I really liked this review article in Books & Culture of a new book about the Bible and sex. So often we treat the Bible as little more than window-dressing for our preconceived moral or political agendas that we often lose sight at the sheer weirdness of the text. The Bible rarely provides ready-made moral exemplars and tidy solutions. And maybe that’s the way it should be. After all: the Bible’s not about us, at least not directly. It’s about God. So it’s not surprising that we should find some of it rather bewildering. (And this isn’t confined to the Old Testament either as far as I’m concerned; there are plenty of parts of the Gospels that just leave me baffled.)
"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal
3 responses to “The strangeness of the Bible”
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Such as?
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It sounds interesting, but I thought the whole idea that Christian thinking on masturbation developed out of the Onan story was debunked in a book a few years ago. To my understanding, the idea that sperm are whole people predated Christianity, and most of Catholic sexual morality grew out of natural law theory. Saying the whole thing would have been totally different were it not for one Bible passage seems like a very Protestant way of looking at it.
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Rob, I’ll try and come up with some examples of what I mean in some future posts.
Camassia, I suspect you’re right that natural law theory played the bigger role here. Though the Fathers aren’t always above a little proof-texting.
A Thinking Reed 
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