ABSTRACT
The third chapter sets the groundwork for religious understandings of sex that still influence our contemporary society. Early Christianity, of course, had the most dominant influence on Western ideas about sex, but it is important to understand how Christian notions of sex differed from those of the Jewish culture into which Jesus was born. While Jewish culture valued marital sex, for early Christians, marriage was second-best to celibacy. The earliest Christians believed the Second Coming was imminent, so human love and marriage distracted believers from the divine. Of course, as the Church became established and institutionalized, it established marriage as a sacrament, but it continued to regard sexual desire itself as evil. Furthermore, this chapter will explore how Islamic ideas of sex were similar and different from those of the other people of the book.
