Demolishing Triablogue: how to get nowhere fast, a reply to "annoyed pinoy"

"Annoyed Pinoy" who frequents Triablogue responded to my criticism of his views.

I reply by new blog post instead of "reply" because the word count is greater than the 4, 096 allowed for "replies".

Pinoy and others raise the issue of whether Ezekiel 16:7-8 constitutes criteria for sexual readiness, and the issue of my prior lawsuits against James Patrick Holding.

Thanks AP for the reply. 

“Because of a comment HERE, I did a very quick search of your blog for my nick and I noticed you made the following response to me.”
No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair. Ezekiel 16. “
That's an example of poor reasoning and poor reading skills. Different types of literature should be read according to their genre and intent/purpose. Just because two criteria are given doesn't mean there are only two criteria.

 That’s technically true, but there are several problems your response creates:

1. The burden of proof is on the claimant.  You apparently claim Ezekiel and or God think more criteria than the “boobs and pubic hair” need to be fulfilled before the girl can be considered legitimately ready for marriage (since apparently you don’t like the idea that they believed only two criteria needed to be met).  I don’t know why you claim this, you have absolutely nothing in the bible to indicate God felt more criteria needed be fulfilled, than these two.  Indeed where does the bible indicate girls need to have more qualifications than signs of puberty, to be deemed legitimately ready for martial relations? 

2. If God believes just as strongly as you that more criteria than these two must be fulfilled for a girl to be deemed legitimately ready for marital relations, don’t you think he would specified what those minimum criteria are?  If he was willing to specify prohibitions against conduct that is “obviously” sinful (like homosexuality, bestiality), you cannot argue that pedophilia is so obviously immoral that he didn’t think we needed a prohibition against it.  We also didn’t need to be told bestiality is wrong, but God specified a prohibition against that act anyway.  So it is reasonable, whether detrimental to you or not, to assume that your God will not shy away from specifying a prohibition against certain acts even if he trusts us to intuitively “know” they are immoral. 

3. Your implication that more criteria than those two were needed, fails on historical grounds anyway, as most ANE scholars agree that the age of 12, or menses or when signs of puberty showed, was when ANE peoples generally deemed a girl ready for marriage.  For example, Life in the Ancient Near East, 3100-332 B.C.E., Daniel C. Snell, Yale University Press, 1997. p. 90 

“You're reading that INTO the passage. The point of the passage is that YHVH waited till the girl was mature.”

And the criteria for maturity are given by the author.  If you wish to argue ancient Jews believed more criteria for marriage-readiness were required to be fulfilled than the two Ezekiel mentions, that is your claim, for which you incur the burden of proof.  Good luck.  Evangelical scholar L. C. Allen sees no problem with the boobs and public hair being set forth as sufficient signs of sexual maturity:

“The creative command turned into fact, and the baby grew into adolescence and sexual maturity, marked by breasts and pubic hair…” Allen, L. C. (2002). Vol. 28: Word Biblical Commentary : Ezekiel 1-19. Word Biblical Commentary (Page 237). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.

 Pinoy continues:

NOT your claim that, "...your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair."

What I said was true.  Your God does not identify any other criteria in that passage for sex-readiness for the girl, except boobs and pubic hair.   So why you insist there was more to the criteria-story than that, remains a mystery.  Perhaps your bible says things my bible doesn't?

“Moreover, you press the allegory beyond it's intended purpose.”

No, I’m only responding to other apologists who, in sheer desperation, resorted to Ezekiel 16 to refute my argument that the god of the bible approves of sex within adult-child marriages.  I actually agree with you that the passage was not intended to instruct the reader on what the ancient Jews believed to be the minimum signs of marriage-readiness for girls.

“Since the passage is NOT about the criteria of when it's permissible for a female to get married and become sexually active. It's about the spiritual infidelity of God's people.”

Correct.  And when you find biblical criteria telling what signs or age indicate a girl first becomes ready in her life for martial relations, let me know.  But for now, that's a change in your interpretation, as earlier this year you DID argue that what Ezekiel 16:7-8 can tell us what ancient Jews thought about the minimum age of marriage for girls:

   ANNOYED PINOY7/08/2017 3:00 PM  
    I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.
    That's a powerful statement by Steve. Christian ethics based on the Bible takes into consideration natural law. Even if Islam could theoretically do the same thing, Islam nevertheless teaches that it's okay for men to have sex with prepubescent girls. As I said in the comments of another blog:
    To add to what Steve said, if one reads Ezek. 16:1-8 (and following) God likens his relationship with His people as Him having found her like a newly born abandoned child. He waited until she was sexually mature to "marry" her in covenant. I think that suggests the same thing Steve is saying. I think we can inductively infer from this what the Jews believed during that time and what God Himself approves of regarding when it's appropriate for a female to get married.

Pinoy continues:

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?- Micah 6:8”29 Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.'31 The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."- Mark 12:29-31 The former passage is a summation of Jewish theology and ethics in the OT, the latter a Christian summation in the NT. But it would be eisegetical (not exegetical) to assume that those passages are all there is to Jewish and/or Christian theology. You make a similar mistake about Ezekiel 16.”

See above.  I don’t think Ezekiel 16 is giving criteria for marriage.  I’m simply responding to Christian apologists who appeal to it as such in their desperate effort to refute my theory that the god of the ancient Jews approved of sex within adult-child marriages.  Apparently you and I agree that such apologists are using the passage in a way Ezekiel did not intend.

