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The Song of Solomon, in fact, represents one of the saner perspectives of sex in the Bible. Indeed, despite the licentiousness by biblical heroes, so neurotic is the attitude towards sex that when Onan spills "his seed," God strikes him dead, a tale lampooned in the "Monty Python" song: "Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate." Apparently, Onan's sperm was more valuable than Onan himself. So obsessed with the spilling of the seed is YHWH that it is prescribed that "no man who has had a nocturnal emission shall enter the sanctuary at all until three days have elapsed. He shall wash his garments and bathe on the first day . . ." Thus, "wet dreams" constitute a transgression against the Lord.

The Phallic Cult

One rather bizarre biblical perspective, also held by preHebraic cultures, is "the Lord's" peculiar obsession with the foreskin, which is viewed as the most important token of the covenant between "him" and "his chosen." In fact, the word "circumcision" is used nearly 100 times in the Bible, and one must wonder at this obsession, as well as at the idea that either the Lord so screwed up in creating man that man needs to fix his handiwork, or the Lord finds this piece of flesh so significant as to base his most solemn vows upon it, thus revealing a homoerotic fetish. So obsessed are the biblical peoples with the foreskin that in exchange for the hand of his daughter, Saul demands the foreskins of 100 dead Philistines from David, who enthusiastically indulges the request by bringing Saul 200 foreskins.

The act of circumcision is all the more strange when its origins are not made clear. Among other reasons, including purportedly serving to make men more docile and socially acceptable, circumcision was said to be done in imitation of the female's menstrual blood, "being performed on boys at the age when girls first `bled,' and even being described among some peoples as `man's menstruation. '6 Another ritual used to create such "femaleness" was castration, necessary for a man to "assume religious authority among the priestesses of the Goddess." As Walker explains, "All mythologies suggest that, before men understood their reproductive role, they tried to `make women' of themselves in the hope of achieving womanlike fertility."7 This phenomenon was widespread enough among the Semites to warrant address by "the Lord," as was penile amputation, such that those who had been thus mutilated, evidently either naturally or artificially, were to be excluded from God's elect: "He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord" (Deut. 23: 1). Yet, at Isaiah 56:4-5, the "infallible" Lord again contradicts himself and says that eunuchs who keep his sabbath and hold fast his covenant will be given a "monument and a name better than sons and daughters ... an everlasting name which shall not be cut off."

Obviously, all this biblical talk about circumcision, foreskins and testicles, as well as "members," "loins," "thighs," "stones," "secret parts" and "private parts," is a reflection of the true nature of the patriarchal religions. As Potter says, circumcision is, in fact, "a barbaric custom of primitive phallic religion."8 He also states:

There were undoubtedly phallic elements in Yahwehism up to the time of the prophets and later, some of which were adopted from Canaanite religion and some of which were original in it, but the central meaning which the name Yahweh had for Moses was evidently something like The Living God of Life. That included naturally a certain sponsorship of sexual relations, as numerous Old Testament passages indicate.9

Indeed, within the patriarchal religions the phallus has been an object of worship, although this fact has been hidden for a variety of reasons, not the least of which are its basic homosexual or homoerotic implications. In fact, the male genitals were so sacred to the Israelites that if, in defense of her husband, a woman grabbed the "private parts" of his enemy,