Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire Book

This book Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire by Jennifer Wright Knust is a gem. It is scholarly yet flows easily. Written for an educated audience that is also Bible-literate there is much to learn from Knust's presentation of current issues as portrayed in Jewish and Christian scripture. Here is a religious scholar who is also an ordained Baptist pastor and yet she is able to speak critically about these sacred texts; one wonders if her windows are bullet-proof.

Knust does not shy from any issues. She tackles menstrual emissions, semen, gay marriage, adultery, bodily parts, sex between humans and angels, sexual politics, miscegenation laws, kashrut, and circumcision. Surely I left a dozen topics out. I found her to be very thorough: she references the scriptural canon, books that didn't make the final cut, historical documents, and the words of the great luminaries of whichever time period under discussion. One cannot ask for a more comprehensive study in the short space of about 300 pages.

The overall message of her book is that the Bible does not speak with one voice. She relates this to the contemporary push among Christian activists to formulate one view of scripture then present it as the *only* view. One point she makes clearly is that the Bible does not state that the definition of marriage is one man/one woman. This simply is not found in scripture.

In fact, the overall message of the New Testament is "celibacy for the strong; marriage for the weak." She uses not only the words of Paul to make this point but corroborative gospel accounts. It is indeed bizarre that Christian pastors tend to encourage, promote, and support marriage when they should be focusing on lifetime celibacy. I cannot imagine a preacher telling a congregation that they need to commit their lives to celibacy in order to focus on the Lord's work.

I have a vivid memory from long ago, Jesse Jackson on TV shouted to a crowd of black activists, "Be fruitful and multiply." Obviously he was addressing racial inequalities and wanted more blacks born to displace white privelege but, as a preacher, his message should have been, "People, stop having sex altogether, this is the message of Christian scripture." Yeah, right. And the Mormons, are they taking the New Testament message of celibacy seriously? Me thinks not.

If the NT's focus on lifetime celibacy were taken seriously we'd have less and less fundamentalist Christians, not more. Celibacy is for the strong; marriage is for the weak. Though what kind of marriage is difficult to pinpoint, there are so many versions of marriage and quite a number of possible sexual relationships as presented in the Bible - not just among the villians but among the heroes as well!