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The Harlot by the Side of the Road: Forbidden Tales of the Bible, by Jonathan Kirsch, was one of the most interesting and explicit collections of biblical stories that I have ever encountered. I spent much of my earlier years in bible lessons and listening to Sunday sermons, but never was I exposed to the sex and violence that the stories of this book tells. Obviously, I was charged to write a rather lengthy paper detailing my thoughts about this book, and to find some commonality among the stories and expound upon those commonalties. Although I am not a very deep thinker, and an even poorer writer, the two themes that seemed to be very obvious throughout these stories were: (1) Women always seem to be at the center of or the cause of a major controversy, i.e. war, murder and death and (2) Women had the innate ability to scheme and connive to get what they wanted or what they felt they were justly entitled too. I will attempt to cohesively address both of these themes in the following pages. Let me take the latter of these themes first, as I find it to be the most interesting and compelling: The art of conniving and scheming. The stories of Lot and his daughters and Tamar and Judah are two examples of how women of ancient biblical times got what they wanted. In addition, the most interesting of these two stories, in my opinion, is the story of Tamar and Judah. Obviously, I do not need to retell the story, but for the sake of clarity, let me give my take on the story. Tamar is in a pre-arranged marriage to the eldest son of a wealthy family.
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