wins permission from the king for the Jews to kill their enemies, and they do so. Her story is the traditional basis for the Jewish holiday Purim, which is celebrated on the date given in the story for when Haman's order was to go into effect, which is the same day that Jews kill their enemies after the plan is reversed. New Testament The New Testament is the second part of the Christian Bible. It tells about the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Christianity. It consists of four narratives called gospels about the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus. It includes a record of the Apostolic ministries in the early church, called the Acts of the Apostles; twenty-one letters called "epistles" written by various authors to specific groups with specific needs concerning Christian doctrine, counsel, instruction, and conflict resolution; and one Apocalyptic book, the Book of Revelation, which is a book of prophecy, containing some instructions to seven local congregations of Asia Minor, but mostly containing prophetical symbology about the end times. Sex, Roman Empire and the early church Sexuality (especially female sexuality) was at the heart of the early clash over Christianity's place in the world. Views on sexuality in the early church were diverse and fiercely debated within its various communities; these doctrinal debates took place within the boundaries of the ideas in Paul's letters and in the context of an often persecuted minority seeking to define itself from the world around it. In his letters, Paul often attempted to find a middle way between those who saw the gospel as liberating them from all moral boundaries, and those who took the position of total celibacy. For Paul, "the body was a consecrated space, a point of mediation between the individual and the divine", and in Paul's letters, porneia was a single name for the array of sexual behaviors outside marital intercourse. Paul's concept became the central defining concept of Christian sexual morality. Early Church Fathers advocated against adultery, polygamy, homosexuality, pederasty, bestiality, prostitution, and incest while advocating for the sanctity of the marriage bed. Both the ancient Greeks and the Romans cared and wrote about sexual morality within categories of good and bad, pure and defiled, and ideal and transgression. But the sexual ethical structures of Roman society were built on its concepts of status and gender; sexual modesty meant