8 Bible Verses That Christians Use to Control Sex Are Fake
A religion runs on fraud?
When you grow up in church, you’re told to follow a lot of rules about sex — and Bible verses are cited to prove it.
You wouldn’t be told that Christianity’s key verses to control human eroticism are badly misread and mistranslated, and often just made up.
1. A fake verse says women should be “dominated”
Christians often try to center the religion on the Bible’s Creation story, which is framed as their ticket to divine patriarchy. Back in Genesis 3:16 we find God, after the ‘Fall’, speaking to Eve. He seems to lay out a future of sex war. As the ESV puts it:
“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”
The translation is a Christian invention of the 4th century. A rare Hebrew word, teshuqa, was translated into Latin as ‘control’ or ‘desire’. That seemed to vaguely work with the Bible’s three uses of the word. Meanwhile, they ignored translations of Genesis into other languages, like Greek, Syriac and Coptic, that suggested teshuqa meant ‘turn’ or ‘return’.
The Dead Sea Scrolls came along with more uses of teshuqa in Hebrew, which confirmed it meant ‘return’. Christians ignored that as well.
What does the verse say? As Joel N. Lohr puts it in a 2011 study: “Despite increased pain in childbearing, Eve would actively return to the man.”
Women will accept the pain of childbirth and also the pain of dealing with men who are intent on crushing them. God lays out the horror set-up that becomes the human story.
2. A fake verse was used to ban masturbation
Christianity has waged a long campaign to stop people from touching their own bodies. A huge range of Bible verses were cited in support of a ban on ‘masturbation’, like Genesis 38:10:
“What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death…”
To go back and examine the Christian analysis is to be left completely puzzled. Why Onan is punished is left a bit vague. As scholars map out, by obscure theological logic, he may have committed murder when having sex with his sister-in-law and spilling his ‘seed’ to avoid fathering a child for his dead brother.
But Christians rewrote all the details to get the “sex rule” they wanted. So Genesis 38:10 punished masturbation—which gave the faith a program of “divine” surveillance on human sexuality from cradle to grave.
All along, it was just Christians terrorizing each other.
3. A fake verse was used to ban unmarried sex
The Bible is very pro-sex, and never says you have to be married to have it. (To this day, Judaism allows ‘premarital’ sex.) But Christians really, really, really wanted that ban. A few strategies were used, like a kook translation of the Song of Songs. They called the great sex book of the Old Testament a ‘celebration of marital love’.
An absurd claim! Marriage is never even mentioned. The lovers just love. But Christians insisted it was all following the ‘rules’, as proven by the refrain: “Do not arouse or awaken love…” They said that meant sexual feeling is kept bottled up until you’re married.
Brian P. Gault lays out the facts. The refrain is saying the lovers’ lovemaking will last “as long as it desires…” They’re saying they’re not to be interrupted.
4. A fake verse is used for Christian weddings
Christianity is heavily focused on marriage, which amounts to licensing sex. To have sex, one has to do a big ceremony, overseen by a cleric, as this ‘wedding’ is said to ‘join’ one to some other person in some heavenly way.
The Bible has no mention of any such possibility, as no sacred wedding ceremony exists, and no authorization is given to “perform” them. A Christian wedding is a party with a side of theological fraud. But to seal the illusion of some divine juju happening they like to read…Ruth 1:16–17?
The words have been spoken at many a wedding:
“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.”
In context, this is a speech by a woman to her mother-in-law. Ruth and Naomi are not getting married. To use this speech for Christian weddings creates the fraudulent impression that the Bible provides sacred language for such an event.
Marriage in the Bible is never a divine ceremony, and is never overseen by clergy. In the Bible, marriage is one thing: the purchase of a woman in a deal done between two men. Ruth marries Boaz, which is explained as him having “acquired” her (4:10)—a word, as T.M. Lemos notes, that is “most typically used for commercial transactions.”
5. A fake verse is used to ban divorce
Christians like the idea that being married is a key religious practice, as getting a divorce is a horrifying violation.
In reality, the Bible discusses divorce as the simple dissolution of a contract that can be done without any fuss (cf. Deut 24:1–4, etc). It’s required when inter-faith marriages are seen to get out of control (Ezra 10:1-44, etc.).
