a (somewhat personal) question about Christianity

"Strum ye your furry banjos, sayeth the Lord" ? It's in the Book of Muff.

I think I may have secured me a place in heaven then!

I always wondered if the bit 'if your right hand offends you, cut it off' was about masturbation. as if you'd look at your hand and say "wtf do you think you're doing? eek. you've had your chips, hand, you're coming off."

perhaps my mind was on the wrong thing in church...

Apparently the original Hebrew of The Song of Songs includes a reasonably explicit reference to cunnilingus, but for some reasons translators prefer to assume that it's a reference to drinking wine out of a woman's navel. For some reason, this is considered more socially acceptable.

The Song of Songs is just dirty. There seem to be allusions to fellatio as well (something about a bough of a tree or something, can't remember off the top of my head).

Here's a selection of various English translations of the alleged cunnilingus reference.

As you can see, most translators coyly favour "navel", but it seems pretty clear from the context that another part of the body altogether is probably being referred to.

The other fairly blatant cunnilingus reference is analysed here. I mean, it's not just me that's got a filthy mind when confronted with:

...is it?

And here's a similar treatment of the alleged fellatio reference. This isn't quite as blatant as the cunnilingus one ("His fruit is sweet to my taste" is somewhat vaguer), but they're pretty close to each other in the relevant bit of the Bible.

We went to a wedding of some very religious friends of Mr Caterpillar's a few years ago, and they had a massive long reading from the Song of Songs- something about "my love has breasts like twin fawns of a gazelle"?!? - we couldn't look at each other all the way through as we were trying to stop the giggles!