During the past two years, I have become a serious student and avid reader of the Bible. I started my studies believing, as many adults with whom I have worked over the years believe, that the Bible either disparaged or ignored sexuality.
As I began my research last year as a Yale University Fellow, I discovered something quite different. Both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament directly address sexuality issues and send messages that are quite different from what most people are taught in their religious groups and denominations. In fact, I now believe that a major function of Bible stories is to teach sexuality education: many of the stories and many of the laws contain information to help people understand the important role that sexuality plays in their lives.
Conversely, I was surprised to find that the Bible is absolutely silent about masturbation, abortion, birth control, oral-genital sex, and other sexual practices. As I continued my work, I gradually realized that, by studying the Bible, readers can see how the people who created scripture understood sexuality. And, in the process, they can also gain personal insights into the Bible's ability to speak to all of us today on these moral issues.
There is no question that certain church traditions have provided justification for sexual oppression. From the writings of Paul to those of Augustine and Aquinas-and through the current work of the Christian Coalition-parts of the Christian church have attempted to control, define, and limit sexual expression. In fact, it is clear that the mind/body dualism that characterizes much of Christian thought is the lens through which both the Bible and church traditions are used to limit people's experience of their sexuality and, indeed, to promote systematic oppression of sexuality.
However, these same theological tools can help demonstrate a revised sexual theology. Both scripture and church history are far richer on sexual issues than most people assume.
HEBREW BIBLE
The Hebrew Bible is replete with stories that have sexual themes. Genesis itself has more than 30 stories that deal with sexual issues.
Genders and biological sex. The creation stories (Gen 1 and 2) explain biological sex and the reasons for two genders. Genesis 1 says that God created "male and female, He created them" (Gen 1:27) and then God blessed them: "Be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28). Genesis 2 is the more familiar telling of the creation of a woman from Adam's rib. God recognizes that "it is not good for man to be alone" (Gen 2:18) and sets out to find Adam a companion. In fact, this solitariness is the first aspect of creation that God finds displeasing. Adam rejects all of the animals that God brings forward. It is only then that God puts Adam to sleep to create woman. The centrality of two genders and sexuality is emphasized: "Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh" (Gen 2:24). According to these passages, man needs not only a companion and a helper but also a lover. The goal of union in Genesis 2:24 is sexual pleasure, not procreation. Side by side, the two creation texts reinforce that sexuality is both procreative and re-creative.
Sexual intercourse and desire. The importance of sexual intercourse and the role of desire appear numerous times in Genesis. Eve is told that despite the pain of childbirth, "your desire shall be for your husband" (Gen 3:16). Divine beings were said to desire the beautiful human women (Gen 6:2). Sarah describes sexual intercourse as "pleasure" (Gen 18:12). Isaac is noticed "fondling his wife Rebekah" (Gen 26:8). Leah and Rachel negotiate for Jacob's sexual favors (Gen 30:1s16). Potiphar's wife strongly desires Joseph and asks him to sleep with her (Gen 39:7). Intercourse itself is also frequently and publicly accounted for in Genesis: Adam "knew his wife Eve" (Gen 4:1). "Cain knew his wife" (Gen 4:17). "Adam knew his wife again" (Gen 4:25). And so on.
Physical beauty and love at first sight. Physical beauty and love at first sight are also featured in Genesis. Rebekah "was very fair to look upon" (Gen 24:16). Rachel "was graceful and beautiful" (Gen 29:17). Joseph was "handsome and good looking" (Gen 39:6).Jacob and Rachel fall in love at first sight (Gen 29) and he happily waits seven years to marry her: "they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her" (Gen 29:20). Rebekah assuaged Isaac's grief after the death of Sarah: "He loved her. So Isaac was comforted after his mother's death" (Gen 24:67).
Fertility. Fertility is referred to in Genesis as a gift from God. God's first words to people are "be fruitful and multiply" (Gen 1:28). However, the matriarchs of the Hebrew Bible are all initially infertile: "God chose three infertile women and one woman [Leah] who was not desirable to her husband to bear children who would inherit the covenant.' God's direct intervention helps these women to conceive. Sarah has her son at 90 after lifelong infertility (Gen 21:2). God healed Abimelech's "wife and his female slaves so that they bore children" (Gen 20:17); God resolved Rebekah's infertility (Gen 25:21); "[t]he Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb; but Rachel was barren" (Gen 29:31); but eventually "God remembered Rachel; and God heeded her and opened her womb" (Gen 30:22). The Hebrew Bible also recounts two stories where infertile women arrange for their husbands to have children with other women: Sarah sends Abraham to have sex with Hagar (Gen 16:2), and Rachel tells Jacob to "go in to" her maid Bilhah so that she may have children through her (Gen 30:3).
Genitals and bodily functions. Genesis also speaks directly about genitals and bodily functions. God asks the ancients to "circumcise the flesh of your foreskins" as the "sign of the covenant between me and you" (Gen 17:11). Circumcision assures that the "covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant" (Gen 17:13). In 1970, theologian and marriage counselor David Mace wrote that the penis was chosen for this mark because it was the most holy part of the body: "It was with this special organ that he became, in a special sense, a coworker with God."2
It also speaks frankly about menstruation. The writers knew that the end of menses was likely to be the end of fertility (Gen 18:11). Menstruation is actually used as a plot device in the story of Rachel's deception of Laban (Gen 31:32-35).
Destructive uses of sexuality. Genesis also contains numerous warnings about the potentially destructive uses of sexuality. There are references to rape (Gen 34:1-4), gang rape (Gen 19:4-8), incest (Gen 19:31-39), and prostitution (Gen 38:15-17). In the three versions of the wife/sister stories, Abraham and Isaac try to pass their wives off as their sisters and almost endanger peace in the land (Gen 12, 26 and 20).
The Bible does not, however, contain the negative sexual messages that people assume. For example, Sodom and Gomorrah is not a story against consensual same-gender sexual relations. Rather, the sin is about inhospitality and gang rape. Likewise, the sin of Onan is not about masturbation but about his ignoring the Levite Law to procreate with his dead brother's wife. Onan does not masturbate to avoid procreation. He practices coitus interruptus: but "Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother's wife" (Gen 38:9), something he apparently did with some frequency.
Sexuality in relationships. The special role of sexuaLity in the first year of a sexual relationship is underscored in Deuteronomy in this translation from the Tanakh: "When a man has taken a bride, he shall not go out with the army or be assigned to it for any purpose; he shall be exempt for one year for the sake of his household, to give happiness to the woman he has married" (Deut 24:5). (Writing about this passage in the 16th century, Martin Luther wrote that it is "as though Moses wanted to say `The joy will last for a year; after that we shall see."'3) Proverbs also contains hope for ongoing sexual intimacy in a long-term relationship: "Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. May her breasts satisfy you at all times; may you be intoxicated always by her love" (Prov 5: IS 18-19).
