All language subtitles for The Bible Rules s01e02 Sex

This time on The Bible Rules, a journey
into sex in the ancient world. Sex is

something that's highly encouraged.

From rules about the genitals.

An erect peanut at a crossroads. To
commands about incest.

Full brother -sister marriage was
permitted.

The Bible shines a light on taboos and
fetishes as old as time.

Most animals would be embarrassed by the
amount of sex that human beings have.

What was the ancient world really like?

The answer may be hidden in thousands of
rules and commandments in the Bible.

Some are shocking.

Some mysterious.

All reveal lost details about the world
that was.

The past is now.

The Bible is the best -selling book of
all time. A holy book for billions.

In it are nearly 2 ,000 laws, rules, or
commands.

These were not just rules of God. They
were often rules mankind invented and

lived by, especially when it comes to
sex.

Around the 7th century BC, in the holy
city of Jerusalem, we find one of the

most surprising rules of the Bible.

If two men are struggling and the wife
of one comes near to deliver her husband

from the hand of the one who is striking
him and seizes his genitals, then you

shall cut off her hand. You shall not
show pity.

So we have in Deuteronomy chapter 25, 11
through 12, this strange passage.

A man gets in a fight with another one.

The wife decides to intercede by
grabbing the genitals of the other man.

She's to have her hand cut off for doing
that.

It's a bizarre story.

It's such a specific rule. Those key
details.

Two men fighting. The wife steps in.

Genitals are grabbed.

All in a street fight that happened 3
,000 years ago.

But what's it doing in the Holy Bible?

Who would think of such a thing unless
it happened once?

So let's say it did happen then.

Isn't it only natural for a woman to
defend her husband from an attack?

Or does this kind of encounter look
dramatically different to people in the

ancient world?

Even the experts have a hard time
understanding what it means.

Well, even the enemy of your husband's
genitals is more important than the

woman's hand.

And because this law is so strange, so
without parallel to my knowledge, it's

not entirely easy to interpret.

This is not one of those passages that a
boy growing up in Sunday school

normally memorizes.

To deconstruct this rule, let's begin
with the most explicit detail.

One man's genitals.

Why is it such a big deal in the ancient
world for a woman to get hostile there?

A clue might lie in a peculiar practice
that has existed since the prehistoric

Stone Age.

Penis worship.

All over the ancient world, From Egypt
to India, men and women both worshipped

the physical shape of the penis, known
to the Greeks as a phallus. What I guess

the word is shocking to a modern
audience is the evidence for phalluses

everywhere in the ancient Greek world.

That's because the Greeks thought the
penis had a sort of holy power to

people from evil.

And no penis was more holy than a god's
penis.

There were statues of Hermes with just
the head of the god and then a pillar

an erect penis in the middle of the
pillar at a crossroads. This is

For further proof, you don't have to go
all the way to the ancient world. Just

take a trip to modern Greece, where even
today the city of Ternovos holds an

annual celebration of the erect phallus.

So could all of this ancient reverence
for the power of the penis explain the

severity of this Bible rule?

Male genitals are divine, in other
words. So they're off limits, even in a

and death struggle.

There's just one hitch.

The rule doesn't forbid the husband in
the fight from assaulting the genitals

his enemy.

Suggesting this rule could have more to
do with who is doing the grabbing than

what is being grabbed.

They don't say that about, what if the
son of one of the men...

does that. No, women are not allowed to
do that, that's all. Why? Because

they're women.

If that's true, do clues elsewhere in
the ancient world provide evidence?

A big one might be found inscribed into
a seven -foot -tall piece of black

diorite stone, now standing in the
Louvre Museum in Paris.

It's one of the ancient world's great
wonders, the Babylonian Table of Laws,

known as the Code of Hammurabi.

Its 282 laws are believed by historians
to be a critical influence on the Bible

rules. So could the laws about women
inscribed in the Code of Hammurabi

the harshness of this rule?

According to that code, women are
property of their fathers or husbands,

especially when it comes to matters of
sex.

They're less than men. They can be
stoned to death.

There was a time where a woman had no
rights at all. And if a man decided he

wanted to kill her, he could kill her.
And because he was a man, he wouldn't be

held responsible at all.

So given the enormous influence of this
ancient Near Eastern code, which shaped

law and society from Egypt to Persia, it
may not be so surprising to discover

that if a woman actually tried to hurt a
man, especially between his legs, the

penalty would be drastic.

