Your strangest Bible Passage

[huckelberry]

I do not know, and neither does anyone else, how old Mary was when she got pregnant with Jesus. She was old enough to be getting very close to marriage. She would be expecting children in the near future. Culturally she would be glad about that.

Warren Jeffs is an unrelated subject.

Considering sperm one could consider that it would have to be human sperm for it to work with Mary's dna. If there is something about Jesus that is divine it would not be coming from the dna in a sperm.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

I do not know, and neither does anyone else, how old Mary was when she got pregnant with Jesus. She was old enough to be getting very close to marriage. She would be expecting children in the near future. Culturally she would be glad about that.

Warren Jeffs is an unrelated subject.

Considering sperm one could consider that it would have to be human sperm for it to work with Mary's dna. If there is something about Jesus that is divine it would not be coming from the dna in a sperm.

Warren Jeffs is an example of a power imbalance. Look how he leveraged it to marry minors. Your god would have the ultimate power imbalance. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary could have been betrothed at about 12, and I don’t see why the Jewish god would risk her becoming ‘impure’.

Look. I know the urge to create an apologetic for a cherished belief. You should just own that your god impregnated a kid, and did so where she couldn’t consent on any reasonable level other than, “O-okay.” It’s vile.

- Doc

[dastardly stem]

Dr cam’s use of age demonstrates how egregious the story is. But even if Mary was of age I do not see how a believer escapes the notion that Mary was raped. God just did it to her body, without her permission. If he has no body, I suppose, we can hope it wasn’t so violent, but who knows? She was forced. That seems true. We don’t know magic so we wouldn’t know how it happened, other than god violated her body.

Of course for me there is no good reason to think there was a Mary who had a Jesus. The story seems made up so believers in the magical could say their god came and lived with them on earth and they could feel good they have a great competing narrative to believe. The notion that a special dude was born as a result of a human woman and god is a story as old as time apparently.

[dastardly stem]

This conversation reminded me of God: an Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. Here she describes how God was a sexual deviant of sorts:

God’s first sexual encounter occurs long before the birth of the Nephilim. In the Garden of Eden, food from the sacred tree might have been off the menu, but sating sexual appetites was divinely ordained. God’s pairing of Adam and Eve seemingly comes to fruition when Eve bears Cain–the first human child. But her emphatic declaration at the birth of her son credits God, not Adam, with paternity: ‘I have procreated a man with Yahweh!’[ 10]

This more literal translation of the Hebrew is rarely seen. Most renderings of this verse default to a theologically fudged interpretation, so that Eve is merely presented as claiming that Yahweh has ‘helped’ her to ‘acquire a man’, as any good fertility god might. But the very language of this Hebrew text signals a bodily dynamic well beyond this, for the woman’s words are pointedly precise: she is claiming that Yahweh has fathered her first child. There is nothing virginal about this birth. Eve’s boast is indicative of a female sexual agency wholly unlike the sanitized passivity of her later biblical antitype, the ‘Virgin’ Mary. Her words reveal she is God’s collaborative partner in the creation of new human life. But this proactive role also points to a long-lost mythic backstory to Eve’s character. Although in her biblical form she is a human woman, her choice of vocabulary is the language of goddesses: in asserting that she has ‘procreated’ a man, she uses a specialized, technical term for divine reproduction also used of goddesses in the myths from Ugarit.[ 11]

