Book review: God and Sex

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by Michael Coogan

★★★★★

If you're hoping for a biblical Harlequin, look elsewhere. This is a heavy little book, even a little overwhelming, as it delves into the sexual inequalities of biblical times. I found the book rather dark in places; an obvious agenda of the author is to extol how grateful we should be to have outgrown the biblical view of women as property. Indeed there are multiple horror stories of how women were treated in the Bible, but is it healthy to overdose on this topic? Coogan touches only briefly on the other side of the coin--the radical change in treatment encouraged by Jesus and his earliest followers. Even Paul, says Coogan, suppressed women, as he argues against current scholarship that many of the suppressive teachings recorded by "Paul" were actually later writings.

But, thankfully, the book isn't entirely about sexual inequality. Some of the topics are more light-hearted. You'll learn about sexual innuendos which shed light on several passages in the Bible; you'll find out whether David and Jonathan were gay lovers (they weren't); you'll learn about the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah (it wasn't sodomy, or even sexual perversity); you'll learn about Yahweh's wife in Israel’s most primitive beliefs, including several passages from the Bible. I highly recommend the book, and I guarantee you'll learn from it.