Bible Question:
This is going to sound like a weird question, but here goes....... Does the Bible state your not supposed to masterbate, or "man isnt suppose to lay his seed in umfertile places" I hope this question didnt offend anyone.Thank you in advance. |
Bible Answer: Genesis 38:6-9 -- The sin of Onan: That is, he disengaged from Tamar just before he ejaculated, and "spilled his semen on the ground." (NIV) God was displeased at this action and killed Onan also -- presumably because he refused to follow Jewish tradition. It was a widespread belief that Onan was killed by God because this was a form of masturbation. This event was the source of the term "Onanism" -- once used as a synonym for masturbation. But further analysis indicates that he was murdered for the "crime" of using a primitive method of birth control to avoid conceiving a child. The Christian churches have now generally accepted the latter interpretation of this passage. The term Onanism is now rarely used. I Corinthians 6:9 -- Sins that Paul believes will send you to Hell: The author, Paul, listed a group of sinful activities. He believed that practicing any one of them would prevent a person from inheriting the Kingdom of God. They would be sent to Hell when they died. This verse has been translated in many ways among the 25 English versions of the Bible that we have analyzed. One of the condemned behaviors is "malakoi arsenokoitai" in the original Greek. Malakoi means soft. It was translated in both Matthew 11:8 and Luke 7:25 as "soft" (KJV) or as "fine" (NIV) in references to clothing. The meaning of arsenokoitai has been lost. Some sources in the early Church interpreted the phrase as referring to people of soft morals; i.e. unethical. That may well be the correct meaning, because presumably people from that era would probably have still known the meaning of the word "arsenokoitai." Others in the early Church thought that it meant "temple prostitutes" - people who engaged in ritual sex in Pagan temples. Still others thought that it meant "masturbators." At the time of Martin Luther, the latter meaning was in universal use. But by the 20th century, masturbation had become a more generally accepted behavior, whereas homosexuality was becoming more commonly a despised activity. New Biblical translations abandoned references to masturbators and switched the attack to homosexuals. The last religious writing in English that interpreted 1 Corinthians 6:9 as referring to masturbation is believed to be the [Roman] Catholic Encyclopedia of 1967. |