Quote: (02-26-2016 01:51 AM)Prophet Wrote:
Samseau is correct that Porneia has a wide range of semantic meaning, including, as he puts it in his list of sexual sins for men, "1. Using whores (this includes internet porn!)".
His mistake is that the word "whores" has a broader semantic meaning. There are whores who charge, and whores that don't. That money or a gift is exchanged isn't central to what makes the act immoral.
The contention you raise has been central to the entire debate of this thread, and it was first raised Scorpion on page 1. It does not seem the quotes you have provided prove your contention.
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To illustrate the point, I will provide a lengthy quotation from Phyllis Bird's article “Prostitution in the Social World and the Religious Rhetoric of Ancient Israel,” found in Faraone and McClure's "Prostitutes and Courtesans in the Ancient World.":
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Priestly legislation specifies in Leviticus 21:7 that a priest may not marry a prostitute (literally, "a woman [who is a] zonah and defiled" [ishshah zonah wachalalah], ie, "a woman defiled by prostitution/fornication") or "a woman divorced from her husband" [ishshah gerushah me'ishah]. This text makes it clear by the association with the divorcée and by the interpretive addition of "defiled" that the prostitute is excluded as a marriage partner primarily on the basis of having had sexual relations with other men, but secondarily because her promiscuous relations are seen as "defiling" and thus a threat to the priest's sanctity.
The part you quote is basically saying, "You can't turn a 'ho into a housewife." But these are rules for marriage, not for sex in general. Keep in mind this same OT sees nothing wrong with married men having concubines either.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/dictionary/concubine/
The OT is often downplayed because of the Apostle Paul's teachings, but I do not think that is correctly understanding Paul. The OT should be taken deadly seriously but we should understand the NT is there to clarify and show that the intent is what counts in the OT, not the letter of the laws. We should try to understand why the laws were written and apply those same intentions to our everyday life, and not worry about following it pedantically like the Pharisee.
The first quote from Leviticus are rules concerning marriage. It does not talk about the rules concerning men via consensual sex outside marriage.
You are correct in that Leviticus provides evidence of sex outside of marriage being sinful for women, but I have never denied this. Here is Lev 21:7 with the YLT:
"A woman, a harlot, or polluted, they do not take, and a woman cast out from her husband they do not take, for he [is] holy to his God;"
You see three classes of sinful women here; whores (harlot), sluts (polluted), and divorced. It is not stated to what degree they are sinful or unlawful of the 10 commandments.
Notice, it does not list widows which could presumably be lawful for a Levitical priest to marry. This would mean sex in itself is not polluting if it is lawfully done within marriage for a woman.
This does not support the conclusion of the book you quoted :
"primarily on the basis of having had sexual relations with other men, but secondarily because her promiscuous relations are seen as 'defiling'"
It cannot be the case that having had sexual relations is the primary basis for defilement, because that Leviticus passage did not include widows as defiled, who presumably have had sex with their husbands.
Therefore, the secondary reason it lists, of promiscuity, is the only thing that makes sense as the primary reason for defilement, not merely sex in itself.
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A prostitute is someone who is habitually, essentially unchaste.
Does not follow. A prostitute defiles herself twice as a promiscuous woman, and as a whore. It is not merely unchastity, as seen with your own Leviticus passages provided; there is a distinction between the polluted and the whore, even if both classes have similarities.
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The same idea is found in two other texts relating to female members of a priest's family, both of which use verbal forms to describe the defiling activity. In Amos 7:17, the prophet proclaims the fate of the priest of the royal sanctuary at Bethel by decreeing loss of land and offspring, but also loss of sanctity: "Your wife shall <i>fornicate/be a prostitute [tizneh] in the city...and you yourself shall die in an unclean land." Here the simple verb, "to fornicate/engage in promiscuous sex" is used, but the specification of the city as the place of the activity suggests that it is the prostitute's trade that is more narrowly intended. Nevertheless, the emphasis is not on the profession or the figure of the prostitute, but just on the idea of engaging in promiscuous and defiling sexual activity.
Does not follow. It clearly says the wife will become a whore, not merely a slut. If it wanted to refer to a mere slut it would have called her an adulterer.
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In Leviticus 21:9 it is the priest's daughter that presents the threat of defilement. The connection with the father is explicit: "when the daughter of a priest defiles herself by fornicating [techel liznot], it is her father that she defiles" (et abiha hi me-challelet"). The punishment: "she shall be burned with fire."
