• BatCountryMusicFan [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    2 years ago

    No clue how this became such a big taboo in Abrahamic religion,

    Iirc it’s about not “wasting” life essence.

    Genesis 38:9-10: But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.

    It’s that Monty Python Every Sperm is Sacred song, but unironically

    • CantaloupeAss [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      One could presume that in an agrarian/pastoralist society in a semi-arid region, high birth rates were socially desirable to constantly add laboring hands to the fields and flocks

      • Llituro [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        The social obligation to marry a deceased brothers widow is relatively universal in old cultures, Judaism not withstanding. It’s one of the oldest patriarchal economic developments, to ensure that a widow is cared for. The child produced is almost always considered to be the blood of the dead brother. The modern reading of the Onan passage as against rubbing one out is incorrect. The christian war against jerking off is I think I relatively modern, reactionary invention.

        • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 years ago

          Yup. And probably something about making sure the wife has kids to take care of her in her old age because otherwise she’d just starve to death or something.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      Nah, the Onan crime thing is about Levantine Marriage. Basically if your brother dies you’re supposed to marry his wife and have kids, and legally those kids are your brothers kids so his bloodline keeps going. It’s a really important cultural thing. Onan’s crime as that he was banging his brother’s wife without knocking her up, so he was basically committing a crime against his brother and his family that was really serious in the culture of the time. Had nothing to do with masturbating.

      Basicalyl Onan was being a shit because he didn’t want to take on teh burden of raising his brothers kids. Seriously, has absolutely nothing what so ever to do with masturbating or pulling out or anything else.

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      it was pretty obviously the fact he was disrespecting the rights of his new wife that they held. tbh I consider that a weird right but the issue was the fact that he was treating her without the albeit deeply weird rights she was due by custom

      • NPa [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        2 years ago

        And God said: Cum in your brother’s wife or be put to death. No I’m not being weird, you’re being weird.

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          2 years ago

          dead brother’s wife if he was still alive it would be disrespectful

          the material conditions of the bronze age caused a society that to us is weird

          mainly I was correcting the idea that it’s sinful to masturbate and pointing out that the sin there was disrespecting women (again in the weirdest possible way)

          • NPa [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            2 years ago

            what if it is impossible to determine if one’s brother is dead or alive, perhaps he is suspended in a chamber filled with a flammable gas that is either ignited or not based off the decay of an unstable isotope. I’m gonna need to see the relevant scripture fast, I’m about to bust and I don’t want to go to Hell

    • NPa [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      2 years ago

      I mean the guy was literally named after the act of masturbation, a sort of ancient precursor to a Coomer, I think we can agree he was an edge-case. :putin-wink: :