Missing Mosaic Laws...

[golgotha61]

Genesis 19. I thought that was clear when I mentioned Sodom by name.

Just making sure, there is nothing more embarrassing than an assumption gone awry. Are you suggesting that the virgin daughters were traded for the safety of the angels?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Just making sure, there is nothing more embarrassing than an assumption gone awry. Are you suggesting that the virgin daughters were traded for the safety of the angels?

We both know the story. We both know the trade never occurred. Read again what I said.

But there is a similar passage in Judges 19 where the trade did occur.

 

[golgotha61]

We both know the story. We both know the trade never occurred. Read again what I said.

But there is a similar passage in Judges 19 where the trade did occur.

Here is your post: "How about angels of the LORD being threatened with gang rape and tacitly agreeing to have virgins take their place? Far as I can tell, those angels went back to heaven when they were done inspecting Sodom." Now, what is your question?

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Here is your post: "How about angels of the LORD being threatened with gang rape and tacitly agreeing to have virgins take their place? Far as I can tell, those angels went back to heaven when they were done inspecting Sodom." Now, what is your question?

Go back to that post and read the thing of yours that I was quoting. If my question is not clear, forget it.

 

[golgotha61]

Go back to that post and read the thing of yours that I was quoting. If my question is not clear, forget it.

OK, forget it.

 

[Nihilist Virus]

Don't really have time to go into this, but, Judaism 101- not everything is written down in the Torah.

I think the OP is going with the common Judeo-Christian assumption that the Bible is all we need.

 

[Moral Orel]

Remember, adultery is applicable to all heterosexual activities that are not practiced within the confines of the husband and wife.

This is false. Adultery in the OT is defined as a man having relations with a married woman. It is not defined as a woman having relations with a married man.

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Leviticus 20:10

Sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. The crime can be committed only by and with a married woman; for the unlawful intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman is not technically Adultery in the Jewish law. Jewish Encyclopedia​

Once the male and female perform the sex act, they are now one in the eyes of God.

This is false. Your verse that you brought up from Exodus about a man and an unbetrothed virgin proves this wrong. They aren't married unless the father says he has to. Marriage is not solely defined by the act of sex.

Show me where this event is presented in the biblical narratives. I will deal with actual events and parts of the biblical narratives, not made up stories to create a false narrative or in the worst case scenario, a strawman argument.

I made up the story to show an example with about 10 different terrible things occurring for you to show me Bible verses condemning them. If the OT saw nothing wrong with this kind of behavior, why would they mention it? I can't show you parts of the Bible telling stories about things the Bible doesn't think is important...

I did read your whole post. I just didn't have time to write a response to all of it, so I wanted to point out what I thought was the worst bit. I'm about to start writing a response to the rest of it now.

 

[Moral Orel]

Don't really have time to go into this, but, Judaism 101- not everything is written down in the Torah.

Oh I know, and I hope I don't sound like I'm trashing Judaism, because I'm not. But the Torah is the only part that Christians universally recognize as being God inspired. I respect Judaism a lot for looking at old laws and updating them as necessary.

Remember, from the OP, the point is not: "Eww! Your religion is evil!". It is: "Maybe Moses wrote those laws himself and he didn't have God write them for him".

I mean, if God just told Moses, "Go and write the laws of this new nation". It wouldn't be weird of Moses to come down saying, "God told me to tell you guys this stuff".

 

[Moral Orel]

Legal in the view of the absence of casuistic or case law or even apodictic law, no and I will explain below. But since God’s charges against Israel were often metaphorically connected to “prostitution,” the act of relations with a prostitute were not sanctioned by God, only tolerated. The men were also included in the pejorative view and not just the women.

Tolerated = legal. That's all I'm saying. We're talking about laws here, and how God allegedly stated how their society should be run. Even if we incorporate morality into the laws and say, "Okay, love your neighbor is a law", that means there is a law with no punishment or deterrent to breaking it at all. So let's just stick to actual laws and not how people back then should have interpreted other parts of the Bible.

God defined marriage as one man and one woman in which the act of sexual intercourse was becoming one flesh. Adultery was a sin and if a married man had sexual relations with someone other than his first wife, he was guilty of adultery. The law was broken and just because the Israelites didn’t punish the offender as they should have, doesn’t make the act legal.

He defined it this way, sort of, in the NT. Not the old. See my other post about your verse in Exodus that contradicts this claim.

In the case of the single man, sex with a prostitute was also punishable but was ignored. Who was the prostitute? Was she divorced? Was she a ruined virgin? If she was divorced, the law is still broken because God never intended that divorce would be practiced and if one had relations with such a person, then adultery was still committed but the Israelites declined to treat it as the sin that it was.

Visiting a prostitute was not punishable. There was no punishment ascribed to visiting a prostitute. There is no law on the books that they ignored.

And if you claim that God did indeed write Mosaic Law Himself, then God wrote this:

When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house Deuteronomy 24:1​

So, yes, Divorce was and is part of God's plan because even the NT gives reasons to allow for a divorce. And no, it is not adultery to sleep with a divorced person.

If the woman was a ruined virgin, it means that she was raped or consensually involved in the act and the civil act of marriage was not completed. If she was raped, she and the rapist had still become one flesh and if another man had relations with her, then he was an adulterer. The sexual union is the determiner of becoming joined as one flesh and if one joins with another who is one flesh with someone else, the act of adultery is on those who engage in the act. The original plan for man and woman to become one was initiated in the act of sexual intercourse and it was the signifier of becoming one flesh/husband and wife.

If a woman is raped, then in God's eyes she is married to her rapist? Are you kidding me?

Just because the nation of Israel did not determine these specific acts as sins of adultery does not negate the fact that they were adultery. That is why these details are revisited in the NT as God brings mankind closer to the completion of His plan for us. The sin is on Israel for not holding itself to the original standards of sin that God outlined and allowing the sins to grow until she was cast into the era of dispersion.

Who wrote Mosaic Law? God or Moses? Moses claims it was God who wrote the details. Do you believe that? If you don't believe God designed Mosaic Law then we have nothing to argue about.

Solomon was not within God’s plan when he accumulated the concubines and multiple wives and in fact, he was in violation of God’s command cf Deu 17:17. Solomon garnered these wives as a means of acquiring national advantages in the Ancient Near East (ANE). In the ANE it was customary to seal the deal with a lesser king by the greater king (Solomon) marrying the lesser king’s daughter. This was not sanctioned by God and was sin which Solomon would indeed suffer for in his later years. God allowed this polygamy the same way that He allowed divorce but Jesus reminded Israel that it was because of the hardness of man’s heart that He allowed the practice and not because God sanctioned the practice of divorce or polygamy cf Matt 19:8.

I brought up Solomon to illustrate how the ancient Israelites viewed sexual conquest, not God. Solomon was revered, and as far as his subjects were concerned, he was blessed by God with his riches and wives and concubines. The OT seems to be a lot about punishment and reward occurring on Earth for being bad or good, respectively. The NT shifts things to punishment and reward occurring after you're done on Earth.

As I have already pointed out, divorce was not God’s plan and it only existed because of man’s hardness of heart. So, any marriage to a divorced woman would be acts of adultery. Christ addresses the problem in Matt 19 as well. The law and intent was always there in the OT laws but man’s determination to be autonomous led him away from God’s intent and Christ brought it back into focus.

You can marry a divorced woman and it not be adultery even in the NT...

Rape: The legal texts show that rape was the equivalent to murder (Deut 22:26) and as seducing a woman physically (Deut 22:25-27) or psychologically (Deut 22:28-29; Exod 22:16) into sexual intercourse. In those same verses, the legal texts value the consent and value of the woman’s voice.

No, as I pointed out, those laws are about adultery. Does the man get a worse punishment if it was rape than he would if it was consensual? No. Does the law apply to anyone other than married women or single virgins? No. There is no protection from rape unless you're married.

In the case of the wife: The act of rape is what is judged and is not viewed as punishable by death because of the object of the crime. It is the crime itself that is abhorrent which means that the husband should treat his wife with the same concern for her value as God’s created being and this is why the NT expands on the idea of the husband treating the wife the same way he treats his own body.

But the wife is supposed to be obedient as well, even in the NT. If the wife refuses to be obedient and comply with sex, then she is a sinner. We can look at some other verses that talk about soldiers taking wives from cities they just got done butchering. Do you think those captive wives were happily consenting to sex? Even if they didn't say, "No" most of them were assuredly afraid of the sword they watched their families killed with. That isn't consent either and results in the same psychological trauma of violent rape.

As demonstrated, finer details are provided in the NT by Christ and the authors of the epistles and it was also determined that these finer details were provided as a reminder that the original intent of the law was ignored. Finer detail is only provided as one violates the original spirit and intent of the law. For example, when Christ taught about loving your neighbor as yourself the next question was “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). However, rape was not overlooked and even though the laws that we have looked at only name the virgin they would also take into consideration the wife. This is because, since it is the act that is judged, it follows that the same respect is due for the wife’s desire for or against sexual advances.

Finer detail... Why so many details about theft and so few about rape? Why is rape less important to enforce than theft?

The NT reboots the laws of the OT and reminds us of what the original intent was in God’s plan for mankind. Your assumption that the more detail that is in the law is a sign of evolving morality, but it is just the opposite. We make laws more detailed because we are trying to deny our sins by only committing parts of the sin in question. We deny the intent of the law and demand that details be provided so that we can get close to sin but just miss the judgment for going too far. This is why Christ defined adultery as “looking at a woman” with adulteress intent. The heart is the originator of sin and the body is the tool for its completion. In reality, the plethora of laws that accumulate over time define the culture in decline and not an evolutionary ascending culture.

I bolded the really important part. Slavery is considered morally wrong now. Women get to choose their husband based on love now. Girls who are too young to make the decision themselves aren't blamed if they volunteer to have sex with a much older man now. These are all good morals that evolved after the Bible.

 

[golgotha61]

This is false. Adultery in the OT is defined as a man having relations with a married woman. It is not defined as a woman having relations with a married man.

If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. Leviticus 20:10

Sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. The crime can be committed only by and with a married woman; for the unlawful intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman is not technically Adultery in the Jewish law. Jewish Encyclopedia

Sexual intercourse between a man and a woman is what makes the two persons, one. This was the original act of man and woman becoming husband and wife as the conjugal union was not only physical but a spiritual oneness. This is why the act of sexual intercourse is to be practiced only by the original participating pair. The violation of the protection of this unique oneness is under the authority of adultery. In the eyes of God’s holiness, adultery is committed any time intercourse is practiced outside the confines of that oneness of the husband and wife. So, if an unmarried/virgin man and woman engage in sexual intercourse, they have become one and are husband and wife as declared by the act. The fruit of this oneness singularity was the child who embodied the two as one. You may ask how this can be fair to couples who cannot become pregnant and the answer lies in effects of sin on all aspects of God’s creation.

I made up the story to show an example with about 10 different terrible things occurring for you to show me Bible verses condemning them. If the OT saw nothing wrong with this kind of behavior, why would they mention it? I can't show you parts of the Bible telling stories about things the Bible doesn't think is important...
I did read your whole post. I just didn't have time to write a response to all of it, so I wanted to point out what I thought was the worst bit. I'm about to start writing a response to the rest of it now.

What you did was create a strawman argument and I will not engage in fallacious arguments. Reality is difficult enough to explain, we don’t need made up realities that are intended to obfuscate the truth. If there are no biblical accounts, then there was no need for God’s intervention in what did not exist.

I brought up Solomon to illustrate how the ancient Israelites viewed sexual conquest, not God.

I already gave the reason for the wives and concubines and it had nothing to do with how the “Israelites viewed sexual conquest.” This was the last thing on the mind of the Israelite in the ANE. What you have presented is a Postmodern Western worldview and not that of the ANE culture.

You can marry a divorced woman and it not be adultery even in the NT...

Not necessarily. Read Luke 16:18.

No, as I pointed out, those laws are about adultery. Does the man get a worse punishment if it was rape than he would if it was consensual? No. Does the law apply to anyone other than married women or single virgins? No. There is no protection from rape unless you're married.

This is where you need to step down and place yourself under those who are better prepared to interpret Scripture and stop posing as some sort of authority on hermeneutics and exegesis. This particular point and verse selections that I presented are from a peer reviewed article by an adjunct Hebrew Instructor at Denver Seminary. You need to place yourself as a student of biblical truths and stop presenting yourself as one with scholarly ground in biblical studies.

I bolded the really important part. Slavery is considered morally wrong now. Women get to choose their husband based on love now. Girls who are too young to make the decision themselves aren't blamed if they volunteer to have sex with a much older man now. These are all good morals that evolved after the Bible.

Morals do not evolve, they are established by a moral authority, and your examples are all culturally and chronologically unrelated. Time to wrap this up. I am calling all those rabbits that you turned lose, back into the warren. Christ was asked by an expert of Jewish law what the greatest commandment was. Christ’s answer was that all of the commandments are derived from two: Luke 10:27 (HCSB) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.

The same can be said for your objections to the lack of detail in the Mosaic law concerning sexual sins and perceived inequality of punishment for violating the laws. I reiterate the tenet that originally, the conjugal act was the joining of the man and woman to become one flesh and that this act is so important and sacred that it denies separation of that oneness. Divorce was not God’s plan in the original acts of creation (Matt 19:8) and the same grace is offered all through Scripture. God could have opted to enforce the adultery law’s punishments to prostitution, fornication, and incest, but displayed grace to Israel and mitigated the full force of His holy character.

If God allows all of His holiness and righteous judgment to be applied, none would survive and in light of this, God allows grace. He allows this grace so that mankind can survive and be able to choose to turn from sin and accept Christ’s salvation. But, there is coming a time when all of His holiness and righteous judgment will be exacted upon us. It is then that the grace of salvation will absolve our sin guilt and allow mankind to continue to exist in paradise.

As we all draw breath, right now, it is because of God’s grace and patience. He could exact our due punishment for our autonomous actions against His character but as He did in OT, He does now. His Mosaic laws were full of grace and demonstrated how He relented from exacting due judgment but instead, He allowed Israel chance after chance to turn to Him. Time is running out.

 

[Moral Orel]

This is where you need to step down and place yourself under those who are better prepared to interpret Scripture and stop posing as some sort of authority on hermeneutics and exegesis. This particular point and verse selections that I presented are from a peer reviewed article by an adjunct Hebrew Instructor at Denver Seminary. You need to place yourself as a student of biblical truths and stop presenting yourself as one with scholarly ground in biblical studies.

Do you have a link to this text? You didn't offer one before, and you didn't cite anything before, you just stated an assertion.

Does it have answers as to why the text chose to state a very specific person as the victim instead of being broad and generalized? If the law was expanded somehow in the Talmud or something, I would have to ask why it wasn't written correctly in the first place though.

 

[rockytopva]

" And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

As you treat your fellow man... So you treat God. If you do evil to man, you do evil to God. The wicked asked... When? They had no awareness of their wickedness... But they will! Oh! They will!

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. - Matthew 25

 

[St_Worm2]

So I've brought it up a few times in various threads that were only slightly on topic, but where are the laws against rape and molestation?

Hi Nicholas, here you go (from the OT and the NT):

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD." ~Lev 19:17-18

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" ~Matt 19:19/Gal 5:14/Ja 2:8..........

"However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" ~Matt 7:12​

Yours and His,
David

 

[Moral Orel]

This is where you need to step down and place yourself under those who are better prepared to interpret Scripture and stop posing as some sort of authority on hermeneutics and exegesis. This particular point and verse selections that I presented are from a peer reviewed article by an adjunct Hebrew Instructor at Denver Seminary. You need to place yourself as a student of biblical truths and stop presenting yourself as one with scholarly ground in biblical studies.

Hey! I found it on my own! Deirdre Brouer right? That's a link to the bit you quoted (without giving credit, shame, shame).

But she gives no explanation as to how she arrived at this conclusion, and no argumentation or additional evidence to support her claim. Citing experts is all well and good, but what about when they disagree?

Robert Kawashima who teaches Biblical Law at the University of Florida says,

"So the ancient near east, including Israel, didn't have a proper notion of 'forcible rape'––just adultery with another man's wife or fornication with another man's virgin daughter. The other man, in either case, was the victim of the crime."​

So since your source that I'm supposed to simply accept as being right gives no explanation as to why the Law states that these laws apply to specific women, and not all women, can you give some reason that it does that other than the fact that these are the specific women the laws were written about?

 

[Moral Orel]

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD." ~Lev 19:17-18

"You shall love your neighbor as yourself" ~Matt 19:19/Gal 5:14/James 2:8..........

"However you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the Law and the Prophets" ~Matt 7:12

There's no punishment ascribed in Mosaic Law for breaking these general commands though. If someone is a thief, there is a punishment for that. If someone is a rapist, there is no punishment for that. At least not until the afterlife, but that applies to both. Shouldn't there be a punishment for rapists in the OT in order to keep people from raping each other?

Remember, the question is not, "Is God evil because He didn't outlaw rape?". For the sake of the argument, I'll accept as a premise that God is infinitely good, and infinitely just, and hates rape and molestation.

The question is, "Would an infinitely good, and infinitely just, God that hates rape write a legal code that doesn't outlaw rape?".

I'm not questioning God's character or His existence. I'm questioning Moses' divine inspiration for writing the laws that he wrote.

Try this. Give the reasons for having a law against stealing and describing what to do when theft occurs, and see if any reasons you can come up with for that which wouldn't apply to rape or molestation as well.

 

[Sam91]

I can't help but think that the Law was sufficiently explanatory about all the other forms to show that sexual violence was even worse and it was fairly obvious that you just don't go there as it is taboo by nature to interfere with the young.

 

[St_Worm2]

Hi again Nicholas, the Bible has this to say:

“But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die."

“If a man meets a virgin who is not betrothed, and seizes her and lies with her, and they are found, then the man who lay with her shall give to the father of the young woman fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife, because he has violated her. He may not divorce her all his days." ~Deut 22:25-29​

I'm posting blind here (surely you have talked about Deuteronomy 22 already, yes?). DEATH was the prescribed judgment for the rape of a woman already betrothed to another (which is a 'far' harsher punishment than we have today for rape, at least here in the West), but that was not the punishment for someone who raped a virgin. Why Because that would, in essence, be a heavy judgment against the young girl as well.

Men sought out virgins to marry in that culture (just look at the extent father's went to in that society to prove their daughters were still virgins on their wedding night ). If you were a virgin and you were raped, your hope of ever becoming a wife back then was over, so the law forced the man to do the right thing If the law prescribed death as punishment for this type of rape, unfortunately, it would have also punished the innocent party as well (as she would, at the very least, face a life of great hardship, with no hope of marriage or children .. which is what women did back then, they got married and had children, they didn't have any of the opportunities that women do today).

It was a very different time and a very different culture, but they sought to be as fair and as just as they could be within that culture.

Hope that helps a bit.

--David

 

[golgotha61]

Hey! I found it on my own! Deirdre Brouer right? That's a link to the bit you quoted (without giving credit, shame, shame).

But she gives no explanation as to how she arrived at this conclusion, and no argumentation or additional evidence to support her claim. Citing experts is all well and good, but what about when they disagree?

Robert Kawashima who teaches Biblical Law at the University of Florida says,

"So the ancient near east, including Israel, didn't have a proper notion of 'forcible rape'––just adultery with another man's wife or fornication with another man's virgin daughter. The other man, in either case, was the victim of the crime."​

So since your source that I'm supposed to simply accept as being right gives no explanation as to why the Law states that these laws apply to specific women, and not all women, can you give some reason that it does that other than the fact that these are the specific women the laws were written about?

I got the paper from EBSCO and didn't think that it was accessible on-line but I should have given the author's name, I will next time. However, the point is that your denial of what the verses in question address is not what Kawashima refers to since he is examining Exodus, nor does he give an explanation of how he reached his conclusion as you seem to demand from Brouer. When in fact Brouer does present her reasoning and offers an explanation for her conclusion. Kawashima is not even referencing the same verses as Brouer which makes your claim invalid. So, it would more convincing to present comparison of the same verses with an investigation on a parallel comparison.

Until the conclusion of Brouer’s is proven unsound or fallacious, it stands as accurate and sound. You have no ground to deny its accuracy and truthfulness outside of your own bias and preconceptions. My argument stands and your only choice is whether to stand under intellectual and educational authority or to arrogantly deny that authority.

 

[golgotha61]

There's no punishment ascribed in Mosaic Law for breaking these general commands though. If someone is a thief, there is a punishment for that. If someone is a rapist, there is no punishment for that. At least not until the afterlife, but that applies to both. Shouldn't there be a punishment for rapists in the OT in order to keep people from raping each other?

Remember, the question is not, "Is God evil because He didn't outlaw rape?". For the sake of the argument, I'll accept as a premise that God is infinitely good, and infinitely just, and hates rape and molestation.

The question is, "Would an infinitely good, and infinitely just, God that hates rape write a legal code that doesn't outlaw rape?".

I'm not questioning God's character or His existence. I'm questioning Moses' divine inspiration for writing the laws that he wrote.

Try this. Give the reasons for having a law against stealing and describing what to do when theft occurs, and see if any reasons you can come up with for that which wouldn't apply to rape or molestation as well.

Read Judges 19-20. It appears that God does indeed have a punishment for rape. Not for murder as I imagine some would like to insert, because that would simply require the enactment of the written Mosaic law and the punishment would be carried out accordingly. However, it is the act of rape (also referenced by Brouer) that has brought God’s directed punishment against the tribe of Benjamin. When the tribe of Benjamin was told to give up the men who had raped the concubine, they refused and then at the Lord’s direction, punishment was exacted.

Here is the point, the Mosaic law need not detail each and every possible concoction of sin and how to punish those who commit the sin. Just as Christ educated the expert of the law that an overarching understanding of the Ten Commandments will enable the righteous man to determine what is sin and what the punishment should be. The chapters in Judges demonstrate this, they didn’t need a detailed law against rape in this case, they even said that this type of perversion was unknown in Israel from the time they had left Egypt. God conjoined with the Israelites and directed the punishment against Benjamin.

As far as your continual rabbit chase for laws against child molestation, I have found no evidence that this was an issue. There are no biblical narratives that I found that give witness to this sin happening in Israel. If there is no evidence to the contrary, then it is absurd to chastise God for not addressing what does not exist.

 

[Moral Orel]

This is a discussion board and not submissions meant for peer review and if you want in-text citations with a works cited section, I can do that but I consider it a time consuming effort that you would still ignore and would serve no purpose but to waste time.

If you cut and paste someone else's words, out of respect for the author, you should at least name them. If you want to scold me for not respecting people who are more qualified, you should name them as well.

However, the point is that your denial of what the verses in question address is not what Kawashima refers to since he is examining Exodus, nor does he give an explanation of how he reached his conclusion as you seem to demand from Brouer.

No he is not. He states the crimes in the Deuteronomy verses. When he says "adultery with another man's wife" and "fornication with another man's virgin daughter" he is clearly referencing those other verses in light of the Exodus verse. The Exodus verse does not mention "fornication with another man's virgin daughter" does it?

Read Judges 19-20. It appears that God does indeed have a punishment for rape. Not for murder as I imagine some would like to insert, because that would simply require the enactment of the written Mosaic law and the punishment would be carried out accordingly. However, it is the act of rape (also referenced by Brouer) that has brought God’s directed punishment against the tribe of Benjamin. When the tribe of Benjamin was told to give up the men who had raped the concubine, they refused and then at the Lord’s direction, punishment was exacted.

Was that even rape? She was the Levite's concubine, and he gave her to the group to be raped. He gave permission to the group to do as they pleased to save his own skin, and a concubine is more akin to a slave than a wife. What was the Levite's punishment for throwing that poor girl to the wolves, as it were? Nothing. Even though his story that he told the Israelite's didn't match up to what occurred. First it is just the men of the city, but he says it was the leaders. The men came and said they wanted to "know" him, but he claims they wanted to kill him. He, of course, doesn't mention that he sent the girl out to them, just that they abused her and she died. And it ends with a genocidal act against the people of Benjamin.

Let's look at this specific part of this quote in more detail:

Not for murder as I imagine some would like to insert, because that would simply require the enactment of the written Mosaic law and the punishment would be carried out accordingly.

If they could charge the men with murder, then they would have enacted the written law, right?
It was murder. Maybe it was rape too, but it was definitely murder. They killed her. So why didn't they enact the law?

Secondly, this is supposed to be the argument that they would enact the written law in Deuteronomy for all rape cases. This story shows that they didn't.

Honestly, it seems to me, that in this case, since it was the Levite that handed her over, if she hadn't died, he wouldn't have chopped her up and made a fuss. The war happened because they wouldn't follow the Law and hand over the guilty party, not because they had sex with a concubine that her Master gave them permission to have sex with, but because they killed her in the process.

Here is the point, the Mosaic law need not detail each and every possible concoction of sin and how to punish those who commit the sin. Just as Christ educated the expert of the law that an overarching understanding of the Ten Commandments will enable the righteous man to determine what is sin and what the punishment should be. The chapters in Judges demonstrate this, they didn’t need a detailed law against rape in this case, they even said that this type of perversion was unknown in Israel from the time they had left Egypt. God conjoined with the Israelites and directed the punishment against Benjamin.

Sure, I don't expect the Law to have a law about everything. I wouldn't complain if the Law didn't mention swear words, or calling someone a mean name. But we're talking about rape and molestation. The question still remains, what makes something important enough to make the list of Mosaic Laws?

As far as your continual rabbit chase for laws against child molestation, I have found no evidence that this was an issue. There are no biblical narratives that I found that give witness to this sin happening in Israel. If there is no evidence to the contrary, then it is absurd to chastise God for not addressing what does not exist.

If they didn't see a problem with it, then they wouldn't write about it. But I'll just note that your defense of the lack of this law is your denial that child molestors existed anywhere in the lands of ancient Israel.