Biblical birth control: The surprisingly contraception-friendly Old Testament

[loco]

Fair enough

So please fix the quote above so your words don't appear as mine, and so I'll be able to quote you in my reply.

[whork]

So please fix the quote above so your words don't appear as mine, and so I'll be able to quote you in my reply.

Dario, Soulc, Bear do you guys do voluntary work helping the poor?



And Loco is that a yes from you on working in a soup kitchen?



Its worth of praise that you help the less fortunate Loco, but in reality isnt that just something that gives you a good feeling about yourself but doesnt really do much? After all your finances i presume is fairly limited compared to the task at hand.
(Im not questioning your motives only the results).
 

[MCWAY]

Biblical birth control: The surprisingly contraception-friendly Old Testament
Think conservative objections to birth control are enshrined in the Bible? Think again
ELISSA STRAUSS

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases about the conflict between new healthcare mandates and religion, it sparked a heated conversation on the religious rights of for-profit corporations.

In Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, the Court will decide whether these corporations can refuse to cover as part of their employee health care plans certain types of contraception, which they allege prevent fertilized eggs from implanting and therefore object to on religious grounds.

As many have already argued, we should not have to live our lives according to certain groups’ interpretations of religious laws. But as a student of ancient religious texts – I run a secular Jewish house of study for culture-makers in New York – I take real issue with these groups’ reading of the Bible, too.

The Old Testament, despite some believers’ insistence to the contrary, does not take a hard line against contraception or abortion. The Bible and the 24 other books that make up the Jewish canon make both direct references and thinly veiled allusions to women using contraception.

These books include references to women using contraception to have, and enjoy, premarital sex, to use their sexuality as a political weapon without risking pregnancy and prove their fidelity to their husbands. More on that later. (There are far more references to contraception in rabbinical commentaries on the Bible, but I won’t get into them here since they are not considered authoritative texts by those from other religious traditions.)

Let’s start with the hot sex! The Song of Songs is a long, sexy, romantic poem that many are surprised to find in the Bible. It is an unusual text in that it makes no mention of God or law, just a young, unmarried couple chasing, and lusting, after one another and eventually, as I and others believe, consummating their relationship. Over the centuries, religious scholars have argued that the poem is a metaphor for divine love. Still, it is pretty hard to ignore the poem’s graphic descriptions of the longings of the flesh.

For example, in chapter 7 the young man says to young woman: “Thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. … ‘I will climb up into the palm-tree, I will take hold of the branches thereof; and let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy countenance like apples;  And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, that glideth down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of those that are asleep.”

As Athalya Brenner points out in her book “The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible,” a number of the plants mentioned in the Song of Songs were used by women in the ancient Mediterranean world as contraception and abortifacients. These include pomegranates, wine, myrrh, spikenard and cinnamon. Brenner goes on to argue that since the book makes no mention of procreation as the purpose of sex, the many metaphors comparing sex to “gardens” and “orchards” may also be read as a reference to the forms of birth control that those gardens provided. Indeed, the man in the poem seduces the woman by offering her many of the plants that would have allowed them to have sex without the risk of pregnancy.

Another place in the Bible where contraception may have played a role is in the Book of Esther. This one’s about a beautiful woman named Esther who disguises her Jewish identity to become the queen of the Persian King Ahasuerus. When her cousin discovers an inside plot to kill all Jewish people, Esther intervenes through seduction and eventually saves the Jews.

In an article in the scholarly journal Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Joseph Prouser points out that the King’s potential wives were all required to anoint themselves with myrrh oil and aromatic herbs for one full year – which is a pretty long time for what some read as just a beauty treatment. Myrrh was a known contraceptive at the time, cited in the writings of Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician who was an expert on gynecology and midwifery. He explained that when used in a pessary, myrrh oil would work as an abortifacient, preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs. The aromatic herbs may have also had contraceptive properties.

Prouser writes:

The recurrent contraceptive imagery in Esther bespeaks the strength and control she exercises over affairs of state and Jewish national survival. Although confronted with powerful men who would exploit her sexually, and from whom the threat of bodily harm is readily apparent, Esther manages to protect herself and her people. The Scroll of Esther is thus allegory as national autobiography: the story of a Diaspora Jewry regularly threatened with rapacious assaults by hostile neighbors and historic foes.

