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Goodbye Jesus

War "brides"


hoosier

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Deuteronomy 21:10-14 KJV

 

10 When thou goest forth to war against thine enemies, and the Lord thy God hath delivered them into thine hands, and thou hast taken them captive.

11 And seest among the captives a beautiful woman, and hast a desire unto her, that thou wouldest have her unto thy wife.

12 Then thou shalt bring her home to thine house; and she shall shave her head, and pare her nails.

13 And she shall put the rainment of her captivity from off her, and shall remain in thine house, and bewail her father and her mother a full month; and after that thou shalt go in unto her, and be her husband, and she shall be thy wife.

14 And it shall be, if thou have no delight in her, then thou shalt let her go whither she will; but thou shalt not sell her at all for money, thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because thou hast humbled her.

 

 

Would luuuuuv to see a Xtian rationalization of this. It's one of my favorite passages because it shows biblegod clearly is not omnibenevolent. Unless I'm doing this whole morality thing wrong and raping and humiliating women is A-OK. Which it obviously is not. Not that bronze age man was aware that it wasn't. Of course if any Xtians bother to post on his they'll probably say crap like "Oh you're taking it out of context!"

 

 Bullshit. There is nothing in the rest the chapter or book that this is from that justifies this. Or perhaps we'll hear "Strawman!" Nope. These verses are real and unaltered.

 Additionally where is the requirement of consent from the woman for this "marriage". "I so am hot for one of these guys that slaughtered my parents, family and everyone in my town!" said no woman ever. At the end of verse 14 it even openly admits that this has been humiliating for the woman. But at least she gets a month before the rapist oops I mean Godly warrior has his way with her.

 

So if you guys would like to take a crack at this as well, open fire. But I would especially luuvvv to see some Xtians attempt to defend this steaming pile of moral sewage. Rape is wrong Xtians and so are these verses. Ditch the OT!

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I doubt any christians are going to respond.

 

Lets see. What counter arguments do the christians have:

1. That section is translated wrong. - Well, then what else is translated wrong and can we fix everything once and for all please.

2. Not applicable anymore due to the new testament. - Then why include it in the bible?

3. She somehow deserved it due to some evil she did. - Yeah no. If this was the case then the text would have mentioned it.

4. god works in mysterious ways. - so mysterious sometimes that it's almost as if he doesn't exist dont you think.

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I doubt any christians are going to respond.

 

Lets see. What counter arguments do the christians have:

1. That section is translated wrong. - Well, then what else is translated wrong and can we fix everything once and for all please.

2. Not applicable anymore due to the new testament. - Then why include it in the bible?

3. She somehow deserved it due to some evil she did. - Yeah no. If this was the case then the text would have mentioned it.

4. god works in mysterious ways. - so mysterious sometimes that it's almost as if he doesn't exist dont you think.

Even the 'not applicable cos of the NT' argument was valid (it's not), then so what? It just proves that even if god is all nice and loving now, at some point in history he was a fucking asshole.
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It seems rape is ok. I mean even Moses said it's ok.

 

Numbers 31:7-18 - And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?

 Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.  But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.

 

And here an example of god actually assisting in rape.

 

Zechariah 14:1-2 Behold, the day of the Lord cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city

 

I don't see the new testament saying that these passages are wrong. In fact nowhere in the new testament does it say anything about rape. Look at pork. The old testament clearly states that eating pork is wrong. The new testament then states that eating pork is now ok again. Why does the new testament not then say that rape is wrong.

 

My logical assumption is then that god did not change his mind on the topic and is still ok with rape.

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You don't really want to hear fundies try to rationalize it.  You might think you do but once you see it you will know you really don't.  I've seen a couple of them try it.  It's sickening.  IIRC our proud Rabbi tried it before he left.  That thread was a monster but I will try to search through it later.

