- May 10, 2018
- 5,165
- 733
- 64
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Skeptic
- Marital Status
- Private
@2PhiloVoid and @cvanwey and anybody else who is pondering the virginity testing methods, etc.,
Here are some assumptions/guesses:
(1) Marriage was motivated entirely by concerns over inheritance of property. Marriage wasn't motivated by morality. So virgins were valued for the certainty that children would be genuine offspring of the husband rather than sexual innocence.
(2) God's goal was genocide. Genocide was necessary, because the Hebrews were supposed to stay pure, holy, separated. The Hebrew gene pool could not be mixed with non-Hebrews. Much of the Law of Moses was designed to keep the Hebrews separate culturally from others, so God surely wanted to keep the Hebrew gene pool separate from other cultures too. To keep pure genes while conquering the Promised Land the native people either needed to be deported or sterilized genetically so that they could safely remain.
(3) The genetic contribution of the mother was not understood. The mother was imagined as soil, and the father's sperm was imagined as seed. The long-term genetics was imagined to come solely from the father.
(4) There was imagined to be a possible delay of many years between sexual activity and conception of the fetus. Just as a seed could lay dormant for years before suddenly sprouting, the Hebrews imagined that the seed of the father could lay dormant for years before the fetus begins to develop.
So with these assumptions, sparing the virgins was the most lenient way to commit genocide against the Midianites. All the Midianite men had to be killed, because they contained seed. All the non-virgin Midianite women also had to be killed because they might contain dormant seed from Midianite men that could be born after remarrying Hebrew men. But virgin Midianite women could safely be married to Hebrew men and their offspring would have no Midianite genes. Thus God's command to spare the virgin Midianites was a way to minimize the bloodshed while still achieving the goal of genocide.
Of course the problem with this theory is that God's strategy must be based on an incorrect archaic understanding of genetics. This theory could explain why the fictional God character could give this command while still satisfying the role of a benevolent and just god, but it doesn't explain why a real God could give this command in the real world.
@cloudyday2 , these are good 'additionals' to the rationale of the humans of this day. However, when we dig down to the root of this 'situation,' we are left with two rather large 'pickles', in which we have no choice but to deduce/surmise/conclude special pleading...
As you already affirmed, God's goal was to completely exterminate the Midianites. To do so, God could either perform the task Himself, order a group of humans to do the dirty deed, or maybe other...
In this case, He chose the later, in ordering a group of humans to do so. But for some reason, in this case, wanted all females whom have not ever laid with males preserved.
Problem number 1: Humans, especially during this time/era, were ill equipped to assure any/every virgin was accounted for... Lets say even one woman, thought to be a virgin, actually wasn't; and falls through the cracks, and is spared. God's ultimate plan, foiled! Thus, it would seem logical to conclude that God must have needed to intervene, by not only calling the order to exterminate such said tribe, but more-so magically, to assure such humans had the full ability to discern any/all virgins, without a single mistake. And as I already stated to @2PhiloVoid , if God was to invoke his powers to achieve an end goal, why only here? Why not just go a little further, and cause the entire unwanted tribe's demise. Why use humans to kill, but not to successfully identify/spare virgins? Seems a little askew.
Problem 2: Regardless of humans, and their traditions of the day, God's plan was to eradicate a people(s). Leaving some females of this 'people' to live, would not achieve this task. Again, regardless of what was known by humans at the time, God would know the bloodline would continue.
Both issues seem to require fallacious reasoning to reconcile... Your thoughts?
Last edited:
Upvote
0