seksualitas biblikal

Editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible Michael Coogan recently applied his thorough knowledge of Scripture to a universal and eternally relevant topic: sex. In God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says, he discusses everything from marriage and prostitution to "fire" in God's own loins (yeah, you may want to reread the Book of Ezekiel). Coogan puts the Bible, which is often inconsistent on such hot topics, in perspective, and you may find yourself surprised by what the ancient texts have to say. (See 10 surprising facts about the world's oldest Bible.)

Your book begins with a discussion of the erotic Song of Solomon. Does its inclusion in the Bible mean there was a positive attitude toward sex back then?
I think there was a positive attitude toward sex in general, because reproduction was essential. Anything that led to reproduction was certainly viewed positively, and the idea of refraining from sex for religious reasons was something that was fairly unusual in Judaism in most periods. In many passages it's a highly erotic text, and it was a text that rabbinic literature tells us used to be sung in taverns. Yet when I was in seminary many decades ago, it was razored out of many of the Bibles that we had. (See pictures of religion in the ruins of Katrina.)

Is there any word in the Bible that isn't a euphemism for genitals? There's feet, hand, knees, flesh.
The word for testicles is stones. There aren't what we would call precise anatomical terms. As with any literature, passages in the Bible can have more than one level of meaning. And sometimes there may be a kind of sexual innuendo or double entendre there that is implicit. (Read "The Case for Teaching the Bible.")

Even laughing has a sexual connotation.
That's a great one, and you don't see it until you get to the story about Isaac telling the foreign king that his wife Rebecca is his sister, and then the king sees Isaac making Rebecca laugh, and he says, "She's not your sister, she's your wife!" Usually the translation itself is not literal; the translations will say fondling, caressing, or something like that. But the Hebrew word actually means to make laugh. It's the same word that's used in other contexts, as in the story of the golden calf, so there's a hint of an orgy there, which complicates the offense.

How important is it to read the Bible in its original languages?
It's essential for some of us to do it, if for no other reason so that translations can be made that are as accurate as possible. Often translators reflect their own views and their own biases just as much as the biblical writers do. I was interested recently in this case that the Supreme Court had in the Westboro Baptist Church. I looked at their website, and he lists all the passages that he says the Bible talks about sodomy. Well, in most of them sodomy isn't discussed at all. The term sodomy is a translator's term to translate Hebrew words that never mean sodomy in the sense of anal intercourse between males. (Read "Should the Highest Court Protect the Ugliest Speech?")

Given all the examples of polygamy, where in the Bible is marriage sanctioned as a union only between one man and one woman?
There is no unequivocal statement in the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, that says that monogamy should be the norm. For the most part, biblical characters we know well, if they could afford it, had many wives. Solomon, the greatest lover of them all — maybe why he's attributed with writing the Song of Songs — had 300 wives. So the fundamentalist Mormons who insist that polygamy is biblical are right, in a sense. If you're going to be a strict literalist, there's nothing wrong with polygamy. (See the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.)

We never know if Adam and Eve are married, right?
That's right. There's no marriage ceremony described. Here's another case where the issue of translation comes up. The same Hebrew word can be translated either as woman or wife. So when it says that the man knew his wife, and she got pregnant — that's another euphemism, to know in the biblical sense — it could also be the man knew his woman and she got pregnant.

You devote a chapter to the status of women. Is the reason there are so many misconceptions about the Bible and sex the fact that we often forget how patriarchal those societies were?
The status of women is important as background, but it's also another example of how we have, for the most part, while accepting the Bible as authoritative, moved beyond it and in some ways rejected some of its main points of view. If we can do that for things like slavery or the subordinate status of women, then we can do it on other issues as well, like same-sex marriage. We have to ask the question, How is it that we'll take some parts of the Bible and say they are absolutely and eternally binding, and other parts can simply be ignored?

As for abortion, the Bible doesn't say much.
It doesn't say anything. That's one of the things I find most interesting, because both sides of the contemporary debate about abortion will quote the Bible in support of their position. They have to quote verses that don't really talk about abortion.

