Rafael Neis, “Visual Eros,” chapter 4, [proofs]

Journal of the History of Sexuality, 1994

HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies, 2017

The article examines the inherently dialectical view of sexuality reflected in Babylonian rabbinic culture, which differentiates the sexual act, consisting of the indivisible elements of procreation and sexual gratification, from notions of sexual desire. On the one hand, the Babylonian Talmud accentuates the relative role of both male and female sexual gratification in the sexual act, but, on the other hand, it expresses a pessimistic view of the sexual urge, which is reified as part and parcel of the demonic realm. This dialectical perception is resolved in Babylonian rabbinic culture through a paradoxical mechanism that seeks to extinguish sexual desire via marital sex. The article situates different aspects of this distinctive construction of sexual desire in the context of contemporaneous Christian and Zoroastrian views. First, the Babylonian rabbinic mechanism is contextualized with the Pauline view of marital sex as a therapy for those " aflame with passion " (1 Cor 7:9) and its reception in patristic literature. Second, the Babylonian rabbinic dialectic of sex and desire is viewed in the light of a similar bifurcated perception evident in the Pahlavi tradition: while Zoroastrianism advocated full-fledged marital relationships from its very inception, an important strand in the Pahlavi tradition expresses an ambiguous view of sexual desire, which is linked in various ways to the demonic sphere.

Horizons, 2011

2002

Religious discourse and imagery may proscribe transformative power centers away from Church proscriptions against sex. By clearly demonstrating that religious images can be found erotic (May, 1982, Tyrrell, 1989) this study is a preliminary examination towards an ethic based on the Diasporic voices of Roman Catholic women in eastern Washington about sexual feelings. Diasporic groups are the same stereotypes not imaged on the artist's traditional rendition of a white male crucifix. Both male and female religious have been documented reporting sexual feelings towards the crucifix during prayer (May, 1982, Tyrrell, 1989). With the current media frenzy on male priests and sex (Barry, 2002), as a group, male priests are difficult to recruit and study for sexual feelings. This study of Roman Catholic women in a weekly eastern Washington bible group substitutes for an explanation of the sexual feelings experienced by priests, as reported by May and Tyrrell (May, 1982, and Tyrrell, 1989), and functions as a preliminary study of parishioner worship of the priestly figure. This study has been informed by symbolic constructionism (Denzin, 1992, Blair and Michel, 1999), critical studies on the mechanisms of art as media reproducing systems of gender and racial oppression through eroticisation of the white male image (Martin, iv Krizek, Nakayama & Bradford, 1999, Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000), the crucifix as the symbol maintaining division between Muslims and Christians (Henneberger, 2001), and by the admitted feelings of sexual arousal among religious Roman Catholic men and women during worship of the crucifix (May, 1982, Tyrrell, 1989). The discussion then explores the manifestation of the erotic in a phallus shaped design in front of an eastern Washington Roman Catholic university. Lastly, to address the architect's design and artist's depiction of the crucifix as possibly defamatory regarding the popularly accepted historical memory of Jesus, Washington state criminal code 9.58.010 prohibiting defamation of the deceased historical figure in public memory is discussed as providing possible legal recourse for Roman Catholic priests and others who claim the historical memory of Jesus. A proposal to pursue damages resulting from defamation of the historical Jesus by artists and designers could provide financial security for religious communities, particularly priests, seeing them through current and future media and legal focus on Roman Catholic sex abuse cases (Goodstein and Stanley, 2002, Liptak, 2002). v Dedication This is dedicated to Sandra Beckenbach, my friend for many years in Germa ny who never labeled me disabled or foreigner, and loved me for being fully human; Gigliola Maria Addini-Stein, my mother who never questioned my male-like femininity, and loved me for being fully human; to Eileen Thomas, the president for the Eastern Washington National Association of American Colored Persons who, while I was in jail, never asked me what color I am nor why I could not afford a private attorney, and recognized me as fully human; and to Ornella Orlandi who recognized her 11 year old Muslim student as fully human, and removed the crucifix from her Italian classroom. Ornella, Eileen, Gigliola, and Sandra helped me to speak out angrily and imposingly in demanding Justice for those in jail, any jail, whether it be academic, punitive, historical, cultural, or religious in demanding Justice against those who labeled you and me "disabled"

richardsorensen.com, 2011

This paper is a study of how various religious factors have corrupted sexuality and eroticism, and turned them from highness and nobility into disrepute. The goal of this article is to demonstrate that Christianity (as directed by Biblical teaching) and eroticism (in its proper context) fit very well together, and are a key component on which marriages and societies can be constructed.

