ju'iblex

my guess was the overwhelming need not to be Roman or Greek, but i imagine it can be traced much further back.

As for the position of women after husband or father died, i think the uncle or nearest male relative took over, but im not entirely sure.

Seeker196

St. Paul was anti-sex because he was anti-'this world'.

And what is more of 'this world' than sex?

Paul was following a tradtion of Idealism in Classical thought that scorned fleshly pleasures (see Plato, examples in the Republic abound where Plato comes down hard on worldly 'eros' pleasures).

Look at Greek writings about eros/logos.

Eros, feminine, emotional, sex, is always inferior to
Logos mental, logical, spiritual

Christianity became anti-sex because Paul introduced an exaggerated version of the pre-existing Greek ideas about Eros/Logos into an already patriarchal religion.

And don't believe that Judaism was that much better, modern apologism aside. The ancient Israelites considered women and children to be in the same group as cows and chickens=property.

Captain Pedantic

There's a book called Anatomy Of Desire by Simon Andrea, which explains this nicely. But, to summarise:

Pre-Christianity, it was considered necessary for people (men) to have as many children as possible (God did apparenly say "Go forth and multiply"). So the infertile and the celibate were looked down on as being inferior in the eyes of God. But Jesus, when he came along, claimed that the infertile and celibate were just as worthy as any other person.

When St. Paul got hold of this information, he seemed to get it twisted - so that he came to the conclusion that the celibate were much more worthy in the eyes of God. And so the whole "sex-is-dirty" movement evolved from the somewhat confused ideas of St. Paul.

There is probably more to it than that, but this is what the book says. It's an interesting read, if you can find it.

IvanK

Second.

Christians in general aren't anti-sex; just anti-sex outside of religiously sanctioned pairings. Exercise that kind of control over one of humanity's strongest urges -- "fuck the way we tell you to fuck or go to Hell forever" -- and you've got 'em, literally, by the short and curly hairs.

DMB

There is a fascinating book on this topic by a catholic theologian, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, called Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church. It covers the whole story from the beginnings of xianity.

I believe she had her licence to teach in a catholic university revoked by the present pope, though I'm not sure if it was because of this book or for something else that he didn't like.

Toto

<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385265271/internetinfidelsA" target="_blank">Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven: Women, Sexuality and the Catholic Church</a>