Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians by David Wheeler-Reed

Abstract

Reviewed by: Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians by David Wheeler-Reed Helen Rhee David Wheeler-Reed Regulating Sex in the Roman Empire: Ideology, the Bible, and the Early Christians New Haven, CT; London, England: Yale University Press, 2017 Pp. x + 177. $45.00. This book aims to expose that modern conservative American Christians, wanting "to (re)establish so-called Judeo-Christian [family] values in this country," without knowingly doing so, "have codified the imperial discourse of Augustus, with its emphasis on marriage and procreation, instead of early Christian ideology that [End Page 138] won out under the monastics, which emphasized singleness as [superior]" (xx). As a work of exposé of ideologies and "general history" in contrast to "total history" (a study of "overarching principles that govern the development of an epoch," quoted in xv), the author seeks to achieve that goal by "describing differences, transformations, continuities, mutations, and so forth" (xv, 105) of ideologies of marriage and sexuality in relation to power in the Roman imperial period and early Christianity that bear upon contemporary American ideologies and politics of marriage and procreation. The foundational chapter is the first chapter where the author discusses Augustan marriage legislation as Augustus's codification of morality: the lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus and the lex Julia de adulteriis (both in 18 b.c.e.); and the lex Papi Poppaea (9 c.e.). Based on the Roman ideal of harmonia (unity), these laws established marriage as a civic duty incumbent on all Roman male citizens between twenty-five and sixty years of age and on all Roman women between twenty and fifty, penalized singleness and marriage between social unequals such as senators and freed people, and granted ius liberorum to fertile women with at least three children. These laws were not really about "family values," however, but about economic and political purpose by ensuring "population growth for the expansion of the empire" (14). The author then shows how moral philosophers such as Musonius Rufus, a philosopher-physician Galen, and even a romance writer Achilles Tatius all served as propagandists of this "ideological state apparatus"—the "fulfillment of the common good through marriage" and procreation (36). The author rightly drives home the (sinister) significance of the apparently unified Augustan ideology and its seemingly unilateral impact on the empire through culturally ingrained misogyny and despite Augustus's own moral hypocrisy; however, he largely ignores heated internal debates among moral philosophers on marriage and celibacy and complexities surrounding the legislation in terms of its execution, reception, and efficacy both in ancient and modern critical sources. Discussing the sexual ethics of Second Temple Judaism (515 b.c.e.–70 c.e.) in the second chapter, the author highlights its privileging of "the home, marriage, and procreation" and commitment to "heteronormativity and the family," thus upholding "the same hegemonic ideology of empire, reducing a woman's body to the reproductive act" (40, 60). According to the author, "this shows just how widespread certain broader cultural patterns were in the ancient world" (60). Second Temple Jews interpreted Gen 1.28 ("Be fruitful and multiply") and 2.24 ("Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh") as commandments and confined sex into marriage only for procreation (44). Philo in particular was the chief advocate of this "new sexual program of Procreationism" as he linked sexual desire to idolatry (44–48). The Essenes were (the only) notable exception to this in their practice of (permanent) asceticism. The chapter on the New Testament argues that two competing ideologies of marriage and sex, "antifamily" and "profamily," pervade the New Testament as the "impasse" (63–64). Here the author takes the well-trodden paths of scholarly discussions. The "antifamily" ideology shown in 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, [End Page 139] Mark, and Matthew chronologically precedes the "profamily" developed in Luke and the disputed letters of Paul, namely Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals. The authentic Paul's view of sex and marriage in 1 Thess 4 and 1 Cor 7, which is thoroughly negative as "the prophylaxis against desire" (69), is predicated on his expectation of the imminent parousia...