Sex & Sin: 1 A.D. [The Brides of Christ] continued

*

[sexual renunciation & sin: 15.23 19 juli '05]

~*~



~*~

The
distinction
between the spirit of taste for food
and the spirit of procreation
is striking.

-

Although both
are listed among the good spirits,
the former contributes strength
to the body.

-

We
would expect,
therefore, that the clause on
"the spirit of procreation and intercourse" would similarly continue;
"by it comes the continuation of the race,
because in intercourse the race
is maintained."

-

But
instead we read,
"with which come sins through fondness for pleasure."
While the spirit of taste is commingled
with the spirit of insatiability,
the spirit of intercourse induces to sin,
even before being commingled
with the spirit of
promiscuity.

-

PHILO,
famously,
expresses himself similarly.
There may be no question, then, that Hellenistic Judaism,
including in Palestine, had developed extremely pessimistic notions
of sexuality.

The clearest expression
of this Palestinian Jewish negative affect around sexuality is, of course,
the term 'yetser hara' ['bad side'] itself,
the evil inclination as a near synonym
for sexual
desire.

-*-


In
a thinking person,
such judgments would inevitably have been in powerful conflict,
indeed creating a sort of double bind,
with the commandment
to procreate.

The fact
that sexuality,
as the 'yetser hara', is the agent of the first positive commandment in the Torah is an irony that neither Paul
nor the Rabbis could
escape.

-


The
very efforts
which the Rabbis were to make
a century or two later to overcome the negative encoding of sexuality and desire as ipso facto evil provide eloquent testimony
to the strength
and problematicity of this ideology of sex
for a community insisting on the
unqualified goodness of
procreation, owing to the doctrine of
the holiness of its physical
existence.

-


The
Rabbis
for their part
heavily ironized the notion of the Evil Instinct through paradoxical formulations, such as calling the Evil Instinct
"very good".

-


PAUL,
I suggest,
found a different way out.
Through readings of three Pauline texts - Romans 5-8,
1 Corinthians 6, and Galatians 5-6 -
I hope to make a case that for Paul encratism was the ideal,
procreation of no value whatsoever, and marriage indeed merely a defense against desire
for the weak.

-


The politics
of this move, of course,
are intimately bound up
in the transcession of Israel according to the flesh
by
its spiritual signified.

verliefd
engel
20 jul 2005 - bewerkt op 13 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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