NARRATOR: This program explores
the mysteries of the Bible from a variety of historical
and theological perspectives which have been
debated for centuries. For thousands of
years, the Bible has been a source
of moral guidance for millions of people
around the world. It is a sacred text intended to
be a part of our daily lives. But could the Bible
contain contradictions and hidden meanings
about what is right and what is wrong
when it comes to sex? PETER T. LANFER: The
Bible is fundamentally about the relationship
of people to one another. JONATHAN KIRSCH: If you read
the Bible with open eyes, you will be shocked at the
sexuality, the sinfulness. WILLIAM FULCO: There's no
question that the Song of Songs is a very sensuous
and erotic text. CANDIDA MOSS: There's a
lot of sex in the Bible, but there's a lot more sex in
the Bible than you would think. NARRATOR: It is one of the most
important books ever written. Its contents have been studied,
debated, and fought over for thousands of years. But does the Bible
also contain secrets? Secret prophecies, secret
characters, secret texts? Now, for the first time,
an extraordinary series will challenge everything we
think, everything we know, and everything we
believe about the Bible. [music playing] The Hebrew Bible, also
known as the Old Testament, begins with the story of
God's creation of the world. In the first chapter
of the book of Genesis, God forms man and
woman in his own image. He blesses them
and commands them to be fruitful and multiply
and replenish the Earth. This commandment is
the first reference to the act of
procreation in the Bible, and according to many
scholars, sets the tone for the numerous stories
of sex and sexual behavior that follow. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN:
Sex and the Bible are intimately
related to one another because the Bible claims to
tell the story of human history. And of course, human
relations and sexual relations are an integral part. a
vital part-- quite literally, from the Latin "Vita,"
of human history. JODI MAGNESS: Sex in the Bible
appears in different places and in different variations. In other words, sometimes sex
is just part of the story. There are also places where sex
is part of laws, legislation. And in those cases, it's part
of the structuring of society's behavior in general. A lot of people look to
the Bible for guidance in a lot of areas, so it
shouldn't be surprising that people look to it for
sexual guidance as well. There's a lot of
sex in the Bible, but there's a lot more sex in
the Bible than you would think. NARRATOR: The first five
books of the Old Testament, called the Torah, were intended
to guide the Israelites' religious and civil behavior
as well as strengthen their identity as a people
and preserve their heritage. JONATHAN KIRSCH: One of the
great themes of the Bible is that the world around
Israel was corrupt and that the Kingdom
of Israel was the one refuge for the righteous. This is a continuous drumbeat
throughout the Bible. NARRATOR: As they roamed
the barren environments of the ancient Middle
East, the early Israelites lacked a homeland, a
well-defined community, and even a traditional
social structure. Seeking rules for everyday
life, Moses' followers relied on the Torah for detailed
instructions on everything from preparing food to cleaning
a wound and even having sex. ELAINE PAGELS: If you look
at Jewish sexual laws, they seem to be designed
to ensure for procreation. For example, a man and woman
having intercourse and the man ejaculates outside
the woman's body in order to prevent
conception-- that's forbidden. FRANCESCA STAVRAKOPOULOU:
The only sexual practices that are outlawed
in the Hebrew Bible are outlawed because if
a child was to be born, it's not going to result in
a legitimate Jewish child. ROBERT R. CARGILL: If you
look at Biblical rules about planting seeds, they
thought of it all as seed. The word for semen is seed, and
so is the word for descendants, right? This is your seed,
your offspring. ELAINE PAGELS: That comes
from people who are nomads, and their survival depends on
the fertility of the flocks and the fertility of the people. So it makes a lot of sense that
the sexual laws are directed toward procreation. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
There actually seems to be a
recognition in Genesis that there's not enough
people in your group. Stories in Genesis are
framed by these long lists of so-and-so begat
so-and-so begat so-and-so. The whole drama is
driven by, oh, we better get some begetting here. We need to beget. Otherwise, we're not
going to have a community. NARRATOR: The third book
of the Torah, Leviticus, lays out detailed
laws for the faithful, including guidelines for
marriage, family, inheritance, and sexual behavior. JONATHAN KIRSCH: However,
the book of Leviticus is the priestly code. It's the laws according to the
priesthood of ancient Israel, and we all know that priests
and rabbis and ministers tend to be fairly strict
about what constitutes proper behavior among the laity. So Leviticus has very,
very strict rules about the sexual aspect of life. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: We have this
interesting law in the Hebrew Bible that explains that if
the eldest son in a family gets married but fails to have
