(September 21, 2015 at 6:53 pm)Spooky Wrote:Quote:"28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives."
I take this to mean that god doesn't give a shit if they aren't discovered.
Cool, as long as I'm sneaky about it I can keep my silver.
Idiotic.
No, I think RAKD has a good point, here. It's important to consider both word usage and context. Even though many translations of the Bible use the word "rape" for the later verses (28-29), others do not. Young's Literal uses "caught":
YLT Wrote:28When a man findeth a damsel, a virgin who is not betrothed, and hath caught her, and lain with her, and they have been found, 29 then hath the man who is lying with her given to the father of the damsel fifty silverlings, and to him she is for a wife; because that he hath humbled her, he is not able to send her away all his days."
In the overall view of the chapter, though, it's clear that the whole point of the passage is to protect virginity, which had a literal, financial value to the men who owned those women. The "tokens of virginity" were an essential element of that. We still have a vestigial remnant of that practice in modern weddings, where the father of the bride "gives her away" to her new owner husband. As RAKD says, it's just a matter of considering the culture of the time. However, I'd say that the kind of culture which would produce such rules is not one that produces any moral codes a modern person should be obliged to consider God-inspired or worthy of respect.
In effect, because women are treated as property able to be damaged, whether it is rape or consensual is largely irrelevant, in terms of the passage, except where she is betrothed and is penetrated by a man not her husband-to-be, and they consider the question of whether or not she cried out in her own defense (the implication being that she must not have been raped, if not, ignoring that many rape victims cannot cry out because they are muffled, at knife-point, or simply terrified into submission), in which case both fornicators die. What mainly seems to matter in those verses is the value of the property that women represent. Fine for Bronze Age tribal (and Patriarchal) sheepherders, perhaps, but hardly the basis for a modern moral code.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
