Onan

Onan (אוֹנָן "Strong", Standard Hebrew Onan, Tiberian Hebrew ʾÔnān) is a person described in the Bible (book of Genesis). He was the second son of Judah. His name is the origin for the sexual term onanism (synonym of masturbation), which is nowadays considered to be based on a misinterpretation.

After his older brother Er died Onan was to marry Er's widow Tamar (this was the practice of levirate marriage). According to the Bible, whenever he had sexual intercourse with his brother's wife he spilt his seed upon the ground (Genesis 38:7-9); the Bible says that he did this because (under the custom of levirate marriage) the child would not be considered his, but his late brother's. In response to this transgression, God killed Onan.

Ancient Jewish and Catholic authors understood the activities of God in this story as a condemnation of masturbation and/or contraception, and this is still the prevalent view in some religious circles. Most modern Biblical scholars, however, say that Onan's sin was to violate the rules of levirate marriage, the Biblical law which states that a childless widow must marry her late husband's brother. It is now generally agreed that the passage refers to coitus interruptus rather than masturbation, but confusion seems to have originated from the fact that both practices result in depositing semen outside of a vagina and thusly prevents the spermatazoa from being united with an ovum. In this way, Catholic teaching (which considers life to begin before conception) equates this with murder because the sperm are kept from completing "their sole purpose in life". But the main purpose of these verses, once again, is to denote the punishment for violating the rules of levirate marriage, which was a divine law, rather than practicing either coitus interruptus or masturbation, which are not known to be condemned by the Holy Scriptures. The purpose of this form of marriage was to prevent a childless widow from becoming pauperized, due to not having a husband or son to support her and not being able to own property herself; thus Onan's refusal was considered very cruel treatment of his sister-in-law.

On the other hand, some more conservative interpreters note that the story is set before the giving of the Mosaic levirate law, and that violation of the Mosaic levirate law were not punishable by death, but by public shaming. It is possible to reconcile the two readings by holding that the biblical writer thought that the act of coitus interruptus was wrong and the goal of violation of the levirate law was also wrong.

Dorothy Parker famously quipped once that her parakeet was named Onan because he spilled his seed.

The Catholic Church's teachings concerning masturbation were the inspiration for the song, "Every Sperm Is Sacred" in the movie, "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life".