There are boundaries that are not to be
transgressed. When she seizes the

manhood, the genitalia of the man is an
attack on his masculinity.

She cannot dishonor any member of the
club of men.

It's impossible to know for certain if
that's the real reason for this Bible

rule about an ordinary street fight.

There's nothing else like it in the Old
or New Testament, and there's no woman

in any of the Bible stories who loses
her hand for attacking a man's private

parts.

Yet the penis and testicles do make an
appearance in another Bible rule with a

very different message.

If a man's testicles are crushed or his
penis is cut off, he may not be admitted

to the assembly of the Lord.

In other words, a man with damaged
privates can't enter the holy temple of

So does that explain why a woman would
be harshly punished for attacking a

privates in the earlier rule, because he
can't enter the holy temple?

Or is there something else going on
here?

A hidden clue to the real face of the
ancient world.

Over 3 ,000 years ago in India,

Ancient scribes write in a sacred text
known as the Rig Veda, describing the

worst curse that could ever befall a
man. There's clearly recognition in the

text that penis is a sign of male
virility. A man may be cursed to have a

vagina, which is seen to represent a
complete loss of virility.

In ancient India, over 4 ,000 years ago,
men without virility had a name. They

were known as eunuchs.

But who or what exactly were the
eunuchs?

Non -heterosexual sexuality in India
tends to get thrown into a kind of a

bag. And that grab bag ends up in this
so -called eunuch community.

Among the eunuchs, some are castrated
males. Few are non -castrated males who

may have strong homosexual feelings.

Some children are given up. They just
end up with this community. Others are

drawn to it. It's a catch -all phrase.

Some eunuchs could be warriors.

Malik Kafur, for instance, a castrated
slave, began to serve the Sultan of

northern India around 1300 AD.

Kafur rose in the ranks to become a
famed military commander, ultimately

defeating the Mongols and conquering
large parts of southern India.

And there is also evidence of a powerful
eunuch class in the Bible, in the Book

of Kings, in the story of Ahab and
Jezebel.

One of the...

Kings of the northern kingdom of Israel
in the 9th century BC was named Ahab,

and his wife was Jezebel.

They had a summer house, and Ahab got
literally sick with longing for his

neighbor's property, but he wouldn't do
anything.

So Jezebel took matters into her own
hands and trumped up a charge of

and treason against the owner of the
vineyard.

and the citizens of the town went along
with the false witness and stoned the

owner of the vineyard to death.

Immediately thereafter, the prophet
Elijah told Jezebel that she would be

punished by having her body thrown to
the dogs. Her blood would be trampled in

the streets.

Eunuchs are the ones who fulfill that
prophecy, hurling Jezebel out of a

window.

Yet the truth about this Bible rule may
have nothing at all to do with eunuchs

and everything to do with Israelite
ideas about holiness.

That part of the male anatomy was a way
of understanding who is in and who is

out. This Bible rule is about to open up
a new portal to the ancient world where

sex is about a whole lot more than just
a good time.

The Bible rules open up a panorama of
sex in the ancient world, shining a

on taboos and fetishes long gone.

Sex shows up so often in the Holy Book
that a common slang phrase, get

was coined.

Get biblical, just another way to say,
have sex.

And among the Bible's numerous rules
about sex are a few choice ones about

male sex organs, like this one.

If a man's testicles are crushed or his
penis is cut off, he may not be admitted

into the assembly of the Lord.

But why do the writers of the Bible care
whether a man's testicles are crushed

or not?

It may sound primitive to a modern ear,
but in the ancient world, tribes were

often defined by their physical
attributes.

That part of the male anatomy and its
preservation was a way of understanding

who is in and who is out.

A brutal reality.

People with intact testicles made the
cut.

People with crushed ones didn't. This
was part of what it meant to be God's

people. And if you are missing any
element, you're out.

You're simply out.

In using their bodies to define
themselves, the ancient Hebrews were far

alone. In biblical times, tribal
societies found distinct ways to look

sometimes with piercings.

Persian soldiers wore small hoops, the
Aztecs sported lip rings, and Roman

warriors even pierced their nipples.

These are all typically markers of
ethnicity in any society.

And you can even think today of people
who wear their hair in a particular way

or dress in a particular way.

A culture defines itself by how it
differs from another culture.

