What the Bible Really Says About Sex
Posted: February 10, 2011.
Print: Newsweek
excerpt:
What does the Bible really say about sex? Two new books written by university scholars for a popular audience try to answer this question. Infuriated by the dominance in the public sphere of conservative Christians who insist that the Bible incontrovertibly supports sex within the constraints of “traditional marriage,” these authors attempt to prove otherwise. Jennifer Wright Knust and Michael Coogan mine the Bible for its earthiest and most inexplicable tales about sex—Jephthah, who sacrifices his virgin daughter to God; Naomi and Ruth, who vow to love one another until death—to show that the Bible’s teachings on sex are not as coherent as the religious right would have people believe. In Knust’s reading, the Song of Solomon is a paean to unmarried sex, outside the conventions of family and community.
Sorry, Lisa, but you are projecting unreason by referring so uncritically to this Newsweek article. Some healthy skepticism, please! The story of Jephthah and his daughter is a tragedy, but neither sexual nor normative. Naomi and Ruth are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law: nothing salacious there. And while Song of Songs will get any theologian’s blood pumping, it is simply part of the Bible’s celebration of the joy of sex: and as the virgin is praised for being a ‘wall’ and not a ‘door’, one can assume the sex is not pre-marital!
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