(June 20, 2014 at 3:11 pm)alpha male Wrote: I don't know if you honestly missed v. 23-24 or are intentionally skipping over it, but it's more applicable, as it refers to the same situation but in a city. In such a case, the act is presumed to be consensual (and both parties punishable by death) unless there's reasonable evidence that it was rape, such as screams from the woman. By your own method of analyzing what we're not told, well, we're not told that she screamed, so it should be viewed as consensual.I missed it. So it seems to have been consensual, since the story doesn't tell us what she did. I think it's safe to assume that someone would have heard. So we are left to wonder why there is no accusation of adultery.
alpha male Wrote:More of what we're NOT told.That's what makes it an interesting question. I am wondering what sort of details would be important enough to keep, and what sort would be important enough to leave out. And what that might tell us about the men who wrote the story. Bath-sheba is treated as little more than a prop throughout the tale, which makes it so we need to find more context to get a better idea of what they may have missed.
alpha male Wrote:Consider the punishment for the crime: the death of the child conceived. Death of the child was punishment to Bathsheba as well (and probably moreso than to David), and is an indicator that she was was also guilty.The child's death is described as punishment for David's sin: "because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die." There doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that this is referring to Bath-sheba or any part she played, since this is the discussion Nathan is having with David about his crimes, and is part of his response after David repents for his actions.
Bath-sheba is not accused of adultery, and is not judged for anything she might be guilty of. When her newborn is stricken with illness, it is David who humbles himself in the hopes of softening god's heart and saving the child. Bath-sheba is ignored by the writer until the baby is dead and David stops mourning.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
