i don't mean to have that kind of argument with you...Jesus taught in parables...I don't see any reason to believe that many Old Testament stories aren't parables. I don't know if Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale...but I don't need to believe that to believe in the story it's teaching...that God's will should come first...and that it can't be ignored. Having said that, this story I linked to has a part on there about the king of Babylon during Daniel's time there. Apparently scholars used to question the entire story because there was no historical account of the king named in the story....until archaeologists in the last century uncovered documentation that the guy actually DID serve as king.
The two numbers I've always heard are married at 6 consumated at 9 or married at 9 and consumated at 12. Regardless of the exact date yeah Aisha was young when she married the Prophet. Yet the most telling fact is that there is no documentation from that time period that questioned his ethics, especially about this particular case. It was not uncommon. It was decent, respected and typical of the time period. Yet I do disagree with the thought that so what if he was wrong in one thing. I would have serious problems believing that the ultimate source of my religion was immoral. I just don't think things like this are universal. I'm sure there are marriages like this in other cultures till today. Plus the big difference between 9 and 12 or 14 that is apparent today was probably not as apparent back then. Hell this whole teenage crap is only a product of Western society in the 20th century. In Europe even in the 1800s women who weren't married by their early 20s were too old to be married. And frankly for the life of me I can't understand how everyone can be so uptight about any racial jokes but religious ones are ok.
I agree with a lot of this. The stories are parables, have morals etc. They may or may not be 100% historically factual, but I don't believe that even really matters as much the message it teaches. The bible wasn't meant to be history text book, or book with wich to tell the future. It's supposed to give spiritual guidance. In a secular analogy Robin Hood may have been partly or wholly fictional, but that doesn't change the message behind the story. Whether 100% true or not it still illustrates the good in fighting for justice and protecting the weak from the greedy.
Max, I wouldn't use the Josephus example if I were you...it is generally agreed that a lot of his work in general and specifically those that mention Jesus were written/edited in later by Christians (unless you believe that Josephus would call Jesus "the messiah").
I know nothing about this, but is the question; Are the stories represented truthful, are the current stories the same as the orginal, or both? Because if in translations over the couple of thousand years the stories have changed, then one must assume that the lessons taught have also changed.
Ugh, forgot: DaDa, According to historian William Montgomery Watt, Muhammad's marital relations were all fully within contemporary norms and none were regarded as contrary to the higher standard of a prophet. In all of the contemporary criticisms (including Christian) of him, none were for his personal morality, they were all for conservatism understood then as supersticion. Also, it is fairly well understood that he did not enter into marriages that were not politically or socially desireable. So, he was just a man of his times. Also, keep in mind that our understanding of children and childhood did not formulate until the late 18th and really into the 19th centuries. Before then, they were literally thought of simply as "little people." It is for this reason that they could work 20 hours a day in mines, etc. at the age of 4. The idea of family did not even really develop until the 17th century and even that was a much different concept. Full understanding of motherhood and fatherhood was also a 19th century formulation, although it can be argued that that was not completed until the 20th.
Here is an interesting article on the "modern day Jonah" story: http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/newjohan.htm
Da, it isn't true, but insted used to make people try to convert Muslims... Edgar Allen Poe married his 14 year old cousin, and that was expected too.
Well, perhaps there was a translation problem at some point, and the marriage was actually consumated in the sacred 69 configuration. Whoops.
The thing is that all religions, at some point, are crazy. They are all based in faith that requires we make extreme leaps to actually believe them. Reincarnation Resurrection Creation Heaven Hell Eternal Life One Big God Many Small Gods Souls Virgin Births Pre-destination Miracles I mean, at some level, you have to simply take a leap of faith to believe these things. Nothing in our logical, rational minds can possibly support the realistic notion that any of this is even possible, yet we hold onto those beliefs with fervent passion. Besides, we all know that historical innacuracies abound, particularly surrounding the mythology of religion. There have been reports that Jesus studied Buddhism and Hinduism. The parable of the talents was actually told by the Buddha 500 years before Jesus told it. There were reports that Jesus was married during his lifetime. Religion supercedes all of that. We cannot know for a fact that anything surrounding religion is real or made up, so it is only on faith that we can maintain our belief systems. Whether the story is that Mohammed had sex with a 9-year-old or Jesus practiced an entirely different religion must be seen as only possibilities in the expanding ideology of religion itself. And, on that topic, religion isn't static. It is a living entity that grows as we grow. It evolves as we evolve. Sometimes it is extremely slow to do so, but that doesn't mean it isn't alive and changing. It is impossible to condense the mythology and ideology of any religion down simply into the stories and individuals that gave birth to it. It is as much about the context of those stories and those individuals as well as how we interpret those actions and words today as it is about what may or may not have happened and who may or may not have done it. The very validity of faith itself must be in question because faith does not equal objective fact. It is subjective truth. As a result, one allegation or story cannot, in my mind, displace the very concepts of faith upon which we base our own philosophy. It would be like saying a forest is infested with a disease and should be destroyed because one tree dead. That MAY be true, but there is no way to know, so, absent of any objective facts (and, with religion, facts are almost impossible to mete out), we can only place our faith in subjective belief.
