>>Omar is right. Christians abound in body shame
too.
I thought "body shame" was a rather specific
issue, and had to do with attitudes toward dress,
adornment, and presentation. Body shame would
demonstrate itself through dress codes for women,
attitudes toward public display of the male and
female body, even locker room behavior. (It's not
an attitude toward sex, which is private. Solomon
had a thousand wives too, for example.)
I agree with Omar that Christianity (especially
19th century Christianity) also has body shame.
(IMHO that's because they are both sunstruck
Mesopotamian sky god religions.) In the modern
world, Islam may take the prize for body shame.
Consider all the reactions to Western culture in
the Muslim world that are in effect reactions to
the presentation of the body.
(This is nothing new with the Mesopotamian sky god
thing. In Hellenistic times, the Seleucids
imported Greek gymnasiums to Palestine and they
became centers of social and economic contact as
well. Because the Greeks were low body shame
people, they saw little problem with exercising in
the nude. The Jews, however, reacted poorly to the
prospect of exercising in the nude, and that meant
they either had to accept Greek culture or be cut
off from one of the main avenues of social
advancement in their world. This alienation from
imposed Greek culture is one of the factors behind
the Maccabean revolt.)
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