Addressing the sexuality of God, you write, "Yahweh is envisioned as a sexual being," according to certain passages.
He is described as a sexual being, but the language is both mythical and metaphorical. (See pictures of John 3:16 in pop culture.)

Those descriptions, in Ezekiel, for example, even if they're allegories, are pretty explicit.
They're very explicit. They've in fact been called pornographic.

Were people in biblical times less prudish than we are today?
I think in some ways they were, even though they used a lot of euphemisms. When they were thinking about their god, they thought of him in ways not that different from the way other people thought about their gods. If you could describe God as a king or a shepherd or a warrior, then you can also describe him as a husband, and doing the sorts of things that husbands do. In the Greco-Roman world in which Christianity arose, the idea that a deity would come down to earth and have sex with a mortal would have been not surprising at all.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027582,00.html#ixzz14nVBySLs

The Bible And Biblical Figures Reviews
God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says
God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says

by Michael Coogan

New York: Twelve, 2010, 256 pp.
$24.99 (hardcover)

Reviewed by Phyllis Trible

Talkback Add Your Comment

God and Sex. Who would not be intrigued by so expansive and seductive a title coming from a secular and boutique press? But the subtitle narrows the scope: What the Bible Really Says. If that phrase suggests either a prudish or salacious bent, the identity of the author assures us differently. A scholar of ancient Near Eastern and Biblical studies, Michael Coogan writes from head and heart—and both are in the right place.

For him, the paradigm of male dominance and female subordination governs gender relationships in the Bible. “Your desire will be for your man,” says Yahweh to the woman in the story of Eden, “and he will rule over you” (Genesis 3:16). “That decree,” says Coogan, “illustrates the bleakness of the overall Biblical picture for feminists who would claim the Bible as an authority.” Yes, the paradigm heralds bleakness. Whether that bleakness also harbors blessing, readers must decide.

In declaring Genesis 3:16 a divine “decree” and, later, a “curse,” Coogan misreads. (He is in good company, from the apostle Paul and his successors through millennia.) These words of Yahweh to the woman do not characterize her status in creation but rather her life after disobedience. They do not “decree” patriarchy; they describe it. They announce judgment; they do not prescribe punishment, which comes later in expulsion from Eden. Further, Yahweh never “curses” the woman. This word the deity reserves for the serpent and the earth (via the man). In numerous ways, literary analysis disqualifies Genesis 3:16 as the paradigmatic proof text for endorsing patriarchy.

Nonetheless, Coogan’s overall assessment is right. For some 40 years (a fitting Biblical time frame), second-wave feminists have wrestled with patriarchy and the Bible. They, too, have cautioned that the Bible belongs to the foreign country of antiquity. Despite its ubiquitous presence in the news and its canonical standing in communities of faith, it remains distant, even alien, in time, languages, mentality and geography. For diverse reasons—scant evidence, contradictory data, discrepancies among genres and historically locked views—what the Bible really says (or really does not say) about matters such as abortion, marriage, divorce, adultery, rape, prostitution and same-sex relationships does not readily transfer (for better or worse) to our world. Tensions between “original meanings” and contemporary applications persist—tensions that Coogan compares to interpreting the U.S. Constitution.

But what about competing evidence within the Bible? What about women characters, for example, who don’t seem to fit patriarchal strictures? In ancient Israel, the prophet Miriam was never linked to a husband. Leader in victory at the crossing of the sea and questioner of authority in the wilderness, she survived censure to endure in prophetic tradition as the equal of her brothers Aaron and Moses (Micah 6:4). The prophet Deborah, identified perhaps as “woman of fire,” exercised authority as judge and military leader in the settlement of the land (Judges 4 and 5). In the reign of King Josiah, the prophet Huldah (without her husband) authorized the beginnings of the Bible (2 Kings 22:14). And the prophet Noadiah, identified by neither father nor husband, opposed the policies of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 6:14). In the New Testament, the prophet Anna, a widow apparently living an independent life, blessed the child Jesus who had been brought to the Temple (Luke 2:36–38). Four unmarried daughters of Philip the evangelist also held the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:9). To these prophets we add wise women (of Tekoa and Abel), queens (Jezebel and Vashti), widows (Naomi and Judith) and disciples (Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna).