The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture: Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity, 2013

The present chapter traces how the rabbis in the tractate of Hagigah developed the biblical commands concerning cultic pilgrimage into laws for a bygone Jerusalem temple pilgrimage to see and be seen by God. Our investigation points to how the desire for, and loss of, the sight of God’s face punctuates and centers the Babylonian Talmud tractate of Hagigah. The biblical commandment to "see the face of God three times a year" allowed the rabbis to conjure forms and narratives of pilgrimage in an age of Greek and Roman "visual piety" but without the Jerusalem temple. The chapter shows how in varying ways earlier and later rabbis construct a pilgrimage of reciprocal vision (in which pilgrim and god mutually behold and are beheld), particularly in the Babylonian Talmud which emphasizes "homovisuality."

Gender <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&amp;"/> History, 1997

Eunuchs were a regular part of the gendered world of Mediterranean antiquity. Most eunuchs were castrated involuntarily, many as slaves and prisoners of war. This paper examines a different class of eunuch, the eunuch priest. This was a free man who, as a mature male, castrated himself voluntarily by removing his testicles with a sharp object, an act undertaken as a token of his dedication to the deity he served. 1 All of the eunuch priests known from ancient Mediterranean society were attendants on so-called Oriental divinities, deities whose cults originated in western Asia. Of these, the most prominent one is the Great Mother Goddess, known in Greece and Rome as Cybele, whose priests will form the principal subject of this paper. The Great Mother was originally a deity of Phrygia, a region of central Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Evidence for her worship first appears in the early first millennium BCE, and she remained a conspicuous figure in the religious life of Mediterranean antiquity until the dominance of Christianity in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Despite her Phrygian origins and her continuing identification as a Phrygian deity, the Great Mother is best known through her cult centers in the Greek world and in the city of Rome. In the Greek world she was addressed as Meter, the Mother, and her civic shrines could be found in several Greek cities. In the city of Rome the Great Mother, the Roman Magna Mater, gained even more public visibility, as she acquired the role of a patriotic, protective divinity, worshipped at an important temple in the very heart of the city. The ubiquity and public presence of the Mother Goddess are marks of a deity who enjoyed a great deal of dignity and respect in Mediterranean antiquity. Yet this circumstance forms a sharp contrast to the position of her eunuch priests, whose asexual condition caused them to be viewed with disgust and loathing outside the goddess's Phrygian homeland. In some cases the eunuch priest was described as a man who had deliberately made himself into a woman, taking on all of the negative implications that were attached to a woman's body in antiquity. In other cases the eunuch was addressed as a being who was a grade below a woman, as one 'neither man nor woman', whose appearance and manners incorporated the most disagreeable aspects of both male and female.

Sexual Issues played a significant role in Judaism’s engagement with its Greco-Roman world. This paper will examine that engagement in the Hellenistic Greco-Roman era to the end of the first century CE. In part sexual issues were a key element of demarcation between Jews and the wider community, alongside such matters as circumcision, food laws, sabbath keeping and idolatry. Jewish writers, such as Philo of Alexandria, make much of the alleged sexual profligacy of their Gentile contemporaries, not least in association with wild drunken parties, same-sex relations and pederasty. Jews, including the emerging Christian movement, claimed the moral high ground. In part, however, matters of sexuality were also areas where intercultural influence is evident, such as in the shift in Jewish tradition from polygyny to monogyny, but also in the way Jewish and Christian writers adapted the suspicion and sometimes rejection of passions characteristic of some popular philosophies of their day, se...