But Christians prefer to cite a verse that seems to ban divorce: the famous Malachi 2:16. As a typical English translation goes:
“‘For I hate divorce,’ says the LORD, the God of Israel…”
The scholar Jack Collins notes that Christians keep mum on the problems in translating Malachi 2:16, as this “weakens the Biblical testimony against divorce.” The Hebrew text is difficult to translate. The Septuagint has this:
“But if, since you hate her, you should send her away . . .”
The Dead Sea Scrolls have this reading of Malachi 2:16:
“If, having hated, divorce! says the Lord the God of Israel . . .”
You wouldn’t hear any of that in church, as you wouldn’t be told that all this talk of “divorce” in prophetic texts is not about human relationships. The subject is the ‘marriage’ of God and Israel. They fight a lot and then get a ‘divorce’ (cf. Jer 3:8, etc.).
6. A fake verse was used to ban ‘homosexuality’
Christians love to wage war on people, but for some reason they don’t pick on Marines, cowboys, samurai, or ninjas. They prefer to go after florists and interior decorators in the religion’s obsessive war on gays.
Unsurprisingly, all of the supposed anti-LGBT passages are open acts of fraud. It looks good as they present the hallowed words of Leviticus 18:22:
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman…”
Jewish rabbis and Hebrew scholars haven’t known what to make of the verse’s actual language. Susan Pigott suggests this translation:
“And with a male you will not lay (on) the couches/beds of a woman.”
She studies Leviticus 18:22 (and 20:13):
“Neither verse actually says ‘Do not lie with a male as with a woman.’ Instead, both say you should not lay with a male on the couches or beds of a woman.”
Christians added and subtracted words to create the weaponized text of terror that they wanted. They added the idea that the Levitical law is only written for men—and out came a ban on ‘homosexuality’.
7. Another fake verse was used to ban ‘lust’
Apparently Jesus came from Heaven to tell people that sexual interest in other people is bad, bad, bad. Isn’t that Matthew 5:28?
“But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Christians don’t much like to get into the weird contours of the verse. Is Jesus saying that anyone who thinks women are sexy has committed adultery? Because that’s a capital crime (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22).
And Christians wouldn’t want anyone to know that the Greek word, epithumia, translated ‘lust’, is any kind of ‘wanting’. Jesus “lusts” in Luke 22:15 when he wants to eat Passover. Then epithumia can also be used to translate the usual Old Testament word for ‘coveting’.
In neither context is sexual interest being gauged or regulated. As Jason Staples notes, one covets by “fixing one’s desire upon obtaining something that is not rightfully one’s own.”
The reality is that Christians never understood any of these weird passages. They often don’t even know that ‘adultery’ in the Bible is typically a reference to idolatry, i.e. worshipping a deity other than the one you “married.”
8. Fake verses ban women leaders
If you want to really get down into the mud of Christian fraud, just look up the Bible passages that ban women leaders—like 1 Timothy 3:12:
“A deacon must be faithful to his wife and must manage his children and his household well.” (NIV)
All the male pronouns were added in translation. As Philip B. Payne explains, in the original Greek text, “there is not even one masculine pronoun or ‘men only’ requirement…”
From verse to verse that seem to regulate church gatherings by sex—in open violation of Galatians 3:28—we find Christian translators behaving badly. Like in 1 Timothy 2:12:
“I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet.”
Well, isn’t it obvious that women can’t be leaders and shouldn’t even speak in church? That’s the way Christian men like it. Ann Nyland is a scholar of classical Greek who pivoted to Bible translation to try and help Christians out. As she translates the passage, with voluminous footnotes in her Source Bible:
“I most certainly do not grant authority to a woman to teach that she is the originator of a man — rather, she is not to cause a fuss — for Adam was formed first, then Eve.”
We seem to have an early Christian discussion of Creation theology, or maybe the virgin birth. Paul disagreed on the matter with some women teachers in Ephesus.
I like reading the Bible.
Jesus is really interesting. But I came to think that Christians don’t care about any of it at all. They wanted a lot of “rules” about sex, sex, sex. To control people? To make them seem better than others?
A tall order, to be sure. They ruthlessly twisted the text of the Bible to get what they wanted—and it wasn’t ‘God’. 🔶