So if you understand the importance of
ancient man's physical appearance, this

Bible rule starts to make more sense.

The condition of a man's genital said
everything about who he was and what

community he belonged to.

The Bible rules are a portal to the
ancient world, plunging us back

years into civilizations long vanished.

And now that portal is about to open
again, taking us to a completely

place with this Bible rule about
marriage.

When a man hath taken a new wife, he
shall not go out to war, neither shall

be charged with any business. But he
shall be free at home one year, and

cheer up his wife, which he hath taken.

In other words, if a man is newly
married, he should stay home and keep

happy. This might sound like an ancient
form of a honeymoon, but over 2 ,000

years ago, when this rule was written,
people got married in a world where

nothing was guaranteed.

We're looking at a society with rampant
infectious diseases, with pretty bad

nutrition. People die often, they die
young, they die violently, and they die

childbirth. Infant mortality was very
high.

Up to half of infants didn't make it
through their first two years.

Maternal mortality was also very high.
So women died at relatively young ages.

High rates of infectious disease and
lack of modern medicine made for

epidemics, like the 2nd century AD
Antonine Plague, a plague of smallpox

knocked out a mind -blowing 5 million
people in the Roman Empire.

And then there was the problem of
constant warfare.

War took a major toll.

It could reduce the population of a city
drastically. Even a city like Athens

lost unbelievable percentages of their
population.

Ten percent in a serious loss.

Can you imagine?

The likelihood that you will make it
past 30, 35 was pretty low.

In a world where people were dropping
like flies from illness and violence,

every moment with your wife counts.

But maybe this rule isn't just about
spending quality time with the wife.

Maybe it's about how exactly you spend
that time.

Sex is something that's highly
encouraged in ancient Israelite society.

Procreation and perpetuating man's
lineage are of the utmost importance.

The Israelites were a small people,
always in danger of going to war with

neighbors or their rulers.

The Romans, for instance, who waged
several wars against the Jewish people

200 years, resulting in tens of
thousands of deaths.

It was a community that was constantly
at risk from neighbors.

And it was a community that really had
to close in upon itself for its own

survival.

There was only one way to keep that
community growing.

More babies.

A lot of pressure on men to have
biological children. A lot of pressure

to carry those children. You need to
produce a lot of boys to go fight the

so that you'll have at least one or two
who will survive the wars to keep the

population going.

And the Israelites weren't the only
community to see the value in more

Their enemies, like the Romans, did too.

The Roman Empire had a shockingly high
mortality rate.

Some historians believe the average
Roman male of the upper classes only

to the age of 25.

Women lived even shorter lives.

Those who made it to 40 were lucky.

That may explain why the Roman Emperor
Augustus took practical steps to make

sure Roman families grew.

It was a matter of sheer survival.

Families that had three children or more
were exempt from a certain kind of tax.

So you do have a stress on marriage and
the production of legitimate children

who will be your heirs simply from the
point of view of a social necessity.

So in a sense, the empire demands that a
woman becomes a baby factory.

At the height of its power, the Roman
Empire ruled over 65 million people.

Every one of them prayed a disease and
war.

The only way to beat or cheat death,
children.

So maybe it's no surprise now that our
Bible rule encourages a man to stay home

and cheer up his wife by making babies.

But is it possible this rule contains a
final warning to men, too, about the

serious dangers of leaving home?

Leaving home always opens new
temptations.

And leaving home always creates new
problems. So a man goes off to war, he

not come back.

Temptation can come in many forms,
including another woman.

And according to one rule, that other
woman must be avoided at all costs.

But I say to you that anyone who has
looked at a woman with lust has already

committed adultery with her in his
heart.

Translation. Even thinking about a woman
other than your wife is cheating.

That's a tough one. You know, I worry
for the souls of the 28 million people

that read the Sports Illustrated
swimsuit issue. You know, are they going

burn in hell?

Before we can understand what this rule
is really about, it's necessary to take

a closer look at a commonplace
occurrence, adultery.

What do we really know about a habit
that never seems to go out of fashion?

Adultery is universal.

Every society that has been studied
revealed common adultery. It seems to be

very, very difficult for our species to
resist.

Not only does adultery seem to be innate
to our species, but scientists have

found that there are few animals having
as much sex as humans.

Humans don't have sex just for
procreation, but also for pleasure and

socializing, which sets us apart from
the rest of the animal kingdom.