As for quoting the NT, perhaps you didn’t know, but I am an atheist.  I do not believe in biblical inerrancy, biblical inspiration, or harmony of morals or theology between the testaments.  

“You're completely ignoring cultural context of the passage. As far as I know, there are no records that describe ante-Christian Jewish communities that regularly had problems of mothers dying or suffering from having infants at too early an age.”

We have literally zero “records” produced by the Jews in the days of Moses, with the exception of course of the Pentateuch itself and a few fragments whose date is hotly contested, neither of which resolve the issue of to what extent early pregnancies were fatal in ancient Israel.  Not all arguments from silence are fallacious, but the one you now advance surely is. 

You are also assuming that sex within adult-child marriages necessarily involved attempts to make the girl pregnant, when in fact Hebrews 13:4 and the Song of Songs counsel that cunnilingus was considered acceptable sexual practice, and if so, then the problem of physically traumatizing the underage girl in an adult-child marriage among the ancient Jews, disappears:

 4 Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. (Heb. 13:4 NAU) 

 16 "Awake, O north wind, And come, wind of the south; Make my garden breathe out fragrance, Let its spices be wafted abroad. May my beloved come into his garden And eat its choice fruits!" (Cant. 4:16 NAU)

Pinoy continues: 

“Unlike what regularly happens among Muslims communities. Yet writings like the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmud have many discussions about the finer aspects of the law as it relates to human living. Including addressing some medical issues.”

The Talmud also says girls at least three years and one day old are “suitable for sexual relations”, and more words to that effect.  I’ll be more than happy to discuss the context these verses sit in, to disabuse you of any possible “they-were-just-talking-technicalities-about-the-extreme-fringes-of-the-law-not-intended-to-apply-to-real-world-situations” foolishness you might share with most of the unfortunate Christian souls who attempted this fallacious trick to get rid of this rather embarrassing historical evidence.

These particular rabbis and sages are quoted in the older more authoritative Babylonian Talmud, and are they are the earlier human teachers, it is only the later teachers in the B.Talmud who voice concerns against adult-child marriage:

Abodah Zarah 36B-37A:

Said Rabina, “Therefore a gentile girl who is three years and one day old, since she is then suitable to have sexual relations, (!?) also imparts uncleanness of the flux variety.”  

Niddah 44 b

Misnah: a girl of the age of three years and one day may be betrothed  by intercourse;

Gemara: Our Rabbis taught: A girl of the age of three years may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

...An objection was raised: A girl of the age of three years and even one of the age of two years and one day may be betrothed by intercourse; so R. Meir. But the Sages say: Only one who is three years and one day old.

Sanhedrin 55b  

R. Joseph said: Come and hear! A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabits with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her;

Tractate Sanhedrin Folio 69a

R. Jeremiah of Difti said: We also learnt the following: A maiden aged three years and a day may be acquired in marriage by coition, and if her deceased husband's brother cohabited with her, she becomes his. The penalty of adultery may be incurred through her...

Kethuboth 39

"|Three [categories of] women may use an absorbent4  in their marital intercourse:   a minor, and an expectant and nursing mother. The minor,  because otherwise she might become pregnant and die. An expectant mother,  because otherwise she might cause her foetus to degenerate into a sandal.   A nursing mother,  because otherwise she might have to wean her child [prematurely]  and this would result in his death.  And what is [the age of such] a minor?  From the age of eleven years and one day to the age of twelve years and one day. One who is under,  or over this age  must carry on her marital intercourse in a normal manner; so R. Meir. But the Sages said: The one as well as the other carries on her marital intercourse in a normal manner, and mercy  will be vouchsafed from Heaven, for it is said in the Scriptures, The Lord preserveth the simple.”

One who is under the age of 11 must carry on her marital intercourse in the normal manner (i.e., without an absorbent [contraceptive]).(!?)

They would hardly have a rule like this, if in their law or view of the law there was some absolute prohibition against vaginal intercourse with girls under the age of 11.  Having Rabbis regulate the sex life of prepubescent girls while absolutely forbidding girls of that age from sexual activity, would be about as stupid as California telling 9 year old girls how and when they can have sex within marriage, despite California law absolutely prohibiting any and all sexual contact with a 9 year old girl.  The more reasonable interpretation of the Talmud is that the Rabbis issue such regulations because prepubescent girls having sex within marriage was not absolutely forbidden.

Gleason Archer and others have accepted that some kings in the Monarchy were fathering kids at 11 years old.“But the males didn't physically suffer from such a situation.”

But ancient Jewish boys having sex at 11 years old still bounces the vast majority of Christian apologists out of their theological comfort zones.  Years ago when I started this craze on the internet, the apologists were saying pedophilia likely wouldn’t even enter the mind of the ancient Jew.  NOW they are softening their position, and admitting that happened but was considered a crime.  Maybe in the next 10 years they’ll figure out there’s no biblical anything to substantiate their view that Moses or the bible god views sex within adult-child marriages as “sin”.  I am not an extreme skeptic, I don’t say Moses used prepubescent girls like disposable love dolls, I simply say there is no plausible biblical argument to justify the proposition that God has always thought sex within adult-child marriages was “sin”.

“Also, not everything the monarchs did were morally licit.”

