I appreciate the detailed response.
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So here’s the deal, Hodgie, my comrade. We have to look at what was condemned in the Old Testament and draw logical inferences as to the meaning of the word(s).
We DO know idolatry IS sin and I don’t need to cite references. Like Double Duce so nobly pointed out earlier in this thread we KNOW that sexual practices associated with idolatry were absolutely abhorred and absolutely sinful and immoral. (See Leviticus) We also know idolatry was a huge problem in the first century Greco-Roman world and was absolutely, positively abhorred by good Christians as Tirib the Satanic Tool Exterminator pointed out along with, of course, the Apostle Paul.
Now let’s go to Exodus 22:16,17, the only biblical law that deals with this issue of single person sex (doesn’t say if the man is married or single):
"If a man seduces a virgin who is not pledged to be married and sleeps with her, he must pay the bride-price, and she shall be his wife. 17 If her father absolutely refuses to give her to him, he must still pay the bride-price for virgins.
We find that instead of a moral issue we just have a financial responsibility for doing the hoochie-koochie with the lassies.
Now go to I Samuel 21 and we find David and his men are out on military maneuvers. David requests bread for his soldiers from the priest at the local temple because they are hungry and out of food. The priests only have “consecrated bread” and will give it only if the soldiers have kept themselves from “women”. These guys had been gone from home for awhile so it could not have been their wives that the priests were speaking of. After all you don’t go totin’ around a herd of wives when you’re out whoopin’ on Philistines. So Sam had to have been talkin’ single chicks here. Single chicks that David and his men encountered out in the field.
The only consequence for the men having had sex with some single chicks is “No consecrated bread for you, G.I.!” But here’s the rub, if they had had sex that day they only had to wait til sundown and THEN they could eat the consecrated bread. The only penalty for sex with a single woman was not being able to eat consecrated bread until sundown (the beginning of the next day under the Hebrew calendar).
"So we have the real possibility that married and single men may very well have had sex with single women (or the priests wouldn’t have asked) and IF THAT WAS SIN…why was there no rebuke from the priests, as well as a demand under Hebrew law, for a sin sacrifice? And why not take measures to rid the camp of of this sin lest it bring their defeat as did Achan’s sin at Ai? That there was no sin involved in their sexual activity is apparent.
The requirement for cleansing was purely ceremonial, relating to the law requiring cleansing if a man had ejaculated semen. But sin required sacrifices. Everything about this circumstance then indicates that the priests were concerned that the men might have made themselves ceremonially impure by having sex THAT DAY. That these men may have been sexually active even though they could not possibly have been with their wives, makes it obvious that the priests had no qualms about non-marital sex and certainly did not consider it sinful." * Thelos
[i]"1 David went to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. Ahimelech trembled when he met him, and asked, “Why are you alone? Why is no one with you?”
2 David answered Ahimelech the priest, “The king charged me with a certain matter and said to me, ‘No one is to know anything about your mission and your instructions.’ As for my men, I have told them to meet me at a certain place. 3 Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever you can find.”
4 But the priest answered David, “I don’t have any ordinary bread on hand; however, there is some consecrated bread here - provided the men have kept themselves from women.”
5 David replied, “Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out. The men’s things are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!” 6 So the priest gave him the consecrated bread, since there was no bread there except the bread of the Presence that had been removed from before the LORD and replaced by hot bread on the day it was taken away." [/i]
So Hodge my man, we have to adjudicate some stuff ‘round here when it comes this here fornication deal. When we have done our homework then we can come marching into I Corinthians with a little insight. Then we don’t have to rely on Webster or a bunch of celibacy-practicin’ old farts sittin’ around in black “flowing robes” in a monastery on a mountaintop in the deep dark woods of medieval Germany to tell us what St. Paul meant when St. Paul was speaking and writing in Greek and with St. Paul having been raised in the Hebrew culture and therefore well practiced in discussing terms within the confines of that culture.
Savvy?[/quote]
OK, I’ll put aside the NT references and deal with the OT.
Ahemelech was only concerned with the physical ceremonial cleanliness of David and his men. Had he been interested in their spiritual cleanliness he would have interrogated them on all possible sins they could have committed while out in field of battle.
He wasn’t concerned with sin, but with the ceremonial cleanliness of the men. Also, put yourself in Ahimelech shoes. He meets the mighty man that the king is trying to kill, and it says he was “afraid at the meeting of David”. Instead of making sure that all the men had not ejaculated during the night, or touched a dead body, or of the other numerous requirements for ceremonial cleanliness, he compromises and says, “if they have kept themselves at LEAST from women.” These men were on the run for their lives, the last thing on their mind was scoring some tail along the way. Ahimelech knew this, he wanted to help them, so he made it easy on them.
Ok, sticking with the OT we have:
“When a man finds a girl who is a maiden, who is not engaged, and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are found out, then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl’s father fifty pieces of silver, and she is to be his wife because he has humbled her. He is not allowed to put her away all his days.” (Deuteronomy 22:28-29,
There was a moral (marry the girl, never divorce her) AND financial responsibility for the perp.
When you have sex with a virgin you are obligated to marry her. Scripture shows that virginity was kind of a big deal back in the day. In fact, when a bride was found not to be a virgin she was “playing the whore in her father’s house” and worthy of death. If this was just a financial issue, why not just give the groom back his money and allow him to divorce her?
I’m curious though. Do you believe that Israelite sexual practices were similar to what we see amongst unbelievers of today? More specifically, numerous sexual partners before marriage.
not for me!