Indeed, like the Ugaritic goddess Athirat, Eve is called ‘Mother of all Living’, and even her name (hawwah in Hebrew) likely means ‘life giver’ or ‘living one’, evoking an epithet of Athirat in her glorious title ‘the Lady, the Living One, the Goddess’.[ 12] These features of Eve’s characterization in Genesis suggest that, before her biblical career, she was more akin to a life-bearing goddess appropriately located in the heavenly Garden of Eden–and hence a most suitable sexual partner for a male deity. In the Bible, however, God’s most significant and sexualized relationship is not with a goddess or a goddess-like figure, but with his other wife, Israel. The personification of a city, territory, nation or social group as a woman is well attested in (often masculinist, patriarchal) cultures across the globe, but in the biblical texts, the female personification of Israel plays a sustained and crucial role in articulating the intense and exclusive relationship between God and his worshippers. It is a relationship so intimate that his love for them is frequently expressed in the language of sexual desire. And yet, in some books of the Hebrew Bible, the erotic tone of this imagery not only moves from the emotional to the physical, but takes on a much darker hue, casting God as a powerful sexual predator, and Israel as a coquettish young girl. The book of Hosea offers a vivid example. Here, Israel is a capricious teenager whose sexual allure so intoxicates God, he falls to scheming obsessively and possessively to make her his wife. ‘I will now seduce her’, he says of Israel; ‘I will take her walking into the wilderness and speak to her heart… and there she will cry out’.[ 13] These words betray more than the romantic fantasy of a love-struck deity. God’s language here marks a shift from passion to threat: in claiming he will ‘seduce’ her, he uses a Hebrew expression more usually employed in the Bible to describe the rape of captive women.

And in describing Israel’s vocal response, he uses a term that can convey both the noise of sexual gratification and religious joy. God’s dangerous sense of sexual entitlement skews his planned attack on the girl into the distorted conviction that she will enjoy her rape–and scream in orgasmic ecstasy.[ 14] This image of sexual violation is unsettling enough. But nowhere in the Bible is the portrayal of God’s sex life more disturbing than in two stories in the book of Ezekiel. Like other biblical narrators, Ezekiel reasons that the military defeat and imperial subjugation that befell Yahweh’s people in the sixth century BCE was a divine punishment for worshipping other gods. Here, too, Israel is cast as God’s wife, but her whoring after foreign deities provokes her husband’s fury and punishment. According to Ezekiel, her wanton behaviour in marriage is the culmination of a long history of social and sexual deviancy. Their relationship begins in the wilderness, where God finds an abandoned baby girl, her umbilical cord still attached, deliberately cast away from the rest of humanity: ‘You were abhorred on the day of your birth’, scorns God, as he reminds her that she had been neither washed of birth blood, nor rubbed with a protective salt scrub and swaddled.[ 15] And yet God acknowledges her, commanding her to live and grow. Only when she has obediently matured to puberty does he notice her again. Reminiscing lasciviously about this subsequent encounter, God comments: ‘... your breasts were formed, your [pubic] hair had grown; you were naked and bare! I passed by you and looked at you: you were at the age for lovemaking. I spread the corner of my cloak over you, and covered your nakedness; I pledged myself to you and entered into a covenant with you… You became mine.’[ 16]

The voyeuristic tone to his words is not lost in this English translation, which barely manages to soften the graphic sexual nature of his actions: God’s gaze is upon the girl’s exposed sexual organs, moving him to cover her genitals (‘ nakedness’) with his own–his spreading cloak politely functioning here as an image of his mounting her, much as in the book of Ruth, in which the eponymous heroine urges a sleepy Boaz to have sex with her by spreading the corner of his cloak over her.[ 17] The sexual euphemisms continue, for it is by penetrating the girl’s body that God ‘enters into’ a binding covenant with her–an unequal power relationship in which the forging of the deity’s exclusive and proprietary claim to Israel is presented as the sexual consummation of a man’s possession of a bride: ‘you became mine’.[ 18] Jewish and Christian interpreters have tended to soften and sanitize this encounter–either by reductive means, so that the episode is ‘merely’ a metaphor or allegory depicting intense religious intimacy, or by fantasizing that romantic notions of a committed, heteronormative love find their archetype in God, so that he is the paradigmatic devoted husband. But this is wishful thinking–and it will not do. Ezekiel’s story is reflective of a patriarchal, masculinist culture, in which girls and women tended to be valued and defined in terms of their bodily configurations with men: as daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, or sex-workers.

