The Book of Books

by Melvyn Bragg

  Some have gone further, unsupported by enough evidence, and claimed that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ and bore his children. If it could be proved, that would change the Christian world for ever: and perhaps for the better?

  The Song of Solomon begins:The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine. Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth. Therefore do the virgins love thee. Draw me, we will run after thee. The King hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee: we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee. I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon . . . Behold, thou art fair, my love . . . Thou hast doves’ eyes . . . Behold, thou art fair, my beloved, yes, pleasant: also our bed is green: the beams of our house are cedar and our rafters of fir . . . He brought me to the banqueting house and his banner over me was love . . . His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me . . . thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies . . . my beloved put his hand by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved for him. I rose to open to my beloved and my hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my beloved but my beloved had withdrawn himself and was gone; my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer . . . I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of love . . . there are three score queens, and four score concubines and virgins without number . . . Return, return, O Shulamite, return, return, that we may look upon thee . . . I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me. Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field: let us lodge in the villages . . . set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave . . . many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it . . . Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.

  The eroticism and the sensuality are explicit. To some its inclusion in the Bible is a puzzle. To others it is evidence that the Bible encompasses all of human life and does so here in a poem to sexual passion.

  Eroticism and seduction are credited with being the principal weapons of bold women in the Bible. One of the boldest women was Delilah, who seduced Samson, the strongest man. The Philistines recruited her to unman Samson and destroy this destroyer of their nation. She seduced him and discovered his secret, cut off his hair thereby nulling his strength and condemning him to slavery. Despite some efforts, it has not been easy to elevate her reputation. Samson can be and has been ridiculed by feminist writers as a rather mindless butchering bully boy. Even so, Delilah used sex for information to destroy the man she professed to love. But is that any worse than any other spy or indeed any other tactic by a spy? It is a territory that has not been entered with much confidence. Delilah remains the harlot with the heart of stone and confirms the poisoned gift of Eve.

  To say that female seduction is not uncommon in the Bible is to say not much more than that female seduction is not uncommon in life: in almost all times among all classes in all tribes and states and nations. Sometimes it can be defended as a virtuous strategy as when Ruth goes to the bed of Boaz and seduces him so that they might marry. And Esther seduced the King of Persia in order to protect the Jews and hang those in the Persian Empire who sought to destroy them. She is much commended for that. In the First Book of Moses, Genesis, we read of Tamar using sex to get justice for a broken promise of marriage. She poses as a prostitute when her promised husband is passing through the town. She seduces him, takes his ring and staff as surely and when she is pregnant, informs him and returns the ring and staff. The Bible does not suggest she was immoral and her new husband declares that ‘she was more righteous than I.’

  For all the sexual pleasure evident in the excerpts from the Song of Solomon, for all the allure of the seductive women of the Old Testament and the openness of love in the New, official Christianity, once it got going, thought it better to build up its congregations by putting a stop to tempting celebrations of sex. It was decreed that sexual satisfaction was not an option outside procreation. Genesis decreed: ‘God said unto them, “Be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth.” ’ But did that mean be fruitful only to replenish the earth? Onan, son of Judah, ‘spilled [his seed] on the ground’, therefore Genesis once more, ‘the thing which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also.’ It became rather complicated.

  The control demanded in the First Book of Moses on the sexual practices of millions of human beings for millennia afterwards is one of the more amazing of the spells which the Bible has cast over its followers. Of course many people ignored it, but there was hell to pay for that. It could be argued that the directions of Genesis were given to a partly nomadic, limited population whose survival depended on the perpetuation of the herd. Infant mortality would rack up the odds against this and therefore common sense ordered: ‘Breed and keep breeding.’ The intention was to weld in the notion to the believer that nothing but sex for procreation would be permitted.

  In the English-speaking world, until the Tyndale and then the King James Bibles made the Scriptures widely and commonly available for individual scrutiny, the interpretation of God’s Word was monopolised by the priests. Whatever its virtues – and there were some – the Church tended, like all monopolistic organisations which gain vast sway, to become corrupt and obsessed with its own best interests and hang everything else. To be able to decide on the sexual practices of all humankind was an unmissable opportunity of which the Church took full advantage to the consequent frustration, guilt and misery of millions of its faithful.

