will." Jesus' attitude to prostitution may be gauged by the following.
"Jesus said to them [the chief priests and the elders of the people], 'Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you to show you the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.'"
(Matthew 21:31-32)
The Urantia Book 133:3.6-7 describes an encounter between Jesus and some courtesans in Corinth. Although Mary Magdalene was not one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, she was prominent among his inner circle. The tradition has grown up that she was a prostitute, though there is nothing in the New Testament to suggest it. The Urantia Book however does seem to support the view (150:2.2).
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| "Mary Magdalene Reading" by Piero di Cosimo (circa 1500-1510) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Jesus does make reference to "sexual immorality". But he does not specify what he means by it.
"For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander."
(Matthew 15:19, see also Mark 7:21)
His comments that he has come to fulfil the law of the prophets seems to suggest that sexual immorality refers to those acts defined as such in Leviticus 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 22. But we have seen that Jesus' idea of fulfilling the law of the prophets is not always a literal adoption. What then might he mean by sexual immorality? We might suggest that he refers to sexual acts which inflict (non-consensual) physical or emotional harm on another, sexual slavery, sexual exploitation. Sexual encounters that cause emotional harm to a third party. Sexual obsession. Notably absent from the Bible are considerations of sexual violence and sexual exploitation, what we today would consider to be real sexual crimes. Instead, the sexual crimes condemned in the Old Testament are all consensual acts. The only exception is the consideration of an unmarried woman who is raped, where the primary concern is in finding a husband for damaged goods.
We should treat Jesus as a politician, a social engineer seeking to sway the opinions of a populace. Beginning from where they are now, he seeks to lead them somewhere else. Rather than detailing specific laws, he outlines a few general principles which should, eventually, have the effect of generating appropriately kind and just detailed laws. We might also interpret the phrase "sexual immorality" to refer to whatever your community defines as sexual immorality, a cultural characteristic rather than an objective moral absolute. When a person indulges in something that is deemed sexual immorality by their community, they are cut off from that community, isolated by the secret they must protect and hide. They live in danger of punishment, shame and blackmail. All this undermines a person's social functioning. In this case there is less sexual immorality as society progresses because fewer things are deemed to be so by the community. We take up this subject again in Is God Good? - Part 2.
Paul on Sex
When we consider the views of the New Testament we must consider not only the opinions of Jesus, but also those of Paul. Paul has his own peculiar ideas on sex."Now for the matters you wrote about: 'It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.' But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband. The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that all of you were as I am. But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.
"Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
"To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband. But if she does, she must remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband. And a husband must not divorce his wife."
(1 Corinthians 7:1-11)
"Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this."
(1 Corinthians 7:25-28)
"I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife—and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord."
(1 Corinthians 7:32-35)
"The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.
"Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies."
(1 Corinthians 6:13-20)
The figures of the Old Testament are sensuous. Their goal is the good life: feasting, wine, large families, wealth and victory over their enemies. When they are happy, they kiss and hug. When they are sad they wail, tear their clothes, fall to the ground and rub dust in their hair. By contrast, Paul seems a sterile figure. We can see in Paul the views of sex characteristic of the Middle Ages and through to the Victorian era. The debauchery of Rome had its opposite counterpart in cults that sought to turn their back on sensuality: Neo-Platonism, Mithraism, and the influx of Buddhism from the East offered "liberation" from the sufferings of desire and the promise of a reality transcending physicality. Paul's pronouncements on gender also had lasting impact.
"Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord." (Ephesians 5:22)
"Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord." (Colossians 3:18)
Do we see anything comparable in the views of Jesus? Some might see in the following a turning away from the world of the senses. But only if we assume that "heaven" is not sensuous.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal."
(Matthew 6:19-20)
The following also suggests a certain unworldliness, in some sense. But the passage seems more about compromising what is right for popularity or success.
"You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."
(James 4:4)
Some might see in the following, allusions to a pure existence of celibacy. Can we assume that "not married" means "celibate"? Jesus' comments on divorce might seem to imply so. But those comments refer those who have broken a marriage contract, a contract that was made. What of sexual beings who never were married, who never made a contract of exclusivity?
"At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."
(Matthew 22:30, see also Mark 12:25)
Paul assumes that “the two will become one flesh” merely by performing the sex act, rather than by forming a meaningful union over time. Jesus also makes what appear to be some mildly disapproving comments to the woman of Samaria. However what is or is not a husband in this passage is murky. The implications of such passages may be only that in casual relationships one of the parties is often exploited, desiring something of more substance but not getting it, while the other preys on that desire. But this is hardly necessarily so. In which case it becomes difficult to see what the problem is. This in turn leads us back to the view that what is being spoken of is marriage partners rather than merely sex-partners. The problem perhaps with the Samaritan woman is that she forms somewhat enduring monogamous relationships without taking the final step of committing to any of them (see 143:5 for The Urantia Book account of this event).