I’m only using the monarchs to refute the apologists who desperately deny that the ancient Jews would ever have done any such thing.  Child sex wasn’t quite as unheard of in ancient Judaism as most of today’s apologists insist it was.

“Even assuming some pregnancies were licit, they probably impregnated women who were older than them and were mature enough to bear children without destroying their bodies.”

Sure is funny that the God who hates the idea of 11 year old boys having sex as much as you hate it, never bothers to specifically condemn it, despite his ability to specify which exact sexual relations are indeed prohibited (homosexuality, adultery, bestiality, degrees of incest, etc).  Some would argue that the reason an infinitely holy God doesn’t condemn something is because he doesn’t regard it as sin.

“You're so gung-ho to refute and defame Judaism and Christianity that you fail to make a good faith argument on a topic so simple.”

You’ve got a lot to learn if you think the topic of God’s beliefs about the minimum proper age of sexual consent/marriage is “simple”.

 If I were an honest atheist I wouldn't use such a bad argument. The fact that you do use such bad argumentation gives me some reason to dismiss your other comments.”

Well now you’ve been disabused of your faulty presuppositions.  Whenever you wish to discuss your reasons for saying your bible god has always believed sex within adult-child marriages to be “sin”, let me know.  I’ll be ready and waiting to discuss your best evidence and arguments to that effect.

(What follows are what other Triablogue posters gabbed about concerning my blog, and my replies to each): 

JBsptfn12/27/2017 11:58 PM☍

I have read that book, and I don't really think that Colton spun this all by himself. Also, his parents do seem pretty honest, although I don't know them. If it is a hoax, though, I just pray that Colton comes clean someday like Alex did.

Have you seen this, though? Apparently, a guy named Barry is attacking this blog:

Turch is Rong: Triablogue

steve12/28/2017 12:07 AM☍

Thanks for the tip. Looks like Barry has anger-management issues.

A true scholar would not indicate that the irrelevant personal gossipy issues were his first priority.  My alleged anger-management issues have nothing to do with the question of whether my arguments are correct.  But then again, spiritually dead atheists like me are prone to forget that Calvinists were infallibly predestined by God to manifest whatever degree of spiritual immaturity God wants them to manifest.

Epistle of Dude12/28/2017 1:02 AM☍

Barry Jones is just his alias (among many others). His real name is Christian Behrend Doscher. He's a militant atheist.

Correct.  But again, my real identity has nothing to do with whether my arguments are correct, raising the question as to what relevance you think my real name has to the biblical issues I raise. 

JBsptfn12/28/2017 2:21 PM☍

I think that is the guy that tried to sue J.P. Holding.

Incorrect.  I didn’t “try”, I did sue him.  And that he was sinful and immoral in his attempts to avoid the merits of my accusations, may be seen from the fact that he (at least to my knowledge) took down those internet posts that I said were defamatory.

Now the trouble is that despite his actions indicating he thinks those posts were genuinely libelous, he refuses to apologize to me, and refuses to forthrightly acknowledge the libelous character of those posts, the way you might expect a genuinely repentant born-again Christian to do when their sins have been exposed.  Actions speak louder than words, and you will know a tree by its fruit.   

An asshole like James Patrick Holding, with his sordid 20-year fruit of taking gleeful pleasure in defaming anybody who dares disagree with him, would never have folded up shop like that had he sincerely believed at the end of the litigation that the internet posts in question were legitimate non-libelous exercises of his free speech.  So they were indeed genuinely libelous, and my claims were meritorious.  I was correct when I concluded months ago that somebody with far more knowledge of the law than he, must have slapped him in the head with a legal 2x4.  

You’ll have to now decide whether Jesus would want his follows to prioritize legal tricks invented by non-Christian lawyers for helping genuinely guilty persons to avoid having to answer charges on the merits, or whether Jesus would want his followers to engage in honest acknowledgement of the truth and make a reasonable attempt to settle.  

 25 "Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.
 26 "Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last cent. (Matt. 5:25-26 NAU)
 40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. (Matt. 5:40 NAU)

Holding was forced to come up with a way to get around the obvious in Matthew 5:25, 40, since I continued throwing these in his face the whole time.  His absurd interpretation of those passages is contradicted by all conservative Christian scholarship, one example being Craig Blomberg’s.

Holding spent more than $21,000 on a lawyer in his effort to avoid having to litigate my accusations on their merits.    He shows no intent to repent, there is no sign that any Christian brother confronted Holding in the spirit of Matthew 18, and to top it all off, I forced Holding to disclose numerous private emails during litigation showing how Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg evinced a shocking apathy toward Holding’s immoral conduct.  See my blog, my “Open Letter” to Blomberg.

After I sent Blomberg several emails providing a very detailed documentation of evidence against Holding's fitness for the office of Christian teacher, Blomberg simply replied in private to Holding that he avoided answering me on the matter because he didn't know what was going on.

So apparently we are supposed to believe that if Craig Blomberg reads a summation of charges and evidence, he will not know what is going on.  The reaction that would have been more biblical would be to ask me for clarification of whatever he thought was ambiguous, and then inquire with Holding whether the charges were true.  If they were true, Craig as Holding's spiritual mentor was required to employ the Matthew 18 process.  To my knowledge, he not only never did, he never intended to "get involved" in the first place.  The more spiritually mature person would view the accusations as potential evidence of a fracture in the body of Christ, not merely as a scuffle between two other people.

