Is it Rape or Not

I'm not defending Hammurabi. What's your point? The law speaks for itself if anybody bothers to notice.

The phrase you asked about, Doc, is a fundamentalist cliché that means 'correctly understanding the Bible.'The wording is drawn from the King James translation of 2 Timothy 2.15:

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Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

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The cliché status comes from the popularity of this verse as memorization material for Sunday School children.In modern English (NRSV):

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Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

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The letters to Timothy and Titus, known as the pastoral epistles, contain detailed instructions about church organization and the role of clergy. The books are attributed to Paul but many scholars believe them to have been written after Paul's lifetime.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Added material.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Accuracy.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Ok, so let me get this straight. It is fine, and sometimes even necessary, to kill little boys if their fathers have committed some horrific acts because the boys may or may not grow up to follow their fathers' footsteps?

Grow up to undermine or overthrow Israel, yes.

Not asking you to read minds, just read the topic post number 1. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

As I would define it , yes.

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But all the women children,

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The little girls

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that have not known a man by lying with him,

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That are virgins

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keep alive for yourselves.

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Are getting screwed.I think sex is implied, but I suppose not necessarily. If you were keeping them for yourself, maybe you wouldn’t care to have sex with them, but in the context of ”knowing a man’, sex is definitely implied.A lot of men have raped a lot of women a lot of times throughout history. Sometimes, the culture in which the rapes were taking place did not consider it rape. According to our culture, it was rape. Not today, but it depends on how you define rape. Our definition, no. Some definitions in other ancient cultures, yes.I don’t think we should project our morality onto these ancient cultures and then use that to make god to look like a bad guy. A lot of bad shit happened, it’s the nature of reality, it must be necessary. As far as men raping the spoils of war: I don’t think we can really say what or how god could have or should have or would have done things. I mean, really? We’re going to throw a bunch of omni- words onto god and then try to say how things should go? And then use that to make god look bad, or say he doesn’t exist. Is that what’s going on here? Or are we actually going to use this to show how parts of the Old Testament cannot be the literal word of god? I think Faith is doing a fine job reconciling it. It makes sense after a war/genocide, during the ancient culture of the Old Testament, to keep alive some of the younger women as breeding stock to strengthen you own culture. I think the young men would not be needed and have potential cause for problems with rejecting your culture. Also, you’d ensure the thinning out of their genes if you only kept females. Sure, its brutal, but I can think of a lot of other more brutal things that most likely happened throughout history.Basically, Deuteronomy is, like the OP says, detailing the law of god. Can we call this an improvement, or a humanizing as Faith puts it, to the previous culture? I think so. I can imagine it being worse before this law was detailed.If we want to call god omnipotent, and say he could have done things a lot better, then we start questioning god’s motives. I don’t think we can really say what/how god should have done things, or say that he’s bad because of the way things did go down. Taking the Old Testament and applying it to our culture and then saying that it cannot be the word of god is not making a good argument, IMHO.

This passage describes abduction, certainly, and rape in the form of forced marriage. In mandating a structure for rape, though, this law has the interesting effect of discouraging it.Rape in wartime is a function of the situation: chaos, lawlessness, mortal peril, sense of entitlement, impulse, and dehumanizing of the enemy. The law creates a structure in which any soldier inclined to commit rape has to delay gratification and go through a process that completely changes the context. The original appeal of the act would most often vanish.The law demands that the soldier take the woman back to his community. He is now obliged to introduce his intended victim to his family and friends, bring her into his home, and assume responsibility for her care and for any future offspring. The anonymity and chaos of war would now be a thing of the past. And before acting on his intentions he has to live with the thought-provoking and not-very-sexually-stimulating sight of his victim grieving with her head shaved.If obeyed, the law would have the effect of discouraging wartime rape.___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Error correction.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Clarity.Edited by Archer Opterix, : Typo repair.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Good points.

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Sorry, then let me address it by saying that I agree that Deuteronomy 21 shows that rape was not being proposed in Numbers 31.

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OK. So you are now insisting that it is impossible for a man to rape his wife, even in the case of a forced marrriage. Aside from the absurdiity of that claim you still have to deal with the issue of those women who were taken captive and yet not taken as wives. Neither passage states that they cannot be raped.

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Spared death, that's all that was meant or said.

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That is NOT all it says. As I state the victors were to keep these women for themselves. And what were they going to do to them, if they did not marry them ?(On the issue of rape within marriage)

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According to modern law, not ancient law.