"He told her, 'Go, call your husband and come back.'
"'I have no husband,' she replied.
"Jesus said to her, 'You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.'"
(John 4:16-18)
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| "Christ and the Samaritan Woman", by Alonzo Cano (1640) |
(This image is taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Cano
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
Paul's vision would lead to ideals of matrimony such as the following vividly described wedding night of the Christian martyr Saint Cecilia.
"After the banquet, matrons guided Cecilia's trembling steps to the door of the nuptial chamber, decorated with all the effeminacy of Roman luxury, and rendered still more imposing by its silence and obscurity. Valerian followed the virgin. When they were alone, Cecilia, strengthened by divine grace, addressed her husband these gentle and touching words: 'My generous friend, I have a secret to confide to thee; swear that thou wilt respect it.' Valerian vehemently protested that he would preserve the secret of his bride, and that nothing should ever force him to reveal it. 'Listen, then,' resumed Cecilia, 'I am under the care of an angel whom God has appointed protector of my virginity. If thou shouldest violate it, his fury will be enkindled against thee, and thou wilt fall a victim to his vengeance. If on the other hand, thou wilt respect it, he will favor thee with his love, and obtain for thee many blessings.'"
("Life of Saint Cecilia" by Reverend Prosper Gueranger, 1866, pp.65-66)
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| "The Childhood of Saint Cecilia", by Marie Spartali Stillman (1883) |
(This image is taken from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marie_Spartali_Stillman_-_The_Childhood_of_Saint_Cecilia.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The Christian martyr Saint Agnes of Rome provides a model of ideal love and marriage: The Platonic Marriage.
"I have vowed to be entirely his. Milk and honey flow from his lips. I have felt his chaste embrace. His body was united to mine, and 'the blood from his stricken cheek has impressed itself on mine.' But know that his mother was a virgin that he was begotten by the Father from all eternity. I can love him and remain chaste, press him to my heart and rest pure, receive him as my Spouse and still be a virgin."
("The Life of St. Agnes of Rome", 1856, pp.14-15)
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| "Saint Agnes Protected by an Angel", Alessandro Turchi, c.1620 |
(This image is taken from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Agnes_Protected_by_an_Angel_LACMA_M.85.57.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Agnes_Protected_by_an_Angel_LACMA_M.85.57.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The Urantia Book has the following to say about cults of celibacy.
"Early in social evolution peculiar and celibate orders of both men and women arose; they were started and maintained by individuals more or less lacking normal sex urge."
(Urantia Book: 82:3.9)
It has the following to say about Paul specifically.
"The continence cult originated as a ritual among soldiers prior to engaging in battle; in later days it became the practice of “saints.” This cult tolerated marriage only as an evil lesser than fornication. Many of the world’s great religions have been adversely influenced by this ancient cult, but none more markedly than Christianity. The Apostle Paul was a devotee of this cult, and his personal views are reflected in the teachings which he fastened onto Christian theology: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” “I would that all men were even as I myself.” “I say, therefore, to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to abide even as I.” Paul well knew that such teachings were not a part of Jesus’ gospel, and his acknowledgment of this is illustrated by his statement, “I speak this by permission and not by commandment.” But this cult led Paul to look down upon women. And the pity of it all is that his personal opinions have long influenced the teachings of a great world religion. If the advice of the tentmaker-teacher were to be literally and universally obeyed, then would the human race come to a sudden and inglorious end. Furthermore, the involvement of a religion with the ancient continence cult leads directly to a war against marriage and the home, society’s veritable foundation and the basic institution of human progress. And it is not to be wondered at that all such beliefs fostered the formation of celibate priesthoods in the many religions of various peoples. Someday man should learn how to enjoy liberty without license, nourishment without gluttony, and pleasure without debauchery. Self-control is a better human policy of behavior regulation than is extreme self-denial. Nor did Jesus ever teach these unreasonable views to his followers."
(Urantia Book: 89:3.6-7)
Today, the cult of celibacy as represented by the priesthood of the organised religions seems like an object lesson in sexual and institutional malformation. See for instance the movie "Spotlight" (2015). This distortion of the natural human sexuality, by which nature perpetuates the human race, gave rise to the celibate priesthood, that gave rise to the priesthood of homosexual paedophiles who were to serve as Christendom's moral authorities. So we might question the wisdom of aggregating men together for life into monasteries, and in general, of segregating the sexes. While homosexuality itself is natural, it is only natural for those who are naturally that way, not for those who have merely been denied the alternative. Monasteries and Nunneries did not set the institution of the Church on a healthy course.