Habermas did little better, remarking that he was glad to see Holding admitting to not caring to engage in the "strong comeback" that he used to (a conveniently timed admission of Holding, since he never indicated any such thing until after my litigation against him ended).  But in both cases, these spiritual mentors of Holding fell far short of the requirement in the Matthew 18 requirement to confront a sinful brother and eventually regard him as a non-Christian if he doesn't repent.  Holding has not repented of his having libeled me (a sin under Romans 13 because America's libel laws are substantially similar to NT prohibitions on slander).

Apparently, you can be a real smarty pants in the area of gospel reliability and the resurrection of Jesus while being severely underdeveloped in the area of basic NT ethics.  

And Christian Research Institute is equally deserving of condemnation, since regardless of all the proof on my blog that Holding is unfit to hold any office of “teacher”, CRI continues to allow Holding to exercise the office of "teacher" by asking him to write articles for their Journal, despite my having supplied them, numerous times since 2015, with fully documented proof of Holding’s homosexuality, unrepentant attitude, and shocking spiritual immaturity (most signs of which on his website he conveniently took down after I exposed all such).

Between 1992 and 1998, I listened to the many recorded lectures of CRI founder Walter Martin over and over, never dreaming that Martin was dishonest.  But I had to eventually admit it.  The same is true of Hank Hanegraaff.  So I guess proving that CRI is more interested in promoting apologetics than in making sure their writers pass NT criteria for office of teacher, isn't any shocking thing.  So I guess my new attitude toward it all is to just consign CRI a place near Benny Hinn and TBN.

Demolishing Triablogue: Steve Hays fails to show his god disapproves of marital pedophila

Steve Hays just happens to have written on July 8, 2017, a blog article ostensibly answering a Christian complaining that God's presumed disapproval of pedophilia cannot be sustained from the bible.  This is right around the time I began posting my other entries here on the topic of why Christians cannot show that their god disapproves of sex within adult-child marriages.

I answer Steve and his commenters here point by point: 

First, he says nothing at all about the infamous quotations from the Babylonian Talmud where the earlier Rabbis/Sages held that girls are suitable for sexual relations at age 3 years and one day.

Second, he says nothing about the Romans 13 argument which would have biblically justified a man living in 19 century Delaware to have sex with a 7 year old girl, because under Calvinism, God really is the creator of all secular law, not just the laws that cohere with the bible.

Third, he says nothing about the argument that because the bible is not explicit on the subject, this forbids Christians from disfellowshipping the man who disagrees with them on this subject.

Saturday, July 08, 2017

Islam, Christianity, and pedophilia

Question from a commenter:

I wonder, though, if we Christians aren't revealing a weak spot when it comes to objections to pedophilia. When pressed by our opponents, I don't think that we'd be able to provide any prooftexts condemning the practice - or am I wrong? Worse, I could see opponents seizing on the notion of Boaz seeming to be an elder while Ruth appeared to be a young girl. Granted, that's a bit flimsy but I'm not sure what the proper response might be. So I guess I'm asking how you might mount a defence against the claim that the Bible has nothing to say about pedophilia.

Interesting question. Requires a many-layered response:

1. Let's assume for the sake of argument that the Bible is silent on the moral status of pedophilia.

I deny the legitimacy of this move.  My argument is that the bible god approves of sex within adult child marriages, not that god approves of adults having sex with kids outside of marriage.  Hays' characterization is faulty here because apart from marriage, adults having sex with kids would be covered under either the fornication or adultery prohibitions.  It's the adult-child sex taking place within marriage, that is impervious to biblical rebuttal.  But Hays pretends to be answering Islamic arguments concerning charges of pedophilia and the bible, so it's probably not his fault that he is beating up a rather weak form of the argument.  Let's see him refute my particular argument. 

There's an essential difference between a religious text that condones pedophilia and silence.

Not according to the historians who lay out the criteria for knowing when an argument from silence is likely to be successful.  Not all arguments from silence are automatically fallacious.

The Bible's not an encyclopedia. It doesn't purport to address every ethnical issue.

You cannot afford to disagree with Paul, who said his solitary basis for being able to know a human act was sin, was the Mosaic Law: 

 6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
 7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET."
 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. (Rom. 7:6-8 NAU)

It doesn't matter if you are correct to say your God disapproves of marital pedophilia, the challenge is whether you can demonstrate that contention from the bible.  You can't.

Steve continues:

Some activities may not be condemned because they are obviously wrong. It isn't necessary to explicitly condemn them. That's understood. Take the cliche example of torturing little kids for fun.

Several problems: 
a) Paul in Romans 7:7 does not allow for even himself to know, apart from Mosaic law, that some human act is sin;

b) You are a Calvinist who believes God secretly wills all human sin, so by your own admission, God is no less approving of pedophiles who torture kids in basements for fun, than he approves of fathers who make their kids attend a Calvinist turch, which logically means God finds the human acts in his secret will no less holy than the human acts in his revealed will; 

c) no thank you, I'll stick to biblical examples, since they trip you up more easily.  If "obviously wrong" might explain why God is silent about torturing kids for fun, then what are you saying about God's prohibition against bestiality?

