ties.

It should be noted here that most of the assertions about the morals of
the Israelites which are to be found in the Erotica Biblon of Mirabeau
are either false or pure guesswork. It is a bizarre method of judging
the morals of a people, that of taking their legal code and inferring
that the people were accustomed to break all the laws which are forbidden
by that code. Nevertheless, that is the method which the author of the
Erotica Biblon adopts for portraying the morals of the Jewish people.
Again, he has not even understood this code; he has believed that the law
against giving one's seed to the idol Moloch meant giving the human
semen; and he is ignorant of the fact that this seed, as spoken of in the
Bible, means the children and descendants. Thus it is that the land of
Canaan is promised to the seed of Abraham, and the perpetuity of the
reign on Sion to that of David. Moloch was a Phoenician deity, the same
one to which, in Carthage, they sacrificed children; the Romans believed
him to be a reincarnation of their Saturn, but Saturn was an Etruscan
divinity who could never have had any connection with the Gods of
Phoenicia. He (Mirabeau) has translated "those who polluted the temple"
as meaning those who were guilty of some obscenity in the temple; and he
does not know that the temple was "polluted" by a thousand acts, declared
impure by law, and which were not obscene. The entrance of a woman into
a sacred place, less than forty days after her accouchement, or the
entrance of a man who had touched an impure animal, constituted a
pollution of the House of the Lord. When one wishes to make a parade of
erudition he should make some attempt to understand the things which he
pretends to make clear to others. Or is it that this Mirabeau was merely
careless?

The love of boys was so thoroughly the fashion in Greece that we have
today given it the name "Greek Love." Orestes was regarded as the "good
friend" of Pylades and Patroclus as the lover of Achilles. In this
taste, the Gods set the example for mortals, and the abduction of
Ganymede for the service of the master of thunder, was not the least
cause for annoyance given the chaste but over-prudish Juno. Lastly,
Hercules was not content with the loves of Omphale and Dejanira, he also
loved the beautiful Hylas, who was brought up by the nymphs.

The Greeks boasted, without blushing, of this love, which they considered
the only passion worthy of men, an