We are among a very few species that has
sex when the female is not

ovulating. We have sex when she's
already pregnant. We have sex when she's

lactating. We have sex when women are
postmenopausal, when they're

The only other mammals that have sex for
social reasons are chimpanzees,

bonobos, monkeys, and dolphins.

Most animals would be embarrassed by the
amount of sex that human beings have.

But as we'll see, in the ancient world,
Sex with the wrong person has deadly

consequences. You don't want to be the
next person's stone.

The Bible rules are a gripping portal
into the ancient world, especially when

comes to sex.

A central theme of the writers of the
Bible who laid down this rule about

adultery ascribed to Jesus in the first
century A .D.

But I say to you that anyone who has
looked at a woman with lust has already

committed adultery with her in his
heart.

In this rule, even the thought of desire
is considered adultery.

This rule seems to be asking people to
go against their very nature.

In fact, some of the most famous men in
the world have admitted to breaking it.

In a 1976 interview with Playboy
magazine, President Jimmy Carter said,

looked on many women with lust. I've
committed adultery in my heart many

God knows I will do this and forgives
me.

Jimmy Carter might have been confident
in God's power to forgive, but the

writers of the book of Matthew weren't
so sure.

To investigate this rule's meaning, we
have to answer a crucial question.

Did adultery 2 ,000 years ago mean what
it does today?

It's important to recognize that
adultery in the ancient world consists

sleeping with a woman who is married to
someone else.

So a man in a polygamous society like
the ancient Near East could sleep with

woman he wanted as long as she wasn't
married to someone else.

So the rules are different for men and
women.

And weirdly, in ancient Israel, the
punishment varied according to where

the affair took place.

If a man sleeps with another man's wife
and it happens in the city,

both are executed.

because both are presumed to have
committed consensual adultery. If a man

with another man's wife, but it happens
outside the city, then the woman is

presumed to have not consented, because
if she had cried out, no one would have

heard her.

And so the woman is not executed, but
the man is.

Capital punishment might sound drastic
for breaking the marriage vow, but the

tribal societies of the ancient world
revolved around blood.

Family was everything.

And if a woman slept with a man other
than her husband, she could get

More than just a scandal in the ancient
world, the child of an illicit affair

could spell doom for a man and his
descendants.

The woman might even pass along a child
born by the seducer as

though it were her husband's, therefore
violating the male line in the family.

Breaking these rules would have been a
tremendous threat to knowing one's

lineage.

The Romans, too, saw adultery as a
threat.

In the first century, the Emperor
Augustus wrote a series of laws he

Lex Julia, meant to rein in extramarital
affairs.

Under this law, the guilty parties would
be executed in the public amphitheater,

stoned to death in front of thousands of
onlookers.

It's a way of making an execution, a
public event, that the whole community

shares in.

And in so doing, the whole community is
given a dose of fear. You don't want to

be the next person stoned.

Clearly, committing adultery is a very
bad thing for the ancients.

But this New Testament rule kicks it up
a notch.

A man who even thinks about another
woman is already committing the act

It might sound cruel to judge someone
for just their thoughts, but in the

ancient world people believed that a
person's thoughts held a mystical and

dangerous power.

In many religious traditions, we have
groups of individuals who try to

withdraw themselves from the world in
which they live and to free themselves,

a sense, of their uncontrollable desires
and urges.

But how do you kill a thought? Around
200 AD, a Christian leader named Origen

gave it a try in a particularly gruesome
fashion.

Origen apparently committed self
-castration in

his attempt to be faithful to his
commitment to be celibate.

Origen was ahead of his time in his
attempt to control his desires.

100 years later, whole communities of
Christians banded together to escape

thoughts of the flesh.

The most famous of these were known as
the Desert Fathers.

These Desert Fathers would, as an act of
free will, withdraw from the world

the everyday hustle and bustle of
commerce and exchange and marital

Not only did the Desert Fathers leave
their lives behind and renounce sex,

But they also shunned other earthly
pleasures, such as food.

For them, fasting was the ultimate
discipline, a way to focus their

away from sex and onto God.

You really could say that the ascetics
were kind of spiritual athletes.

They disciplined their bodies with the
goal of disciplining their

desire.

It's impossible to know what exactly
fasting did to the bodies and minds of

Desert Fathers 2 ,000 years ago.

But modern science provides a clue to
just how extreme this behavior could be.

