My bathroom calendar's word of the day today is "onanism" and, while I knew that it means masturbation and that its etymology is based on some guy in the Bible named Onan, I got to wondering what on earth the Bible was doing discussing masturbation. A little research on Wikipedia reveals that, perhaps predictably, the Bible was not actually offering useful practical advice for teenage boys, but the usual mish-mash of anachronistic mixed messages.
It turns out that Onan was the younger brother of Er, and second son of Judah (patriach of the land of Judea, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel). When Er was summarily killed by God because "he was wicked in the sight of the Lord", as happens a lot in the Bible, father Judah called on Onan to fulfill his duty by taking his older brother's place with his wife, Tamar, and impregnating her in order to carry on the family line (this is sometimes referred to as a "levirate marriage", and yet another reason why we should not be taking the Bible seriously in the 21st Century).
It seems like Onan was nearly as outraged as we might be with this idea (and as Tamar probably was too, had anyone bothered to ask her). But, unwilling to give up the chance of a good screw, he went along with that part of the plan at least. However, for reasons that are not really clear (but may be something to do with the fact that any child of such a union would be considered his brother Er's under this kind of weird levirate marriage), he decided to withdraw before orgasm and, in that inimitable Biblical phrase, "spilled his seed on the ground".
Thereupon, God did his smiting thing again and Onan was toast, leaving somewhat vague exactly what it was Onan did that was evil: whether it was the having sex with his sister-in-law (probably not, that kind of thing happens all the time in the wonderful world of the Bible), the disobeying of his psychotic father and the contravention of the bizarre rules of levirate marriages (that was probably the lesson that ancient Jews would have taken away, although smiting still seems a little harsh), or the spilling of the seed and the criminal "wasting" of Onan's procreative juices.
This latter view was the one that the early Christian commentators decided was the best interpretation to suit their own prurient agenda. The Catholic church went on to use the story as a cautionary tale against any kind of contracepted or non-procreational sex (e.g. coitus interruptus, anal sex, whips and bondage), and the Protestants of the 16th and 17th Century later extended this to include masturbation. Well, why wouldn't they?
So, as you can see, the connection between Onan and masturbation is tenuous at best, but that is just what onanisn came to mean when it was introduced into the English language in the Protestant-dominated early 18th Century. What it really calls for, though, based on the original story, is for us to schtup our brother's wife if he doesn't get around to it himself - more invaluable moral guidance for the modern age from the good old Bible.
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