Sort of. Sorry to be crass, but it was kind of a "you break it, you bought it" policy wasn't it? It also shows that the law didn't distinguish between consensual pre-marital sex with a virgin and forced pre-marital sex with a virgin. Who the victim is is what matters, not what the crime was. Are you starting to see how I am viewing their view of what it means to rape?
Yes, I know their history. But the rapists saw no punishment, and that's what you were talking about.
Not really. You said that Israel exists because of their laws. To an extent, that's true. Civilizations would collapse without any laws. But there are plenty of cultures that persisted for thousands of years with their totally man-made laws and only stopped existing after military expansion by someone bigger, stronger, or smarter than them. It doesn't take a specially written legal code to make a civilization persist. Perhaps it takes a God to protect them, or a lot of luck, but any nation back then could write a legal code that was sufficient to keep their civilization from collapsing under itself.
The culture of all three of these nations has persisted. It's evolved over time, as has Judaism, but they still know exactly where they came from.
As a Christian, how old do you believe the Talmud to be? Do you think it has divine origin like the OT? If you look at the references I've been sharing in the thread though, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that there were explicit rape laws that protected all sorts of victims in the Talmud either. If there was, I would definitely consider it a point for God's existence if His people recognized an evil for why it was evil over 3000 years before the rest of the world.
And it's the fact that I recognize how legalistic they were that I read their laws the way I do. Their laws don't mention that a non-virgin single woman is protected by law from rape, therefore they did not protect them by law from rape. I am looking at it from a legalistic perspective, whereas you seem to be reading into the law what the rules seem to say.
Perhaps I explained it wrong. To the victim, it always feels violent. I'm sure it feels violent even when they consent because of intimidation. What I was talking about in terms of violence is how it is perceived by outsiders. And outsiders are the ones to determine if something violent happened in the context of a law. As to the harm that I pointed out, I'm going by the research on the matter that victims of rape, no matter the circumstances of the rape, suffer the same psychological symptoms such as depression, feelings of a loss of control, nightmares, etc, that often leads to harmful behavior such as eating disorders and cutting.
I have to point it out, because this isn't the first time I've heard a Christian make this claim. It was, by definition, genocide. Why someone commits genocide has absolutely no bearing on whether or not genocide was committed. Genocide is causing a culture, race, nation, or society to cease to exist. We don't bother saying things like "attempted genocide" if a small bit of that group still exists, that's why we say that Europeans committed genocide on the Native Americans because we killed 99% of them. It doesn't matter that a tiny fraction of them survived. A "genocidal act" is that on a small scale, such as when someone destroys a city and kills all of the inhabitants including women and children. In America, Europeans were the evil aggressors, but Native Americans still committed genocidal acts against some of our towns, just as an example. You should understand the actual definition of the word if someone does argue with you about the other bad stuff in the OT. Own that it was genocide, and then explain away why it wasn't evil.
The excuse for the genocides is generally that God, as creator, is free to take back that which belongs to him (our lives) and that it makes no difference if he does this personally or sends his barbarians to do it.
But of course, what about when God allows the invading army to take the virgins for themselves? In what world is that not rape? Imagine for a moment that you are a 12 year old girl and your mother, father, and siblings were slaughtered in front of you. Imagine further that one of the men responsible for this claims you as his wife. Will the consecration of this "marriage" be rape? I'd think so. Even if you don't resist, it's only going to be cooperation based on terror.
Let's examine Numbers 31:7-18. I encourage an independent examination of the surrounding context to ensure that I'm not taking liberties here.
7And they warred against the Midianites, as the LORD commanded Moses; and they slew all the males.
8And they slew the kings of Midian, beside the rest of them that were slain;
namely, Evi, and Rekem, and Zur, and Hur, and Reba, five kings of Midian: Balaam also the son of Beor they slew with the sword.
9And the children of Israel took
allthe women of Midian captives, and their little ones, and took the spoil of all their cattle, and all their flocks, and all their goods.
10And they burnt all their cities wherein they dwelt, and all their goodly castles, with fire.
11And they took all the spoil, and all the prey,
both of men and of beasts.
12And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which
are by Jordan
nearJericho.
13And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp.
14And Moses was wroth with the officers of the host,
with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle.
15And Moses said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?
16Behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the LORD.
17Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him.
18But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
It seems to me that they had gotten venereal disease in prior instances where they'd taken women as war booty, so Moses wanted to ensure that they only raped virgins. Now, the question is this: was Moses acting against the will of God here (he does set such a precedent, so this can be argued) or is there a legitimate reason for God allowing them to pass around sex slaves? Or does God not need a legitimate reason to do this? Are apologists satisfied with this simply because God ordained it?
Before arguing that Moses acted against the wishes of God, note that verse 7 says that they were following God's instructions when they killed the males. This implies that God gave them permission to keep the women (in particular, the virgin women). But for what, I wonder? Why did God allow them to take virgins as war booty along with cattle and other goods? If they were merely keeping these women as worker slaves, why was it necessary to keep only the virgins?
Aside from the obvious reasons which I've remarked on above, there is another disturbing possibility: human sacrifice. Read verse 40 in context:
32And the booty,
being the rest of the prey which the men of war had caught, was six hundred thousand and seventy thousand and five thousand sheep,
33And threescore and twelve thousand beeves,
34And threescore and one thousand asses,
35And thirty and two thousand persons in all, of women that had not known man by lying with him.
36And the half,
which was the portion of them that went out to war, was in number three hundred thousand and seven and thirty thousand and five hundred sheep:
37And the LORD'S tribute of the sheep was six hundred and threescore and fifteen.
38And the beeves
were thirty and six thousand; of which the LORD'S tribute
was threescore and twelve.
39And the asses
were thirty thousand and five hundred; of which the LORD'S tribute
was threescore and one.
40And the persons
were sixteen thousand; of which the LORD'S tribute
was thirty and two persons.
41And Moses gave the tribute,
which was the LORD'S heave offering, unto Eleazar the priest, as the LORD commanded Moses.
42And of the children of Israel's half, which Moses divided from the men that warred,
43(Now the half
that pertained untothe congregation was three hundred thousand and thirty thousand
andseven thousand and five hundred sheep,
44And thirty and six thousand beeves,
45And thirty thousand asses and five hundred,
46And sixteen thousand persons
47Even of the children of Israel's half, Moses took one portion of fifty,
both of man and of beast, and gave them unto the Levites, which kept the charge of the tabernacle of the LORD; as the LORD commanded Moses.
So these virgins were offered to the Lord as a heave offering. What is a heave offering? GotQuestions.org gives this answer:
A heave offering was a way of presenting one’s offering to God, and it appears in the Old Testament along with
burnt offerings,
grain offerings, freewill offerings, and the offering of the firstborn of the flocks. The heave offering is part of the Mosaic Law and was one of the common sacrifices or offerings given to God by the Israelites.
http://www.gotquestions.org/heave-offering.html
But hey, what's wrong with human sacrifice if God can take back what he freely gave? After all, Christianity is based entirely on human sacrifice, since Jesus was indeed a man.