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So you're going to retreat to legalisms to defend immoral behaviour now. You're going to argue that an absurd legal definition of "rape" is to be used - probably one you've invented since I very much doubt that you've got any actual references - rathew rthan deal with the issue.Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

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I don’t think we should project our morality onto these ancient cultures and then use that to make god to look like a bad guy.

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That only makes sense if you assume that the passages in question were the product of Israelite culture and not commands from God.Are you claiming that that was the case ?

Gotta make this quick, and I'd like to respond more to what you said, but this I thought I'd address now as this point always makes me smile. 1st: If we take Genesis as fact, I have the same capacity to judge good and evil as God. In some cases I judge the Christian God to be bad. In others, quite good.2nd: If you deem God "good", you are judging God. I feel confident in saying that you too feel quite free to judge God as I doubt that you would worship and defend a deity you feel neutral about.Edited by docpotato, : No reason given.Edited by docpotato, : the Tenses must agree

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The American Drivel Review

Cultural factors obviously matter a great deal in understanding these passages.Forced marriage is rape by our definition. But how much choice did any woman in Middle Eastern culture have then, even in peacetime, about who and when she married? Even Israelite women were as likely as not to get a husband through a deal cut by their fathers with another family. To talk about 'forced marriage' in that context is redundant. It was simply marriage. To talk about socially approved marriage as rape--which did exist as a crime--would have made little sense to the ancients. In the context of its time the law may be seen as humane.The psychological astuteness of the Torah law on this point would make it a deterrant to wartime rape if the law was enforced. Enforcement, though, is another question entirely. How eager would the Israelites be to mete out tough penalties to a national hero for breaking a law intended to protect foreign women at the inconvenience of Israelite men?This is to discuss these laws as social solutions to real-life problems. I have no interest here in making God 'look' bad or good. Any PR problems God has are his to solve.PaulK and Doc Potato raise an important point. Talking about social realities in ancient times doesn't get you very far when you are asserting that these laws came straight from God.God creates realities. God thus bears responibility for the content of the laws and the fact that slavery, Israelite wars of conquest, enemies and infidels, wartime rape, and war even exist. We have the right to expect something special. His laws, and the actions of his chosen people, would surely embody the principle of treating another as you would be treated.The fact that these texts reveal an ancient society pretty much like any other--only more monotheistic in its belief system--poses a problem for anyone who insists that society's belief system makes it special. What is special?___Edited by Archer Opterix, : Correction.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

Couldn't an argument be made that God did not create the specific reality you are discussing? A theist could seemingly show that God created Eden. That was his intention.He gave humans a choice, and they chose the consequent reality (the Fall). By the time of Deuteronomy God was constructing laws to fit the realities humans created for themselves.One could ask why he doesn't just change the reality we make, or why he allowed us choice as he had to know what we'd do anyway... but that gets into a discussion of whether a "good" God allows free will or not.

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holmes
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)

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Couldn't an argument be made that God did not create the specific reality you are discussing? A theist could seemingly show that God created Eden. That was his intention.
He gave humans a choice, and they chose the consequent reality (the Fall). By the time of Deuteronomy God was constructing laws to fit the realities humans created for themselves.

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If you're prepared to limit God that might work, but if God is omniscient and omnipotent then it wouldn't be possible for humans the thwart His intentions. He would have to deliberately choose to make a universe that worked out the way that it did. If He had wanted it otherwise He would have made it otherwise.

Well, sure, that is the argument. If God's law looks imperfect it's only because after Eden everything is a contingency plan to accommodate an imperfect reality. God has fallen back, as it were, to Plan B. That's the question I understand PaulK and Doc to be asking. It's a good one.God is still responsible for the reality even if one puts the immediate blame elsewhere. Doing that just pushes God's responsibility back one level. The question still remains as to why he permits it.Even given a fallen reality brought about through free will, what sense is there in God making a law that compromises with it?The law, if from God, exists mainly to reveal God's character and invite his people to measure up. Why lower the standard right out of the gate?If you're a deity who 'hates divorce,' for example, why make a law that allows it? Why not make a law saying marriage is for life that decrees capital punishment for any individual who doesn't deliver? It's not as if related offenses aren't already being punished that way. And if you're God, why not make people--'your' people, anyway--more inclined to be monogamous in the first place?___

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ArcherAll species are transitional.