instead of posting a cute response...post something substantive on the topic. have you read Josephus' accounts? he affirms a good deal of the NT
Good point about the marriage. At least with Noah though, incest wasn't necessary*. He got on the boat with his wife, 3 sons and his sons wives. So the incest would have been between 1st cousins which I don't think is forbidden in the Bible (someone look in Leviticus and see if I'm right).
The whole 9 year old thing is disconcerting to say the least. But Jews and Christians have heroes that were slave owners. Jesus himself wasn't, but many others were. I think one way to look at the message is that despite wrongs, immoralities, and faults done by some people God still loves people and chooses to works through them. Of course Mohammad's first wife was older than he was, a business woman, and actually she was the one who proposed to the prophet. I know that they were different times, but I'm glad that people's understanding on the whole as regards to slavery and marrying youths, has grown some since those days.
What was the life-expectancy then, 20-25? I guess the life expectancy has increased here even more, since Alabama may now outaw marriage for 14 and 15 year-olds.
There's also a difference between 1600 years. I personally have no idea of what was a standard age for women to marry back then, but I would venture to guess, this wasn't that unusual.
Yes, I have actually. Most historians do not consider the Bible an accurate historic document. Some of the history in the Bible is correct (i.e. accepted by historians); some is disputed.
Hey, time out, guys! Am I going to have to distract you with a horrifically tasteless Jonbenet Ramsey joke? Please don't make me do that.
I'm not an expert by any means and I know that a fact like this sounds quite disturbing and troubling from a 21st century perspective. I believe that Muhammad did marry Aisha when she was 7 and then consumate the marriage when she was 9. She was actually engaged to a Non-muslim before he engagement to Muhammad and then went on to become one of the most famous women in Islam and even became a known religious scholar. The average age in the desert and in those conditions was less than 50 years and even both of Muhammad's parents had died before he was 2 years old. This forced many to marry very, very early. Even Mary, who is revered in Islam, from a historical perspective I have read that she was 8 or 9 when she was engaged and had the baby Jesus when she was between 11 and 14. Joseph was a much older man as well. Other Examples from the Time Period: In Exodus 21:10, a man can marry an infinite amount of women without any limits to how many he can marry. In 2 Samuel 5:13; 1 Chronicles 3:1-9, 14:3, King David had six wives and numerous concubines. In 1 Kings 11:3, King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines. In 2 Chronicles 11:21, King Solomon's son Rehoboam had 18 wives and 60 concubines You will also see examples of Prophets sleeping with their neighbor's wives, such as the following: David watches a women bathe, likes what he sees, and "goes in unto her." Let us look at 2 Samuel 11:2-4 "One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, 'Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?' Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (She had purified herself from her uncleanness.) Then she went back home." So what happened to "If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death. (From the NIV Bible, Leviticus 20:10)"? How come Leviticus 20:10 was compromised in the Bible and was never applied to King David?! Didn't King David know about this law? Yet, the Jews use his star as their holy symbol; the David Star, and the Christians call Jesus his son; "Son of David". More Recent Examples: The age of sexual consent is still quite low in many places. In Japan, people can legally have sex at age 13, and in Spain they can legally have sex at age 12. (This data comes from the Age of Consent chart, which you can see at: http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm) The Prophet's contemporaries (both enemies and friends) clearly accepted the Prophet's marriage to `Aisha without any problem. We see the evidence for this by the lack of criticism against the marriage until modern times. However, a change in culture caused the change in our times today. A 40-year-old man having sex with a 14-year-old woman may be a "pedophile" in the USA today, but not in China today (where the age of consent is 14), nor in the USA last century. Biology is a much better standard by which to determine these things in my view, not the arbitrariness of human culture. In the USA last century, the age of consent was 10 years old. California was the first state to change the age of consent to 14, which it did in 1889. After California, other US states joined in and raised the age of consent too. (Source:
abso-freaking-lutely!!! could not agree more! nail on the head...bob's your uncle! look at David...had sex with another man's wife...got her pregnant...sent that man off to die in the frontlines of a war...yet there seems little question of his love for God and God's for him.