As Prouser sees it, contraception allowed Esther, who wielded power through her beauty and ability to seduce, to take control of her reproductive system.

There is a darker example of birth control in the Bible, and it appears in Numbers 5. This describes a ritual when a husband, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him, can force her to swallow a special concoction prepared by a priest. If she has been unfaithful, the Lord will “make [her] belly to swell, and [her] thigh to fall away.” In other words, she will abort her fetus. If not, this means she is empty of womb and ready to conceive her husband’s child.

The one Bible story that some read as anti-contraception is that of Onan, who withdraws before ejaculating and is then killed by God as a punishment him for “spilling his seed on the ground.” The backstory here is that Onan doesn’t want to impregnate his wife Tamar, the widow of his brother Er, because he doesn’t want to share his inheritance with a child they might produce.

This is the text that the Catholic Church takes as proof that contraception is unholy, along with the many mandates to “be fruitful and multiply.” However, many biblical commentators have noted that God’s anger is because Onan failed to live up to his legal obligation to impregnate his brother’s widow, and not because he wasted his sperm.

Everything I’ve written here is my understanding of these texts. I don’t see myself, or anyone else for that matter, as an absolute authority, and hardly expect everyone to agree with me. The wonder of the Bible lies in the way in which it can be read in so many different ways and mean so many things to so many different people.

But it’s worth pointing out that until 1968, a good number of Evangelical Christians may very well have agreed with my reading. As Jonathan Dudley notes in his book “Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics,” magazine articles in Christianity Today and Christian Life in the late ’60s made the case for life beginning at birth. These articles cited Exodus 21:22–24, which says that the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense — killing a person, as stated elsewhere, most definitely is.

Dudley says these were mainstream opinions at the time, until televangelist Jerry Falwell started turning against abortion and contraception, aligning himself with Catholics – who, incidentally, were not always opposed to abortion either. So, according to Dudley, instead of following biblical law, Evangelical Christians have been swept up in a 30-year-old reactionary political movement.

The Bible is shared cultural history for many Americans, whether we read it as the word of God or not. (I don’t, for whatever that’s worth.) It is at times beautiful and at times troubling, and there is no question that it was written within the context of a patriarchal society. Nevertheless, it can be more observant about human nature than many of its most loyal adherents and uninformed critics give it credit for.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/05/biblical_birth_control_the_surprisingly_contraception_friendly_old_testament/?source=newsletter

NONE of these accounts have a blessed thing to do with contraception. The despeartion of some folks to make the Bible say something that it doesn't is beyond absurd.

Thos woman acts as if she's discovered some bombshell. Onon didn't want to fulfill his redeemer duties to his brother's widow? DUH!!!!! The text spells that out as plain as day.

Esther wasn't some ho who freaked down the king and got the crown.; heck, she probably didn't even want ot be part of the candidates to replace Vashti. The only birth control practiced there was whacking off the nuts of the guys and making them eunuchs, to make sure nobody got his freak on with the ladies. For some reason, kings wants the throne booty to be pure.

[Straw Man]

NONE of these accounts have a blessed thing to do with contraception. The despeartion of some folks to make the Bible say something that it doesn't is beyond absurd.

Thos woman acts as if she's discovered some bombshell. Onon didn't want to fulfill his redeemer duties to his brother's widow? DUH!!!!! The text spells that out as plain as day.

Esther wasn't some ho who freaked down the king and got the crown.; heck, she probably didn't even want ot be part of the candidates to replace Vashti. The only birth control practiced there was whacking off the nuts of the guys and making them eunuchs, to make sure nobody got his freak on with the ladies. For some reason, kings wants the throne booty to be pure.

really, try reading it again

Biblical birth control: The surprisingly contraception-friendly Old Testament
Think conservative objections to birth control are enshrined in the Bible? Think again
ELISSA STRAUSS

When the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases about the conflict between new healthcare mandates and religion, it sparked a heated conversation on the religious rights of for-profit corporations.

In Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. v. Sebelius and Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius, the Court will decide whether these corporations can refuse to cover as part of their employee health care plans certain types of contraception, which they allege prevent fertilized eggs from implanting and therefore object to on religious grounds.

As many have already argued, we should not have to live our lives according to certain groups’ interpretations of religious laws. But as a student of ancient religious texts – I run a secular Jewish house of study for culture-makers in New York – I take real issue with these groups’ reading of the Bible, too.

The Old Testament, despite some believers’ insistence to the contrary, does not take a hard line against contraception or abortion. The Bible and the 24 other books that make up the Jewish canon make both direct references and thinly veiled allusions to women using contraception.

These books include references to women using contraception to have, and enjoy, premarital sex, to use their sexuality as a political weapon without risking pregnancy and prove their fidelity to their husbands. More on that later. (There are far more references to contraception in rabbinical commentaries on the Bible, but I won’t get into them here since they are not considered authoritative texts by those from other religious traditions.)

Let’s start with the hot sex! The Song of Songs is a long, sexy, romantic poem that many are surprised to find in the Bible. It is an unusual text in that it makes no mention of God or law, just a young, unmarried couple chasing, and lusting, after one another and eventually, as I and others believe, consummating their relationship. Over the centuries, religious scholars have argued that the poem is a metaphor for divine love. Still, it is pretty hard to ignore the poem’s graphic descriptions of the longings of the flesh.

For example, in chapter 7 the young man says to young woman: “Thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. … ‘I will climb up into the palm-tree, I will take hold of the branches thereof; and let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy countenance like apples;  And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, that glideth down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of those that are asleep.”

As Athalya Brenner points out in her book “The Intercourse of Knowledge: On Gendering Desire and Sexuality in the Hebrew Bible,” a number of the plants mentioned in the Song of Songs were used by women in the ancient Mediterranean world as contraception and abortifacients. These include pomegranates, wine, myrrh, spikenard and cinnamon. Brenner goes on to argue that since the book makes no mention of procreation as the purpose of sex, the many metaphors comparing sex to “gardens” and “orchards” may also be read as a reference to the forms of birth control that those gardens provided. Indeed, the man in the poem seduces the woman by offering her many of the plants that would have allowed them to have sex without the risk of pregnancy.

Another place in the Bible where contraception may have played a role is in the Book of Esther. This one’s about a beautiful woman named Esther who disguises her Jewish identity to become the queen of the Persian King Ahasuerus. When her cousin discovers an inside plot to kill all Jewish people, Esther intervenes through seduction and eventually saves the Jews.

In an article in the scholarly journal Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Joseph Prouser points out that the King’s potential wives were all required to anoint themselves with myrrh oil and aromatic herbs for one full year – which is a pretty long time for what some read as just a beauty treatment. Myrrh was a known contraceptive at the time, cited in the writings of Soranus of Ephesus, a Greek physician who was an expert on gynecology and midwifery. He explained that when used in a pessary, myrrh oil would work as an abortifacient, preventing the implantation of fertilized eggs. The aromatic herbs may have also had contraceptive properties.

Prouser writes:

The recurrent contraceptive imagery in Esther bespeaks the strength and control she exercises over affairs of state and Jewish national survival. Although confronted with powerful men who would exploit her sexually, and from whom the threat of bodily harm is readily apparent, Esther manages to protect herself and her people. The Scroll of Esther is thus allegory as national autobiography: the story of a Diaspora Jewry regularly threatened with rapacious assaults by hostile neighbors and historic foes.

As Prouser sees it, contraception allowed Esther, who wielded power through her beauty and ability to seduce, to take control of her reproductive system.

There is a darker example of birth control in the Bible, and it appears in Numbers 5. This describes a ritual when a husband, who suspects that his wife has cheated on him, can force her to swallow a special concoction prepared by a priest. If she has been unfaithful, the Lord will “make [her] belly to swell, and [her] thigh to fall away.” In other words, she will abort her fetus. If not, this means she is empty of womb and ready to conceive her husband’s child.

The one Bible story that some read as anti-contraception is that of Onan, who withdraws before ejaculating and is then killed by God as a punishment him for “spilling his seed on the ground.” The backstory here is that Onan doesn’t want to impregnate his wife Tamar, the widow of his brother Er, because he doesn’t want to share his inheritance with a child they might produce.