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Same excuse the Muslims use for their scripture's rules about women. It was so much nicer than the other cultures at the time, therefore god is good and merciful. I mean, look at all the protections in there for the women! She gets a full month of mourning, and he's not allowed to sell her off, he has to dump her on the street without getting paid for her! And she's not a sex slave or concubine, she's a wife, and we all know that the only time sex is ok is inside marriage and therefore it can't be rape if he marries her first. And the bad stuff that's left, well, in the NT jesus says the only reason divorce is allowed at all is because of the "hardness of your hearts", so god gets all the credit for sucking less than other cultures at the time, and humans get all the blame for the rules not reflecting today's standards of morality.

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If you want to get really cynical about it, rape is still OK with biblegod in the NT. When Gabriel appeared to the virgin Mary, he was not asking permission; he was telling her: God impregnated you, lucky girl! (And she was betrothed to another man, if my understanding of the timeline is correct.) So biblegod kinda raped her, if you think about it.

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Women are the property of their fathers, husbands or slave owners. To rape a woman was to violate another man’s property, not to violate the woman herself. See Deut.22 and Lev. 19:20 as just a couple of the many foundational passages for this idea. So in the case of "war brides" both in the passage from Deuteronomy in the OP and in Numbers 31 that someone else mentioned, there's simply no one's property rights to violate as the victors get the spoils.

 

The view is that what makes sexual violation wrong is not that it violates a woman’s right to her own body. Never does the right of the woman to her own body come into the picture because she presumably has no rights to her own body. What makes it wrong is that it violates another man’s property, i.e. his daughter, wife or slave. In fact, this is true of nearly all sexual violations. Rape, adultery and premarital sex are wrong on the grounds that husbands, fathers and slave owners are having their property rights violated or are in some way being defiled or defamed.

 

Prostitution was wrong because the men become defiled and/or idolatry is involved. For example, if a priest’s daughter engages in prostitution she’s to be burned because she has defiled her father’s holy office (Lev. 21:9). Premarital sex with an unmarried woman, whether it was consensual or not, required payment to her father followed by a permanent marriage contract.

 

Rape of a slave required payment for the slave. Only the rape of a married or betrothed woman resulted in death for the rapist and in those cases both parties faced stoning unless the woman could demonstrate that she cried out for help, otherwise it was the same as adultery.

 

A father trying to pass off used property (i.e. a daughter who was not a virgin) as new property ended up with a loss (she was stoned to death on his doorstep). False accusations resulted in payment to the father as it was his reputation that was being damaged.

 

Penalties for certain acts bear this out. Consider how a woman grabbing a guy's junk resulted in having her hand cut off, but nothing is said of what happens to a guy who does the same thing. Women were simply a lesser class and were regarded as property like slaves.

 

It won’t do to make the excuse that Yahweh was just accommodating himself to the accepted cultural norms of the day for various reasons. First, Hammurabi’s code regarded (freed) women with much more dignity and respect and it pre-dated the Law of Moses by hundreds of years even by conservative reckonings of when the receiving of the Law at Sinai is to be dated. Second, either rape is wrong or it isn’t. If Yahweh is just going to change his mind about what is right and wrong based on arbitrary dispensations or covenants or whatever they want to call them, his morality is just as relativistic, mutable and arbitrary as any atheist’s moral code could ever be accused of. Finally, there’s never any explicit repeal of these laws anywhere in the NT and I defy any Christian to attempt to make an cogent argument that rape should be handled by civil authorities now any differently than it was dealt with in the Old Testament based solely on biblical reasoning and without relying on contemporary secular morality based on human empathy. The same goes for slavery.

 

Christians are horrified at the stories that come out of Islamic countries about rape victims being stoned and honor killings and all kinds of barbaric acts, never stopping to realize that their own source document endorses many of those same horrible, barbaric acts and indeed could be thought of as in some ways foundational to their justification.

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Christians are horrified at the stories that come out of Islamic countries about rape victims being stoned and honor killings and all kinds of barbaric acts, never stopping to realize that their own source document endorses many of those same horrible, barbaric acts and indeed could be thought of as in some ways foundational to their justification.

