ABSTRACT
African American women are uniquely challenged by a perceived shortage in the number of eligible men within their ethnic group due to the economic, social, and political disparities that exists in America’s historically racist society. This chapter employs a combination of the historical critical method and reader-response criticism. It attempts to remove the mystery and authority that many African American Christian women place on these Scriptures and present a case which suggests that the prevailing interpretations of these historical narratives are probable but not indisputable truths. The chapter explores when, and by whom, and under what circumstances, these passages were written in an attempt to identify the original meaning and the context in which they were written. It looks at how societies, Christian and non-Christian, viewed sex in antiquity and how those views may have influenced our current cultural milieu.