children before dying that it was the responsibility of
the next-born son to marry the deceased brother's wife and
to have children on his behalf. JONATHAN KIRSCH: The child would
be regarded as the offspring of her dead husband, as
the heir of his property, and would thus give the widowed
woman a role in the community and access to her husband's
property, which she would not otherwise have. NARRATOR: Later in the Old
Testament, in the Book of Ruth, this law is demonstrated in
the story of a grieving widow. Living in Moab, Ruth, a recent
convert to Jewish beliefs and now without a husband,
finds herself with few rights and fewer options. But rather than retreating
to her family home in another country, she pledges
to stay with her dead husband's mother, Naomi, saying, "Thy
people will be my people, thy God my God." JONATHAN KIRSCH: The story
of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz, which is often offered in
sermons and Sunday school lessons as an example of
a dutiful wife and widow, is in fact a story about sex. Ruth, as a widowed
woman, is entitled to be married or impregnated
by a male relative of her dead husband. This was the tradition of
Biblical law in ancient times. NARRATOR: According
to the Bible, Naomi instructs Ruth
to meet Boaz, believed to be the closest male relative
to Ruth's deceased husband, in his tent after
he's gone to bed. When Ruth encounters him, she
does something that might seem odd to the modern reader. She uncovers his feet. CANDIDA MOSS: In
the Old Testament, "feet" is a euphemism
for male genitalia. So when Ruth sneaks into Boaz's
tent and uncovers his feet, she's not giving him a foot rub. That's not what's
happening here. JONATHAN KIRSCH: This is
concealed from the reader by one of the favorite devices
of the Biblical censor, which is to use idiomatic expressions
that conceal the real meaning. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: Boaz wants
to fulfill the marriage law in Leviticus. He woos her, and no doubt,
that was a culmination of their hopes and dreams. NARRATOR: Ruth becomes pregnant
and gives birth to a son, Obed, who later becomes
grandfather of David, the eventual King of Israel. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: And what's
interesting is that line of David would also be the
line through whom Jesus would eventually arise. NARRATOR: Is it possible the
procreation laws in the Torah resulted in the birth of
Jesus, and ultimately, the formation of Christianity? And could the requirement
to produce offspring also explain the circumstances
surrounding the children of Abraham, the founding
father of the Israelites? According to chapter 16
in the Book of Genesis, Abraham has a wife named
Sarah, but they are childless. ROBERT R. CARGILL:
Abraham is very old. Sarah is very old. They don't have any children,
and yet God promised them all these children. When Sarah thought that she was
never going to get pregnant, she actually gave Abraham
her servant, Hagar. JONATHAN KIRSCH:
The story of Abraham is particularly touching because
Sarah is supposedly childless and encourages Abraham to have
sex with his slave, Hagar, so that he can perpetuate
his line so that he can have children. This was the highest
calling of any human being, was to be fruitful and multiply. CANDIDA MOSS: The laws are very
different than they are now, so when Abraham takes Hagar
and has children with her, it's a way to have
legitimate offspring. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: It was not
uncommon in the ancient Near East for a couple who couldn't
have children of their own to turn to a surrogate mother. NARRATOR: The notion
of a surrogate may seem strange to
the modern reader, but it is actually
sanctioned by the Torah. For the ancient Israelites,
the only thing more important than having a child is having
as many children as possible. DALE MARTIN: A man can have more
than one wife because you can have more chances of having
more descendants and a larger household and just making
yourself that much more important. JONATHAN KIRSCH: People
who wrote the Bible valued above all bearing and
rearing of children. And that's why some sexual
conduct that we might find appalling-- those are all
approved because they result in procreation. NARRATOR: Might the stories
concerning sexual behavior and moral codes as
depicted in the Bible be considered out of
date or irrelevant by today's standards? Or might they still provide
useful and important guidelines for all of us, even today? Perhaps the answer can
be found by examining another sacred text, one that
many Bible scholars believe reveals a shocking truth about
the sacrament of marriage. Sepphoris. Less than five miles
northwest of Nazareth, this ancient capital city of
the northern province of Galilee was believed to have been built
by the ancient Assyrians as early as the 7th century
BC and once served as a center of religious
and spiritual life. According to scholars,
Jesus most likely visited here to preach
and conduct business. REZA ASLAN: Sepphoris, which
was about an hour's walk from Nazareth, was this
cosmopolitan urban city. It was a cultural and economic
hub, really the first city that Galilee had ever seen. JODI MAGNESS: If Jesus
did visit Sepphoris, then that's likely the place