 

I never thought of it this way. Wow. What a powerful statement. You are so right!

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You don't really want to hear fundies try to rationalize it.  You might think you do but once you see it you will know you really don't.  I've seen a couple of them try it.  It's sickening.  IIRC our proud Rabbi tried it before he left.  That thread was a monster but I will try to search through it later.

You know, upon thinking more about this, you're right. I'm actually kind of glad they don't usually try to defend this crap. Normally they just don't mention it at all and pretend it does not exist. I mean, when was the last time anyone preached a sermon on these verses? Their evasion of this passage and the others like it sends the message to me, that at least in some part of their mind, they know that this stuff is wrong and that this just does not jive with the image of a warm, loving Jesus. In other words, Cognitive Dissonance. But yet they compartmentalize it away, keeping the chance of breaking free from this mind bondage spell locked in its closet.

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You don't really want to hear fundies try to rationalize it.  You might think you do but once you see it you will know you really don't.  I've seen a couple of them try it.  It's sickening.  IIRC our proud Rabbi tried it before he left.  That thread was a monster but I will try to search through it later.

You know, upon thinking more about this, you're right. I'm actually kind of glad they don't usually try to defend this crap. Normally they just don't mention it at all and pretend it does not exist. I mean, when was the last time anyone preached a sermon on these verses? Their evasion of this passage and the others like it sends the message to me, that at least in some part of their mind, they know that this stuff is wrong and that this just does not jive with the image of a warm, loving Jesus. In other words, Cognitive Dissonance. But yet they compartmentalize it away, keeping the chance of breaking free from this mind bondage spell locked in its closet.

 

 

I would love it if someone actually preached this. I will personally attend that sermon. I don't care what country it's in or what version of christianity they're in. Just give me enough time to organise a visa and get there.

 

I'll keep my mouth shut and won't interfere with the service at all. I just want to hear a pastor / priest say that god says it's ok to rape women in certain circumstances and when following certain protocol.

 

In fact. I will pay for the flights of a few of my fundie family members to also attend. It would be worth it to see their reactions. Money well spent.

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Many pastors will preach through the entire Bible.  A common tactic for passages like this is to say that God was only giving them laws which the culture was capable of following at the time.  They were not at a place where they could resist the temptation to enjoy the spoils of war...  They also insist that it was not rape.  It was always marriage.

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Many pastors will preach through the entire Bible.  A common tactic for passages like this is to say that God was only giving them laws which the culture was capable of following at the time.  They were not at a place where they could resist the temptation to enjoy the spoils of war...  They also insist that it was not rape.  It was always marriage.

 

I always find this argument ridiculous because Jesus in particular in the Bible asks the people to do things which are almost impossible for ANYONE to do: love everybody, turn the other cheek, give up all your possessions, cut of parts of your body if they cause you to sin etc etc. You'd think 'Don't rape you bastards' would have been quite an easy instruction in comparison

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nowhere in the bible does it say, 'do not rape' or 'do not own slaves', despite claiming Jesus to be ahead of his time in terms of morality.  He failed the morality test.

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You don't really want to hear fundies try to rationalize it.  You might think you do but once you see it you will know you really don't.  I've seen a couple of them try it.  It's sickening.  IIRC our proud Rabbi tried it before he left.  That thread was a monster but I will try to search through it later.

You know, upon thinking more about this, you're right. I'm actually kind of glad they don't usually try to defend this crap. Normally they just don't mention it at all and pretend it does not exist. I mean, when was the last time anyone preached a sermon on these verses? Their evasion of this passage and the others like it sends the message to me, that at least in some part of their mind, they know that this stuff is wrong and that this just does not jive with the image of a warm, loving Jesus. In other words, Cognitive Dissonance. But yet they compartmentalize it away, keeping the chance of breaking free from this mind bondage spell locked in its closet.

 

 

I would love it if someone actually preached this. I will personally attend that sermon. I don't care what country it's in or what version of christianity they're in. Just give me enough time to organise a visa and get there.