 23 'Also you shall not have intercourse with any animal to be defiled with it, nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it; it is a perversion. (Lev. 18:23 NAU)

 Indeed, God apparently thought one single prohibition wasn't sufficient:

Exo 22:19 "Whoever lies with an animal shall surely be put to death.
Lev 20:12 If there is a man who lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed incest, their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Lev 20:15 If there is a man who lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; you shall also kill the animal.
Lev 20:16 If there is a woman who approaches any animal to mate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.
Deu 27:21 Cursed is he who lies with any animal. And all the people shall say, Amen.

 Under your "obviously wrong" type logic, then the only reason God revealed multiple specific prohibitions against bestiality for Israel is because God didn't think Israel's common sense was sufficient to dissuade them from this type of activity. 

That won't help you when you start trying to argue that the obvious immorality of pedophilia would have been appreciated by Israel.

But if sex with animals is an obvious wrong, then why should God feel Israel needed more specific guidance on it than they needed on the proper minimum age of marriage?

Gee, could it actually be that these stupid questions come up because the bible is not inspired by a consistent creator, but is inspired by nothing but various people spouting various theological opinions?

The argument can be extended: how 'obviously wrong' is it to burn your kids to death?  And yet we see God constantly prohibiting the Israelites from imitating this pagan practice:

10 "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer,
 11 or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. (Deut. 18:10-11 NAU)

Same question:  if God thought the Israelites would recognize the "obvious" immorality of burning their kids to death, why did he specifically prohibit it?

You will say the prohibitions against acts condemned by common sense were needed because the pagan nations surrounding Israel did them and Israel might imitate them and often did.

So I really have to wonder why you would defend the high moral scruples of a people who could be persuaded by other cultures/nations, that burning their kids to death, was acceptable?

How many Christians live in big cities full of homosexuality and witchcraft.

How many of those Christians give in to practicing homosexuality and witchcraft?

So if your answer is that God needed to guide Israel because of the corruption of the pagans, you are making the Israelites out to be unacceptably gullible, which cannot be good for your other argument that surely they were wise enough to intuitively "know" when an act was sinful.

Could it really be, after all, that Paul was correct, and that your only hope for identifying human acts God thinks are sinful, is Mosaic law?

I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.

But you claim that God disapproves of sex within adult-child marriages.  You aren't going to prove that disapproval comes from God, if all you are using are natural law arguments.  And natural law arguments can backfire.  It's natural for a parent to not wish to burn their child to death, so was God contradicting natural common sense in Leviticus 21:9?

2. In Scripture, couples marry with a view to having kids. That assumes the bride and bridegroom are sexually mature.

A view fatally mitigated by the NT's consistent reference to Lot as a consistently righteous man.   Lot is called righteous in 2nd Peter 2:7-8 despite how clearly Genesis 19 asserts that Lot recommended to a sexually violent mob that they rape his two virgin daughters.  In other words, if this NT statement is true, then the author did not believe Lot’s attempt to have his daughters raped, constituted anything immoral, especially given that the story says Lot was trying to achieve a good purpose (preventing angels from being raped).  

 7 and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men
 8 (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day by their lawless deeds),
 9 then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation,  (2 Pet. 2:7-9 NAU)

In other words, while it may have been the ANE norm for virgin girls to lose virginity only in marriage, it also appears that where larger issues were involved, exceptions to normative sexual ethics were allowed.  

Lot, in particular, is considered righteous for offering his virgin daughters in order to save wayfarers. 

Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday.

 
Couple marrying in scripture with a view toward having kids may also assumes the couple is not allowed to engage in the specific sex act that would make the girl pregnant until she is older.  The Song of Songs would suggest at that point that an adult-child couple can engage in other similar acts that would not carry that danger.

In Scripture, couples also sometimes begin marital rites upon no other basis than that the man lusted after the woman's beauty, Deut. 21:10-14, a passage that neither expresses nor implies the purpose of the marriage would involve having children:

 10 "When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive,
 11 and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself,
 12 then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails.
 13 "She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house, and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife.
 14 "It shall be, if you are not pleased with her, then you shall let her go wherever she wishes; but you shall certainly not sell her for money, you shall not mistreat her, because you have humbled her.   (Deut. 21:10-14 NAU)

Steve continues:

3. Ruth was a widow. Moreover, she'd been married for ten years before her husband died (Ruth 1:4-5; 4:11). Presumably, she was in her twenties when she married Boaz.

4. Are there passages in Scripture that have implications for age of eligibility in reference to marriage?

i) Take the much maligned passage about war brides (Deut 20:10-14). The brides are widows. So these are not prepubescent girls. It's unlikely that they are even adolescent girls. Rather, the context suggests adult women. They are chosen for their overt womanly sex appeal.

You are dreaming:  

a) It's Deut 21, not 20, you specified "much maligned passage about war brides, and Deut. 21:10-14 is far more explicit in its discussion of war brides than Deut. 20 is.

b) you cite no contextual or grammatical evidence to show these female war captives were widows, 

c) that Moses allow his men to enslave prepubescent and adolescent girls is clearly seen in Numbers 31:18, and 

d) you don't know what ancient Israelite men would have found attractive in other females, in Deut. 21:11, what would constitute "beauty" is not defined and left to the eye  of the beholder; 

e) if the GNT is correct in translating v. 14 as "you forced her to have sex with you" is a proper dynamic translation, the probability increases slightly that the text is assuming younger girls, i.e., those more likely to resist first intercourse; 

f) if the GNT is correct in its rape-translation, then these Israelites apparently didn't have any scruples against a single act of rape as the result of an attempted marriage rite, and this increase in their barbarity gives you all the less justification to automatically assume the god of the bible surely agrees with modern American Christian scruples on sex.

ii) In 1 Cor 7:36, the virgins are, at the very least, sexually mature, and the word (hyperakmos) may well mean the "bloom of youth". That suggests females in the upper teens or early twenties. 

here you assume the inerrancy of the bible, when the more scholarly objective approach would appraise the morals of the ANE Hebrews solely on terms of ANE practice and the OT.  And regardless, Paul's meaning is ambiguous,

48      36-38. The Apostle applies the preceding teaching to a particular case. There has been a lively discussion among exegetes concerning the precise relation of the man (tis) to his “virgin” in these verses.