wow.. quite the discussion. ive just skimmed most of it, but here is my understanding and the response to most of the things brought up: the first is that the information about the marriage being agreed to when she was 6, and consummated at 9 is correct. marrying her was a comandment from God shown to the prophet (peace be upon him -pbuh) in the form of a dream. one thing to remember is that girls go through puberty at different times, and this can vary depending on environmental factors such as climate, etc. in fact, i read an article on cnn.com w/in the last couple of months mentioning that some girls in AMERICA were actually going through puberty at the age of 4 and 5 (just proving that girls can in fact go thru puberty early). additionally, if the prophet(pbuh) was a pedophile, and marrying aisha due to this reason, then why wait 3 years to actually consumate the marriage? obviously she was not past the age of puberty at the time, so it was not consummated then. also, anyone familiar with the history of islam, and the biography of the prophet knows that he had something like 9 wives. now of all these wives, aisha was the ONLY one that he was married to that was a virgin. the rest were widows. in fact, his first wife khadijah, was almost 40 when he married her (he was around 23 or 25 or so). and he married her before he actually became a prophet. also, another thing to point out from the perspective of islamic history is that the pagan arabs at the time looked for anything and everything to use against the prophet. the literature in regards to traditions of the prophet is FULL of every single thing that the pagans used to say in order to attack the prophet. however, they did not accuse him of any wrongdoing in the marriage to aisha, proving once again, that at the very least it was a norm at the time for the women to marry early. there is also a wisdom in this being a commandment from God, in that she was young when she married him, meaning she also lived longer than his other wives, and in fact a lot of his companions. therefore you find that aisha is one of the most famour narrators of the traditions of the prophet and details about his life, and in fact she used to teach the religion and had many students after the prophet(pbuh) died due to her in depth knowledge about the life of the prophet. also i saw someone mention a research paper saying her age was actually 17 or so, then this is incorrect. im familiar with these papers, and unfortunately, most of them are in english only, and the arabic sources they quote from to prove their point actually say the opposite of what they translate it to be, so these are not very reliable. i hope this clarifies a bit, got more questions ill be more than happy to try to answer
Short answer: the death penalty in Israel was only applied when there were two or three witnesses to the capital offense.
Mad Max, I've got a question for you based on your statement below: Can the same basic thing be said for the resurrection of Christ? "For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:39-40 ESV)
Hey, if the average lifespan was 35 yrs old at that time, that made her 18 in people years of that time period. Also, the dude waited 2...two..II...dos...years before consummating his marriage. Sounds like a miracle to me. How many of you all could have waited more than 2 days? Let him with a more controlled libido, cast the first stone!!!
Okay, want some non-"drivel", boy -- here ya go. The reason some people can joke about religion while they are (more often than not) loathe to joke about race is incredibly simple: for most humans, religion is a conscious choice of the mind and heart, while, for most humans (other than Michael Jackson) race is in no way a choice. A lot of humor is derived from people's choices. Hope that helps, boy. I have no problem with people choosing to be uptight about both religion and race; I respect that. You should feel free to be "uptight" about as many topics as you wish. Personally, I will always find it funny that some people obsess over the alleged "historical" details of their faith's inception instead of obsessing over practicing and living that faith. But I think it can become a hobby of sorts, like collecting stamps ... but much more emotional. Just my take. heypartner: thanks for more drivel.
no..i don't think it can. there were witnesses to the event of the resurrection...men who claimed to have witnessed it went out across the world and were tortured and died proclaiming what they saw...men who prior to that witness, were denying any relation to him.
I personally think its great that someone can ask questions that may be sensitive to others. It breeds understanding and discussion, which obviously all of us enjoy. I think when people are so worried about offending others' race, religion or culture, they limit the ability to learn. I would rather not be politically correct than to be ignorant. Its almost as if political correctness and the fear of being called a 'racist', 'sexist' or 'un-american' has forced people to not speak out about actions they don't agree with.
