Great essay! a very enjoyable essay. However, I think it's an incomplete analysis. The nature of Greek worship of "god" was deeply pagan, worshipped as a creator force of great power rather than of human will. The concept of "divinity" is wholly different between Greeks and Judeo-Christians. Whereas the Greek divinity as established in humans creates a person of great sexual or political prowess, the Judeo-Christian divinity as established in humans (Mary and Jesus) is one of meekness, humility, and sexual restraint, which is supposed to be electively manifest in all humans by a divine lineage. Whereas the Greeks had "fallible deities are not models or guarantors of anything," the Judeo-Christian diety is inherently meant to serve as a Platonic ideal or model of human will. Heath in a way suggests that to accept this sex-spurned diety as a human ideal is to invite Puritanism as inevitable, which is a powerful conclusion! I wonder what sort of culture of sexuality we would have instead had if the Roman pantheon prevailed over early Judeo-Christian monlatry... frankly, I don't think it would be some kind of sexually-liberated parallel universe of our present society. Many of the sex-repression and power-promoting cultural laws of present society are not so much a consequence of Yahweh-worship as simply justified by it. Furthermore, while Christianity has always involved a level of sexual repression, I'm not sure that the modern incarnation of Christianity as a descendant of Puritan ideals is as much inevitable as much as the result of historical philosophical, political, and colonial dominances. I think more can be learned about the impacts of ancient biblical sexual dictums from modern Jews and their lifestyles than the strange chimeral creature of modern Christianity. Of course, this was just a short essay, so I'll see about your other writings now. Thanks again for the great evening read.
Great essay! a very enjoyable essay. However, I think it's an incomplete analysis. The nature of Greek worship of "god" was deeply pagan, worshipped as a creator force of great power rather than of human will. The concept of "divinity" is wholly different between Greeks and Judeo-Christians. Whereas the Greek divinity as established in humans creates a person of great sexual or political prowess, the Judeo-Christian divinity as established in humans (Mary and Jesus) is one of meekness, humility, and sexual restraint, which is supposed to be electively manifest in all humans by a divine lineage. Whereas the Greeks had "fallible deities are not models or guarantors of anything," the Judeo-Christian diety is inherently meant to serve as a Platonic ideal or model of human will. Heath in a way suggests that to accept this sex-spurned diety as a human ideal is to invite Puritanism as inevitable, which is a powerful conclusion! I wonder what sort of culture of sexuality we would have instead had if the Roman pantheon prevailed over early Judeo-Christian monlatry... frankly, I don't think it would be some kind of sexually-liberated parallel universe of our present society. Many of the sex-repression and power-promoting cultural laws of present society are not so much a consequence of Yahweh-worship as simply justified by it. Furthermore, while Christianity has always involved a level of sexual repression, I'm not sure that the modern incarnation of Christianity as a descendant of Puritan ideals is as much inevitable as much as the result of historical philosophical, political, and colonial dominances. I think more can be learned about the impacts of ancient biblical sexual dictums from modern Jews and their lifestyles than the strange chimeral creature of modern Christianity. Of course, this was just a short essay, so I'll see about your other writings now. Thanks again for the great evening read.