where he would have first been exposed to Greco-Roman culture. NARRATOR: In the New
Testament's Gospel of Luke, Chapter 7, a strict and very
devout Jewish leader known as a pharisee, whom
scholars now believe was living in Sepphoris, invited
Jesus to join him for dinner. During the meal, a woman
burst into the room, approached Jesus, and
fell to the floor, crying. She then used her own tears and
hair to wipe his feet clean. ROBERT R. CARGILL:
Meals at this time were broken, actually,
into two parts-- the part where you eat and then
the part where the Jews might discuss the Torah. And it's during this time when
less righteous people would have the dancing boys
and the dancing girls and the sex and the orgies. It's at this time that
this woman breaks in. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
The Gospel of Luke says that this woman is a
woman of the city, a sinner, a prostitute. The prostitutes in
antiquity were slaves, or they were impoverished women. ROBERT R. CARGILL: In
the Biblical story, it says that the
men around Jesus were horrified that
this woman did this. Yet Jesus says no, no. He holds her up as a
model of worship of him. NARRATOR: But why did Jesus
show such consideration to a prostitute? And what does this tell us about
the New Testament's attitude towards sex and sexual
behavior, even outside of marriage and child bearing? JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
Certainly, a popular way of reading
the Gospel account of Jesus consorting with
prostitutes is that Jesus has a kind of open
attitude towards women of all sorts, which
is great, actually, given the way that
real prostitutes in the Greco-Roman world
were being treated. ROBERT R. CARGILL:
Jesus went out of his way to lift up
the marginalized people. Jesus was a big social
justice guy, right? He was actually looking for
the downtrodden, the oppressed, and this includes women. CHRIS KEITH: If you were
one of those pharisees, then you would have heard
these stories about God welcoming lost things and
celebrating all of our lost things. If, however, you are one of
the down and outs of society, you would have just heard Jesus
say that God welcomes you back with open arms and
celebrates over your return. NARRATOR: But just
as Jesus was openly tolerant to being in the company
of sinners and prostitutes, his views on
traditional marriage were equally unconventional. CANDIDA MOSS: Jesus seems to
be quite opposed to marriage. He seems to be all about sort of
not getting married, not having sexual relationships, and living
this life instead of pursuit of God. ELAINE PAGELS: What's striking
about the teachings of Jesus is he seems to ignore
any of that focus on having children and
anything about the sacredness of marriage. NARRATOR: According to the
Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, Jesus says
that family is not decided by bloodline, but rather
by adhering to God's will. He goes on to explain that there
is no marriage in the kingdom of heaven. In fact, it wasn't until
hundreds of years after Jesus' death, when Christianity
became more organized, that the notion of traditional
marriage and marriage laws were instituted by the church. ELAINE PAGELS: After the second
century, when this movement becomes more popular among
families, men with wives and households and slaves,
marriage laws are changing. ROBERT R. CARGILL:
In fact, marriage is redefined several
times in the Bible itself. So it's not just one
man and one woman. You have patriarchs of Israel
marrying multiple women, having children with not only
their wives but their wives' servants. The 12 sons of Israel come
from four different women, and this is upheld. JODI MAGNESS: There were
different laws regulating who could marry who, how
many wives you could have, and whether you could divorce
those wives depending on who you were. There wasn't any
one notion of this is a traditional family in the
way that we have that today. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
In the Hebrew Bible, polygamy is the norm. And in the New Testament,
the few endorsements of marriage in the
New Testament that get cited in order to argue
for traditional marriage. Passages in the letters of
Colossians and Ephesians and I Timothy, II
Timothy, and Titus are not talking about
traditional marriage. They're talking about a master,
a free man, who has one wife but also has sexual
access to his slaves. NARRATOR: But if the Old
Testament texts suggest a tolerance of polygamy
and the New Testament is largely silent
on the topic, then why has the Bible been
considered so morally strict? The answer can be found in
the later books of the New Testament, in the Epistles,
or letters written by the apostle Paul and others,
years after the death of Jesus. Paul, a former Jewish pharisee
and convert to Christianity, was a zealous advocate
for the faith. He was instrumental in
building several churches and establishing guidelines
for early Christian behavior, including those concerning
sex and marriage. And these guidelines often
offered a radical departure from the attitudes towards
sex and sexual roles found in the Old Testament. CANDIDA MOSS: If you've
ever been in love, you know how
intoxicating that is. You can think of
nothing but your beloved and how much you
want to be with them. They're all you can think about.
