This video is for adults who are at least 18 years of age. This is no joke. I'm going to read to you
some parts of the Bible which are very sexually explicit. Now you might think 'where on earth are
there sexually explicit parts of the Bible?' and they're often covered over it seems
by euphemistic translations, particularly in the Christian translations, but recent work
in looking at the original Hebrew, particularly in the Jewish scriptures, reveals a very sexually
explicit narrative and I wanted to share that with you. Not for any prurient or pornographic interest
but just so perhaps we can realize that the Bible really is not for children,
children should not really read the Bible, at least certain parts of it, because it is very
explicit. Now to share with you just a brief excerpt I'm going to turn to Professor Bart Ehrman's
wonderful book 'The Bible: a Historical and Literary Introduction' published by Oxford University Press.
And he has a section on 'The Song of Songs'. Now what is this? This is a a text in the Jewish Bible,
part of the 'Writings' as they're called. So they're not part of the Psalms or the Historical books or
the Pentateuch, and the section he's talking about in The Song of Songs is very erotic and he
entitles this section 'Eroticism in The Song of Songs', traditionally the book is believed to be written by
King Solomon who lived about 900 to 1000 BCE (Before the Common Era) but today scholars date it to
about the third century BCE. It has nothing to do with King Solomon at all who passed away many centuries
before. Why do they say that? Well because of the the nature of the language, the references
the style, the vocabulary, and so on, lots of indications that it is much much later than King
Solomon's time - and more likely to be about the 3rd century BCE. So it's not by Solomon. We don't really
know who wrote it and it is basically a song, a rhapsody between a man and a woman, it's sexual,
it's explicit, but the Church particularly from the time of Origen (this is a third century
Church Father) onwards interpreted it allegorically to refer to the Church and
Christ, or Christ's love for the church, and then it became to refer to the Virgin Mary, and
the Christian church developed a theological reading of what is definitely *not* a theological
text if you just read it in its plain meaning. So I want to share with you then the full
eroticism of this so again you get a sense of the Bible is a library of books: it contains some very
disturbing material, such as genocides allegedly commanded by God to kill women, children, babies, and animals
for sins of people who were passed away centuries before - famously in 1 Samuel 15. It
contains virtually pornographic material about the erotic attraction between a
man and woman, the lovers of the Songs of Solomon and other disturbing material as well. So just
wanted to read to you what Dr Bart Ehrman says which is actually really interesting I think.
So (QUOTE): "The full eroticism of the Song of Songs does not come across in most English translations.
(This is this is really the point i'm trying to share with you how the Christian
translations kind of euphemized and softened and covered over the realities of the text, certainly in
the Song of Songs anyway). The following is a more literal translation of one of the key passages,
provided by Hebrew bible specialist professor Michael Coogan (now he happens to be a professor
at Harvard Divinity School and he's one of the world's leading biblical scholars)
and he has translated the Song of Songs chapter 5 verses 2-6 and
I'll just read it out and you can obviously follow it yourself. I'm not going to comment
on the content so much because it is very explicit: 'I slept, but my heart was awake. Listen,
my lover is knocking. "Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my perfect one, for my head is wet with dew...
My lover thrust his hand into the hole, and my insides yearned for him.
I arose to open to my lover, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with liquid myrrh, upon the
handles of the lock. I opened to my lover, but he was gone.' (Song of Songs 5:2-6). Now
this book is full of explicit erotic sexual imagery and as i say both in later Judaism
but especially in the Christian church this was clearly highly embarrassing because they allegorized
it they they read it in a theological way as i say to refer to Christ's love for his Church as
if Christ had a sexual attraction for his church! You know i mean it's extraordinary really. So
I just want to share with that just another insight into the nature of the Qur'an the nature of
the Bible I should say! An important point to remember i always stress this with people the
Bible and i have a copy here of course this is a Bible this is very misleading when i show you this
single Book between a single cover that's not really what the Bible is like. It was
originally a library of books containing many different authors from over a thousand years or more
and the texts were written on individual scrolls like the Dead Sea Scrolls. They weren't contained
in the pages of a single book. We have this because of the invention of printing and the way now
the text here is really microscopic and you can fit it all in one book, but in the ancient world when
people when Jews, rabbis, had the Bible they had individual scrolls, huge manuscripts that were
rolled up and kept separately in pigeonholes you know in the synagogue or in rich people's houses.
They weren't contained in a single book like this. And why does it matter? because this gives
the impression that there's it's a single author and it's just a single narrative but it's not. I
say it's a vast library written by many, many, different people most of whom we don't know who they are
over many centuries and different Christians have different canons, different lists of books,
and they interpret it differently. And of course the Jewish Bible which is a part of the Christian
Bible has a quite a different flavor, if you understand it from a Jewish point of view
than if you read it from a Christian perspective. Anyway I just thought I'd share that little nugget
of information about the Christian Bible and the Jewish scripture. Till next time.