Throughout the Bible various women, by their actions, words or status, challenge the patriarchal paradigm, at least indirectly. Although Coogan reports on these public figures, he fails to stress their potentially subversive presence. What did such women represent? Tokens? Exceptions? An alternative narrative? A lost history? A saving remnant within the bleakness of patriarchy?

Despite this book’s title, God takes center stage only in the last chapter. There Coogan argues that the Biblical deity is a male, indeed a sexual being who engages in reproductive activities in a polytheistic environment. The archaeological find at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud depicts two figures with the inscription “Yahweh and his Asherah” (eighth century B.C.E.). Within the Bible, more evidence surfaces: Ezekiel’s description of the divine loins (1:27); the pairing of Yahweh in the Temple with Asherah; metaphors of Yahweh as Israel’s husband and father; the goddess Wisdom alongside Yahweh; and the Christian formula for the parentage of Jesus: son of God, born of a virgin.

Believers cannot neglect these threatening descriptions, says Coogan. But to what extent have believers neglected them? Even though polytheism and a female consort may not be acceptable, the basic idea that God is male has endured for centuries, sometimes as unofficial dogma. After all, Jesus called God “Father.” Missing among many believers are sustained critiques of this idea.

Female images of God, in contrast to a female consort, call for attention. The metaphor connecting divine mercy (rahamim) to the vehicle of the womb (rehem) permeates the Bible. One small witness describes the God who “writhed in labor pains” giving birth to Israel (Deuteronomy 32:18). Sexual overtones in these portrayals are not male. Although early in his prophecy (chapter 3) Hosea depicts Yahweh as the abusive husband beating his wife Israel, later Yahweh repudiates both male identity and violence. “For I am God (‘el) and not male (‘is), the Holy One (qadosh) in your midst, and I do not come to destroy” (Hosea 11:9). Is this the pattern of the abusive husband—to feign goodness and mercy? Or does the declaration of holiness testify to God beyond (male) sex, gender and attendant consequences? In keeping with his passionate plea that we read “the entire Bible” and not “cherry-pick” for “preconceived conclusions,” Coogan might have explored these and other counter-texts.

On one occasion, God set before ancient Israel life and death and then commanded the people to decide the difference. “Choose life that you may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Likewise recognizing that authority derives from the community, Coogan admirably concludes that what the Bible really says (this time, its “underlying ideals”) moves “toward the goal of full freedom and equality for all persons.” That rhetorical flourish awaits development beyond the provocative subject of God and Sex.

Distinguished feminist Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible is professor of Biblical studies at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in North Carolina. From 1981 until her “retirement” in 1998, she taught at Union Theological Seminary in New York. She served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature in 1994, only the second woman to serve in that capacity since the organization was founded in 1880.

Pornografi Sudah Menggelora Ribuan Tahun Lalu
Rabu, 10 November 2010 | 15:05 WIB
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Kompas.com — Berbicara tentang pornografi, orang selalu mengidentikkan kata tersebut dengan produk manusia modern, bukti dari kemorosotan moral. Padahal, pornografi sudah eksis sejak ribuan tahun lalu, bahkan sebelum ditemukannya teknologi video dan kamera foto.

Para ilmuwan bahkan yakin bahwa evolusi memengaruhi manusia memiliki gairah visual. Berbagai bukti material pornografi dari zaman lampau juga menunjukkan bahwa manusia sejak dahulu sudah tertarik pada hal-hal yang berbau seks.

"Seks selalu menjadi hal yang penting bagi hubungan tiap manusia. Apa yang orang lain lakukan secara seksual selalu memancing rasa ingin tahu," kata Seth Prosterman, seksolog klinis dan terapis dari San Francisco, Amerika Serikat.

Definisi pornografi sendiri sangat subyektif. Dalam Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia disebutkan bahwa pornografi adalah penggambaran tingkah laku secara erotis dengan lukisan atau tulisan untuk membangkitkan nafsu berahi; bahan bacaan yang dengan sengaja dan semata-mata dirancang untuk membangkitkan nafsu berahi dalam seks.