It does not seem implausible to suggest that Paul, exploiting the reflected authority of Jesus, "on Jesus' coat-tails" so to speak, was able singlehandedly to fuck up half the world for millennia, in what might be called: "The Great Pauline Detour" in the sexual history of planet Earth. The fault is not all Paul's, but derives chiefly from the decision of the churches to declare the Bible as a whole as: "The Word of God", in every "smallest letter" and "least stroke of a pen".
Some take the fact that Jesus was an apparently virgin thirty-year-old single man to imply the virtues of celibacy, so that imitating the life Jesus means living this way. But if Jesus is an eternal being, thirty years spent in Palestine is the blink of an eye: a quick business trip. If the Urantia Book is correct Jesus already has a divine consort (see "The Urantia Book" section of In the Beginning: Water - Part 1). Would it have been appropriate for Jesus to have a human wife and children given the fact that he would be leaving soon? What human woman would be his equal? Unfortunately the Urantia Book does seem to confirm the non-sexual nature of post resurrection life, making an explicit connection between "not marry" and non-sexual being.
"Though seraphim are very affectionate and sympathetic beings, they are not sex-emotion creatures. They are much as you will be on the mansion worlds, where you will 'neither marry nor be given in marriage but will be as the angels of heaven.'"
(Urantia Book 38:2.2)
So if you want to have sex, now is the time to do it. Although it does also say the following.
"As mortal creatures ascend the universe, passing from the material to the spiritual realms, they never lose their appreciation for, and enjoyment of, their former levels of existence."
(Urantia Book 15:7.4)
Perhaps it is necessary to make a distinction between the aesthetic and emotional elements of eroticism and the chemical reactions leading to and involved in the physical sex act or imagination. When sensation becomes an object of fear and prudishness a virtue, people start trying to out-prude each other. Those with an inclination to tell others how to live must come up with something new to declare, to carve out a niche of authority for themselves, to set themselves apart from all the other would-be moral authorities. So the field of immoral behaviour spreads into new territory and behaviours once accepted are banned in the scramble for social status, recognition and power, like the Pharisees of old. Religious societies can thereby become more restrictive than the revelatory documents that founded them. A good antidote to anti-sensuality in Christianity is the Song of Songs (Song of Solomon). Interpreting the song as a spiritual metaphor does not undermine its approving sensuality. Finding spiritual meaning in an event does not diminish the event.
"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—for your love is more delightful than wine. Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers....
"While the king was at his table, my perfume spread its fragrance. My beloved is to me a sachet of myrrh resting between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi. How beautiful you are, my darling! Oh, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves. How handsome you are, my beloved! Oh, how charming! And our bed is verdant....
"Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon; your mouth is lovely. Your temples behind your veil are like the halves of a pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built with courses of stone; on it hang a thousand shields, all of them shields of warriors. Your breasts are like two fawns, like twin fawns of a gazelle that browse among the lilies. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee, I will go to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of incense. You are altogether beautiful, my darling; there is no flaw in you....
"Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste its choice fruits....
"Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, 'I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.' May your breasts be like clusters of grapes on the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, and your mouth like the best wine....
"I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment."
Violence and the New Testament
"You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ (An Aramaic term of contempt) is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell."(Matthew 5:21-22)
Jesus' focus was on the cultivation of true civility. Shortly after the crucifixion Paul busied himself with handing Christendom over to the authoritarian institution, and created the suffocating Medieval mind. Obedience to authority meant also adoption of the ideology of that authority.
"Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience."
(Romans 13:1-5)
It is difficult to reconcile this view with the fact that Jesus had just been crucified by the authorities of the day.
Priests and Prophets
We have seen what the Bible has to say about adulterers, homosexuals, hypocrites and those who worship the wrong gods. There is another class that are a cause of much criticism."As a thief is disgraced when he is caught, so the people of Israel are disgraced—they, their kings and their officials, their priests and their prophets." (Jeremiah 2:26)
"From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike, all practice deceit." (Jeremiah 6:13)
"The kings of the earth did not believe, nor did any of the peoples of the world, that enemies and foes could enter the gates of Jerusalem. But it happened because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed within her the blood of the righteous." (Lamentations 4:12-13)
"The more priests there were, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness." (Hosea 4:7-8)
"As marauders lie in ambush for a victim, so do bands of priests; they murder on the road to Shechem, carrying out their wicked schemes." (Hosea 6:9)
"Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a price, and her prophets tell fortunes for money." (Micah 3:11)
“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is the messenger of the Lord Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the Lord Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.” (Malachi 2:7-9)
We saw in the "Woe to Hypocrites" section of the Suffering article that this criticism continues into the New Testament, in the words of Jesus at least.
