Did God rape Mary?

Hi Granny MagdaI am being sincere in raising this issue, although I don't mind admitting that the title of the topic and my opening message were deliberately meant to be provocative, but only to help entice some strong opinions.Obviously I don't really think God could rape anyone at all, as I don't believe in God. It's quite possible that the angel story evolved to cover a real rape (i.e. someone told an innocent Mary that they were impregnating her on God's behalf). Alternatively, it could have been a story fabricated to cover an adulterous affair. Of course, that's only speculation.Anyway, I was being sincere in that I think there is a very immoral message of sexual-subservience in this story. I understand God is supposed to be able to speak directly to people if he so chooses, so it seems slightly inconsiderate, to put it mildly, that he didn't speak directly to the woman he impregnated. To me, the story reveals God to be abusing his position of power, and as such the impression is that Mary didn't really have a choice. "No" does not appear to be an option to her. It is clear to me that she was chosen but had no chance of choosing for herself, and it seems clear that that is what she was meant to expect out of life. If the general story is true and Mary was treated in a wholly respectful manner, that is not conveyed. It should have been. The same applies if the story is made up.I know there wouldn't have been sexual equality to the extent that we see it today (in some parts of the world). But surely the culture of the time should be irrelevant to the way God sets a moral example.I don't think I underplay the seriousness of rape at all. Rape can be the result of mental intimidation, either personally or culturally. It doesn't just describe a physically violent act. I think it is perfectly justifiable to claim this appears as an example of rape.For the record, I don't have any special alliance with Blzebub, and I've no idea how far we share opinions. I chipped in on the other recent discussion as I agreed with him on the issue and thought he deserved some support.

Hi JUC and welcome. That's not what's being discussed though. All we can usefully discuss here is what it says in the texts. Well, yes, he should have waited until the third date or something. But that is hardly equivalent to rape. I agree that the inequality of the relationship makes it morally dubious, but there is a big difference between that and rape. There's nothing in the text to justify that though. Again, I agree that thee is a necessarily unequal relationship and that's not good, but it is a long way from the seriousness of rape. I think you do. Take another look at Luke and tell me honestly that Mary's words sound like those of a rape victim. She is honoured to have been chosen. She is pleased. She is not traumatised. She has not been affected in any way that even approaches rape. I agree. But rape is nonetheless a physical act. No physical act, no rape. The answer to your initial question, "Did God rape Mary" is simply "No.". Fair enough. I'll take your word for that and for your sincerity in raising this issue. If you are trying to do something other than get on Christians' nerves though, I am at a loss as to know what it is.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

A limerick apropos to this possibility:There was a young lady named Dodd
Who claimed that her child came from God.
But 'twas not The Almighty
That lifted her nighty
It was Rodger, the lodger, the sod!I'll be here all week, folks......

Could Mary have possibly given informed consent? Sure, she was considered an adult and able to make sexual decisions...but we're talking about having to say "no" to God.Im not sure how much "choice" she had. At the least I'd compare it to a child being sexually abused by a parent.Yes, I'm comparing God to a pedophile.

Paranoia, you destroyer. I have no idea who JUC is. I have not been "trolling" anyone. I am an atheist who thinks all religions are equally silly.I read somewhere that Mary was raped by a Roman soldier, cannot confirm that though.P.S. If Mary had had a sister, she would have been the Aunty-ChristEdited by Blzebub, : Add joke

every isrealite woman wanted to be the mother of the Messiahthey considered it a blessing and a privelege.

Hi Granny MagdaI agree that the text is very thin and the whole story (be it true or false) is not conveyed here. Maybe Mary did have more of a free choice than is conveyed. But I stand by my point that if that was the case it should have been made unequivocally clear in the story. The way the story is written, it seems obvious to me that Mary was expected to accept her instructions (and they ARE conveyed as instructions, not a request).I find it hard to imagine that if Mary had said "no" it would have been reported in the text and that Mary would have been praised for being an independent woman in control of her own destiny.I'm really concerned about the moral attitude in the story. Would you think it acceptable today if a person who rules a community through fear, such as a leader of a drug gang or a political dictator, sent a representative to TELL a young woman that she had been chosen to have his child? If that young women straightaway said "yes" and professed to be delighted, would you be completely at ease with that? Would it even be acceptable for an otherwise entirely benevolent leader to do such a thing? Suppose a major celebrity like Bono sent a messenger to one of his young fans and told her that she was to have his child and she was thrilled by that. Wouldn't it be just a tiny bit creepy?I'm concerned about the moral message here. I'm not gratuitously trying to wind up Christians. This site is for debate over these issues.