The biblical God cannot and should not be let off the hook. Here, he is a predatory alpha male, whose sexual entitlement entirely shapes the identity and fate of this displaced and vulnerable young girl. Indeed, it is only after sex that God formally rehabilitates his young bride by means of actions reminiscent of the rituals denied her at birth: he bathes her, washing away the dried blood of birth and the wet blood of puberty, and then rubs her not with salt, but with sacred oil. Her objectification continues as he dresses her in rich fabrics and puts soft leather sandals on her feet; he decorates her with earrings, a nose ring, bangles, a necklace and crown, so that she looks like a statue of a goddess in a temple. He gives her the ritual foods commonly offered to deities–choice flour, honey and fragrant oil–and transfers her from the wilderness to civilization, where she is rapturously celebrated for the beauty God has bestowed upon her. And here she is fixed: an unspeaking, passive ornament of her husband’s hegemonic, sexualized masculinity.

God, given the Bible is scripture, inspired, and true, illustrates abuse in relationships and exalts in that illustration—seeking love and devotion focused on him. Israel and eve may have been his willing spouses, but they also were his subordinates. As it is I can’t figure out how either were really said to consent. It all seems to speak to gods support for rape.

[IHAQ]

Why?

Spurces closest to the time report the conception did not involve sexual relations. If they are mistaken it would be most likely Joseph as father. I do not think God has a physical body. I am in general doubtful about Brigham Youngs speculative thought.

The sources to which you refer aren't reliable, in that they weren't there and were writing third or fourth hand long after the events. It is very likely the character of Jesus is based on a real person. Jesus may even have been his name. So we can be reasonably sure that Jesus was born. Which means he was also conceived. This idea of an immaculate conception is likely a literary construct designed to "guild the lilly" of the narrative those Iron Age bloggers wished to promote. Supernatural conceptions are mumbo jumbo. Apparently there was only 1, ever, but nobody that was there at the time
bothered to write down what happened. Okay, sure...

Jesus was conceived and born naturally. So yes Joseph was likely the father. He may not have been, which might also have made an immaculate conception story expedient to protect the couple embarrassment. Imagine that - Christianity stemming from the cover up story for a simple out of wedlock pregnancy.

[huckelberry]

This conversation reminded me of God: an Anatomy by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. Here she describes how God was a sexual deviant of sorts:
......see previous post for long quote


God, given the Bible is scripture, inspired, and true, illustrates abuse in relationships and exalts in that illustration—seeking love and devotion focused on him. Israel and eve may have been his willing spouses, but they also were his subordinates. As it is I can’t figure out how either were really said to consent. It all seems to speak to gods support for rape.

Stem, I did not quite understand how God is seen as a sexual deviant in your quote. I read that a couple of prophets use descriptive imagery that is clearly old fashioned patriarchal clearly not woke. In thiis present discussion it might sound as though Gods ripping Israel out of Egypt was a rape.

As for Eve and God the quote is explicit that Adam and Eve had sexual intercourse and Cain resulted. The article points out how the phrase echos older mythology or deities speaking a role of more strength for Eve. Ok.

It is true that any relationship we have with god is very unequal. His excess of power in unfair. After all I was forced into this existence without any choice. I was in fact too young to do much except cry out and hope for the best. Perhaps I should see all birth as a divine rape.

I must admit that our creator may call on us to duty beyond our choice. We meet problems not of our choosing. Perhaps Mary had some negatives as a result of the duty god called her to. I can understand seeing it as a duty, raising a child which she did not ask for. Life is like that. It appears she handled her call well and receives respect as a result.

[huckelberry]

Spurces closest to the time report the conception did not involve sexual relations. If they are mistaken it would be most likely Joseph as father. I do not think God has a physical body. I am in general doubtful about Brigham Youngs speculative thought.