You can't work. You can't sleep. Sex gets in the way of
contemplation of God, of the divine. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: The
apostle Paul asked his readers to consider being like him--
celibate-- so that they could devote themselves singularly
to the mission of spreading the gospel. What Paul puts forward
is a recommendation, and his letter to
the Corinthians would later become a
requirement of priests and popes serving in the Catholic church. NARRATOR: In the fourth century
AD, a series of papal decrees commanded that all clergy
serving in the Catholic church should be unmarried and
celibate, although there was nothing in the Bible
that required it. They also restricted women
from becoming priests and forced previously
married priests to refrain from sleeping
with their wives. But why? JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST: Celibacy
becomes a kind of stamp of one's extraordinary
commitment to Christ, to the point where
the most important church fathers are all celibate. The early church definitely has
a very different perspective on sexuality. JODI MAGNESS: There's
nothing in the Hebrew Bible that says that you
should be celibate. In fact, Jews believe that
the first commandment is to be fruitful and
multiply, and that's been sort of the traditional
Jewish view all along. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN:
In the New Testament, the emphasis seems
to be on spreading the good news of the gospel. And because the early
Christian community had that as its
focus, there seems to be a downplaying of sexual
and even marital relations. NARRATOR: But if, as most
scholars and theologians believe, one of the most
important mandates in the Bible is procreation, then how and
why did traditional expressions of human sexuality become
considered shameful? Was it to keep the focus on the
love of God above all others? Or were there other
reasons, reasons that lie hidden in the
pages of the Old Testament? The Kingdom of Israel,
approximately 1020 BC. According to the book of
Samuel in the Old Testament, a young warrior stands in
the throne room of King Saul, holding a severed head. The warrior's name was
David, and the head was that of a Philistine
champion named Goliath, the leading enemy of the king. Before long, the
charismatic David became a favorite of
King Saul and his court. The king's son, Jonathan,
also befriended David. The verses of Samuel record
that Jonathan presented David with the robes off his back,
and even his own sword. CANDIDA MOSS: David and
Jonathan had this really close relationship-- really close. Jonathan talks about his soul
kind of cleaving to David, to David's soul. JONATHAN KIRSCH: They
are comrades in arms. They wear each other's clothes. They have very tender
moments with each other. NARRATOR: But Jonathan
and his father die in a later battle
against the Philistines. In mourning, David
authored a lament that acknowledged his deep
affection for Jonathan and triggered
centuries of questions about the true nature
of their relationship. CANDIDA MOSS: David
describes Jonathan as loving him more
than any women have, which immediately sort of
puts Jonathan's relationship with David in a sexual context
because how is that the point of comparison? JONATHAN KIRSCH: We can read
that that's a platonic love, an honorable love between
two men in whose relationship there is no sex. But we could also say that
Jonathan preferred David not only as a friend,
but as a lover. NARRATOR: Does the Bible
really include a story about a same-sex relationship? And if so, was it meant
to be considered sinful? CANDIDA MOSS: The story
isn't condemning either David or Jonathan for
their relationship. And while it never
explicitly says that they have a
sexual relationship, the language and the
imagery is sexual. WILLIAM FULCO:
Amongst the ancients, there was activity that was
considered same-sex activity, but no person was
identified as homosexual. JOEL M. HOFFMAN:
The Bible doesn't talk about homosexual
behavior in general, and it doesn't talk about
it in the context of sin. People feel so compelled to
take their modern opinion and find a way in which they can
interpret the Bible to make it say that. NARRATOR: In ancient literature,
there are numerous references to same-sex relationships,
particularly in stories involving Greek
and Roman warriors engaged in battle. The notion of
homosexuality was not new, nor was it as frowned
upon or condemned as it became in later years. Nevertheless, the one thing
homosexuality could not produce was
biological offspring, and procreation,
particularly among kings, was critical if bloodlines