However the actual event happened, the account was written by a man in a male-dominant society. Why would he have written about Mary's choices and feelings if he, himself, didn't consider them to be important? The point of the story in the Bible was to show that Jesus was the son of God. Some religious people, including the late Pope John Paul II were very aware of Mary's part, and some want to raise her to divine status, but at the time, she was merely the vessel by which Jesus entered the world, and she would have been written in much that way by the men chronicaling the event.

Hi PerditionI concede that is a very fair point, although it simply means that we can't be sure exactly what the true events were, which throws into doubt again how much we can believe the Bible to be either a true account of events or a true description of God.

As with any first person account of an event, we're stuck taking the author's word on things. In fiction, we have the concept of an untrustworthy narrator where we can figure out that what we're reading is the way the narrator would like things to have been, the way s/he perceived them, or merely how s/he wants us to think they went.When it comes to non-fiction, we have the same possibilities. In those cases, we have to look at any biases the author would have had, any cultural viewpoints shared by te author and his audience, etc. The best way to understand what may be left out of an account, or whether we can take the authro's word for things is to try and understand the culture for which it was written, and if that leaves us with areas of doubt, then so be it. If we only have one account of things, we can't deduce a perfect reconstruction of the actual events, and that's just a failing we'll have to live with.With the Mary account, knowing the culture the story was written in, and taking into account the bias the author would have wanted to get across, we see that we're kind of in the woods as to the actual event, and we really only have two options: take the author's word for it; or say the author probably got something wrong or left something out, but we'll never know what.

I am generally quite happy to agree with your conclusion, except that I would emphasise the distinct possibility that the whole story is made up, not just some parts of it.I stand by my point that if the story is a literal account, or very close to being a literal account, then Mary was at the very least abused (I won't bother arguing over the technicality of "rape"). If the story is not a literal account, then, well, the implications are obvious.

That is always a possibility that must be acknowledged, no matter the source. WHen I said fiction and non-fiction, I was kind of meaning the absolute category, not necessarily that which the author would put it in. Of course, that would mean you could conceivably place all works in fiction because no one can tell the "TRUTH" without first interpreting the truth to themselves. The literal acount says Mary was happy. You're reading into it to say, "Of course she said she was happy, she's standing before God's representative, what's she supposed to say?" and while I agree with you, we have no reason to believe she was anything but sincere. Just because someone has the ability to force you to do something, and you have reason to be afraid of that ability, does not mean you can't also want to do what they tell you to do. If she actually wanted the pregnancy, then we're in no position to call it abuse or rape. Conversely, we're in no position to know if she wanted it or not, so we can't make a judgment without reyling on assumptions we've got very little basis to make.

OK. Yes, it's possible she might have been genuinely happy. There's no proof either way.I'll just leave it that it would have been nice if she was asked rather than told!

Evidence...?

Whoa... When did "Faith and Belief" turn into a Science Forum? (Admittedly, I did notice a confusing inconsistency in the linkage at the top of the page -- sometimes "Faith and Belief" shows up as a category within "Science Forums". I hope the admins can fix this.)Well, extrapolating from current observables, it's certainly plausible that the idea of bearing a child without the need of physical sex with a man would have been considered a Good Thing by at least some women. However, I gather that other information in the NT would suggest that Mary was not a lesbian.But then again, I recall hearing from my brother, who studied scriptural translation at a Christian college, that there is also information in scripture to suggest that this conception was actually "maculate" (so to speak) -- in fact, he was turned down for a position with at least one church because he believed that this alternative (non-virgin-birth) interpretation was the better one, and that the virgin-birth story was an unwarranted and quite unnecessary distortion of the history.All of which goes to show how so much about the OP question depends so heavily on matters of interpretation. And let's face it: anyone who commits to a specific interpretation of this text is treading on thin ice. There really isn't very much to go on, and there was undoubtably a lot of "social context" taken for granted -- and therefore left implicit and unstated -- by the original authors.And then there were additional (and different) social contexts taken for granted by each of the successive interpreters who tried to render the original text into other languages at other times, which were also not explicitly stated but nonetheless had various effects on the subtle shadings in the selection and ordering of words in each translation.In any case, it strikes me that posing a question like "Did God rape Mary?" is like asking "Did the children of Adam and Eve commit incest?" -- well of course you can look at it that way, especially if you're skeptical about the stories anyway; and of course you won't see it that way if you've already decided to accept and believe the stories "at face value" (meaning that you adopt an interpretation that puts these events in a positive light).This is related in a way to the notion that "the nation that wins the war gets to write the history books." Describing human (religious, cultural, and even economic) history is all too often a dreadfully context-dependent exercise.

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autotelic adj. (of an entity or event) having within itself the purpose of its existence or happening.