The sources to which you refer aren't reliable, in that they weren't there and were writing third or fourth hand long after the events. It is very likely the character of Jesus is based on a real person. Jesus may even have been his name. So we can be reasonably sure that Jesus was born. Which means he was also conceived. This idea of an immaculate conception is likely a literary construct designed to "guild the lilly" of the narrative those Iron Age bloggers wished to promote. Supernatural conceptions are mumbo jumbo. Apparently there was only 1, ever, but nobody that was there at the time
bothered to write down what happened. Okay, sure...

Jesus was conceived and born naturally. So yes Joseph was likely the father. He may not have been, which might also have made an immaculate conception story expedient to protect the couple embarrassment. Imagine that - Christianity stemming from the cover up story for a simple out of wedlock pregnancy.

IHAC
I realize iron age bloggers was meant lightheartedly. Probably because I felt a target on my back in this tread I checked Wikipedia about iron age ,
"the Iron Age is taken to end, also by convention, with the beginning of the historiographical record. This usually does not represent a clear break in the archaeological record; for the Ancient Near East, the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire c. 550 BCE is traditionally and still usually taken as a cut-off date, later dates being considered historical by virtue of the record by Herodotus, despite considerable written records from far earlier"

I think those bloggers would be more modern than iron age. Still I can see some sense in your comment. The gilding a lily view does have some fit. Paul has no interest a Virgin birth,Mark, the first gospel does not mention such and John finds in unnecessary as well.It does seem it could be a late add on story. I don't think it would realistically fit to consider it an old story covering an early birth starting the Jesus movement though the idea has a touch of humor.

[huckelberry]

I do not know, and neither does anyone else, how old Mary was when she got pregnant with Jesus. She was old enough to be getting very close to marriage. She would be expecting children in the near future. Culturally she would be glad about that.

Warren Jeffs is an unrelated subject.

Considering sperm one could consider that it would have to be human sperm for it to work with Mary's dna. If there is something about Jesus that is divine it would not be coming from the dna in a sperm.

Warren Jeffs is an example of a power imbalance. Look how he leveraged it to marry minors. Your god would have the ultimate power imbalance. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary could have been betrothed at about 12, and I don’t see why the Jewish god would risk her becoming ‘impure’.

Look. I know the urge to create an apologetic for a cherished belief. You should just own that your god impregnated a kid, and did so where she couldn’t consent on any reasonable level other than, “O-okay.” It’s vile.

- Doc

Doc, I would rather not try apologetic gymnastics. You are correct , or close enough, about what happened. I do not see it as vile. I see it as god calling her to an honorable duty. It was a duty understood to be for the greater good. She fulfilled her duty with honor.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Warren Jeffs is an example of a power imbalance. Look how he leveraged it to marry minors. Your god would have the ultimate power imbalance. According to ancient Jewish custom, Mary could have been betrothed at about 12, and I don’t see why the Jewish god would risk her becoming ‘impure’.

Look. I know the urge to create an apologetic for a cherished belief. You should just own that your god impregnated a kid, and did so where she couldn’t consent on any reasonable level other than, “O-okay.” It’s vile.

- Doc

Doc, I would rather not try apologetic gymnastics. You are correct , or close enough, about what happened. I do not see it as vile. I see it as god calling her to an honorable duty. It was a duty understood to be for the greater good. She fulfilled her duty with honor.

Just to be clear, you’re cool with Jehovah impregnating a 12-year-old girl if that’s what he wants to do?

Huck, a child cannot consent to pregnancy by an authority figure. Fearfully submitting to exploitation as a servant is not consent. It’s not “free will.” Christians have a long tradition of lauding Mary’s submission, failing to recognize her reproductive exploitation as abuse - never mind the fact she was most likely betrothed at 12-years-old to a widower.

Anyway. I’m already skeezed out as it is. Imma dip on this one. Carry on.

- Doc

[Everybody Wang Chung]

She fulfilled her duty with honor.

A 12 year old fulfilled her duty by having sex? I’m with Doc on this one. I’m going to bow out and leave this sleeze to you.