and political stability were to be maintained. According to the
Second Book of Samuel, David eventually becomes
the king of the Israelites and later begins a passionate
and highly scandalous affair with a woman named
Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, one of his soldiers. JONATHAN KIRSCH: One way of
assessing David's sexuality is that he is, at best,
bisexual, because he has a voracious
appetite for women and takes any woman who
excites his sexual imagination, including, famously, another
man's wife, Bathsheba. CANDIDA MOSS: David wants to
persuade Uriah that perhaps he's the father of
Bathsheba's unborn child, so he needs to get Uriah
to have sex with Bathsheba. So he says go home
and wash your feet. It's not about cleanliness. It's the euphemism for sex. NARRATOR: But out of his
sense of duty to his soldiers, Uriah declines the offer
to return home to his wife and stays with his troops. In an apparent effort to
conceal his own indiscretion, David then sends Uriah to
the front lines of battle, where he is eventually killed. The child dies, but soon after,
Bathsheba conceives with David again and has another son,
whom they name Solomon. CANDIDA MOSS: There's the ideal
and then sort of the reality. And it says this is real life. People do have sex. They have sex with people
they shouldn't have sex with. PETER T. LANFER:
One of the things that we find in the Bible is
that many of the genealogies depend on figures that are
only united through things like incest, rape, or adultery. Solomon, one of the
most important kings, is the son of the most famous
adulteries in the Hebrew Bible. NARRATOR: According
to Biblical scholars, this adulterous
relationship was ultimately considered acceptable
since it resulted in the birth of a king,
in this case, Solomon. Once again, it appears
God's command to procreate supersedes all other
conventional notions of morality. Perhaps significantly,
the name of Solomon himself would be linked to what
is widely regarded as the most sensual book in the Old
Testament, the Song of Songs, also known as the
Song of Solomon. Attributed to Solomon, It
is believed by scholars to have been written between the
eighth and fourth centuries BC, and it is easily the most
provocative book in the Hebrew Bible. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
It's pretty clear that it's an erotic poem. It's a poem that
celebrates sexual desire. PETER T. LANFER: Early receivers
of the Song of Songs debated whether or not it
was a holy book, and one of the reasons
they debated about it was because it has this
different character of erotic poetry, poetry
about the love between a man and a woman. JOEL M. HOFFMAN: First of
all, the man and the woman in this book are not
actually married. They're actually not
engaged and not even dating. They are doing with
the teenagers nowadays would call hooking up. WILLIAM FULCO: There's no
question that the Song of Songs is a very sensuous
and erotic text. Chapter 5, that my lover
knocked on the door, my lover came into
me, and so on-- the Hebrews saw sexuality,
eroticism, as sacred and as a God-given gift. It is something to be
explored, enjoyed, relished, and to write hymns about. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
People today who think that the Bible
must teach that sex is bad and sexual desire is
naughty can't believe that this book made it in. But from the perspective of
the rabbis and the Christians, they thought this book was
fantastic because they're reading it allegorically. WILLIAM FULCO: The
Song of Songs is a way of making that connection
between God and human beings as powerful as possible,
because as human beings, the most palpable and
powerful expression of love is the mingling of human bodies. NARRATOR: But as much as
the Old Testament is filled with stories about
sexual desire, the New Testament promotes a
strict set of moral values. In it, sexual intimacy is only
acceptable within marriage, and only when it serves the
purpose of having children. Sex simply for pleasure
is strictly forbidden. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
Medieval Christians are willing to
imagine sexual desire as a kind of fruitful way to
think about how much we love God. NARRATOR: Homosexuality. Adultery. Eroticism. Is it really possible that
so many so-called sinful acts are not only depicted but
tacitly accepted in the pages of the Old Testament? And perhaps none so vividly
or so erotically charged as those depicted in
the Book of Genesis. Sodom and Gomorrah. For centuries, the names
of these two cities have become synonymous
with lust and depravity. JONATHAN KIRSCH:
The Biblical authors felt that the purest way to
