I have a non-academic yeshiva background and really appreciate bouncing ideas of people who are knowledgeable in the field. You write on page 179 that ‘Scarcely anyone else in the Hebrew Bible is ever confronted with sexual temptation’, noting Samson as an exception. [But] much of the material in the Bible is “big picture,” including the laws, prophecies and histories of the kings. Once you get to the more personal type material there seems to be plenty of sexual temptation. In the 5 books of Moses: Ham“saw his father’s nakedness”; Sodom; Reuven and Bilhah; Judah and Tamar; the story of Phinehas; David and Bathsheba; Amnon rapes Tamar. Avshalom and David’s concubines.
A good question — and maybe I should have been clearer. But let me treat your examples one by one:
Ham and his father (Noah): There’s little indication in the text that any temptation was involved or acted on here — you certainly could be right, but I think the very fact of the text’s “modesty” in describing what happened (and the resultant ambiguity) only support what I said.
Sodom: Well, here too, it would seem that the point of the story was the Sodomites’ failure to treat these sojourners (like the ones in the pilegesh be-giv’ah story [Judges 19]) as decent people ought to treat them. There’s no interest in the psychodynamics of sexual temptation–they just acted wrongly.
Reuben and Bilhah: As I said someplace: this is just the stereotypical “worst thing” a person could do in biblical times, sleeping with your father’s wife/concubine, and so it explained handily the disappearance of the tribe of Reuben (as predicted in Gen. 49). A few more details are given in Genesis 35 that refer to Jacob’s words in Gen 49 — but it’s only in the ancient interpreters that this becomes a story of sexual temptation, Reuven seeing Bilhah bathing naked (and that story was ultimately rejected by HaZaL).
Judah and Tamar: I guess I’d even disagree with you on this. There’s no indication in the story that going to a prostitute in those days was a bad thing. Here’s somebody whose wife is dead –I’m not sure anyone in biblical times would find something wrong with doing what he did. In any case, I don’t think there was any temptation here.
The story of Phinehas killing the offending couple (Num. 25:69): What was wrong here was the sexual partner and the place. I suppose temptation is built into this story, but again, I find it striking to compare the Bible’s terse account with the loving elaboration of what the Midianite women did to allure Israelite men as found in Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Josephus (see my Traditions of the Bible, pp. 809-810).
David and Bathsheba (Uriah’s wife): This certainly is a case of temptation; I probably should have mentioned it. But still: Isn’t the point of this story David’s sin and subsequent punishment, leading nonetheless to Bathsheba’s subsequent ascent to power and her son Solomon’s succession of David? I don’t deny that temptation is there, but as in the previous examples, it has a completely different flavor from stories of sexual dalliance among the ancient Greeks or Romans. (Ditto with the two remaining examples: Amnon is indeed a temptation story, Absalom not—but I’d say both are included only because of their political ramifications, and not for the fact of sexual temptation per se.) Of course I don’t mean to imply that these things didn’t go on in Israel, or even that they went on less than elsewhere, only that, as you yourself imply, they weren’t the sort of thing Israelites found appropriate to write about.