Friendship, love, sexuality (part ¹ )

The "sacred marriage

Numerous compositions have been associated with the ritual of sacred marriage. We will briefly present a text from the Neo-Assyrian period (^8th c.), because of its relationship with the Song of Songs. It concerns the love affair between Nabû and Tashmetu (Nabû, son of Marduk, god of wisdom and writing, mentioned in Isaiah 46:1; Tashmetu is his consort). As in the Ct, there is a choir, a woman's voice and a man's voice.

According to a document written by a "mayor"(hazannu), there was a ritual in Calah, in the month of Iyyar in spring (Ayyaru) (ABL 65): on the^3rd of the month, Nabû enters the chamber, the sexual act (g/quršu) takes place on the^4th of the month, then Nabû leaves for the temple and then the garden (kiriu) where offerings take place. The god and his charioteer make a tour, then a sacrificial meal takes place at Nabû's temple. All this takes place for the life(anabuluṭ napšate) of the crown prince, Assurbanipal, to whom the letter is addressed. It's apparently a walk from the statue of Nabû, who is supposed to have made love to his parèdre.

Love and sexuality in the Hebrew Bible: the Song of Songs

To underline the importance of this hymn, those who handed it down attributed it to King Solomon, who, in the books of Kings, is presented as the author of an impressive number of poetic texts and a lover of women (1 Kings 5:12: 1005 songs attributed to Solomon). It is plausible to imagine that the Song of Songs was composed in the 4th^or 3rd century BC. Clues pointing to a Hellenistic date are, in 3:11, the crowning of the bridegroom, a Hellenistic custom, and the late Hebrew: Aramaisms and borrowings from Greek (3:9: palanquin) and Persian (4:13: pardes = paradise, garden).

When reading the eight chapters of the Cantique, one wonders whether this is a kind of opera (we're talking about a chorus of young girls) with a certain narrative framework, or whether, on the contrary, we're simply dealing with an anthology of love poems. There is, however, a certain progression to the canticle. Two lovers seek to reunite and live out their love despite a number of obstacles. The poem concludes with a hymn to love, which gives meaning to human life in the face of death. Although the gods do not appear explicitly in the Ct - and Yhwh only in an allusion - there may still be a "divine" dimension in the Ct, as shown in particular (but not explicitly) by the links between the Ct and the love between Nabû and Tashmetu :

The Song even develops a kind of counter-program or response to the forced exit from the garden in Genesis 2-3. The expulsion from the garden had been accompanied by the submission of the woman to the man: "Your desire shall be for your man, and he shall rule over you" (Gen 3:16). The Hebrew word for "desire" (הקושת) is found only three times in the Hebrew Bible. It is found again in Genesis 4:7, a text in which Cain is invited not to let himself be dominated by sinful desire, and then in Song of Songs 7 :

The desire which, in the scene of the exit from the garden, was one-sided, is now balanced. And, as a result, love or erotic desire, probably both, appear in the Song as a remedy against death. The Song transfers the love of the gods to the love of humans, while retaining the religious and even spiritual dimensions of love and sexuality. The hymn may also have sublimated the relationship between Yhwh and the goddesses, well attested for the first part of the first millennium.

Sexual prohibitions

In chapters 18 and 20 of the "Code of Holiness" (Lev 17-26), a piece of legislation composed in Persian times, we find a catalog of prohibitions against illicit sexual relations (verses 6-23). This list is surrounded by general exhortations designed to inculcate the fact that the recipients of this list must distinguish themselves in their actions from the peoples around them (verses 1-5; 24-30). Verses 6 (title) and 7 to 17 form a first collection, all the prohibitions are formulated in the same way and concern members of a clan with whom it is forbidden to have sexual relations. This first part prohibits incest in a broad sense, which is an anthropological constant. What is also at stake is a man's honor: if someone sleeps with women belonging to a man, he is violating that man's honor and integrity. The organization is apparently such that it starts with the recipient's closest relatives.

One taboo is missing, however: the ban on sleeping with one's own daughter!

Emar's hepatoscopic texts, for example, mention liver constellations indicating this case of incest: "If the gallbladder has bitten on its outside, ... the man has had commerce with his own daughter [3]".

Many explanations have been attempted. Does this omission reflect "the powerlessness [of the law] in the face of the transgression of this fundamental taboo", as Sophie Lafont puts it [4], or is it a taboo so obvious that there was no need to put it in writing? One could also put forward the opposite speculation, namely that such a relationship would have been tolerated in a patriarchal society, but this seems less plausible in the context of the Ancient Near East, since such a relationship is forbidden in the Code of Hammurabi and Hittite laws [5]. But perhaps this was a strategic "oversight" designed not to challenge the father's authority over his daughter, while hoping that his economic interest (obtaining the dowry) would lead him to respect his daughter's virginity [6].

The second part of the prohibitions (v. 18-23) is much less homogeneous, and may have been added to complete the sexual prohibitions. These prohibitions concern sexual activities that cannot lead to descent or procreation (menstruating women, married women who cannot identify their offspring, homosexuality and zoophilia); perhaps this is why we find the prohibition of sacrificing one's offspring/seed to Molech. Generally speaking, these prohibitions also touch on the limits of the construction of identity boundaries. It is quite possible that the list in Leviticus 18 predates that of Leviticus 20, which would have clarified and updated the first catalog.

The question of homosexuality in Lev 18 and 20

Let's not forget that the Bible doesn't have a term for "homosexuality", which is a modern concept that classifies men according to their sexual preferences. The Bible, like the POA, does have a clear concept of gender, the distinction between male and female, active and passive. This distinction is also reflected in the two prohibitions of Lev 18 and 20:

You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination.

(Leviticus 18:22).

When a man lies with a man as with a woman, what they have done is an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood on them.

(Leviticus 20:13).

In the second case, the problem lies in the fact of sleeping as "one lies with a woman", i.e. with one of the partners fulfilling the role of a woman. There is a major difference, irrespective of the penalty: in Lv 18, only one of the two partners is mentioned, whereas in Lv 20, both are threatened with capital punishment. It's not clear whether Lv 18 is aimed at the active partner (in which case it could amount to rape) or at the partner who accepts the passive role and thus transgresses the male role. In Lev 20, both are considered punishable. In fact, the very terms of the text indicate that what is at stake in the prohibition is the transgression of gender boundaries: "You shall not lie with a man as you lie with a woman". It's also worth noting that neither masturbation nor female homosexuality are mentioned, which makes sense because neither of them really undermines the traditional role of the male in a patriarchal society. In Lev 18 and 20, therefore, we find an insistence on the distinction between passive and active roles, a distinction central to the conception of sexuality in the Ancient Near East.

Of course, homoerotic relationships were also present in the AOP, as shown by a whole series of texts and representations, especially the epic of Gilgamesh and, in the Bible, the story of David and Jonathan.