Brown, R. E., Fitzmyer, J. A., & Murphy, R. E. (1968]; 

Published in electronic form by Logos Research Systems, 1996).  

The Jerome Biblical commentary (electronic ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

 ....and he appears to be talking about a man with a virgin daughter who is past her sexual prime and wants to marry another man, since he is dealing with a specific problem that apparently had no common sense answers:

36. behaveth … uncomely—is not treating his daughter well in leaving her unmarried beyond the flower of her age

Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., Fausset, A. R., Brown, D., & Brown, D. (1997). A commentary, critical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. 

On spine: Critical and explanatory commentary. (1 Co 7:36). 

Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

So if spiritually alive Christians cannot even agree on what Paul's meaning is, you can hardly seriously expect your unqualified interpretation of Paul's words to look the least bit persuasive to spiritually dead Muslims and atheists.

5. It's common to speculate that Mary was an adolescent bride who was widowed by the time Jesus began his public ministry because she married a much older man. But even if we grant some of the assumptions, it was probably rare for people to die of old age in the ancient world. Mortality was high, and there are many common ways to die young, viz. illness, accident, infection.

But Joseph was likely rich given that he apparently had more children with Mary, not a wise decision if he was poor.  Joseph was a carpenter, and he could easily have earned enough of a living to avoid the harsh realities that caused shortened life spans, such as famine, or eating diseased food, forced to take dangerous labor-intensive jobs, etc.

6. Regarding the morality of older men who marry younger women, that depends.

i) On the one hand are coercive or exploitative relationships.
Older men (and women!) in positions of power who abuse their authority by taking advantage of subordinates.

I don't see why you think that matters.  Even denying the pedophilia interpretation of Numbers 31:18, you still think these men expected these little girls to start slaving away in their houses soon after hearing the dying shrieks of their parents and siblings.  Some would argue that the way these men obtained the service of these little girls was horribly exploitative, and worse than a single act of sexual molestation. Touching a little girl improperly doesn't kill off her parents.

ii) On the other hand, there are desperate or ambitious women who take the initiative. They court or seduce older men who can advance their career, provide financial security, or lavish lifestyle. That's calculated. Some women are attracted to alpha males or powerful men. I'm not making a value judgment, just a sociological observation. Between consenting adults, I don't think age disparity is coercive or exploitative.

Posted by steve at 9:29 AM

But you are ignoring the precise question at issue:  What age did the Hebrews require a girl to reach, at a minimum, before they would allow her to be married to an adult man?  You simply don't have any biblical basis to select any age except the age of 12 that can be gathered from what is already known about ANE peoples outside the bible.  But that does not represent an absolute mandate, anymore than a state's law requiring a person to be 18 to marry is absolute, since we know some states will allow lower age with parental consent.  You can only show what was "normative", you cannot do what you need to do, and that is to show that sex within adult-child marriages was consider sinful.

    ANNOYED PINOY7/08/2017 3:00 PM  

    I think there's a place for natural law considerations in Christian ethics. We don't require biblical warrant for all our ethical determinations.

    That's a powerful statement by Steve. Christian ethics based on the Bible takes into consideration natural law. Even if Islam could theoretically do the same thing, Islam nevertheless teaches that it's okay for men to have sex with prepubescent girls. As I said in the comments of another blog:

    To add to what Steve said, if one reads Ezek. 16:1-8 (and following) God likens his relationship with His people as Him having found her like a newly born abandoned child. He waited until she was sexually mature to "marry" her in covenant. I think that suggests the same thing Steve is saying. I think we can inductively infer from this what the Jews believed during that time and what God Himself approves of regarding when it's appropriate for a female to get married.

 Even assuming Ezekiel 16 is the answer to your dreams (it's not, God is rather stupid and brutish to assume that formation of breasts and pubic hair indicates the girl is "ready" for love), Gleason Archer and others have accepted that some kings in the Monarchy were fathering kids at 11 years old.  As I said in another post, revered commentators believe that the modern practice of girls marrying before puberty was true also in the OT days:

 Second, many conservative Christian scholars still revere the Keil and Delitzsch Commentary, because what it has to say about the bible remains very scholarly despite its having been written in the 1800’s.  After acknowledging King Ahaz fathered a child at 10-11 years old, they recognize the question this will pop into the mind of the reader, and they go on to cite documentary evidence that prepubescent marriage was normative for middle-eastern families, and this evidence forces Holding, without a rebuttal otherwise, to admit ancient Hebrews were willing to allow marriage at even younger ages than 12:

