A Disturbing Bible Verse About Rape

It is just as much an example of warring factions which regard the cultural differences of their opponent a threat on itself. If you can antagonize the enemy well enough even raping and killing their women almost becomes righteous. When we look at history it is obvious this transcends religion.

 

Women were raped and killed by their enemies in our neck of the woods too for centuries.

 

It's only a story.

 

It transcends religion as we have it nowadays. Back then, I think religion was the culture, and from it, everything flowed. It's not like the Israelites had any kind of authority separate from the religion. And pretty much all the human cultures at that time were equally cruel and barbaric.
I agree with nox on this - to lay this on modern Christians is ridiculous, although there may be a small number of extremists who'd like to go back to barbarism who call themselves Christian, they are far from the mainstream or the majority.

 

I've said for ages on here that religion intertwines with other parts of culture. Even more so in the past. But when I do it gets often regarded as if I am trying to excuse religion of their atrocities (not the case at all)

 

More atrocities were probably committed during the 20th c. than during the entire course of past history, and religion didn't play much of a role IMO.

 

Cultural differences? Moses slaughtered the Midianites because the Lord instructed him to. It was religious extremism at its worst.

 

If you insist on taking the story literally. In this case it was more likely the threat of hostile neighbouring tribes/people. People make excuses all the time for attacking enemies or invading their land. If I could attribute my misdeeds as our god's command and therefor also guarantee the support of my people I would almost be silly not to. It seems that was the common mindset in those days.

 

Even in the first world war Brits were encouraged to sign up to fight for God, King and Country. Probably, the Germans had something similar. Just part of the way that power is constructed in human cultures. Maybe less so now as God has gone out of fashion as a tool in the hands of the ruling class - at least in Europe.

 

I agree. I'm sure every modern Christian recognizes religious intolerance and extremism as it occurred in the Old Testament for what it is. And even the ones who don't recognize it for what it was have at least learned to keep their hands to themselves.

 

So did the Midianite virgins, but back then it was hard to escape the long arm of the Lord.

 

Gosh, I shouldn't laugh at that. My gosh, stop it. You're too much, lol.

 

You have the creepiest, fucking avator ever.

Sorry, guys... I know I'm dumbing this serious issue. I should read and stop typing. Starting..... NOW! Maybe.

 

Then there is that Bible story where some men of God are being protected, but there is a mob of men that came to kill them and are at the gates of the person who is protecting them. SO he sends his daughters out the gate to be ravished to appease them------its in the Bible, maybe someone knows where.

 

Judges 19:24

-New American Standard Bible

 

Judges 19. cant tell, think there are a few fuck flicks in the bible , But I cant recall where Ive masturbated to them most..

 

There are two possible candidates: Gen. 19:4-5,about the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah; and Judges 19, about the Levite and his concubine. In the Genesis story, two strangers (who happen to be angels) are visiting Lot in the city of Sodom, and a mob of men came and asked Lot to send them out so that they might "know" (in the biblical sense) them. Lot offers his two daughters instead, but the Sodomites weren't interested. They made their move on the visitors, who smote them blind, and after Lot and his family were allowed to leave, God destroyed the city with fire and brimstone. Conservatives say this was punishment for being gay, liberals say it was punishment for violating the laws of hospitality toward strangers and for being generally mean people. Ezekiel 16:49 says the sin of Sodom was that they "were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy".

In the Judges story, a Levite's concubine left him and returned to her father's house in a distant town. The Levite followed her, reconciled with her, and was returning home with her when they stopped overnight at the town of Gibeah. A mob from the local Benjamite tribe surrounded the house and demanded that the host send out the Levite so that they could "know" him (in the biblical sense). Instead, the host offered them his daughter, The mob refused, but the Levite pushed his concubine out the door and the mob, not being fussy, had their way with her for the rest of the night and left her unconscious and dying at the door. When she died, the outraged Levite chopped her body into twelve pieces and distributed them to all twelve tribes of Israel as evidence of the crime. This triggered a war between the Benjamites and the other tribes of Israel, who were outraged at the atrocity. Some scholars think the story was meant to show the depravity and chaos into which Israel had sunk before the monarchy, and was Judean propaganda supporting the creation of kingship and taking a jab at their Benjamite rivals..

I'm sure someone will notice that both stories imply that violating males sexually is worse than violating women. We have made some, if limited, moral progress.

 

Exactly! We need to keep in mind that we're dealing with the ancient Jews' stories about their past. They were both a religion and an ethnic group, and the two reinforced each other. Their founding myth was that they were God's chosen people, given Canaan (Palestine) as their "promised land, despite the fact that it was already occupied by Canaanites. Yahweh was originally their national patron deity; even though they recognized the existence of other deities, Yahweh was the one they enlisted for support, just as the Moabites had Chemosh, the Philistines had Dagon, the Canaanites had Baal, etc. Much later, during the Babylonian captivity of the sixth century B.C.E., they developed the idea that Yahweh was the only true god, and the god of everyone, but He still had a special relationship with Israel. Most of the violence and the disturbing passages come early on in the first five books of the OT known as the Torah. The main purposes were to emphasize the special covenant relationship between God and the Jewish people and to solidify the Israelites' sense of separate identity established by such rituals as circumcision, the sabbath and the kosher dietary laws. Later parts of the OT, including the Prophets, Psalms, and Wisdom literature, emphasize justice, compassion and universal values. Dwelling on the violent, chauvinistic parts of the Torah makes sense only to the fundamentalists who think that every word in the Bible is inerrant and literal--a position which neither the Jews themselves nor the early Christians church fathers held.

Christianity took over the Jewish scriptures, which gave Christians a plausible claim to a prestigious ancient tradition but some awkwardness in explaining how a predominantly Gentile religion followed by a heterogeneous mix of races could do this. The idea was that the Jews had a good thing going but blew it by rejecting Jesus, after which Christians became Yahweh's favorites. Most Catholics and Orthodox Christians don't read the Bible much and rely on their apostolic Churches which are supposedly guided by the Holy Spirit. Protestants do emphasize the Bible and Reformed and Evangelical Protestants do read it regularly. Many, however, take a "New Covenant" approach to the Jewish scriptures,. They think that god's old covenant with the Jews ended with Jesus, and that they aren't bound by Jewish law or history. Others are Dispensationalists, who think that God organized history into several distinct periods or "dispensations", each with its own rules. The period from Moses to the death of Jesus was the dispensation of "law"; the present period, until the Second Coming of Christ, is the dispensation of "grace". Neither of these schools of theology identifies with the Jewish slaughter of the Midianites and other atrocities, which are dismissed as just something those ancient Jews did in a different world under different conditions long ago. There are a minority of fundamentalists who accept the whole Bible and take it literally. Of course, mainline and progressive Protestants take a non-literal, historical-metaphorical approach to the Bible, and would focus on what the Torah tells us about the mentality of early Jews. In Bible study at my own mainline Protestant church, there were plenty of complaints as we struggled through the blood and guts of the Torah. One woman said "This seems kind of violent", which drew prolonged laughter from the rest of the class at the understatement of the year!