GOD RAPED MARY

[Aoi Magi]

I'm not saying it's out and out rape, but I am saying this isn't what anyone nowadays would call clear consent, either. If a very overbearing father tells his 12 year old daughter that he's going to impregnate her, she might have the same response.  Would we call it consent, then?

The glaring difference is that a modern 12 year old isn't able to give consent.  Mary, on the other hand, was already engaged to Joseph when the angel appeared, so she was clearly old enough (at the time) to give consent.

According to the account in Luke, Mary didn't resist, she didn't seem afraid at the news - she merely asked how a virgin could be made pregnant.  And, as a soon to be bride, it seems silly to presume that getting knocked up and giving birth held any special terrors for her.

Sorry, but you'll really have to go all round the houses for the story to depict a rape, statutory or otherwise.

Boru

In those days consent was given by the bride's parents, more specifically her father, not the bride herself. Also I find it funny when people excuse a god, who is supposedly the timeless source of objective morality, on account of his deed being from a different time period. Even if people died young those days, that doesn't mean children were born adults.

As for the biblical story itself, If a father testifies in court that he sent his servant to his preteen daughter to notify her that he will impregnate her, and that his servant had returned to him with his daughter's consent... I think even in Texas, a judge would put that father in the slammer,.... on second thought... maybe not in texas but in any other civillized region of the world...