2 Kings 16:1–4. On the time mentioned, “in the seventeenth year of Pekah Ahaz became king” see at 2 Kings 15:32. The datum “twenty years old” is a striking one, even if we compare with it 2 Kings 18:2. As Ahaz reigned only sixteen years, and at his death his son Hezekiah became king at the age of twenty-five years (2 Kings 18:2), Ahaz must have begotten him in the eleventh year of his age. It is true that in southern lands this is neither impossible nor unknown,33 but in the case of the kings of Judah it would be without analogy. The reading found in the LXX, Syr., and Arab. at 2 Chron. 28:1, and also in certain codd., viz., five and twenty instead of twenty, may therefore be a preferable one. According to this, Hezekiah, like Ahaz, was born in his father’s sixteenth year.
------33 In the East they marry girls of nine or ten years of age to boys of twelve or thirteen (Volney, Reise, ii. p. 360). Among the Indians husbands of ten years of age and wives of eight are mentioned (Thevenot, Reisen, iii. pp. 100 and 165). In Abyssinia boys of twelve and even ten years old marry (Rüppell, Abessynien, ii. p. 59). Among the Jews in Tiberias, mothers of eleven years of age and fathers of thirteen are not uncommon (Burckh. Syrien, p. 570); and Lynch saw a wife there, who to all appearance was a mere child about ten years of age, who had been married two years already. In the epist. ad N. Carbonelli, from Hieronymi epist. ad Vitalem, 132, and in an ancient glossa, Bochart has also cited examples of one boy of ten years and another of nine, qui nutricem suam gravidavit, together with several other cases of a similar kind from later writers. Cf. Bocharti Opp. i. (Geogr. sacr.) p. 920, ed. Lugd. 1692.

Keil, C. F., & Delitzsch, F. (2002). Commentaryon the Old Testament. 

(Vol. 3, Page 283-284). 

Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Annoyed Pinoy continues:

    Many (not all) Muslims have the wrong notion that once menstruation occurs it's God's sign that she is ready to be sexually active and bear children. But that's not medically true. Other parts of a woman's anatomy (like the hips) need to develop for her to be ready to bear children. That's a reason why a lot of women die or suffer terrible injuries in Islamic cultures. Because they didn't postpone marriage long enough.

 Good reasons to call the God of Ezekiel 16 stupid and brutish for thinking a girls "readiness" for love is indicated by formation of breasts and pubic hair.   Plenty of 10 year old girls have fully formed breasts and public hair, and yet are obviously nowhere "ready" for sex as God thinks they are.

    The Christian God of love, wisdom, and healing would naturally want and expect us culturally to promote a safe age for marriage (with the assumption that the consummation of the marriage occurs soon after marriage).

Or because so many Christians are insincere liberal idiots, the Christian God has decided to wreak havoc and chaos in America like he apparently did in Israel, read Deut. 28.

In some cultures female sexual maturation occurs earlier than in other cultures. So, there can be no specific fixed age for a female to marry.

But a god who creates a universe shouldn't have a problem doing at least as good of a job at setting the minimum age by law, as godless secularists have in America for the last 50 years.  

It depends on both biological and psychological maturity.

No, your God only identifies two criteria, boobs and pubic hair.  Ezekiel 16. 

    Mr. Fosi7/08/2017 8:10 PM
    My first response when I saw the initial question that Steve is addressing was to point out the repeated directive in Song of Solomon to "not awaken love before it's time" and the idea at the end of the book that the "little sister without breasts" is one who is being guarded/protected. It's also clear from the language of that book that the lover and the beloved are sexualy mature.

Again, sex within adult-child marriages was likely not "normative" in ANE cultures, but that does not fulfill your burden to disprove the contention that the God of the bible disapproves of that act.

    Also, there is a much more basic argument to be had from the 2nd greatest commandment.

That's a rather vacuous argument:  were the Israelites treating their neighbors as themselves when massacring the baby boys in Numbers 31:17?

    Children are never sexual objects in the bible.

Argument from silence.  Can you back it up?

You can call that 'silence' if you like but in the presence of plenty of sexual stories and rules regarding sex, it is a ringing silence.

On the contrary, the fact that the rules specifically prohibit obvious sins like bestiality, but never give the minimum age or conditions under which a girl could be legitimately married, counsel that the god of the bible did not feel that sex below any certain age was prohibited.  Does God care more about animals having sex, than he cares about kids having sex?

    Finally, Christian parents don't encourage their kids to marry and have sexual relations with adults and Christian kids are told to obey their patents. Not exactly second use of the law but the bible is primarily for God's people.

But marriage today is based on romance and an evolved intellectual consideration of compatibility, entirely different from the arranged marriages for business and profit and continuation of family line as they were in the ANE.

Steve's failure is clear from the fact that he presupposes biblical inerrancy...he is writing to Christian inerrantists who are just as prone as he is to automatically think any use of the bible to justify modern Christian morality is valid. It doesn't matter if Paul knew of other ways to identify sin apart from the Law, what else Paul knew does not fit with his absolutist language in Romans 7:7. 

So while you are free to believe the bible condemns sex within adult-child marriages, you certainly cannot fulfill your burden to show that the god of Moses similarly disapproved.

Screwy Moments in Scriptural Interpretation: James Patrick Holding fails to defend God's honor

I made the argument at this blog that in light of Paul's express wording in Romans 7:7 that he wouldn't have known coveting was a sin except this had been explicitly prohibited in Mosaic law, Christians cannot call something "sin" unless it has been prohibited in Mosaic Law.

