Edgar Pearlstein

I read in the newspaper (Sept. 1992) that a Minnesota man brought suit to have the Bible removed from schools, on grounds that its content is "lewd, indecent, and violent". According to the article, he submitted twenty pages of examples.

I don't know what examples he used, or what was the result of his lawsuit, but here are some things I found in "God's Word" (KJV) that might not get into the Sunday sermons, and that many of us would not want our small children to read:

"and Absalom went in unto his father's concubines in the sight of all Israel" (II Sam 16:22). Afterwards, the poor concubines (there were ten of them!) got imprisoned for life (II Sam 20:3).

"and after that thou shalt go in unto her" (Deut 21:13). There are many other places where the graphical phrase "go in" is used.

"He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off..." (Deut 23:1).

"and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets" (Deut 25:11).

"let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love" (Proverbs 5:19).

"My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him" (Song of Solomon 5:4).

"and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun" (II Sam 12:11).

"he shall lie all night betwixt my breasts" (Song of Sol. 1:13).

"And they committed whoredoms in Egypt; ...there were their breasts pressed, and there they bruised the teats of their virginity" (Ez 23:3).

"to every man a damsel or two" (Judges 5:30)

"and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matthew 19:12).

Many sexual crimes in the Bible go unpunished:

Lot had sex with his two daughters. One might even conclude that he had God's help in this, as he was both very old and very drunk at the time. There was no punishment for any of them. On the contrary, both daughters were rewarded with sons who founded nations (Gen 19:33-38). Earlier (Gen 19:8), Lot had offered his daughters to be used by a mob. And Peter said that Lot was a "righteous man" (2Peter 2:8).

A married man who has mistresses is not punished for adultery. Examples: Abraham (I Chron 1:32), Saul (II Sam 3:7), Gideon (Judges 8:31), Reheboam (II Chron 11:21), David (II Sam 5:13,20). But a woman who has sex outside of marriage is severely punished.

"Reuben went and lay with Bilhah his father's concubine: and Israel heard of it" (Gen 35:22). No mention of any punishment.

Punishment for sexual crimes was sometimes meted to innocent people, or even to the victim:

When a man has sex with a slave girl (yes, slavery is OK), he isn't to be heavily punished, but the girl is (Leviticus 19:20).

The penalty for sex with an animal is to be death not only for the man or woman, but for the poor beast as well (Leviticus 20:15,16).

A woman who doesn't scream when she gets raped is to be stoned. (Deuteronomy 22:24).

Bastard children are to be punished, and their descendants, too. (Deuteronomy 23:2, Isaiah 14:21).

King David had the hots for Bathsheba. So he had sex with her and then sent her husband off to die in battle. David's punishment, decreed by God, was that all his wives be publicly raped, and his newborn child would die! (II Samuel 11:2 - 12:14) (The men who did the raping presumably were not punished, since they were following God's orders.)

There are many cases where a married man has mistresses and isn't punished for adultery: Abraham (I Chron 1:32), Reheboam (II Chron 11:21), Saul (II Sam 3:7), Gideon (Judges 8:31), David (II Samuel 5:13,20).

God actually decrees fornication in Deut 28:30, where the punishment for a man's misdeed is that his fiance has sex with another man.

Judah had sex with his daughter-in-law, who was pretending to be a whore. No punishment for either of them. (Genesis 38:13-26)

A man may forcibly take a woman from enemy captives and make her his wife, after trying her out. (Deut 21:11-13)

A man is supposed to have sex with his dead brother's widow. If he refuses, he gets publicly humiliated (Deut 25:5-9). Apparently it doesn't matter whether he is already married.

When David was old and infirm, he was brought a young maiden so that he would "get heat" (I Kings 1:1-2). It didn't work.

Ruth, a young widow, acts the harlot to nab a rich husband, as her mother-in-law Naomi instructs her to do (Ruth 3:3-4). The two women are portrayed as righteous.

Lots of scatological phrases.

scatology n.
1 a a morbid interest in excrement. b a preoccupation with obscene literature, esp. that concerned with the excretory functions. c such literature.
2 the study of fossilized dung.
3 the study of excrement for esp. diagnosis.

scatological adj.
[Greek skor skatos ‘dung' + -logy]

Examples:

"that pisseth against the wall" (I Samuel 25:22, I Kings 14:10)

"that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you" (II Kings 18:27, Isaiah 36:12)

"And thou shalt eat it [as] barley cakes, and thou shalt bake it with dung that cometh out of man, in their sight" (Ez 4:12).

"Then he said unto me, Lo, I have given thee cow's dung for man's dung, and thou shalt prepare thy bread therewith" (Ez 4:15).

"Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces..."(Malachi 2:3).

"and do count them [but] dung, that I may win Christ.."(Philipp 3:8).

There are also plenty of non-sexual violations of the Ten Commandments which go unpunished, in both the old and new testaments (stealing, lying, disrespect for parents).