I have heard both sides of this argument and I am not one to decide what her age was but here is the argument made that she was at least 15 at the consumation of the marriage: "The popular misconception as to Aishah’s age may be removed here. That she had not attained majority is clear enough, but that she was not so young as six years of age is also true. In the first place, it is clear that she had reached an age when betrothal could take place in the ordinary course and must therefore have been approaching the age of majority. Again, the Isabah, speaking of the Prophet’s daughter Fatimah, says that she was about five years older than ‘Aishah. It is a well-established fact that Fatimah was born when the Ka’bah was being rebuilt, i.e., five years before the Call or a little before it, and so ‘Aishah was certainly not below ten years at the time of her marriage with the Holy Prophet (pbuh) in the tenth year of the Call. This conclusion is borne out by the testimony of ‘Aishah herself who is reported to have related that when the chapter entitled ‘The Moon’ (the 54th chapter) was revealed she was a girl playing about and that she remembered certain verses then revealed. Now the fifty-fourth chapter could not have been revealed later than the fifth year of the Call, and therefore the report which states her to have been six years old in the tenth year of the Call when her marriage ceremony was gone through cannot be correct, because this would show her to have born about the time of the revelation of the 54th chapter. All these considerations show her to have been not less than ten years old at the time of her marriage. And as the period between her marriage and its consummation was not less than five years, because the consummation took place in the second year of the Fight, it follows that she could not have been less than fifteen at that time. The popular account that she was six years at marriage and nine years at the time of consummation is decidedly not correct, because it supposes the period between the marriage and its consummation to be only three years, while this is historically wrong."
ok..throw me a source here. most historians? that's not what i've read, even in secular sources. do you have any further info on that? i watched a show once on the History Channel (may have been Discovery) about the historical accuracy of the Bible where all sorts of secular historians and archaeologists were affirming what i'm saying here. they weren't saying, "yes, Jesus was resurrected and is the Son of God." They were saying that the books that made up the Bible recorded history well. In fact, on a couple of occasions people disputed the Bible only to be proven later wrong by further discovery through archaeology. in addition...as far as manuscript proof goes...there is no more reliable document than the Bible. and when i say reliable, i don't mean accurate..i mean consistent. consistent from when it was written through its translation today.
No Worries, if you're talking about the Bible as an accurate description of what really happened during the times it talks about, I understand your point. I think some books are pretty accurate and some are suspect. However, we were talking about the Bible as an authentic primary document and in that regard I think historians pretty overwhelmingly agree that it has a high degree of authenticity. Khan, you're going to start a ruckus. Exodus 21:10 says: It implies that multiple marriage is allowed, but does not specifically allow it. It just doesn't disallow it. David, Solomon, Rehoboam and others did have many wives and concumbines. The Bible does not endorse the behavior even while it doesn't condemn it. It does freely admit that all three were flawed characters that sinned in various ways. Specifically with Solomon you get the feeling that he got to be a bit gluttonous with his many wives. David was not a prophet, for one thing. Also, the Bible is very clear in condemning his adultery with Bathsheba. He is reproached by the prophet Nathan and his son by Bathsheba dies as punishment for David's sins. You can't really use the Bathsheba story as any way to say that adultery was not frowned upon.
Thanks guys...still sounds immoral to me and I am not a hardened Chritian. Seems to me too much killing in the name of God. DD
Of course that wouldn't have even been an issue if God, being the swell guy that he is, hadn't decided to wipe out nearly the entire planet because people refused to grovel sufficiently...
far be it for the creator of the universe..the one who breathed the very life in you...to make any demands on your time.
Who said he was a swell guy? Besides, I think his charge was we sinned overmuch, not that we were deficient in worship.
This is probably a road neither of us want to go down. My sources are university history professors. I have seen web sources awhile back, but ... If this gets into the contest, where I say something like "Jonah was not swallowed by a whale" and you say "but you are wrong...", why don't we not have that argument but say that we did?