In 1944, American scientists conducted
the Minnesota Starvation Study to test

the effects of fasting on the body and
the mind.

These 36 guys were starved for 24 weeks.
And what was most interesting about the

results were the psychological ones.
People got very depressed. They got very

anxious. One of the subjects cut off
three of his fingers with an ax and was

subsequently unable to say why he had
done that.

In our own time and thousands of years
ago, starving yourself for any reason

remains an extreme statement.

But is that what this Bible rule is
really asking people to do?

Or is the wisdom of the Bible a little
more forgiving of our nature?

The gospel writers and certainly the Old
Testament writers are very realistic

about the fact that we have human
emotions and we're going to have

thoughts. But if you give yourself over
to those thoughts time and time again,

then probably eventually you're going to
act on them. If you put yourself in the

pattern of constantly allowing it to
take you over, then indeed it will take

over. In the ancient world, evil comes
in many forms. It can be who you sleep

with. But as we'll see, it can also be
the food you put in your mouth.

The rules of the Bible open a portal on
the ancient world. And now that portal

is opening again.

Taking us back to one more hidden corner
of our deep past, where it's just about

dinner time.

And all that have not fins and scales in
the seas and in the rivers, of all that

move in the waters, they shall be an
abomination.

In other words, fish that doesn't have
fins or scales shouldn't be eaten.

So say goodbye to that shrimp cocktail.

No one knows exactly when this rule was
written down, but it was probably over 2

,500 years ago, millennia before the
advent of modern medicine.

And yet the biblical writers might have
been on to something.

Shellfish is a filter feeder, meaning
that if there's a lot of typhoid fever,

for instance, coming out in the sewage
of a population, you could get typhoid

from eating the shellfish. It's also the
case that shellfish have a lot of

iodine in them. And it probably doesn't
take a lot of seeing somebody go into

anaphylactic shock for eating a
shellfish, but they tried to remember

time that that's something they may want
to avoid.

Shellfish wasn't just considered
dangerous 3 ,000 years ago.

Today, an estimated 2 .3 % of Americans
are allergic to shellfish. That's 7

million people at risk of dying from a
shrimp or oyster.

So, health might have had something to
do with this rule, even though ancient

peoples had no knowledge of disease or
allergy as we understand it.

But it is possible that basic geography
played a part as well.

In the arid deserts of ancient Israel,
there were no shellfish.

And so the writers of this rule might
have considered it a foreign food.

The Israelites didn't control much of
the seapost. We know that people who

along the coast ate shellfish because we
find huge piles of shells in

archaeological excavation.

But the Israelites didn't have easy
access to this free source of protein

prohibited it, differentiating
themselves once again from their

Food is one way to keep order.

Sex is another.

And here is a rule that transports us
back to the inner sanctum of ancient

religion. to those places so sacred only
the truly pure of heart can set foot

there.

Priests shall not marry a prostitute.

At first, this might sound obvious.

Sacred priests shouldn't marry sex
workers.

But this rule is probably pointing to a
very real piece of lost history.

So I think it's safe to say that whether
it's the Bible or any other code of

law, if we're making rules about it,
it's happening.

No one legislates that which is
unimaginable.

In other words, in biblical times, more
than one priest probably married a

hooker.

The Old Testament has 613 rules.

247 of them alone show up in the book of
Leviticus.

The rules are portals to a life we can
scarcely imagine.

400 years before Jesus Christ, when this
one was probably written down.

A whiff of scandal from a lost world.

To begin to crack this rules code, we
have to understand what's been called

world's most ancient occupation,
prostitution.

Unlike today, 3 ,000 years ago, a
prostitute couldn't be jailed for just

her job.

Prostitution is perfectly legal
throughout the ancient world.

That is, male and female prostitution
are known and practiced throughout the

ancient Near East.

The Bible never expressly outlaws
prostitution, but in Israelite society,

prostitutes were usually at the bottom
of the social barrel.

And like today, becoming a prostitute
was a woman's last resort.

It only became necessary for women to
barter with this resource when it was

last resource they had, when there was
no way to get food and protection and

status and these things that were
necessary to survival other than through

And the only thing that women still had
left to barter with was their sexuality.

Around the ancient world, most
prostitutes worked out of brothels that

rooms with stone slabs that served as
beds.

In Rome, these brothels were called
lupinare, meaning wolf den.

