As a result of the comment that Cayetano left in the previous post, in which he defined Messalina as "an icon for compulsive onanists", I remembered a story that he had read in the book Historias de la Historia by Carlos Fisas -the bedside book for all of us who write this type of article- and now I'm going to tell you about it.
According to the definition of the Royal Spanish Academy , onanism (From Onan, a biblical character) is synonymous with masturbation. But if we look for the biblical character that gives name to onanism we will see that it is not synonymous with masturbation but with coitus interruptus .
It happened at that time that he went down to Judah, departing from his brothers, and came to an Adullamite named Hira. He saw a Canaanite woman named Sue there, and he took her to wife and went in to her, and she conceived and bore a son by her, whom he named Er. She conceived again and bore a son, whom he named Onan; she conceived again and bore a son whom he named Sela; when she bore him this one, she was in Quizib. He took Judah for Er, his firstborn, a woman named Tamar. Er, the firstborn of Judah, was evil in Yahweh's sight, and Yahweh killed him. Then Judah said to Onan, "Go in to your brother's wife, and take her as your brother-in-law, to raise up offspring for your brother." But Onan, knowing that the offspring would not be his, when he entered his brother's wife, he spilled himself on the ground so as not to give offspring to his brother. What Onan was doing was evil in Yahweh's eyes, and he also killed him. (Genesis, chap. 38, verses 1-10)
Onan did not masturbate but «entered the woman » and «it spilled on the ground «, What he did was use the method coitus interruptus (reversal of all life) to not get his sister-in-law pregnant.
Note :The levirate law or simply the levirate it is an institution of the law of Moses that forces the brother of the one who died without children to marry the widow to continue the line of succession and family descent. In addition, the name of the first male of this new union must be the same as that of the deceased.
Image:University of Cantabria.