Sexuality, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Bible and Ethics (original) (raw)

The topic of "sexuality" does not itself appear explicitly in the Bible. While the Bible teems with stories, laws, poetry, and prophecy concerning aspects of sexuality, the discourses that make sexuality an important topic today developed long after the close of the canon. This does not, however, differentiate sexuality from other more recent concepts such as "inclusiveness" or "democracy," in that it remains possible to consider biblical sexuality as a source and guide for contemporary sexual ethics. With as ample a supply of directly relevant commandments, narratives, and images as the Bible provides, and with reasonable inference from related exempla, the Bible's