I made that argument as part of my larger argument that the bible-god must approve of sex within adult child marriages, one of my arguments intended to show error in the bible (here, moral error, even by Christian standards).  The argument itself was:

Fourth, if Holding thinks Romans 7:7 is inspired by God, then Paul's language there giving criteria for identifying sin, is so strong it leaves no logical possibility of being able to identify sin where the Law is silent on the act:

 6 But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.
 7 What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, "YOU SHALL NOT COVET."
 8 But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. (Rom. 7:6-8 NAU)

Does Holding agree with Paul, that Paul would not have known coveting was a sin, except this act had been prohibited in Mosaic Law, yes or no?  If yes, then because the Mosaic law doesn't prohibit sex within adult-child marriages, Holding cannot have a biblical justification to call that act a "sin".  Holding will say the bible teaches we can know sin through our conscience, but the only reason our conscience tells us what sin is, is because God wrote his law on our heart, as Paul said:

12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law;
 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.
 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
 17 But if you bear the name "Jew " and rely upon the Law and boast in God, (Rom. 2:12-17 NAU)

In context, the "Law" that is on the heart of the Gentile (v. 15) is no different than the written Mosaic Law that is otherwise exclusive to the Jew (v. 17), and that contextual link cannot be undone by citing to commentators who think "work of the law" is something different than the "law".

-------------------------------
The full blog post where that argument was made is here.

Mr. Holding responds now with, you guessed it, another "cartoon" response, which apparently is the only way he can channel his aggressive spitefulness without committing a crime.  By living in dreamland, Holding can watch himself beat up those bad 'ol atheists and causes all the fantasy injuries he wishes he could inflict in real life.

Holding tries to counter by asserting, again, typically, without recourse to any scholarly commentary (why would God need a commentary anyway when he is posting his cartoon videos to YouTube?)

At :40, Holding says Paul is speaking in the past tense of his own experience.  He says this while flashing the following text:

                


First, Paul's wording is absolutist:  he would not have known coveting was a sin except the law had said "thou shalt not covet", and this directly contradicts Holding's belief that Paul could have known sin by conscience alone.  Paul did not say it would have been unlikely for him to have known such sin apart from the Law, but bluntly that he would not have known coveting was sin, apart from the Law.

Paul's choice of wording is absolute, it is inconsistent for a person who thinks there are more ways the the Law to recognize sin. If you don't need a car to go to the store, you don't say "if it hadn't been for my car, I'd never have made it to the store."

If Paul believed he could know sin by some way other than the law, then he erred by speaking in absolute terms in 7:7.

Second,  allowing that Holding is correct to say the bible teaches we can also know sin by conscience alone, all he gains is the ability to show that people can know by conscience alone that sex within adult-child marriages is sin...but that would not be sufficient to speak that moral opinion dogmatically.

You are imperfect.  What bothers your conscience doesn't decide how God feels and doesn't dictate how other people should think.  If sex within adult-child marriage is disapproved by God, you don't prove this by telling everybody how much the whole idea bothers your conscience.

So Holding simply creates further problem with his conscience argument:  How do you persuade the Christian brother that his conscience isn't reflecting God's morals, if your only basis for proving it is your own conscience?

If Holding is so sure that his bible-god thinks sex within adult-child marriages is sin, let him provide the following evidence:

1 - Biblical or historical evidence showing the minimum age ancient Hebrews thought a girl  must reach before a man could marry her.  Why does he automatically assume it would have been 12 years old just because that's what the Assyrians and Sumerians and Egyptians believed?  If you find out that I live in America, do you automatically assume I love mom, baseball and apple pie?  Why can't we adopt that age into our consent laws today, the stupid way Mr. Holding automatically assumes that the riposte of honor/shame cultures in the ANE automatically applies to Christian apologetics today?

2 - Biblical or historical evidence showing the minimum age ancient Hebrews thought a married girl living in the days of Moses must reach before her adult husband can have sex with her.  Holding, in his effort to avoid my argument, has said a man's getting married to a girl didn't automatically allow him to have sex with her, so I'd like to know what biblical or historical evidence he has that any ancient Hebrew man ever a) married a girl too young for sex, and then b) waited until his wife was older before having sex with her.  Don't tell me it was possible, because you've so far produced no evidence that any such thing ever happened, while most scholars are agreed that in the ancient world, marriage was the justification for sex.  I said marriage, not "betrothal".  I can buy that a Hebrew man would refrain from sex during betrothal, what I cannot buy is your speculation that even after "marriage", the Hebrew man would still refrain from sex until his wife was "old enough" for it.

3 - Why God was silent respecting this horrific crime against children, but spoke several times, clearly prohibiting bestiality.  Holding cannot say God expected us to use our common sense, otherwise, the fact that God specifically prohibited bestiality means God didn't expect us to know from "common sense" alone that sex with animals was forbidden or immoral. 

4 - Why we cannot classify this "sex within adult child marriages" thing as a non-essential based on God's screaming silence, and therefore, as a non-essential, make the argument that disagreement over this practice is not a sufficient reason to justify disfellowshipping or excommunicating someone.  Either explain that, or demonstrate that God's beliefs about the minimum age for girls to get married, is an "essential" about which liberality of opinion cannot be tolerated.