Brody's Notes... God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says

By Brody Levesque (Bethesda, Maryland) OCT 31 | In a new book released back on the first day of this month, preeminent biblical scholar & popular Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College, Michael Coogan, has written an unbiased appraisal of what the Bible says about premarital sex, homosexuality, and even polygamy.

In an interview with TIME magazine writer Alexandra Silver published today, Coogan talks about some of his findings and some of the misconceptions modern day religious leaders, and even scholars have about topics that are lightening rod issues in the so-called cultural war in the United States and elsewhere.

Author Bryce Christensen notes that Coogan argues, for instance, that religious conservatives misunderstand some of the scriptural passages they wield against homosexuality. He reinterprets the Genesis account of Sodom, for instance, as a condemnation not of homosexual practices but rather of callous inhospitality toward vulnerable strangers. 
Even more audaciously, Coogan turns the tables on Hebrew prophets’ denouncing the worship of female pagan deities, suggesting that such worship provided a much-needed corrective to patriarchy. In scriptural passages affirming a sexual discipline offensive to modern sensibilities, Coogan sees only a deplorable cultural bias, sustained by worshipping God as a jealous and abusive husband.
From a segment of the TIME interview:

Silver: How important is it to read the Bible in its original languages?

Coogan: It's essential for some of us to do it, if for no other reason so that translations can be made that are as accurate as possible. Often translators reflect their own views and their own biases just as much as the biblical writers do. I was interested recently in this case that the Supreme Court had in the Westboro Baptist Church. I looked at their website, and he lists all the passages that he says the Bible talks about sodomy. Well, in most of them sodomy isn't discussed at all. The term sodomy is a translator's term to translate Hebrew words that never mean sodomy in the sense of anal intercourse between males.

Silver: Were people in biblical times less prudish than we are today?

Coogan: I think in some ways they were, even though they used a lot of euphemisms. When they were thinking about their god, they thought of him in ways not that different from the way other people thought about their gods. If you could describe God as a king or a shepherd or a warrior, then you can also describe him as a husband, and doing the sorts of things that husbands do. In the Greco-Roman world in which Christianity arose, the idea that a deity would come down to earth and have sex with a mortal would have been not surprising at all.

In this book, God and Sex, Professor Coogan examines one of the most controversial aspects of the Bible- What it really says about sex, and how contemporary understanding of biblical literature is frequently misunderstood or misrepresented. In the engaging and witty voice generations of students have appreciated, he explores the language and social worlds of ancient Israel, early Judaism, and early Christianity, showing how much innuendo and euphemism is at play, and illuminating the sexuality of biblical characters, including God.
Coogan is also the author of A Brief Introduction to the Old Testament-The Hebrew Bible in Its Context (2009), The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction (2008), and The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures (2006; 2010), and editor of The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2001; 2007; 2010). 

Professor Coogan is Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College, and Lecturer on Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School.
In addition to Nova’s The Bible’s Buried Secrets, Coogan has appeared on several television and radio programs, including Morning Edition (NPR), and a National Geographic program on “Lost Cities of the Bible.”