Archaeologists uncovered one that dates
back to the 1st century AD in the

destroyed city of Pompeii, identifying
it by the pornographic art still visible

on the walls.

We have numerous wall paintings, such as
at Pompeii, depicting erotic scenes.

It can be difficult to tell if a
building is a brothel unless you've got

or paintings. And in that case, it can
be pretty obvious sometimes.

Of course, you always have the problem,
is this a brothel with erotic paintings,

or do you just have a house where the
guy liked erotic paintings?

Explicit art was one way to tell if a
building was a brothel.

But if you were a man in the ancient
world, you might have to depend on word

mouth, too.

There is a building at Ephesus in Turkey
that's thought to be a brothel, and if

that is a correct identification, it's
rather funny that one of the entrances

was a secret one from the library across
the street.

So, honey, what are you doing tonight?
Oh, I'm going to the library.

And sometimes temples doubled as
brothels, too. The ancient fertility

involved ritual prostitution.

As the Bible rules make clear, the
ancient world is a place teeming with

sex, including secret brothels.

But does the secretive nature of these
brothels reveal a surprise meaning

inside this Bible rule?

Priest shall not marry a prostitute.

By definition, prostitutes worked in the
shadows.

Priests were public figures, the most
celebrated members of the Israelite

community.

The high priest in ancient Israel was a
connector between heaven and earth. And

as a result, almost everything about
that high priest's life was meant to

reflect an ideal state.

But if priests were public figures and
spiritually pure leaders, why would they

ever consider marrying a prostitute?

And if they did, why would there need to
be a written rule against it?

Call it occupational hazard.

In the ancient world, turns out
prostitutes and freaks sometimes did the

job.

In the 5th century BC, in the ancient
Greek city of Corinth, sacred

offered their services at the temple of
Aphrodite, the goddess of love and

pleasure.

And in 464 B .C., a man named Xenophon
dedicated 100 young girls to the temple

as a sign of thanksgiving. These girls
probably had a very specific purpose.

There would be a specific category of
prostitutes who would be paid for sexual

services, but in a context that was
religious and as a kind of offering or

any rate taking part in the power of a
divinity.

So does this Bible rule point to the
possibility that high -ranking Israelite

priests were cavorting with sacred
prostitutes?

We can't know for sure, but we know
their Canaanite neighbors were.

Some historians believe the sex act
itself was central to the worship of the

storm god, Baal.

Baal worship seems to be bound up with
an ancient fertility cult. And

the way that the thinking went is that
if you could get Baal...

frankly, sexually aroused, he would then
fertilize the clouds with his seed and

everything would be nice and green and
lush and the animals would be fat and

happy because the land was well watered
and the people were causing this through

their actions at the cults where they
were engaging in this ritual

The Israelites shun the cult of Baal as
idol worship, so maybe this rule is a

warning to preach.

Don't even go there.

When it comes to the rules of the Bible,
there is often no final answer to the

mystery. But in this case, there may be
one last hidden reason why priests were

forbidden to marry prostitutes.

Priesthood, going back to Aaron, the
first high priest, and his sons, the

priests who served alongside him, was
biological.

It was passed from fathers to sons.

prostitution is that men want to be sure
that that little boy is really his.

2 ,000 years ago, there were no
paternity tests.

So maybe priests had to avoid
prostitutes simply to make sure their

line remained genetically pure.

On the other hand, this other rule makes
clear that keeping things in the family

isn't always a good thing.

You shall not uncover the nakedness of
your father's wife.

It is your father's nakedness.

What exactly did the biblical writers
mean by the term uncovered nakedness?

The sex act is described in several
unexpected ways in the Bible.

To know someone can mean to have sex
with them, and to lie at someone's feet

mean the same thing.

Uncovering the nakedness of someone is
one of those ways that the biblical

writers spoke about the sex act.

So this rule is actually about sleeping
with your stepmother, which was

considered back then incest, a near
universal taboo 3 ,000 years ago or

There are clear biological reasons why
most humans shun sleeping with their

relatives. There are natural built -in
prohibitions against incest in our

species and in others.

The entire enterprise of sexual
reproduction is about reshuffling genes

to create greater vigor, hybrid vigor.

In other words, reproduce with a
relative and there's a high risk of a

defect.

But what exactly is the problem with
sleeping with someone who isn't

related at all, like your stepmother?
That can't be biological.

