Intimate kissing only became prevalent in Ancient Israel after the Babylonian exile, or in the 6th century BCE, a recent study based on biblical textual analysis has suggested.

Published in the Journal of Biblical Literature in March, the study examines the contexts in which kissing appears in the Hebrew Bible, distinguishing between texts that scholars generally date to before the destruction of Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE and those composed afterward.

Its author, Dr. Rachelle Gilmour, an associate professor at Trinity College, University of Divinity in Parkville, Australia, was intrigued when she read a 2023 academic article challenging the long-held assumption that sexual kissing first appeared in ancient India around 1,500 BCE. The paper argued instead that such practices emerged much earlier in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

“I just found it fascinating that sexual kissing is not universal,” Gilmour told The Times of Israel in a video interview on the eve of Tu B’Av, the Jewish holiday of love, which falls on Saturday. “This immediately got me wondering when ancient Israelites started sexually kissing.”

Gilmour noted that while today — largely due to the influence of mass media — kissing is recognized and understood globally as an intimate act, this was not the case across all times and cultures.

In addition, not everyone in the past interpreted the act of kissing in the context of intimacy as mouth-to-mouth. In ancient Egypt, for example, kissing might have referred to the act of rubbing noses, as the word was written with the same sign as the term “smell.”

In the context of ancient Israel, the Hebrew Bible contains numerous references to kissing, though most occur outside of romantic settings. As in modern Hebrew, the term used for kissing is nashaq.

The clearest examples of passionate, romantic kissing appear in the Bible’s quintessential love poem, Song of Songs — a lyrical dialogue between two lovers that Jewish tradition has long interpreted as an allegory for the relationship between God and the People of Israel.

“Oh, give me of the kisses of your mouth, for your love is more........

© The Times of Israel