live was the Bedouin lifestyle-- out in the wilderness,
relying on yourself, moving from place to place. They had an inherent
distrust of cities. Cities are places where
you can indulge your taste for pleasure, and they're
really not good places for righteous people to live. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: There is a
Biblical bias against cities in general and that because
these were places of sin, theft, and sexual behaviors,
this was not where you wanted to live. JONATHAN KIRSCH:
Sodom and Gomorrah are made to stand symbolically
for this habit of human beings to indulge their
pleasures in illicit ways. NARRATOR: As recorded
in the Book of Genesis, God causes both cities
to be destroyed, but not before two
angels in human form are set to lead a man named
Lot and his family to safety. JONATHAN KIRSCH:
God sends angels to protect Lot and his daughters
and to carry them out of town before they destroy
Sodom and Gomorrah. NARRATOR: Lot invites the
visiting angels into his home, but as news of the
visitors spreads, a mob gathers outside Lot's door
and demands that his guests be handed over to them so they
can be raped and humiliated. DALE MARTIN: In many societies,
if one man rapes another man, it shows the superiority of
the raper and the inferiority and the shamefulness
of the rapee. These guys are from out of
town, and so the Sodomites want to have sex with them. But the sex they want
to have is raping them because they're foreigners. CANDIDA MOSS: The
problem at Sodom is not that they want
to have homosexual sex. The crime here is that they
want to rape these strangers who have come into their
community, outsiders that they should be caring for. And that is inhospitable,
and that's the crime. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST: The
prophets in the Hebrew Bible read the Sodom and Gomorrah
story as a kind of lesson about pride and greed. They don't read the problem as
being about sex, or if they do, they don't say that. DAVID WOLPE: Even
though the city of Sodom gave its name for
the English word "sodomy," from the
story itself, and even from later interpretations
in Ezekiel, it's not at all clear
that that's the sin. It seems like coercion,
rape, cruelty-- that's the prevailing
sin of the city of Sodom. DALE MARTIN: The
word "sodomy" meaning having something to do with
sex is a medieval invention. But in the scriptures, when they
condemn Sodom for something, it's because they didn't
practice proper hospitality according to ancient
Near Eastern customs. NARRATOR: As the book
of Genesis suggests, the behavior of Sodom citizens
sealed the fate of their city. But as Lot and his family flee
and the cities become engulfed in an inferno of
fire and brimstone, Lot's wife disobeys
God's command and looks back to
view the carnage. As punishment,
she is transformed into a pillar of salt. JONATHAN KIRSCH:
Lot and his daughter sought refuge in the
wilderness, and they looked down on the plain beneath them and
saw Sodom and Gomorrah consumed in hellfire. The city where
they formerly lived and the whole world that they
could see had been destroyed. In that sense, it's a little bit
like a science fiction story. What would you do if you were
the last person alive on Earth? Lot's daughters discuss
it among themselves and say if the
world is destroyed and our father is the last man
on Earth, who will impregnate us? Who will allow us
to have children? NARRATOR: In the Bible, one
of God's first commandments to his people is to be
fruitful and multiply. Now, without men with
whom to satisfy God's law, Lot's daughters turn to
the only man they know and with whom they
can bear children. JONATHAN KIRSCH: Lot's daughters
were bound and determined that they would fulfill
that commandment. The only person at hand who
could perform that function was their own father. And so they got
him drunk on wine and seduced him and
impregnated themselves. NARRATOR: In the Old
Testament, the daughters of Lot are rewarded for following
God's commandment, even though they had
committed an act of incest. CANDIDA MOSS: You don't read
the story of Lot's daughters getting him drunk and
then having sex with him and think, oh, maybe
I should try that. It's not a model
for anyone else. JONATHAN KIRSCH: It's
told rather indifferently, in a neutral way. And we are allowed to conclude
that the original commandment of bearing children was more
important than the fussy priestly law against incest. JEFFREY GEOGHEGAN: Part
of the reason for this is that the Hebrew Bible
covers a span of time beginning in creation,
where you have the command to be fruitful and multiply. So we have a lot of opportunity