 

I'll keep my mouth shut and won't interfere with the service at all. I just want to hear a pastor / priest say that god says it's ok to rape women in certain circumstances and when following certain protocol.

 

In fact. I will pay for the flights of a few of my fundie family members to also attend. It would be worth it to see their reactions. Money well spent.

 

 

 

You can go through the "Mathematical Proof Of God" thread in the science section and see what Nat did.  I believe he ignored the rape verses to focus on God's child sacrifice.  The way fundies defend this crap is annoying and dishonest.  It's all double talk designed to keep the tithes rolling in.  They don't care what argument you can come up with.  They just want to keep their victims in bondage.

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I think the part about humbling the victim refers to cutting off her hair, because Paul said women having short hair is disgraceful.

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I think the part about humbling the victim refers to cutting off her hair, because Paul said women having short hair is disgraceful.

 

I suppose that's possible. However, the word translated here “humbled” (anah)is also used in passages like Gen. 34:2, Judg. 19:24 and 2 Sam. 13:14 . Used in those contexts it strongly suggests sexual assault. The difference being that in those passages Dinah, the Levite's concubine and Tamar all belong to someone. Think of it this way: "thou shalt not make merchandise of her, because she's damaged goods."

 

The bottom line in the case of war brides is that the guy has to wait a month before raping her and then he can't just rape her and then turn around and sell her. The man either has to have his way with her and then set her free or keep her as a wife if she pleases him. Think about what this would do for a woman who wasn't found "pleasing" to her captor. She's turned out in a foreign culture with no support, no family and no real opportunity to find another willing husband because she's all used up (according to their view anyway). Her best chance for survival in this scenario is probably to make damn sure her captor is pleased with her. See how merciful Yahweh is?

 

Very little about this law likely has to do with showing mercy to the captive women. It's all about maintaining order and ensuring legitimate offspring. If everybody just goes on a raping rampage willy-nilly things can get violently out of hand and in the aftermath they've got no way to sort out whose kid belongs to whom. Even they recognized the practical value in trying to discourage such practices, although it's doubtful they were truly successful. Women are raped in nearly every armed conflict. That seems to be a fact of history.

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I think the part about humbling the victim refers to cutting off her hair, because Paul said women having short hair is disgraceful.

Another thing I've read (in the Dakes KJV commentary bible) is that the cutting of hair was supposed to represent the conversion of someone to a new religion. If that is correct we now have forced religious conversion to add to the list of moral trash in "Gods Absolutely Morally Perfect Holy Word"

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Yep...if Yahweh were ever to take a wife for himself this is exactly how he'd do it.  He'd just take her.   

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Yep...if Yahweh were ever to take a wife for himself this is exactly how he'd do it.  He'd just take her.   

 

He did. Gabriel was not asking Mary's permission. He was just telling her that she had just been taken.

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Yep...if Yahweh were ever to take a wife for himself this is exactly how he'd do it. He'd just take her.

He already did. He didn't ask Mary if she wanted to have his baby.

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wow all this raping mary talk is getting me excited!!!!!! calm yourself down its only a book its only a book. This reminds me showing my wife that the bible doesn't care about rape. She was all like of course god thinks rape is wrong. Boy was she mistaken. Aside from never not once mentioning that rape is wrong it supports rape gee how nice no more objective bible god for her. now he is subjective bible god =D

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Yeah, we women could put up with some of the misogyny of the religion for a while, but once the blinders are off regarding the raping of women -- it's all over.

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And yet it's still the "good book" and anyone pointing this stuff out is an evil godless asshole, even though were not the ones who wrote it.

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Yeah, we women could put up with some of the misogyny of the religion for a while, but once the blinders are off regarding the raping of women -- it's all over.

 

Yeah, when the women find out about the raping of women in the Bible, they can be dangerous... Sometimes they can be more merciless than men. GET TO THE CHOPPER JESUS! BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE! jesus.gif

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