The word fornicating means whoring. Made clear by the literal translation, Lev 21:9 in the YLT:
"9 `And a daughter of any priest when she polluteth herself by going a-whoring -- her father she is polluting; with fire she is burnt."
It's whoring.
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The use of common language to describe both casual and professional sexual activity outside marriage is illustrated dramatically by the response of Simeon and Levi to the rape of their sister Dinah in Genesis 34. In answer to their father's reprimand for their violent revenge against the city of the offender who had "defiled" ["tame"] their sister (vv. 13,27), they reply: "Should he treat [literally, "make"] our sister as a zonah?" ("hakezonah ya'seh et achotenu" [v.31]). Even though she was raped, the unmarried daughter is put into the category of the prostitute, the woman who offers sex to other men. Consent plays no role; the only relevant point is that an unmarried woman is involved in a sexual act.
Note that these are also without cultic associations.
Just because the sons are saying the sister was reduced to the same thing as a whore because of her rape, it does not follow that a woman who has sex outside of marriage is the same thing as a whore, nor would it follow that a man who has sex with a promiscuous woman is raping her. She was raped and therefore lost her dignity, just as a whore has no dignity and no man would ever care if a whore was raped. That is why her brothers wanted to restore her honor by killing her rapists.
The author you quote tries to commit a false equivocation by claiming that a woman who is raped is as low as a whore, merely on the basis of having had sex outside of marriage while completely ignoring the lack of consent issue that being raped presents.
How can the author jump to conclusions like this? How can he say it was merely sex outside of marriage that reduced the woman's status, and not having sex without consent, i.e.
rape? He needs to show the lack of consent wasn't the reason for her having been reduced to a whore if he wants to prove that it was merely sex outside of marriage.
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Sex with a prostitute is the same as sex with a fornicator: sexual use of a dishonored woman (ie not a virgin).
You're not using the word fornication correctly, nor does the conclusion follow that a prostitute is any woman who is merely a polluted woman. None of the quotes above prove this point.
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The central defilement is in the sex outside of marriage -- for both the man and the woman.
Sorry, does not follow from the passages above. It only supports women who are defiled, not men. And it gives different levels of defilement, with a whore being as low as a woman who is raped. A mere slut is not described in such a manner.
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Do you honestly think that the NT-era man giving his whore an old loaf of bread after a bang is what makes it wrong according to the Scriptures? If so, why wouldn't God simply advise women not to charge for it and provide men and women with an alternative sexual outlet?
By NT logic, the man should give the woman her bread without having her give up sex for it (charity), and find himself a nice virgin to marry (who were plentiful in those days). Meanwhile, women who are non-virgins are basically doomed anyways (since few man wanted a non-virgin back then) so for them to find a relationship with any man as a concubine or even a lover would seem to be better than merely begging all day.
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Answer: Because he has already provided an alternative (marriage!).
Do you not see your own contradiction? Why would anyone want to marry a non-virgin? You just quoted Leviticus which clearly states not to marry polluted women (i.e. non-virgin). However, Leviticus was for Jewish priests, so perhaps for the random Jewish layman he could still find value in marrying a non-virginal woman off the streets. And for a woman who was a whore, she would almost certainly never find a man to marry her, which meant a lifetime of poverty and begging if she stopped her whoring. Many whores simply became beggars at Christian churches who begged for mercy as Christ provided mercy to the whores in the Gospel.
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See 1 Corinthians 7:2 ("But since [porneia] is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.") and 1 Corinthians 7:9 (But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion) to be more than enough to demonstrate that sex within marriage is God's will for Christian men and women. Paul presents marriage here as the alternative solution to the temptations of easy sex with dishonored women.
Marriage is the ideal, and whores are listed as sinful, but again you haven't shown that polluted women are off-limits for men. Which was the original contention of this thread in the first place.
Thanks for your time and effort to try and show my errors though. I appreciate it and by no means am I completely decided on this issue. But it is clear there is way more nuance on this subject within the Bible than most people realize. Furthermore, it is shocking that no one can easily show premarital sex with non-virginal non-whores is anymore sinful for men than to indulge in food, and I have brought up this issue to priests and Orthodox canon lawyers. More on that next.