Yeah, about that momentum thing

I was actually doing fairly well. To be fair to myself, I have managed to get through most of the texts I picked up on ancient sexuality. Most seemed to focus on the biblical texts and their view of sexuality, rather than something more anthropological/historical-sociological. Though, to be fair, the biblical corpus does represent most of the texts we have from Ancient Israelite culture. (As near as I can tell, anyway.)

Looking outside Israel is interesting, and certainly enlightens a bit. The Ancient Israelites seemed to be -far- more patriarchal than their surrounding cultures, and those ones (Egypt, Sumer, Babylon) weren't exactly bastions of ancient feminism. I have been reading some ancient Sumerian poetry and it has been fascinating. What was really interesting was a poem about Inanna (goddess of war) being jealous and angry at her husband's infidelity. This sort of reaction -never- occurs in the biblical text. In fact, when men -do- get multiple women, they are presented as a completely normal family or one of the women more or less drops the other in her husband's bed. (Sarah-Hagar, Rachel/Leah and their handmaidens)  That said, a later poem in the cycle seems to have Inanna offering Dumuzi (her husband) a random taptress (innkeeper/bar wench) into his bed as she recovers from giving birth, so it's the lack of her consenting to his sleeping around that is the problem, not the act itself.

In all, I'm finding the Sumerian poetry oddly interesting. I will have to hunt down copies of texts of the Egyptian and Ugaritic love songs as well.

Regaining Momentum

Having spent the week dealing with large number of strawberries from my mom and some final moving-in work, I'm turning back to reading.

Most of the reading has been on pedagogy and biblical language studies for my TA work, but I did work through Phyllis Trible's God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. While she deals more with gender issues than sex ones (not that they can easily be divided), she does deconstruct the story of Genesis 2-3 rather beautifully and also works quickly through Song of Songs read in the light of Genesis.

Specifically, she shows Genesis 2-3 to be God creating humanity in Eros, in an erotic two-as-one wholeness that is destroyed when humanity disobeys. It echos a good deal of Bonhoeffer's interpretations of the text. (Which I mean to look at soon.) From there, she shows how Song of Songs revels in that two-as-one and rebuilds the unity that is spoken of after gender is differentiated but before the Fall. An interesting read, especially with the implication that patriarchy was a result of the Fall, and not something ordained by God from the beginning. (Though she is perhaps a bit more circumspect about the erotic elements of Song of Songs.)