{"id":58,"date":"2008-07-26T15:00:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-26T15:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/media\/book\/chapter-12b-sex-and-the-et\/"},"modified":"2010-07-24T18:35:24","modified_gmt":"2010-07-24T18:35:24","slug":"chapter-12b-sex-and-the-et","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/media\/book\/chapter-12b-sex-and-the-et\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter 12b – Sex and the ET"},"content":{"rendered":"

But even the Western mainstream religions don\u2019t ignore sex altogether. When the German composer Carl Orff published the beautiful \u2018Carmina Burana\u2019<\/em> in 1937, it was based on very old text \u2013 poems about women and love, which had been found in the Benedictine Monastery of Beuren. It appears that those medieval monks were extremely talented writing about virginity, and \u201cburning all over for love of a maiden\u201d. The beautiful medieval Arabic collection of One Thousand and One Nights<\/em> has also served a great deal as a source for ancient stories with sexual context. The Jewish rebellious Shabbetaianism<\/em> movement in the 18th century was partly obsessed with free sex and seeking redemption through orgies.<\/p>\n

For all that, in the Bible itself, sex is quite commonly used. Many times to simply describe sexual events, in other places \u2013 as an allegory. The author of chapter 16 in Ezekiel, wrote about Jerusalem and the people of Judea, but undoubtedly had some specific pictures in his mind. We\u2019ll perform a nasty exercise here, and abuse the original text by stripping it of all non-sexual stuff. Here is what we\u2019re left with (feel free to skip to the end of this short masterpiece, whenever you think you have had enough):<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 And thou didst increase and grow up, and thou camest to excellent beauty: thy breasts were fashioned, and thy hair was grown; yet thou wast naked and bare. Now when I passed by thee, and looked upon thee, and, behold, thy time was the time of love, I spread my skirt over thee, and covered thy nakedness \u2026 and I anointed thee with oil \u2026 But thou didst trust in thy beauty and play the harlot because of thy renown, and didst pour out thy harlotries on every one that passed by; his it was. And thou didst take of thy garments, and didst make for thee high places decked with divers colors, and didst play the harlot upon them \u2026 and didst play the harlot with them \u2026 And in all thine abominations and thy harlotries thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare \u2026 Thou hast built thy lofty place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty an abomination, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy harlotries \u2026 thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet thou wast not satisfied \u2026 and yet thou didst not have enough herewith \u2026 the work of a wanton harlot \u2026 but thou hast given thy gifts to all thy lovers, and hast bribed them to come unto thee from every side in thy harlotries \u2026 thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness uncovered through thy harlotries with thy lovers \u2026 I will gather all thy lovers \u2026 and will uncover thy nakedness unto them, that they may see all thy nakedness \u2026 I will also give thee into their hand \u2026 and they shall strip thee of thy clothes \u2026 and they shall leave thee naked and bare \u2026 and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women \u2026 Sodom thy sister hath not done, she nor her daughters, as thou hast done, thou and thy daughters \u2026\u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fortunately, there is little chance for an original Biblical text to be censored, or else this book would probably be one page shorter. The original text in Hebrew, by the way, sounds less mild than the English translation used above. \u2018Opened thy feet\u2019, for example, is written as \u2018spread your legs\u2019 and \u2018uncover thy nakedness\u2019 sounds more like \u2018reveal your genitals\u2019.<\/p>\n

At this point, you probably say \u201cenough obscenity!\u201d and the good news is that there\u2019s also some pretty nice erotic poetry in the Bible, most notably the Song of Songs<\/em> (go ahead and have a look). Alas, many Orthodox Jews learn in school that the text in this case is merely a metaphor for the love between God and Israel.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Religion and sex form a strange couple. Sometimes they live happily together. Most of the time they need a marriage counselor.<\/p>\n

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But even the Western mainstream religions don\u2019t ignore sex altogether. When the German composer Carl Orff published the beautiful \u2018Carmina Burana\u2019 in 1937, it was based on very old text \u2013 poems about women and love, which had been found in the Benedictine Monastery of Beuren. It appears that those medieval monks were extremely talented […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,40,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","category-sex","category-the-truth-is-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thetruthiswrong.com\/indeed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}