This is the text that the Catholic Church takes as proof that contraception is unholy, along with the many mandates to “be fruitful and multiply.” However, many biblical commentators have noted that God’s anger is because Onan failed to live up to his legal obligation to impregnate his brother’s widow, and not because he wasted his sperm.

Everything I’ve written here is my understanding of these texts. I don’t see myself, or anyone else for that matter, as an absolute authority, and hardly expect everyone to agree with me. The wonder of the Bible lies in the way in which it can be read in so many different ways and mean so many things to so many different people.

But it’s worth pointing out that until 1968, a good number of Evangelical Christians may very well have agreed with my reading. As Jonathan Dudley notes in his book “Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics,” magazine articles in Christianity Today and Christian Life in the late ’60s made the case for life beginning at birth. These articles cited Exodus 21:22–24, which says that the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense — killing a person, as stated elsewhere, most definitely is.

Dudley says these were mainstream opinions at the time, until televangelist Jerry Falwell started turning against abortion and contraception, aligning himself with Catholics – who, incidentally, were not always opposed to abortion either. So, according to Dudley, instead of following biblical law, Evangelical Christians have been swept up in a 30-year-old reactionary political movement.

The Bible is shared cultural history for many Americans, whether we read it as the word of God or not. (I don’t, for whatever that’s worth.) It is at times beautiful and at times troubling, and there is no question that it was written within the context of a patriarchal society. Nevertheless, it can be more observant about human nature than many of its most loyal adherents and uninformed critics give it credit for.

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/05/biblical_birth_control_the_surprisingly_contraception_friendly_old_testament/?source=newsletter

[MCWAY]

really, try reading it again

I read this on another thread and on Salon.com itself several days ago. Your transposing it here doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

You know what else prevents implantation of fertilized eggs? NOT HAVING SEX!! Kings had their harems; but the QUEEN (who was to produce royal offspring) was expected to be pure.  As for they myrrh and beauty treatments, the magi gave myrrh to Jesus as a young boy. I guess they thought He might need some birth control, too.  

And even if myrrh were foolishly used as a contraceptive, nothing in the book of Esther (or anywhere else) suggests she or any of the other ladies used it to that end. In fact, Esther 2:17 spells out that she (and the other women) were VIRGINS (the Hebrew word used is bĕthuwlah), which translates as "virgin".
 
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H1330&t=KJV

Once again, this author (and you) are reading mess that isn't there to draw a ridiculous conclusion.

Your screen name truly fits you to a tee.


As I said about Onan, it's spelled out in the text why Onan was killed. You don't need a Bible commentator to tell you that. The fact that the Catholic Church botched that up doesn't mean that passage condones birth control.

And, the Numbers 5 routine, how does this work if she's been unfaithful but isn't pregnant? And how does holding a meal of barley (with no oil or frankencense) help abort a unborn child?

This is a fidelity test, which obviously has supernatural connotations.


Once again, this author (and you) are reading mess that isn't there to draw a ridiculous conclusion.

Your screen name truly fits you to a tee.

[Straw Man]

I read this on another thread and on Salon.com itself several days ago. Your transposing it here doesn't make it any less ridiculous.

You know what else prevents implantation of fertilized eggs? NOT HAVING SEX!! Kings had their harems; but the QUEEN (who was to produce royal offspring) was expected to be pure.  As for they myrrh and beauty treatments, the magi gave myrrh to Jesus as a young boy. I guess they thought He might need some birth control, too.  

And even if myrrh were foolishly used as a contraceptive, nothing in the book of Esther (or anywhere else) suggests she or any of the other ladies used it to that end. In fact, Esther 2:17 spells out that she (and the other women) were VIRGINS (the Hebrew word used is bĕthuwlah), which translates as "virgin".
 
http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H1330&t=KJV

Once again, this author (and you) are reading mess that isn't there to draw a ridiculous conclusion.

Your screen name truly fits you to a tee.


As I said about Onan, it's spelled out in the text why Onan was killed. You don't need a Bible commentator to tell you that. The fact that the Catholic Church botched that up doesn't mean that passage condones birth control.

