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2013-02-06
I try to keep the content in this comic appropriate for younger people because I want it to be accessible for everyone—no easy task considering I’m illustrating one the most perverse and violent books in history! I don’t like censorship, but I do like to expand my reach, so it is often necessary to curb my expletives. However, sometimes I can’t hold back and expletives are demanded by these pathetic euphemisms.
If you’re a biblical literalist, Leviticus 15:24 is certainly talking about a woman putting flowers on your penis, which I’m totally down for. However, for those of us who understand concepts like metaphor, we’re talking about, and say it with me everyone it’s not that hard, menses.
In actuality, I don’t think is this is a reference to a blossom, so much as an archaic homograph. A thing which flows is a “flow-er,” and multiple flowing things together are “flow-ers,” thus “flowers.” Get it? Not 100% sure about this, but I can’t find any reputable evidence online. Anyway, the Biblical Hebrew word used is niddah, a word choice of which the original authors should be ashamed. This word doesn’t mean “flow,” but rather something more along the lines of “personal impurity.” The same word that is used to talk about a woman’s menstruation is also used to refer to non-potable water and land occupied by sinful people. The authors aren’t implying that a woman’s menstruation is filthy, they’re outright saying that it’s dangerous!
Modern translations acknowledge such a definition by translating the word to “menstrual impurity.” Of course, unless you have an infection, menses is not impure. Modern Christians easily dodge this issue by claiming that words like “unclean” and “impure” don’t mean what the bible says they mean… unless they’re referring to sin, in which case, they do! I find it amazing how nobody thought of this until after germ theory was discovered. For example, around 1800 CE, biblical commentator Adam Clarke wrote that children who are conceived when a woman is menstruating tend to be “infected with leprous, scrofulous, and other deeply radicated diseases.” Turns out, he wasn’t exactly correct on that assumption.
According to the bible, when a man does accidentally get his wife’s menses on his penis, he and his bed is unclean for a week (almost as if he was menstruating himself). Note that I say “accidentally” because no man would ever knowingly have sex with a menstruating woman, right? Well, just wait until we reach Leviticus 20:18 and you’ll see why!
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