for sexual activity. NARRATOR: But if acts of incest,
adultery, and homosexuality could be tolerated during the
time of the Old Testament, then just how and why
did things change? And at what point did the notion
of sex outside of marriage become not only
forbidden, but sinful? For many Bible
scholars, the answer lies not in the teachings of
Jesus or even of his disciples, but in one of the very
first Bible stories, the story of Adam and Eve. The Book of Genesis. In one of the very first
chapters of the Old Testament, God creates mankind in
the form of a male, Adam, and a female, Eve. He places them naked
in the Garden of Eden and allows them to live among
the animals in perfect peace and harmony. He instructs them that they
may eat the fruit of every tree except one, the
tree of knowledge. But after being
tempted by a serpent, Adam and Eve taste
the forbidden fruit. It is then, for the
first time, that they become aware of their
nakedness and feel ashamed. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST:
It's bad enough that they didn't obey God. They disobeyed God,
and so therefore, sin entered the world. PETER T. LANFER: And in
that, we have the downfall of all humanity. It is connected both to this
breaching of the covenant, but also to the sexual
connection between Adam and Eve. NARRATOR: For pre-Christians
the story of Adam and Eve is a cautionary tale
about trust and obedience. But for Christians, the
downfall of Adam and Eve represents one of the
most important concepts of their faith-- the concept of original sin. ROBERT R. CARGILL: The
concept of original sin is a Christian doctrine
that argues that once Adam and Eve disobeyed
God that that sin is now inherent in all mortals. NARRATOR: It is
this original sin that Christians believe
can only be removed through the
sacrament of baptism. But Jews and many Bible
scholars have a very different interpretation of the story. PETER T. LANFER: Many would
regard the wisdom that they had gained in the garden,
this illicit wisdom, as being the knowledge
of their own sexuality. DAVID WOLPE: It's not only
sex, although clearly, that's a big part of it. It's the recognition that
they're frail, that they're mortal, that they will die. And the connection between
sexuality and mortality, between sex and death,
is very powerful in literature, in our
psyche, and in the Bible. DALE MARTIN: Jewish scholars
will often go out of their way to say there's nothing in
this story about original sin. Where did you Christians
get this sort of idea? NARRATOR: Scholars have traced
the idea of original sin to a powerful fourth century
Christian bishop named Augustine of Hippo
Regius, a Roman province in northern Africa. Saint Augustine became
a Christian in his 30s after a life filled with the
pursuit of sexual desires. He even admitted that he
kept a mistress for 13 years and fathered a child with her. JENNIFER WRIGHT-KNUST: From the
perspective of Saint Augustine, sexuality is integral
to original sin. The fact that we lose
ourselves to desire and that we really get hot
and bothered for one another is a sign of original
sin to Augustine, and he finds proof
for that in the fact that Adam and Eve
put on clothes. DALE MARTIN: For
Saint Augustine, yes, the sexual act was important
for the transmission of original sin. NARRATOR: Could the notion
of sex as something sinful be based not on
actual Bible texts, but on the subjective
interpretations of a reformed hedonist
like Saint Augustine? Is the Bible actually more
tolerant on the subject of sex than many would believe? JONATHAN KIRSCH: If you read
the Bible with open eyes, you will be shocked at the
sexuality, the sinfulness. The Bible is a grab
bag of laws and poetry and traditions and
storytelling, and it comes from many
different authors living at many different
times and places and writing for many
different purposes. PETER T. LANFER: The
Bible is not just a book about the relationship
between God and humanity, but it's a book
that's fundamentally about the relationship
of people to one another. DAVID WOLPE: People assume
sometimes that the Bible has one fixed standard of
sexuality and family, but there are a lot
of different models, and they actually
changed over time and over subsequent history. NARRATOR: Perhaps the
various discrepancies and contradictions
contained in the Bible are also the source
of its great strength. They may explain why the Bible
has survived thousands of years after it was written,
for as the faithful look to its pages for
God's instructions on love, sex, and family,
they are also invited to adapt those instructions
to their own life experiences, their judgment,
and their own free will.