And, the Numbers 5 routine, how does this work if she's been unfaithful but isn't pregnant? And how does holding a meal of barley (with no oil or frankencense) help abort a unborn child?

This is a fidelity test, which obviously has supernatural connotations.


Once again, this author (and you) are reading mess that isn't there to draw a ridiculous conclusion.

Your screen name truly fits you to a tee.

I fully understand that you don't agree with the interpretation by others about what these passages in the bible are all about but the fact remains that many other people (in this case it's conservative Rabbi's) point out that the methods described in the passage were in fact forms of birth control.

Again "many biblical commentators have noted that God’s anger is because Onan failed to live up to his legal obligation to impregnate his brother’s widow, and not because he wasted his sperm"

this interpretation makes perfect sense as well regardless of whether you like it or agree with it

That's the great thing about that book (mostly written by unknown people and translated/mistranslated and edited/redacted countless times).  It's open for interpretation and there are countless opinions of what is going on and your opinion is just one of many and no more valid than any other

So yes, in fact we can see instances of birth control and abortion in the bible whether you care to agree with it or not

[MCWAY]

I fully understand that you don't agree with the interpretation by others about what these passages in the bible are all about but the fact remains that many other people (in this case it's conservative Rabbi's) point out that the methods described in the passage were in fact forms of birth control.

But, nowhere does it state (even if such were the case) that ESTHER used it for such purposes. That's projection by them and you to prop up this feeble and foolish claim about birth control. Myrrh had mutiple purposes, including the blatantly obvious one: MAKING STUFF/PEOPLE SMELL NICE!! Could it possibly be that King Xerxes wanted his new queen's fragance to be pleasant? NAAAAAH!!!!

"King’s potential wives were all required to anoint themselves with myrrh oil and aromatic herbs for one full year – which is a pretty long time for what some read as just a beauty treatment"....PLEASE! How long do beauty paegant competitors compare for a Miss USA/America/Universe/(fill-in-the-state-or-city) contest? What about figure and bikini shows in the NPC and IFBB? A year? If only!!!

Again "many biblical commentators have noted that God’s anger is because Onan failed to live up to his legal obligation to impregnate his brother’s widow, and not because he wasted his sperm"

this interpretation makes perfect sense as well regardless of whether you like it or agree with it

Did you not read what I said? The text SPELLS OUT PLAINLY why Onan was killed. No biblical commentary is necessary to figure that out.

That's the great thing about that book (mostly written by unknown people and translated/mistranslated and edited/redacted countless times).  It's open for interpretation and there are countless opinions of what is going on and your opinion is just one of many and no more valid than any other

So yes, in fact we can see instances of birth control and abortion in the bible whether you care to agree with it or not

There are no instances of birth control, because nowhere in those passages is such a stated purpose. In fact, (and this is what makes yours and these rabbis' claims rather silly) the state reasons are SPELLED OUT IN PLAIN LANGUAGE. Thus, no need for any "open interpretation", other than by warped people who want to push an agenda that the Bible doesn't and never has supported.

[Straw Man]

save your time McWay

you have your interpretations and opinions and others have their interpretations and opinions

that's all you can say about anything in the bible

period

[MCWAY]

save your time McWay

you have your interpretations and opinions and others have their interpretations and opinions

that's all you can say about anything in the bible

period

I don't have my interpretations. I have what the texts actually say.

Try that on for size, instead of regurgitating utter silliness.

[Straw Man]

I don't have my interpretations. I have what the texts actually say.

Try that on for size, instead of regurgitating utter silliness.

you have your interpretations of what they say

again, try to keep in mind they were written mostly by unknown men and not in English so DE FACTO everything it says is an interpretation and in fact an accumulation of interpretations

These passages are interpreted by some scholars to be about contraception and abortion

again, save your time and go find someone who cares about your opinion

[avxo]

I don't have my interpretations. I have what the texts actually say.

Nowhere in the Bible do we have a passage that begins with: "And on the topic of contraception thus sayeth the LORD:" so no, you don't have what the texts actually say. You have your interpretations (or someone else's interpretation that you agree with and have adopted) of passages which you consider relevant.

I hope this helps.