CWH
05-02-2012, 02:07 PM
I know Rose will vomit at the thought and stimulate her male bias obsession....just joking. I am suspecting there was an ancient tradition in the Middle East in which travellers and strangers were offered women to sleep including daughters, wives, concubines even homosexual men as a form of hospitality. We do know that strangers and travellers in ancient Middle East as evident in the Bible were treated with utmost respect, care and hospitality with food, water, rest and lodging. I won't be surprised if they were offered women or even men if the stranger or traveller were to ask for sex. The reason for the suspect is that when we read the OT, it seems strange and offensive that people in the Middle East as depicted in the OT would readily offer their daughters, wives, concubines for sex on demand to travellers and strangers who came to their land. And homosexual men would demand homosexual sex from those male travellers and strangers who came into their land. There were also temple prostitutes offering such services. Does anyone have any input on this ancient tradition in the Middle East? I do know of some tradition that offer their wives to sleep with travellers as a form of hospitality e.g. Eskimos, ?Mongols known as wife lending. And I do know of business men being offered high class prostitutes as a lure to get a business contract concluded or as a business goodwill. Just fir understanding, there is an article on this Eskimo tradition of wife lending which was practiced but is rare now:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2066/do-eskimo-men-lend-their-wives-to-strangers
Excerpt:
Now we come to the meat of the question: wife-lending, in which the husband let another man sleep with his wife without getting access to the other man's wife in return. The popular conception is that it was a matter of common hospitality to offer this service to any man traveling without his own wife. This is certainly not an accurate interpretation. As far as I can tell, no Eskimo male was ever expected to offer his wife to a visitor, and nowhere did it happen as a matter of course. Most Eskimo men traveled with their wives so it wouldn't come up very often anyway. Husbands did occasionally volunteer to lend their wives to visitors, but there seems to have been a general aversion to doing so. If, on the other hand, a guest brashly asked to borrow the wife, the rules of hospitality might make it hard to refuse. It would usually be considered rude to make the request, however. If the host had more than one wife (roughly one in ten did), he might be more willing to offer one of them to a guest, but that was still not the universal custom. If a traveler was offered his host's wife it was usually implicit that the host would have access to the guest's wife at some time in the future.
God loves us. :pray:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2066/do-eskimo-men-lend-their-wives-to-strangers
Excerpt:
Now we come to the meat of the question: wife-lending, in which the husband let another man sleep with his wife without getting access to the other man's wife in return. The popular conception is that it was a matter of common hospitality to offer this service to any man traveling without his own wife. This is certainly not an accurate interpretation. As far as I can tell, no Eskimo male was ever expected to offer his wife to a visitor, and nowhere did it happen as a matter of course. Most Eskimo men traveled with their wives so it wouldn't come up very often anyway. Husbands did occasionally volunteer to lend their wives to visitors, but there seems to have been a general aversion to doing so. If, on the other hand, a guest brashly asked to borrow the wife, the rules of hospitality might make it hard to refuse. It would usually be considered rude to make the request, however. If the host had more than one wife (roughly one in ten did), he might be more willing to offer one of them to a guest, but that was still not the universal custom. If a traveler was offered his host's wife it was usually implicit that the host would have access to the guest's wife at some time in the future.
God loves us. :pray: