Levite's Concubine

[Leah71]

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[Tzaousios]

1. This passage was quoted to me by an Evangelical long as I lay in a hospital room waiting for a rape kit to be done. I was told by this follower of Christ that I 'asked for it' and that as a child raised by Christians I 'deserved it'.

It is important that you mentioned the fact that it was an Evangelical Christian who quoted this text to you in a prescriptive manner. In the outer fringe extremes of the Evangelical Protestant world one can find those who interpret the text (without admitting to engaging in interpretation) in this way.

I am sorry that you experienced such rank callousness and evil at the hands of such people. No one should try to justify what they self-justify with misinterpretation.

If you are interested in resolving the problems associated with misinterpreting the text in this way, I would suggest that you examine the ways in which the early church fathers and Christians before the Radical Reformation interpreted the text. They never approached these "problem texts" with the mindset that this is what God prescribes as penalties or punishments, i.e. in a prescriptive manner. Rather, in terms of the reality of what the horror the text talks about, the early church chose to interpret it allegorically or metaphorically, i.e. that it describes the terrible reality of evil and sin.

2. My father was an Evangelical/non-denominational pastor. He read this to myself and my sister and said since we, as girls/females were 'responsible' for the Fall of Man we 'deserved it' as all females (girls and/or women) do and should never question that fact.

Again, this is very grievous and no one should try to justify or self-justify such evil through misinterpretation of the text. As I mentioned above, one tends to find such ridiculous misinterpretations at the extreme fringes of the Evangelical Protestant world—Independent Fundamentalist Baptists, Christian Reconstructionists, Anabaptists, and non-denominational churches with a hyper-Calvinistic influence.

It is true that such guilt-ridden misinterpretations occur out of the more forensic, legal theories of justification that came out of the western Christian world. However, the notion of Christ's atoning work accomplished through the Incarnation, in addition to the Death and Resurrection, is a unique emphasis that one finds in the Eastern or Byzantine Church. It tempered the more legalistic and shame-inducing theory of justification that came out of the Western church. The extreme emphasis on guilt and shame, and its application specifically to women through Eve, is something that one sees come out of the Radical Reformation, from which the fringe groups I mentioned above sprang.

My prayers are with you in your search for some kind of resolution to your experiences that you mentioned above. If there is any way that I can help sort out the mess of misinterpretation, please do not hesitate to let me know.

 

[jmount78]

Judges 19 was a very hard chapter for me to understand. The answers provided really helped me look at it in a new and better light as the events in it were very hard to read.