Harlot by the Side of the Road:
A Bible Story
Yes, we do get letters.
The majority are complimentary.
Maybe it's just that these people are more apt to write. (In the newspaper business it was the opposite.)
But, there are also people these columns have upset.
...especially the columns that touch on religion...
....and on that four-letter word "sex."
Although I'm past the age of worrying much about sex — and, yes, that does simplify life a whole lot — I'm amazed at the firestorm this topic regularly ignites.
...especially among religious types.
(It's strange how those two things seem to be so closely tied.)
It would seem these self-appointed guardians of our morality have sex on their minds even more the rest of the population...
...the evils of sex.
They commonly cite the Bible for their anti-sex crusades.
And I've always sort of left it at that...
...until I read the book The Harlot By The Side of the Road—Forbidden Tales of the Bible...
...written by Jonathan Kirsch a lawyer and newspaper compatriot at The Los Angeles Times.
It's well researched, and it's not a read that'll keep you awake at night turning pages.
But it provides ample evidence that a good many parts of the Bible related to sex...
..have been systematically ignored, rewritten and deleted...
..so they would be more acceptable to the unenlightened masses that might get the wrong idea.
...or maybe the right idea.
I hate reviews that summarize the best parts of a book right off...
..so I'll just say that there seems to be more sex and violence in this 300+ page book than in most of today's bestsellers.
It probably should be banned.
And given today's if-you-don't-agree-with-it-get-it-banned-mentality, I'm sure that someone has already thought of that.
But this would also mean we'd have to ban the Bible...because that's where it all comes from.
Which presents a bit of a problem...at least today.
In years past it didn't; they actually did ban certain books of the Bible from "those who wouldn't understand."
And, then later, to get around some of the problems that presented, translators "reinterpreted" passages to make them more acceptable.
Now, I'm far from an expert on the Bible.
And if I were I'd just be another one of those experts that disagreed with the other experts.
But let me cite one example from The Harlot By The Side of the Road—Forbidden Tales of the Bible...
Remember the mother-in-law of Ruth, the field worker who suggested that Ruth sneak in late at night and "lie down with" Boaz, a wealthy landowner?
"And it shall be, when he lieth down, thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do."
And I'm sure he did.
But uncover his feet?
Well, "feet" happens to be one possible translation of the original text...
...which might be logical in some contexts.
But another meaning of that particular Hebrew idiomatic expression is male sexual organ.
Now you tell me what makes the most sense here...
...and why the translators elected to ignore the most logical translation?
But, the story doesn't end here. (We don't fade to black and leave the two of them there the way they do on TV.)
When Boaz suddenly wakes to find the lovely Ruth lying beside him, a brief bit of chitchat ensues and she soon asks him to "spread her skirt" over her.
If you can't handle what's about to happen, you might just want to assume that the poor woman was cold and wanted to be covered up...
...or experienced a sudden need for modesty.
And that's what some would have us believe.
The problem is that "spreading one's skirt" is a biblical euphemism for having sex.
A little something that the masses haven't been told...
...apparently because we were to immature to deal with this kind of thing.
The Song Of Solomon in the Bible is considered one of the most explicit erotic poems ever written.
And it has long been a thorn in the side of many religious types.
When it was being decided what would and wouldn't be a part of the Bible, many Jewish rabbis wanted it deleted.
(What was and wasn't included in the Bible was often decided by which warring faction won on the battlefield, but that's a story for another time.)
When it came to the Song Of Solomonan, an influential senior rabbi at the time reasoned that it should be included...
...because it actually wasn't about sex, but about God's relationship to the Jewish people.
Later, the Christians would decide that it wasn't about sex or Jewish people, but about Christ's relationship to Christians.
Of course, more broad-minded perspectives have always held that the Song of Solomon was simply about what it seemed: erotic love between a man and a woman.
Interestingly, even as explicit as it is, the meaning seems to have been intentionally blunted in some places. For example, some biblical scholars believe the word "naval," which is the focus of one memorable passage, refers to something a bit further South on the anatomy.
Although the actual intent of biblical restrictions on sex may have been lost over the centuries...
...some scholars feel that the original motivation for codifying such restrictions...
...was simply to preserve the purity of the Jewish race...
...something that may have made sense...
...a long time ago.
Editor's notes:
The fact that the Bible and the Jewish Torah contain many verses that are now ignored, even by the strictest literalists, is evident in these verses.
This link provides more information on how religion has influenced attitudes about sex, and how that's dramatically changed over the years.
One of the best reviewed books that clearly documents how the early church reworked important tenets of Christianity to meet its own goals is The Christian Conspiracy—How the Teachings of Christ Have Been Altered By Christians, by L. David Moore.
