It's All About Sex Baby...

Image - "The Seed As The Origin Of The Fruit"

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What was the biological knowledge of the people in the middle east a couple of thousand years ago? How did they live? How did their lifestyle influence their worldview? Did the limited biological knowledge of the time result in not only in a shift towards a more overt form of patriarchy, and if so, could this shift towards male political and economic power have helped to create the concept of a "supreme male god"?

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It's interesting to note that the supposed time span from Abraham to the time of the early church is a period of about two thousand years. It is during this time that there was a cultural change from a nomadic lifestyle which consisted of moving from place to place with herd animals, to a more settled agricultural based society. This may have occurred for the israelites when they reportedly settled in Canaan after leaving Egypt. Farming became a more important way of making a living. Grains, such as wheat and barley, were used for making bread, and were the most important crops.

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As time went on, their knowledge as farmers helped them to grow fruits, including melons, figs, dates, grapes, and olives. From these practices, developed a number of religious festivals which were based on their agricultural society. Some of the major religious festivals in Israel were the Harvest Festival and the Festival of Shelters. These festivals were coordinated with the farming cycle. The Harvest Festival, also called the Festival of Weeks, celebrated the wheat harvest in the spring (Exod 23.16). The Festival of Shelters (or Booths) is an autumn holiday for the occasion of the planting and gathering of crops, and the annual harvest.

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Grain and seed and the resultant propsperity and eventual dependence upon an agrarian lifestyle meant that seed would be seen as an essential element to the continuation of life. The veneration or importance of seed would be obvious in an agrarian society. There was political and economic power in being the producer of the seed. Seed was necessary to plant the grain crops. Plus it was necessary for all the fruits, such as figs, dates. Aparts from their knowledge of seeds and agriculture, people of this time period would have been aware of the copulation of their herd animals and the fact that male animals deposited "seed" into female animals who then went on to bear the "fruit" which originated from this seed.

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It is doubtful if there was any recognition that either female humans or female animals contributed any matter towards the growth of the seed to the fruit. They provided the environment, or the soil in which the seed could take root and prosper. It was the male who produced the seed. The seed was probably thought of as the primary element. It was the female who nurtured the seed until it grew into fruit. The fruit, when born, was of male seed, or his seed - not of her egg or ovum as they didn't know that women produced ova. If women could not "bear fruit" even though they had received "seed", they were seen as barren, as soil was considered barren, or lifeless, if it did not produce a crop of grain or fruit.

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This kind of puts in perspective to me, why Jesus cursed the fig tree in Matthew 21:19. "And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away." Was this because he had been expecting fruit and had received none? Had the fig tree failed him as a barren woman would have failed her husband? I don't know. Sounds suspiciously like it to me. Perhaps from Jesus' point of view, it was the job of that tree to produce fruit. It had been seeded and had grown to a tree, but had not produced fruit. It had disappointed him, and therefore deserved a bit of a tongue-lashing.

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Patriarchy, or male power structures, therefore, may have been given a boost with this shift from a hunter/gatherer culture to an agrarian one. Certainly, it has been suggested that this huge shift in human behaviour and the resultant changes in the emerging cultures and societies, may have been the catalyst towards the creation of strongly patriarchial religious systems. The major monotheistic religions and their overt patriarchial hierarchies evolved in the spaces between nomadic and agrarian societies, not in the hunter/gatherer ones.

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So, why is it "all about sex?" I think that the female gods and female power structures continued to disintegrate during the cultural and societal shift from hunter/gathers and nomadic lifestyles to more settled agrarian cultures because men were able to evidence that they produced the seed needed to create life. As their crops came from seed, so did their children come from seed. In essence, men began to see themselves as the creators of life. Perhaps, they also began to see their penis' as the tools for the creation of life, as evidenced by the jewish covenant with god being a foreskin.

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Prior to the development of male dominated religions, in the hunter/gatherer cultures, the creation of life was always viewed as something mystical, supernatural, mysterious AND essentially female. Afterall, women gave birth - they were the “creators of life” or the "producers of life", therefore fertility and the creation of life may have been viewed as essentially female. With the advent of agrarian cultures and the increased knowledge of natural biological processes, the idea of who was responsible for the creation of new life probably shifted from a female origin to a male one.

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People became aware that females, (humans and animals), did not give birth and create life without a cause. Males may have began to see themselves as the cause of life as evidenced by sex and male ejaculation. It didn’t take a Rhodes Scholars to work out that women did NOT give create new life unless they had been with a man. Female animals did not create new life unless they had been with a male. So, I think a few misconceptions were made. Firstly there was the misconception that the male was responsible for the creation of life and that the female was merely the vessel. She did not contribute matter to the creation of new life, she merely provided “the soil” in which the “male seed” was planted.