Dari pengertian tersebut, ternyata penggambaran erotis pertama yang diketahui manusia mungkin tidak porno, tetapi lebih dalam pengertian tradisional. Sekitar 30.000 tahun silam, manusia Paleolithic memahat bentuk payudara yang besar dan padat dalam figur wanita hamil pada batu dan kayu. Para arkeolog menduga figur Venus ini tidak dimaksudkan untuk membangkitkan gairah, tetapi sebagai simbol kesuburan.

Kalau kita maju lebih dekat lagi, manusia purba di Yunani dan Roma menciptakan seni pahat dan seni lukis di dinding untuk menggambarkan homoseksual, threesome, fellatio (seks oral pada penis), serta cunnilingus (tindakan menstimulasi organ intim wanita dengan tangan atau lidah).

Di India pada abad kedua, Kama Sutra menjadi buku manual cara melakukan seks. Kemudian orang-orang dari suku The Moche di Peru telah melukis adegan seksual pada barang-barang tembikar. Di Jepang, pada abad ke-16 hal-hal erotis bahkan dicetak dalam kayu (woodblock).

Sementara di Barat, kebanyakan material seksual yang disebar lebih banyak bersifat politis daripada pornografi. Misalnya saja, saat Revolusi Perancis disebarkan pamflet bersifat seksual untuk menyindir anggota kerajaan. Bahkan Marquis de Sade, penulis terkenal dari Perancis yang karyanya terkenal akan unsur brutal dan erotis, lebih banyak berangkat dari unsur filosofis.

Kelahiran pornografi

Sekitar tahun 1800, hal-hal yang berbau porno mulai menyebar. Novel erotis sendiri sudah mulai ditulis pada pertengahan tahun 1600 di Perancis. Namun, novel pornografi yang ditulis dalam bahasa Inggris pertama kali adalah Memoirs of Woman of Pleasure, atau dikenal dengan Fanny Hill, diterbitkan tahun 1748.

Teknologi kemudian mendorong inovasi genre porno. Tahun 1838, Louis Daguerre menciptakan daguerreotype, bentuk primitif dari fotografi. Tak lama berselang, buku-buku cabul langsung memanfaatkan teknologi itu. Penggambaran persenggamaan pun dilakukan secara hati-hati pada tahun 1846.

Penemuan video pun mengikuti jalan serupa. Tahun 1896, pembuat film dari Perancis menciptakan film bisu porno berdurasi pendek. Isinya adalah aktris film beradegan tari telanjang. Baru pada tahun 1900, film seks yang termasuk hard core muncul. Film-film itu kebanyakan memakai aktor yang sudah tua, tetapi beradegan seks sesungguhnya.

Selama bertahun-tahun film-film porno itu berjalan stagnan, baik dalam hal kualitas maupun isinya. Baru pada tahun 1970-an, terjadi pergeseran sebagai imbas masyarakat yang lebih terbuka menerima sensualitas. Perkembangan internet dan kamera digital ikut berpengaruh pada produksi film-film porno.

Menurut sebuah penelitian tahun 1994, diketahui bahwa 48 persen orang yang mengunduh film porno menyukai bentuk seksual yang tidak lazim, misalnya, hubungan seks dengan binatang, inses atau paedofilia. Hanya kurang dari 5 persen yang mengunduh film seks yang dilakukan lewat vagina. Diduga masyarakat mencari di internet hal-hal yang tidak mereka temukan pada majalah dan film porno biasa.

Kini, pornografi bisa dengan mudah ditemukan di internet meski angka pasti penjualan materi pornografi ini masih misteri. Menurut sebuah riset, diperkirakan angka penjualan majalah, alat bantu seks, dan film porno per tahunnya mencapai 6 miliar dollar AS.

Usaha untuk membungkam materi pornografi sendiri masih terus berlangsung sejak era Victoria dan tampaknya belum akan mencapai kata akhir dalam waktu dekat. Kecuali jika orang mulai berhenti melihat foto atau gambar orang lain dalam kondisi telanjang.