So I think the commandment prohibiting
incest with stepmothers is highlighted

precisely because it isn't simply
biological, but is actually trying to

construct a notion of family in which
relationships are respected.

Remember, in ancient Israelite society,
a man's wife is understood to be his

property. So sleeping with your father's
wife isn't just being impolite, it's

theft. The woman moves into the
household.

at the request and acquisition of the
patriarch of that household, and no one

else can sleep with her. That's not
allowed.

As property, a woman was off limits to
any man other than her husband, a harder

rule to keep than it sounds when people
lived in cramped quarters.

Ancient farmers would live with their
extended families in large tents, which

meant everyone slept side by side.

Ancient Israelite society is usually
described in terms of extended family

household. So you have to picture a man
and a wife,

maybe a second wife, some concubines,
the sons and daughters of their

the sons' wives, and you might have two,
three, or four generations along a male

lineage living within the same extended
family household.

within that context.

But if you think things get complicated
in ancient Israel, wait till you meet

the Greeks.

Full brother -sister marriage was
permitted.

The Bible rules are a portal to the
ancient world, revealing ways of life

vanished, including a Bible rule about
incest, which makes clear that 3 ,000

years ago, when extended families slept
side by side,

personal boundaries could get blurred.

You shall not uncover the nakedness of
your father's wife. It is your father's

nakedness.

So in other words, even your stepmother
is off -limits.

But not all ancient societies played by
these rules.

The Greek community living in Egypt
allowed brothers and sisters to marry.

Full brother -sister marriage was
permitted.

considered good thing.

First of all, it kept the wealth within
the family instead of sending it out.

Secondly, they grew up together, they
like each other.

It's a much more secure arrangement than
making a deal with a strange family

where you can come up with all kinds of
problems and the kids might not like

each other.

Proof of this shocking practice, ancient
marriage contracts.

We have about a hundred Papyrus marriage
contracts that say explicitly the same

mother and the same father. And people
for years and years and years denied

that could mean all women, cousins.

No, no, no.

Whole brother, sister marriage.

The incest practices of the Greeks might
have influenced the writers of the

Hebrew Bible who wished to set the
Israelites apart from their neighbors

these rules to draw the line.

But even a community with such strict
rules made some exceptions. We do have

interesting accounts that are at least,
if not contradicting some of the incest

code, seem at cross purposes with it.

One is the law of leveret marriage.

That if a man dies with no children, his
brother is expected

to marry the widow.

Leveret marriage, a marriage of a widow
to her brother -in -law, was not just an

Israelite custom. It was widespread
among ancient societies and was seen as

absolute necessity in times when disease
and violence left many women widowed.

But it's not a practice that died out 2
,000 years ago.

Traces of it can even be found on
military bases during World War II.

Partner swapping parties were held on
military bases, and they were organized

Air Force pilots and their wives and
girlfriends.

These were the guys who were flying
missions over Japan and Okinawa, and

fatality rate was about 25%. It was very
important to create a sense of

community among their colleagues and
their partners so that the men...

had intimacy with the women so that the
men who died knew that their buddies

would take care of their wives.

And a version of Leverett marriage has
even found its way into the 21st

After September 11th, I started to get
calls from people who said, I don't know

how to work this out. It was in the case
of two firefighters.

My husband died in the Toon Towers.

And I fell in love with his best friend,
who really was like his brother.

And so really we're right back to the
time of the Bible, right back to the

notion of leveret marriage, right back
to the impulse by brothers wanting to

honor the memory of the departed, but
also propagate the life and the values

which they stood.

And that is really what leveret marriage
is all about. And so precisely the

thing which would otherwise be
unacceptable when there is a tragedy may

become not only acceptable, but one of
the holiest things you can do.

These biblical rules about sex and
sexuality often seem to contradict each

other. Sometimes sex is good, other
times taboo.

So where does the Bible really stand?

There's this tradition that's arisen out
of a reading of certain biblical texts

that led to such neuroticism about sex.

People having this idea that sex is evil
and dirty and all the rest.

Interestingly, there are other passages
in the Bible that celebrate sex as a

gift. Then we realize in between those
extremes is a healthy and sensible

attitude towards sex. That seems to me
to be what we have to search for in the

Bible.

Especially when it comes to the Bible
rules, which hurl us back through

centuries, transporting us to lost
civilizations in a blink of an eye.

and leading to endless new
investigations.