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Many biological and religious misconceptions most likely arose. Women were supposedly responsible for the lack of conception as she must be barren as soil is barren. It was not considered that the male seed may be non-productive, because it was assumed that all the elements for the creation of life were contained within his seed. Best to remember at this juncture, that the ovum (female egg) wasn’t discovered until 1827 by Prussian-Estonian embryologist Dr. Karl Ernst von Baer. Prior to that, there was no evidence that females contributed any matter to the creation of life.

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Man provided the seed which women gave birth to as fruit. (the fruit of the womb) - The seed, which mankind provided was the catalyst for creation. Fruit was created from seed. Man derived power from being the seed. The fruit grew from the seed, the woman provided a vessel (womb) for the growth of the seed, but essentially the seed was male. Perhaps this is also why some cultures have considered female children to be inferior fruit as they could not produce seed, they could only receive seed.

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Of course this type of agricultural thinking and the resultant religious thinking, is obvious when one looks at the language used in the bible. There are many references to seed and fruit. Not always literally used as "seed" and "fruit" as we would use them today, but also referring to seed as possible decendents and fruit as being babies. Some examples below.

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• 1. Genesis 46:7 "His sons, and his sons' sons with him, his daughters, and his sons' daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt." (Children are all his seed.)
• 2. Genesis 17:7 "And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." ( The covenant of circumcision.)

Why is the jewish covenant with god a foreskin? Something to do with the veneration of seed? The penis and the male sexual organs produce "seed". Is this recognition that the male through his seed, is the creator of life as the male god is the creator of life? Did this idea that males were the creators of life through their seed result in developing a religious concept that the supreme god must be male? That is - males are the creators of life through their seed so therefore god must be male? If god is male, he must be capable of impregnating women even if he doesn't have seed. (Gods can do that sort of thing, doncha know...) In fact, perhaps the head honcho would be someone who COULD get women pregnant without having to go through the usual "manly procedures.") Now THAT takes some skill. I can hear the local guys at the pub now. "See, I am so virile, I only have to look at her and she gets pregnant." ;)

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• 3. Leviticus 12:2 "Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a woman have conceived seed, and born a man child: then she shall be unclean seven days; according to the days of the separation for her infirmity shall she be unclean." (Women conceive after the planting of seed.)
• 4. Ezra 9:2 "For they have taken of their daughters for themselves, and for their sons: so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands: yea, the hand of the princes and rulers hath been chief in this trespass." (All seed is equal, but some seed is more equal than others if it is holy seed. The "holy seed" is a reference to the males of Israel spreading their seed where they shouldn't. Namely amongst the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites.)
• 5. Genesis 30:2 "And Jacob's anger was kindled against Rachel: and he said, Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb?" (Another naughty woman who hasn't borne fruit after the seeding procedure.)
• 6. Leviticus 25:19 "And the land shall yield her fruit, and ye shall eat your fill, and dwell therein in safety." (A reference to the earth as female which produces fruit after she is seeded.)

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These are just a couple of examples, but it is obvious to me that the shift from a nomadic lifestyle towards a more settled agrarian lifestyle, coupled with the knowledge of agriculture and farming; directly influenced the gender roles within their developing religion. It influenced which gender would have which power roles and why.

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Perhaps man took the credit for the creation of life a few thousand years ago based on insufficient information about natural biological processes. The agrarian cultures only enforced this belief as the sowing of crops, was probably seen as the sowing of male seed into the female earth. We still refer to the earth as female. We refer to churches, ships, houses, planes as females. Many objects which can be symbolic of the female womb is refered to as a “she”. Whereas objects which are symbolic of action, acts of creation, sowing seed, shooting missiles, etc are generally refered to as “he.” Maybe this is why the cultures which grew out of nomadic and then more settled farming communities, developed concepts of a supreme male god who, through his creation of men and women, would spread his seed across the face of the planet.

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Just my thoughts on the subject.

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PS. And homosexuality would have been seen as "bad" because men would NOT have been sowing their seed in order to produce more fruit.

sex , bible , patriarchy , female+gods , male+god , agriculture , hunter+gatherer , nomadic , judaism , circumcision , covenant , seed , fruit , jesus , gender+roles

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"As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active power of the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of a woman comes from defect in the active power." - Thomas Aquinas, 'Summa Theologica', Q92, art. 1, Reply Obj. 1