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Among the Canaanites the most potent deities—Baal and El and Asherah—were the symbols of procreation and sexuality. Hence, all acts, all objects, all rituals associated with copulation, with the phallus, with fecundity were divinely inspired and inherently sacred. Ceremonials dedicated to the deities invariably included sexual activity, sacred and ecstatic orgies. The voluptuous and sensual character of the dedicatory rites was evidently so appealing that they lured the Israelites into acceptance and imitation, for the deity of the Israelites was one, supreme, without kin, without consort, without sexuality.

The New Testament attacks pagans, particularly Roman paganism, for unnatural sexual practices, lusts, and corrupt and degenerate mores.

In primitive Greek society, under a primal matriarchy, the male functioned as a kind of passive sexual partner, and virtually thereafter as a domestic drudge.

But in the course of the centuries the male acquired dominance, in the divine pantheon, and equally on a mortal and earthly plane, politically, socially, and domestically.