GOD RAPED MARY

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

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...

1.  But Mary's parents do not appear in the story.

2.  I'm not trying to 'excuse a god' at all.  This is simply an analysis of the text, and cultural context is important as regards the story.  If Mary was a preteen, that was the norm in 1st century Palestine - you simply cannot judge the mores and behaviour of the people in the story based on the mores and behaviour of people today.

3.  I agree that a modern judge would have locked up the father in your example, but so what?  A Sanhedrin would not have done so, and that's all that matters.

Please don't think I'm trying to excuse the Bible in any shape or form - I'm not.  But the story in Luke simply doesn't describe any kind of a 'rape'.

Boru