Its called southern cooking and it is tasty. BTW, the chicken is freshly slaughtered, the mustard greens and green tomatoes fresh from the garden, and the bacon grease kept in the freezer until spooned into the frying pan. Perhaps you recoil from the buttermilk and cornmeal. 😉

Christianity was derived from the Jewish tradition. Jesus was an expert at the Jewish law, and stated that his teaching was congruent with the Jewish law.

“Think not that I am come to destroy the law [given by Moses], or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.” – Matthew 5:17

..since the Torah has warned against forbidden sexual relations and forbidden foods, while permitting relations with one’s wife and eating meat and wine, the lustful person can find a place to wallow in fornication with his wife or wives and be of “the guzzlers of wine and the gluttons of meat”, and converse at will of all licentious things (since no prohibition against this is specified in the Torah). He can be a hedonist with the Torah’s permission. Therefore, after enumerating the things which it forbids entirely, the Torah says: “Be holy.” Constrain yourself also in that which is permitted. – Nachmanides, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (1194-1270), known by the acronym Ramban, author of commentaries on the Torah, Talmud, and Maimonides’ Sefer HaMitzvot

For one, it prioritized the relationship of the family, the patriarch or matriarch, and prevented “whoredoms”. Meaning, there’s the story of one Roman politician or senator who kept trying to convince his wife to let him do anal sex on her, and he often taunted her by saying the boys he was using was better than her feminine charms.

The resistance of the wives to Rome’s whoredoms was not merely a matter of social or family status. As a personal preference, the matriarchs preferred not being treated as sex slaves or prostitutes. That was not only beneath their status, it also relegated them to being a figure of vice rather than a figure of virtue. Motherhood was prized as a virtue and one of the most valuable things women could do.

The second primary reason is probably abortion or sacrificing children to Bhaal for “population issues” or blessings or “blood magic”. This comes back to MIthraism. Christianity directly opposed blood and human sacrifices, which allowed many women, who converted, to reject these Pagan child sacrifice rites.

All of this is very different from 1st AD Christendom. Due to a number of factors, such as State Christianity, the Council of Chalcedon, and the Islamic purges of the ME, 1st AD Christendom got scattered and transformed beyond recognition. The basic tenets were the same, but the original hierarchy of 12 disciples was not continued. Many historical scholars talk about Jesus of Nazareth and how the Romans “doctored” the Bible, which is basically the same story.

What was left of Christendom was a shadow of itself after 1000 years, yet that shadow was mightier than the Roman culture and military in the end. Both the Western Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire, before and after the split, became Christian.

The Christian or rather the Roman Catholic push against homosexuality was more directly related to the excesses of Rome. Specifically Caligula and the Senators. While many religions and customs have a thing about sexual purity and protecting men from women, and women from men, that homosexuality thing was a big reaction to the Greeks and the Romans.

Remember the Spartans? After the Battle of Thermopylae, when the Romans conquered Greece, the Spartans became a decadent people, a luxury paradise of naked women gymnasts, designed to please Roman senators and upper class. The Greeks had an interesting view of marriage and love. True love, was said to be only between men, as men were equals in intellect and education. Women were for the creation of families and heirs. This, of course, was spread by Alexander to Baktria or Afghanistan. And that has morphed into current day “playing with boys” culture with Islam.

Traditional societies had men guarding the men, women guarding the women.

That’s why they often didn’t allow non family related males and females together, alone. Before the law could be engaged, the people at the grassroots were already engaged. Think global, act local.

The law was put into place because humans would otherwise start clan wars up about this issue.

Nick – I don’t think “We all know that we’re made for something more than sexual degradation, even when we seek it out.” A lot of people don’t, or if they do, at least can’t control themselves. Years ago, on another list, in a debate on religion vs. secularism, somebody asked me, “Why should God care about adultery?” My answer was, “Go to the general fiction section of your local public library. Close your eyes, and pull ten books pf the shelves at random. At least five of them will be about how illicit sex messes up people’s lives. That’s why God cares about adultery.” There are just a lot of people who either don’t care about messing up people’s (including their own) lives, In fact, a lot of people think it’s a good idea — as Woody Allen once said to Tony Roberts in a movie, “Without alcohol and adultery, there would be no art.”