  Another consequence of the act of Onan – apart from the persisting rumour let loose among adolescent boys that it made you blind – was to stress the sacredness of the seed. The Roman Catholic Church used this for its savage campaign to prohibit birth control with, yet again, consequences which included the frustration, guilt and misery of its faithful. The faithful were frequently bullied, tormented and rebuked. Nor did the Protestant Church lag far behind in seeing part of its duty until recently to instil into its congregation an acceptance of the sacredness of God-given life which began in the womb and must not be aborted by mere humankind.

  To put the padlock on non-marital sex they brought in sin. Eve again was a useful example. But, to reinforce her evil legacy, just three chapters on from her historic yielding to the wiles of ‘the serpent . . . more subtle than any beast of the field’, when by some unexplained process the sons of Adam and Eve had all gone forth and multiplied, ‘on the face of the earth’, the message of the inadequacy of the human race was hammered in. ‘And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil constantly. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created, from the face of the earth . . . But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.’

  And with Noah God’s evolution began again. This was believed by faithful congregations for centuries and those who manipulated these matters made sure that the underlying notion of God’s limited patience with the wickedness of man was linked with the root of that wickedness: sex. So began the battle between instinct and authority, between joy and repression, between liberty and control. It was a battle kept active as often as not by potentates who disobeyed all the rules they enforced on their congregations. It was a battle riddled with bold characters who risked hell and damnation for sex and pagan pleasures. But a battle which, until quite recently in the history of the influence of the Bible, succeeded in shepherding the long-suffering, the fearful and the obedient into paths, they were promised, of earthly righteousness and heavenly glory.

  The
outcomes were obfuscated but the message was very clear. The message was ‘thou shalt not . . .’. The outcomes, in the stories – thought for so long to be historically accurate – were confusing. David, for instance, who had slain Goliath and written the Psalms and loved Jonathan and had many wives, committed adultery with Bathsheba.

  And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from his bed, and walked up on the roof of the King’s house; and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and enquired after the woman. And one said is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? And David sent messengers and took her; and she came in unto him and he lay with her (for she was purified from her uncleanliness) and she returned unto her house. And the woman conceived and sent and told David, and said, ‘I am with child’.

  David then arranged for her husband Uriah the Hittite to be killed in battle. After Bathsheba’s time of mourning for her husband, she became a wife of David. ‘The thing that David had done displeased the Lord’ and their son was ‘struck’ by the Lord and was ‘very sick’. Despite David’s prayers and fasting the son died. David then ‘comforted Bathsheba his wife, and went into her, and lay with her, and she bare a son and he called his name Solomon . . . and the Lord loved him.’

  Where does that leave us? The adultery leads to a form of murder, God takes his revenge but then appears to relent since the marriage to the adulteress brings him Solomon, whom he loved. Yet the first act of adultery was punished by the death of the child.

  Most remarkable of all, I think, is in the book of the Apostle John, when the scribes and the pharisees brought a woman to Jesus while he was in the temple teaching the people.

  They say unto him, ‘Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us that such shall be stoned: but what sayest thou?’ This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as if he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’ And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground. And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lifted up himself and saw none but the woman he said unto her, ‘Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee?’ She said, ‘No man, Lord.’ And Jesus said unto her, ‘Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.’

  Forgiveness. And that would appear to have been if not the end, then the decisive opinion on the matter of adultery. Yet Christ would speak again. And both Exodus and Deuteronomy declare, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ with the force of a law which would trigger punishment. And it is that line rather than the story of Jesus and the ‘woman taken in adultery’ that became the rod to beat the congregations into line. Yet Hosea had a wife who committed adultery constantly, Jeremiah claimed the whole of Israel was committing adultery and did Lot commit adultery when he slept with and had children with his two daughters?

  No matter that there were contradictions in the evidence, the most fervent users of the King James Bible – the evangelicals and the varieties of Presbyterians – clasped the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy to their bosoms and enforced unrelieved monogamy : nothing more; or less. There were abundant useful biblical references.

