Author: Richard Owen
Publication: Afternoon Despatch
& Courier
Date: March 31, 2001
The Bible is an adults only book
which is "so full of eroticism" that it should not be given to children,
according to a Roman Catholic theologian.
Don Bruno Maggioni said that he
would tell a conference titled Eroticism in the Old Testament that Scripture
was "full of sex" and violence. He said the keynote of the conference was
the quotation from The Song of Songs - "Kiss me with the kisses' of your
mouth". The conference will be held in the northern city of Mantua under
the auspices of the Italian National Bible Association.
Father Maggioni, a noted biblical
scholar, told Avvenire, the Catholic daily: "The Bible is a work for adults
not just because of its sexual pages but because of the kind of questions
it, raises about mankind." There was nothing scandalous about biblical
sex, however. "The Bible uses the word to 'know', as in 'carnal knowledge',
which implies a profound relationship of communion and knowledge between
man and woman, which, in turn, is a reflection of God's knowing relationship
with mankind."
He said that the Bible's erotic
vocabulary had once been suppressed by priests and confessors "when the
climate -as more chaste, and reading rather crude expressions might be
thought scandalous. But in reality the Bible uses the language of the people
-it is sincere, spontaneous, a language for all people, for all times.
It only mentions sex when it is strictly necessary: when it forms part
of a story - like the episode of Noah's daughters, or for diffusing information
about laws of matters of health and hygiene, or to describe the sins of
some of its characters like David and Bathsheba."
The Book of Samuel describes how
King David had a passionate affair with Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, a Hittite
mercenary in his army, and then put her husband in the front line of battle
so that he would be killed. They married, and their second son was Solomon,
author of the Song of Songs.
Father Maggioini said that sex was
"the very first thin we read in Genesis- we read about Adam and Eve being
naked and full of sin and shame." In other words the threat of disorder
is always "lurking in the joy of sex". He said that the Bible assumed a
natural attitude to sex but warned of the "terrible destructive force which
sex can assume outside the framework of God's laws."
(Richard Owen, in The Times, London)
