Toto

The classic work on this topic is Uta Ranke-Heineman's Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Ranke-Heinemann argued that Jesus must have been married, because that was the expected state for a Jewish man, and someone would have mentioned it if he had not been. She argued that Jewish culture was sex positive (within marriage) but that early Christians adopted gnostic attitudes of rejection of all pleasure and worldly things.

Consider the Catholic Church's opposition to "concupiscence" which seems to include any marital sex if someone enjoys it too much:

St. Augustine wrote I'm not sure that any of this makes any more sense than the doctrine of the Trinity.

stephan huller

One can make a compelling case that women have always been attracted to Catholicism to help avoid having sex with men and vice versa. I am not sure that women in pagan antiquity had that right before the advent of Christianity. Come to think of it are there examples of men being allowed not to marry women before Christianity? Socrates was married despite being ugly and gay. It is an interesting question.

My gut sense is that men and women originally 'came to Christ' to (a) avoid having sex with the opposite sex and (b) to challenge the sexual mores of the time. Sexuality is a fundamental issue within earliest Christianity, more important to understand the faith than the question of whether Jesus was the son of David or was the awaited messiah of the Jews.

sotto voce

Compelling, eh. What would have been particularly compelling would have been the kicking that the hapless emperor would have got from the Senate had the imperial population decreased, slowing the stream of luxuries into patrician villas. "Horror! Nothing like a damn good beating to get dopey ideas like being married to oneself out of one's system." The purpose of papist prohibition of contraception has always been supposed (since the dawn of the modern era, when comment is actually permitted, stephan) to have been to ensure that constant supply of cheap 'slave' labour; as was the prohibition of suicide, on pain of eternal suffering. The Black Death made labour far more expensive because there were far fewer to labour.

It was true, though, that in one period the ravages of 'barbarians' and other interruptions in the food supply made celibacy somewhat celebrated, and may well have made the cult of 'Mary' (or rather, Isis) as perpetual virgin more intense. What propelled those northern tribes was climatic change, that affected Europe, too, and this was the true cause of monasticism, not religion at all. It was when the European climate improved that there grew general agreement that monasticism was more hindrance than help, that land as well as labour were needed for both improving agriculture and nascent capitalism.

What was commonly noted in the not-so-distant past was the special genius of the RCC hierarchy for making the working class prolific, but also feel guilt for their productivity! This was part of the sinister psychological conditioning of Catholics that continued as a medieval overhang, but which has now been pretty well terminated by clerical abuse.

Today, the proportion of Catholics who officially lead celibate lives is tiny, so there is not even empirical evidence of this hypothesis about always avoiding sex. There is not a little rumour about wife-swopping among middle-class Catholics in the USA, so it seems as though this hypothesis may be actually inversion of reality that could meet ironic laughter from Catholics! "That's what you know!"

sotto voce

Catholicism makes sense only when there's a soldier at your shoulder.

stephan huller

And Clement's interpretation is almost beside the point. The question still is whether the Marcionites would have objected to two old people getting it on. I am not sure they would have.

stephan huller

The Jewish POV would be interesting too. As Toto notes Abraham and Sarah were obviously 'doing it' long after it would have been reasonable for them to have children. That makes Clement's interpretation all the more perplexing. Why couldn't two old people get married based upon 'faith' that they 'could' produce children? Surely, if you believe the Bible it happened before. Look also at Benyamim (Benjamin). His name means 'son of old age' according to the Samaritans based on the age of his mother who died during delivery. I don't understand this interpretation at all. I have trouble believing that the section was actually written by Clement (as with some passages in the surviving literature attributed to him).

sotto voce

Now that's almost as funny as the Marcionite quip. Ask four Jews a question, get five answers; according to Jews, I hasten to add.

They could. Whether they would get them is another question.

The question that is on topic— not what has every appearance of a Jesuit trainee desperately trying to pass his exams— is whether two old 'uns can get married without that prospect. And that, in the Christian context, is for such people themselves to answer, and not any busybody. Millions of people were lost in WW2 establishing that much.

ideologyhunter

I'm too bored to look it up, but didn't Abraham's wife drop a kid when she was, like, 900 years old, when you'd assume her lady parts needed new brake linings? And isn't that counted as a miracle in the OT?
(Oops. She was just 90, a mere spring blossom. I can't even imagine what the breast feeding was like -- the kid must have thought that milk comes out of old party balloons.)

sotto voce

Yes, it was counted a miracle, and is totally without relevance to this thread. But it's not the only thing that's so!


And it's not the last, is it? :constern01:

Why does it not occur that the miracle extended to the milk supply?

Sheshbazzar

Its irrelvant to this thread that Abe and Sarah were still getting it on at the age of 90?
So early Christians were supposed to remain ignorant of what The Scriptures said?

Oh now I get it, according to Christians, Abe and Sarah didn't have any sex.
It was another one of them thar miraculous 'Immaculate Conceptions' where Jawhovi done plants his own seed in the woman.
'Splains why the old boy had to show up in person thar on the plains of Mamre, and have his angels take 'ol Abe out for a stroll.
...while meanwhile back at the tent....:devil1:

"Is any thing too hard for Jawhovi?" Apparently it was hard enough


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