"The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin [a Jewish council] were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death." (Matthew 26:59)
"Jesus replied, 'And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them.... Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.'" (Luke 11:46-52)
In the State as defined by Paul, there was no tolerance for such dissent, which was duly silenced for the long dark ages. King or Pope is assumed to be the unquestionable instrument of God's will merely by virtue of receiving and keeping or taking and holding power. The virtue of Paul was his effectiveness. He was a get it done kind of guy. One wonders if Christianity would have had the same impact if it had been left to Jesus' cautious disciples. But Paul had no grasp of the potential consequences of overlaying Christianity with his own assumptions and theories, where the choice of one turn of phrase over another could change the course of future history.
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The prophet "Jeremiah tells the king that Jerusalem shall be taken",
illustration from "The story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation" (1873)
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(This image is taken from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeremiah_tells_the_king_that_Jerusalem_shall_be_taken.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeremiah_tells_the_king_that_Jerusalem_shall_be_taken.jpg
where it is available as "in the public domain".)
The biblical prophets were typically not officially part of some religious institution. They were freelance social critics, believing themselves appointed personally by God to announce God's views on the condition of Israel at the time, as was Moses. It's not entirely clear from the Bible how priests in the usual sense came about, though every religion has them. They are just there. The first mention of a priest in the Bible is Genesis 14:18, referring to Melchizedek: "He was priest of God Most High", in the time of Abraham (Abram). Moses' father-in-law was a priest (Exodus 3:1), and at Exodus 19:6 God declares of the state of Israel: "you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation". Among this kingdom of priests are some priests proper (Exodus 19:22). At Exodus 28:1 God formally appoints Moses' brother Aaron and his two sons "to serve me as priests", and at Exodus 28:43 that: "This is to be a lasting ordinance for Aaron and his descendants." Their role was not originally as teachers and interpreters of religious doctrine, but to perform the religious rituals. There was a distinction then between priests, who performed the religious rituals; and prophets who spoke on behalf of God to communicate God's will and opinions to the people. The priests were part of an institution, with an occupation of priest. Prophets may be eccentrics who lived outside of normal society. As religion evolved it came to be increasingly text based. The priests were guardians not only of ritual, but also of religious texts, and therefore the doctrines they contained. They therefore, like the prophets, came to act as intermediaries between God and ordinary people, interpreting the will of God for the community. But whereas prophets were inspired, delivering divine revelation directly, priests were working from the written word, becoming the instruments of the cult of The Book.
In the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments, we have at least as many warnings about corrupt priests and false prophets as we do about adulterous women. Jesus seems to bypass this dangerous class to some extent when he says: "my sheep know me" (John 10:14), placing authority into the hands of each member of the community directly. But his apostle model of religious teacher also readily evolved into a priesthood.
The individual churches tend to define themselves by what distinguishes them from every other church, so that membership in any church is likely to require acceptance of some obscure and contentious piece of doctrine about which all the other churches are wrong, rather than those doctrines that churches have in common, and which are usually more reliable and important. The need to accept the authority of the church's representatives is cultivated by persistently emphasising the need to believe, believe, believe. Believe or die. Institutional obedience is formalised in open-ended and ultimately meaningless contract-like slogans: "Do you accept Jesus as your personal saviour?" Institutional loyalty manifests as hatred of every other religious institution and finds its pinnacle in religious war.
Religious teachers are important to preserve and disseminate religious information, so that a priesthood is valuable, but should be treated with some degree of suspicion by those guided or controlled by them, particularly where followers are told not to think for themselves. The message is clear: "Beware the priests".
Jesus' comments about: "You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence" (Matthew 23:25) or: "You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean" (Matthew 23:27) differentiate the outward signs of righteousness and religion from inward states of goodness. What do we mean when we refer to a person as "holy", a holy man? Do we mean he has supernatural powers or special communication with God? Is he only someone familiar with the religion's scripture, or who performs its ritual? Is he someone who obeys God's laws and leads a good life? It is possible to do all the trappings of religion: attend Church sixteen times a week, pray loudly twenty seven times a day, recite passages from scripture, dress in the prescribed religious uniform; and yet be inwardly hateful and petty, so it is all for nothing. However if you are inwardly patient and kind, and outwardly engaged in good works, you can dispense with the trappings of ritual. What does repeating the same phrase over and over again do for you or god? What is it but a contentless demonstration to the world of how religious you are? The only true holiness is good works flowing from good intent. The trappings of religious ritual do not confer or represent goodness. Ritual stems from a desire for communion with the holy. This is its meaning for those who find meaning in it. For the rest it is empty motions. If holy men don't actually glow in the dark, their holiness is indistinguishable from secular virtue. The desire for communion with the holy can become a craving. The desire can flow into good works, or it can flow into religious hysteria or the pursuit of the supernatural for its wonder.
We continue our consideration of the morality of the Judeo-Christian Bible in the next article: Is God Good? - Part 2.
Any comments welcome.
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