  ‘Marriage is honourable in all’ says the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, ‘and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.’

  Proverbs talks about keeping

  thy father’s commandment and forsake not the law of thy mother . . . for the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light; and reproofs of instruction are the way of life; to keep thee from the evil woman, from the flattery of the tongue of a strange woman. Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; neither let her take thee with her eyelids. For by means of a whoreish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life . . . whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul. A wound and dishonour shall he get: and his reproach shall not be wiped away.

  And Christ himself adds to the confusion. Having forgiven the woman taken in adultery and saved her from death by stoning, he takes wing in Matthew after the Sermon on the Mount to join forces with the Old Testament he has declared he came to overthrow. ‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’

  Immediately following is a passage of God-of-Vengeance intensity – and an intensity turned on itself – that is barely credible in the mouth of the man who has just preached the Beatitudes. He says: ‘And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.’ And the sermon goes on, without pause, to: ‘It hath been said, Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement. But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.’

  Is he equating the casting out of an eye, the cutting off of a hand with the self-punishment resulting from adultery? Or is it all a metaphor? Where has the forgiveness gone?

  There was always enough to keep a punitive sexual restraint near the top of the Christian agenda. Paul told the Thessalonians that God wanted them to be completely free from any sexual immorality. And Leviticus in chapter 18 lays out twenty-three laws of acceptable sexual behaviour.

  These include never having intercourse with anyone of your own blood, nor with your stepmother or stepsister or granddaughter or aunt or daughter-in-law or a woman and her daughter together, or your neighbour’s wife, or with a man as a woman, or with an animal.

  Much of this is understandable for the protection of the health of a small tribe. Some seem excessive; others, with regard to homosexuality for instance, are offensive. But the weight of it in Leviticus and Proverbs, and the insistence on strict monogamy in Paul to the Corinthians all confirm the reason taken from that one act of Eve: sexual women had to be reined in.

  There is more about the perils of forbidden sex than the casualities of unjust, including genocidal, wars. It has been seized on so often and so forcefully to shape and order society in a form not always guaranteed to suit the best interests of the majority. Nor has it been kind to minorities.

  Women who have sought abortion, for instance, have for centuries been driven to often criminally inadequate abortionists. They have faced persecution and ostracism. The Bible gives licence for the hounding of these women through its call on the sacred nature of the womb. In Job: ‘Did not he that made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?’ Isaiah: ‘Thus saith the Lord that made thee, and formed thee from the womb.’ Jeremiah: ‘Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.’ Psalms: ‘By thee have I been holden up from the womb: thou are he that took me out of my mother’s bowels; my praise shall be continually of thee.’

  There are those who agree with passion and sincerity that life begins once conception is under way and that to abort is to kill a living being. This has Church authority on its side; it has other supporters who see human life as sacred from the seed to the death. It takes no account of rape, accidents whose outcomes carry a variety of dangers and the claim or right of a woman to determine as f
ar as possible the fate of her own body. It has been a bitter struggle and in some countries it still is. But increasingly the blanket negative of the Bible is being ignored. It is a similar story with contraception where again the Church’s authority is now largely obsolete. Neither abortion nor contraception carry stigma any more except in a few remaining repressive boltholes. Fornication can still bring public opprobrium even in liberated societies.

  ‘Flee fornication’ urges St Paul to the Corinthians. By which I take it he includes all extra-marital, including pre-marital, sex. To the Galatians he includes it in a comprehensive listing: ‘Now the works of the flesh are manifest which are these: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.’

  Then there is homosexuality. Once again Paul is adamant: to the Romans he writes: ‘And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly.’

  Leviticus was blunt: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind: it is abomination.’ This is in such contrast to attitudes in the classical world which Christianity challenged and then replaced that it is possible to see it as part of a conscious ‘difference’, a rebuttal of the superiority of classical claims on the world. It is also worth noting that several commentators see and find homosexuality in the Old Testament – David and Jonathan – and in the New – the closeness of the disciples. The Spartan and the Apostolic elites have been thought to have much in common.