T – don’t know about other ancient cultures, but rape is certainly discussed in the Torah. Rape is a death penalty offense, although there are some significant differences between our view and their view.

First of all, rape of a married or betrothed women is treated completely differently from rape of a single women. If a betrothed woman is raped in a city, the crime is considered to be adultery (which is a death penalty offense, Duet. 22-22), and both rapist and victim are put to death, because it is assumed that in a city, she would have cried for help and would have been saved. If it happens in the country, however, it is rape and only the rapist dies, as even if she cried for help, there was no one to save her. (Deut. 22:23-27.)

With a single (unbetrothed) virgin, the crime is categorized as “seduction,” rather than rape. (This was a crime, at least in the US and the UK, until about 100-150 years ago.) The man is forced to pay the bride-price and marry the woman, without the possibility of divorce. If the woman’s father declines to let his daughter marry the seducer, he has to pay the bride-price anyway.

Obviously, this is based on a much different society, one in which everybody knows everybody, and if a woman screams for help, everyone would come running.

I also suspect, without any substantive authority whatsoever, that the difference in treatment between betrothed/married women and unbetrothed women has to do with preventing what we see today, unrestrained shtupping among horny young people, and also “he-said-she-said” situations.

Further, have you noticed that one of the hallmarks of most religions is to cause us to separate from the carnal, not just in the sexual sense but in the fundamental animalistic sense. Not only does Judeo-Christianity stand against unbridles sex, but also against unbridled eating, unbridled covetousness (envy, hatred), and unbridled relaxation (sloth). I’m not so familiar with Buddhism, but I believe that it, too fits this pattern.

It’s like Mr. Miyagi said to Daniel-san: “[Balance] not just karate only. Lesson for whole life. Whole life have a balance. Everything be better.”

The problem with this interpretation is that it employs a 20th/21st century prism. If slaves are property and cannot give consent, then they cannot deny consent, so our contemporary concept of rape does not exist in that argument.

I do not know whether there was any definition or consideration of what we would call rape in the ancient world, but the very use of the term here is the result of modern thinking. The only equivalent I can come up with quickly is the decision by Truman to drop the atomic bomb. If using the premise of today, one might offer an argument that it was the wrong decision, but it was a decision made within the culture, sensibilities and information available in 1945, so such arguments tend to be specious. Likewise the use of the term “rape” in ancient culture.

“Actually, if you study the pre-Christian “Old Testament,” this prohibition against licentiousness predated Christianity and was a Jewish thing. Actually, if you study the pre-Christian “Old Testament,” this prohibition against licentiousness predated Christianity and was a Jewish thing. It wasn’t mere prudishness, . . . but that unbridled sex is not good.” [Neo @ 12:05]

Thus the 7th and 10th Commandments: “Thou shalt not commit adultery;” “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

Clearly these speak not only to unbridled sex, but primarily to familial relationships.

Chesterton said that the first millennium after the fall of Rome was needed to wash away the Greek and Roman excess from our relationship to sex and nature. It was only after we had reoriented ourselves that we could approach the subjects again in art. The Christian message, properly, isn’t that sex is wrong, but that it’s potentially dangerous. As Neo said, it’s wrong when it’s unbridled.

We might need to set aside sexuality for a few hundred years again.

T, Steve57:

Actually, if you study the pre-Christian “Old Testament,” this prohibition against licentiousness predated Christianity and was a Jewish thing. It wasn’t mere prudishness, because Judaism has no concept of original sin and the idea is that sex itself is good but that unbridled sex is not good. ”

Well, yes and whoring after strange gods involved physical whoring too. I don’t want to go into the practices of pagan prostitutes because it is lunch time and makes me sick anytime of day nonetheless.