God and Sex

God and Sex: What the Bible Really Says is a book by Professor Michael Coogan, published in 2010.

Coogan asserts that, in the Hebrew Bible, there is no prohibition of premarital or extramarital sex for men, except for adultery, i.e. sleeping with the wife of another man.

Coogan affirms that premarital sex for women was "discouraged", but the Bible has a word for the sons of unmarried women, i.e. they were allowed to give birth to such sons, although their sons were relegated to an inferior social status. He also claims that Paul the Apostle condemned extramarital sex out of apocalyptic fears (he thought that the world was going to end soon) and that Jesus does not say anything about this, except regulating divorce between a man and one of his wives. Coogan does use therein the singular ("wife"), but does not say that a man could have only one wife, since Jesus was therein discussing the Law of Moses, which allowed for polygamy.

Interviewed by Time magazine about this book, he also says that words often translated in the Bible as "sodomy" have often nothing to do with anal intercourse between men, and that according to Sola Scriptura, the Mormons were right about polygamy.

The book was well received by Jessica Warner, from the University of Toronto, but was criticized by Prof. Phyllis Trible, from Wake Forest University School of Divinity in North Carolina. Trible asserts that patriarchy was not decreed by God but only described by him, it being specific for humans after the fall, and claims that Saint Paul made the same mistake as Coogan in this respect. The Catholic apologist Robert Sungenis strongly denounced both the book and the author on numerous other grounds.