Notes from the book God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says by Michael Coogan
Section from Song of Solomon 7: 1–5:
Your curved hips are like jewelry, the work of an artisan’s hands.
Sections from Song of Solomon 5:10-17:
His arms are rods of gold, studded with gems from Tarshish.
His loins are ivory plaques, overlaid with lapis lazuli.
... His mouth is most sweet: all of him is desirable. This is my beloved and this is my love, O daughters of Jerusalem.
When I read this I thought about how far a cry it is from Augustinian tradition and these verses' voyeuristic appreciation of the female and male form and erotic desiring by the lover is seen as appreciating God's artistry.
Here is a bullet point summary from Coogan's book on sex and relationships in the Old Testament:
So that is a snapshot view of the unbiased and objective historical biblical scholarship on the subject. In short, you can’t covet your male neighbor’s property, and his property included his house, his wife(s), or his livestock. The Jewish father owned his daughter until the Jewish husband took over ownership of her. The father gave the daughter away in marriage as basically selling his property to the husband for a bride-price (like selling your car today). Adultery was illegal/illicit because it questioned paternity and since the husband owned the wife it was stealing the husband's wife. It would be like someone stealing your car and driving it around and damaging it and thus decreasing it's value. Stealing a car is a crime today, and adultery was a crime in ancient Judaism because it was stealing the man’s property.
The law didn’t prohibit unmarried Jewish women from having sex with married Jewish men or single people having sex. There is no mention of Adam and Eve being “married,” for when Adam “knew” Eve, in that wording it is implied that she became his wife by way of sexual intercourse.
In the New Testament:
Some quotes from God and Sex by Cagon
“Women were inferior, subordinate, and men’s property [in biblical times]. A daughter was given to a prospective husband in return for a bride-price paid to the father” … “until she was married, the daughter was her father’s property” [and then she was the property of the male she was married to. See the Hebrew Commandments where it says you can’t covet your neighbor’s wife along with his other possessions] (pg. 26, God and Sex by Cagon. Words in brackets my own).
“Genesis never reports a marriage ceremony” (pg. 78, God and Sex by Cagon).
In other words, Adam and Eve were not legally married. The Bible has no concept of the modern woman aged 14 to 75 with a career that is unmarried and having sex with her bodyfriend. If a woman was having sex outside of marriage in Bible times it was assumed the woman was a harlot/prostitute in the Old Testament. The woman (regardless of her age) was the property of her father and so if she lost her virginity she lost her value. In other words, having sex made it so she became less valuable to her father as his property. So it's not premarital sex in and of itself that was immoral in the Bible. What is immoral is stealing and devaluing someone's property. What is unholy is Jewish women of the Bible becoming prostitutes in pagan temples and cheating their father’s out of a brideprice by not getting married. A woman was owned by her father or her husband. In today's modern world, these ancient customs are no longer applied, and so just as Christians used to condone slavery but we modern people no longer see slavery as moral, the same thing can be said about issues regarding sex today. Women are no longer considered the property of their husband or father.
According to wikipedia:
“God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says is a book by Professor Michael Coogan, published in 2010. … According to its author, in the Hebrew Bible there is no prohibition of premarital or extramarital sex for men, except for adultery, i.e. sleeping with the wife of another man.[4]
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_and_Sex#cite_note-coogan-4
Footnote [4] above reads:
Questions with Professor Michael D. Coogan The Summit, October 19, 2010: "In ancient Israel, premarital sex by a woman was discouraged because in the patriarchal society of that time, a daughter was her father's property. If she was not a virgin her value--the bride price her father would get from a prospective husband--was diminished. Also, any child born to an unmarried woman would be fatherless--the Biblical term is "orphan"-- and so without either a male protector or any possibility of an inheritance, which was passed from father to son. There is no explicit prohibition in the Old Testament of premarital or extramarital sex by men except for adultery, which meant having sex with another man's wife."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_and_Sex:_What_the_Bible_Really_Says#cite_note-coogan-4
New URL: http://admin2.collegepublisher.com/se/the-summit/opinion/5-questions-with-professor-michael-d-coogan-1.1716380 Archived September 19, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
Q&A, What the Bible Has to Say About Sex By Michael Coogan, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010:
“The idea of refraining from sex for religious reasons was something that was fairly unusual in Judaism in most periods. … There is no unequivocal statement in the Bible, especially the Hebrew Bible, that says that monogamy should be the norm. For the most part, biblical characters we know well, if they could afford it, had many wives. Solomon, the greatest lover of them all — maybe why he's attributed with writing the Song of Songs — had 300 wives. … There's no marriage ceremony described [between Adam and Eve]. Here's another case where the issue of translation comes up. The same Hebrew word can be translated either as woman or wife. So when it says that the man knew his wife, and she got pregnant — that's another euphemism, to know in the biblical sense — it could also be the man knew his woman and she got pregnant.
Source: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027582,00.html, Oct. 2010. Words in bold are my own for emphasis.
From: What the Bible actually says, Sex and the scriptures (Boston Globe, October 3, 2010). Coogan spoke to Ideas from his home in Concord:
IDEAS: What’s the problem with contemporary readers using the Bible as an instruction manual?
COOGAN: Contemporary policy makers, pundits, and preachers use the Bible...as a kind of unquestioned authority....[The] Ten Commandments themselves contain values we no longer accept. They presume the existence of slavery — and if God is the author of the Ten Commandments, then God approves of slavery.
IDEAS: The Ten Commandments don’t say much about sexuality, actually, do they?
COOGAN: All they say is thou shalt not commit adultery....It doesn’t say anything about prostitution, premarital sex, birth control, abortion.
IDEAS: And yet a number of biblical heroes indulge in that particular sin [adultery].
COOGAN: One of the most important characters in the Bible is King David, and David’s affair with Bathsheba...he sleeps with this woman and then arranges to have her husband killed. So David is guilty of not just illicit sex [adultery], but also of murder.
COOGAN: ... in ancient Israel, polygamy, for those who could afford it ...was widespread and was completely accepted.
…
Source: http://www.religiousconsultation.org/NEWS/sex_and_the_scriptures.htm