"The community that created the Dead Sea Scrolls remains an enigma. These sectarians - or Sons of Truth as they called themselves. Inhabited an imaginative and secret laden landscape replete with hidden allusions, insider, metaphors, esoteric wisdom and mysteries reserved for the elect." "In The Truth about the Virgin, Ita Sheres and Anne Kohn Blau have come closest to unlocking the scrolls' innermost secrets by brilliantly analyzing two unique rituals performed at Qumran that were meant to overcome "sexual pollution": one, the anointing of a select group of males into a life of "angelic" perfection; the second involving a select group of virgin females who were pledged in an immaculate conception ceremony evocative of the great marriage of the ancient Goddess religion. These rituals are described against a background of revolutionary, apocalyptic ideology that abhorred sexuality, prized virginity, was obsessed with purity and defilement, championed male exclusivity and female subordination, and ultimately created its own solution to the problem of the "first sin" - that is, how to procreate without "pollution." And yet these sectarians who preached strict monotheism echoed some of the more mysterious aspects of the repressed Goddess religion."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The OBSESSION WE HAVE ABOUT VIRGINITY AND HYMEN IS INCREASINGLY COMMON IN UNITED STATES - FROM GOVERNMENT AGENCIES TO SCHOOL TO MEDIA HOUSES. This book THE MYSTERY OF VIRGINITY focuses on virginity and hymen for the sake of peaceful Relationship and Marriage as well as bringing up children with accurate knowledge of this words. This book is not only for those in a committed relationship (Marriage) but also for those who want to know all about human sexuality and who need a right counsel on how to get a perfect partner. About the Author DR. SOLOMON GATES is a young graduate from university of North Carolina. He studied a sex education and have been practicing for 5 years running and a member of American Association of Sex Therapist. As a Sex Therapist he has helped thousands of couples, young men and ladies learn to fulfill a successful marriage that last for life time. The Fate and freedom of youths as well as parents lies in the mystery of virginity!

A confident and mesmerizing fiction debut, from the winner of the Plimpton Prize Set in the South, at the crossroads of a world that is both secular and devoutly Christian, April Ayers Lawson's stories evoke the inner lives of young women and men navigating sexual, emotional, and spiritual awakenings. In "The Negative Effects of Homeschooling," Conner, sixteen, accompanies his grieving mother to the funeral of her best friend, Charlene, a woman who was once a man. In "The Way You Must Play Always," Gretchen, who looks young even for thirteen, heads into her weekly piano lesson in nervous anticipation of her next illicit meeting with her teacher's brother, Wesley. Thin and sickly, wasting from a brain tumor, Wesley spends his days watching pornography and smoking pot, and yet Gretchen can only interpret his advances as the first budding of love. And in the title story, Jake grapples with the growing chasm between him and his wife, Sheila, who was still a virgin when they wed. At a cocktail party thrown by a wealthy donor to his hospital, he ponders the intertwining imperatives of marriage--sex and love, violation and trust, spirituality and desire--even as he finds himself succumbing to the temptations of his host. Self-assured and sensual, Virgin and Other Stories is the first work of a young writer of unusual mastery.

In 1929 the Holy Inquisition seized a secret communique from a senior bishop to the Roman emperor when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 325AD, and hid it in the Vatican`s most sealed files. Graham Phillips` research in linking together the pieces of this puzzle at the heart of Western civilization has not only uncovered an extraordinary conspiracy, but also a wealth of new evidence pointing to the Jesus who did exist, and what became of his mother and early followers. Further, by identifying who the earliest Christians really were, he has possibly uncovered the resting place of Mary. This powerful story, which knits together historical analysis, archaeology, science and documentary evidence as never before, has opened up a whole new door of historical exploration.

First published in 1993, The Virgin Suicides announced the arrival of a major new American novelist. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters—beautiful, eccentric, and obsessively watched by the neighborhood boys—commit suicide one by one over the course of a single year. As the boys observe them from afar, transfixed, they piece together the mystery of the family’s fatal melancholy, in this hypnotic and unforgettable novel of adolescent love, disquiet, and death. Jeffrey Eugenides evokes the emotions of youth with haunting sensitivity and dark humor and creates a coming-of-age story unlike any of our time. Adapted into a critically acclaimed film by Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides is a modern classic, a lyrical and timeless tale of sex and suicide that transforms and mythologizes suburban middle-American life.

"This volume sustains, and more than sustains, Dr. Machen's reputation as not only one of the world's foremost New Testament scholars but as one of the ablest defenders of historic Christianity. His former books, 'The Origin of Paul's Religion' (1921), 'Christianity and Liberalism' (1923) and 'What is Faith?' (1925), have so whetted the appetites of their thousands of readers that the announcement of a new book by Dr. Machen fills them with eager expectancy---whatever may be their theological position. It will be recalled that Mr. Walter Lippmann, whose theological position is about as far removed as possible from that of Dr. Machen's, in his widely read book, 'A Preface to Morals', not only speaks of Dr. Machen as 'both a scholar and a gentleman' but says of his book, 'Christianity and Liberalism': 'It is an admirable book. For its acumen, for its saliency, and for its wit, this cool and stringent defense of orthodox Protestantism is, I think, the best popular argument produced by either side in the current controversy. We shall do well to listen to Dr. Machen.' Dr. Machen's latest book, it is true, like 'The Origin of Paul's Religion', moves throughout in the field of exact scholarship. It would be difficult to point to a book anywhere that is more thorough-going in its recital and examination of all that bears upon the subject with which it deals. But while this is the case, Dr. Machen writes so simply and lucidly that men and women of intelligence everywhere, whatever their standing as technical scholars, will be able to read it with understanding and profit. Certainly no minister or Bible teacher of adults can afford to ignore this book. To the reviewer at least it is a source of much satisfaction to know that what is confessedly the most exhaustive and most scholarly book on the problem of the Virgin Birth of Christ ever published, at least in English, has been written by a man who after having acquainted himself with everything of importance that has been written on the subject since the first century, no matter in what language, holds to the historic belief of the Christian Church that its founder was born without human father, being conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary." -Samuel Craig

A provocative social history examines the history of virginity and of noted virgins in Western culture, describing the unique fascination civilization has had for virginity from a social, political, economic, philosophical, medical, and legal standpoint. Reprint.