7. I am aware that the belief I have just articulated—that the Bible’s teaching on sex and marriage is coherent and profoundly wise—has been under major assault in popular culture. Jennifer Knust’s Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions About Sex and Desire (HarperOne, 2011) is an example. Knust argues that the Bible accepts polygamy and prostitution (in certain parts of the Old Testament) but then forbids it (in parts of the New Testament). She concludes that, therefore, taken as whole, the Bible provides no coherent and unified guidance on sex and marriage.

For example, in her introduction, she writes, “the Bible does not object to prostitution, at least not consistently. The biblical patriarch Judah, for example, was quite content to solicit a prostitute while out on a business trip . . . It was only later, when he learned that this ‘prostitute’ was actually his daughter-in-law Tamar, that he became angry. . . . Does the Bible have a problem with prostitutes or prostitution? Not necessarily . . .” (p. 3). But just because Biblical writers report that behavior occurred does not mean they are promoting it. Knust should know that Hebrew literature scholar Robert Alter, in his classic The Art of Biblical Narrative (Perseus Books, 1981), makes a very detailed case that Genesis 38 is tightly connected to the next chapter, about Joseph refusing to sleep with his master’s wife. Alter concludes, “When we return from Judah to the Joseph story (Gen 39) we move in pointed contrast from a tale of exposure through sexual incontinence to a tale of seeming defeat and ultimate triumph through sexual continence—Joseph and Potiphar’s wife” (pp. 9–10). Alter, perhaps the dean of Hebrew narrative experts, in no way thinks the author of Genesis “has no problem with prostitutes.” The narrator is deliberately contrasting Judah’s behavior to Joseph’s in the next chapter, where he calls sex outside of marriage “this wicked thing” and a “sin against God” (Genesis 39:9). To say that Genesis condones prostitution, or polygamy for that matter—when the prostitution and polygamy in the narrative bring untold misery to all participants—shows, I think, an elementary failure to learn how to read narrative.

I have personally studied and publicly taught for four decades on all the texts Knust treats, and there are mountains of good scholarship, as well as common sense, opposed to her reading of every one. Strangely, Knust doesn’t give readers much hint of that, and even in places (like her Genesis 38 interpretation) where almost the entire body of Biblical scholarship, from liberal to conservative, is against her, she offers not even a footnote to mention it. I find this to be the case with most all the speakers, books, and articles assailing the Bible’s wisdom on sexuality.