Could this “sex and the Bible” story by Lisa Miller be a taste of what the new Daily Beast-ly version of Newsweek will become? Maybe they read the leaked AOL business plan that requires all stories to be SEO-optimized, meaning lots of “content” featuring sex, God and scandal…
The poem describes two young lovers aching with desire. The obsession is mutual, carnal, complete. The man lingers over his lover’s eyes and hair, on her teeth, lips, temples, neck, and breasts, until he arrives at “the mount of myrrh.” He rhapsodizes. “All of you is beautiful, my love,” he says. “There is no flaw in you.”
The girl returns his lust with lust. “My lover thrust his hand through the hole,” she says, “and my insides groaned because of him.”
This ode to sexual consummation can be found in—of all places—the Bible. It is the Song of Solomon, a poem whose origins likely reach back to the pagan love songs of Egypt more than 1,200 years before the birth of Jesus.
