The Muhammad and Aisha controversy

[TheLeft]

Perhaps because none of those people are held up as moral examples to follow today.

Why the far-right? Are atheists far right?

So they have to be moral examples to count?

Apologies I wasn't aware of the rules of your little game of "Which historical Paedophiles Matter". How about St Joseph, husband of Mary the mother of Jesus? Most historical sources have her aged around 12 or 13 while he is supposed to be 17 or 18 (or even older depending on the account you read). Does that count? If not I'll raise you God himself. After all didn't he impregnate a 12 year old girl give birth to Jesus? Surely either one of those has to held up as a moral example?

The reason why I mention the far-right is because they're the ones getting their collective knickers in a twist about 'Asian Grooming gangs' and getting horribly Islamophobic at the same time.

As an atheist, I think it wise to treat all forms of religion with the contempt and disdain it deserves and try not to get bogged down with the silly-ness and hypocrisy.

[Heathen Hammer]

And yet the outrage from the far-right is zero. I wonder why that is?

Because Edmund Tudor himself is not considered to be a religious prophet and conduit of ideas that one should base one's life upon like Muhammad is.

[TheLeft]

Because Edmund Tudor himself is not considered to be a religious prophet and conduit of ideas that one should base one's life upon like Muhammad is.

But God is. As is St Joseph. Both of which happily shagged a 12 year old Virgin Mary...

Again the silence is deafening...

[Heathen Hammer]

But God is. As is St Joseph. Both of which happily shagged a 12 year old Virgin Mary...

Again the silence is deafening...

According to Bible, Joseph didn't have sex with Mary and Jesus' consummation was result of a "miracle" rather direct sex act with Yahweh. Also I'm not a Christian, but the parallel you are desperately trying to create doesn't really work.

[TheLeft]

According to Bible, Joseph didn't have sex with Mary and Jesus' consummation was result of a "miracle" rather direct sex act with Yahweh. Also I'm not a Christian, but the parallel you are desperately trying to create doesn't really work.

The Bible doesn't mention people taking a dump either but we know they did. Likewise assuming a married couple never consummated their relationship because it isn't written about in the gospels is pure gullibility.

Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk

[Aexodus]

So they have to be moral examples to count?

The only problem anyone ever had, was that here you have a religion who’s founder did some very questionable things, and may inspire some followers to do questionable things today, or have genuinely misogynistic attitudes.

[Prodromos]

Note that this thread was split off from another thread, the topic of which was a woman prosecuted for calling Muhammad a pedophile. That's why we were discussing it, so we didn't start this discussion as part of some unprovoked anti-Islamic campaign. If Europe started prosecuting people for calling an ancient British monarch a pedophile, we'd be discussing that too. We certainly have no qualms about accusing political figures of pedophilia on this forum.

But God is. As is St Joseph. Both of which happily shagged a 12 year old Virgin Mary...

Again the silence is deafening...

Both Scripture and Tradition are generally silent on Mary's age at marriage. The only source mentioning it is the apocryphal Protevangelium of James, which is rejected as unreliable.

The consensus is that it was actually composed in the latter half of the 2nd century. The first mention of it is by Origen of Alexandria in the early 3rd century, who says the text, like that of a Gospel of Peter, was of dubious, recent appearance and shared with that book the claim that the "brethren of the Lord" were sons of Joseph by a former wife.[8]

Although a number of Church councils condemned it as an inauthentic writing of the New Testament, this did little to diminish its popularity. Pope Innocent I condemned this Gospel of James in his third epistle ad Exuperium in 405 AD, and the so-called Gelasian Decree also excluded it as canonical around 500 AD.[9][10] Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae rejects the Protevangelium of James teaching that midwives were present at Christ's birth, and invokes Jerome as contending that the words of the canonical gospels show that Mary was both mother and midwife, that she wrapped up the child with swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. And thus concludes, "These words prove the falseness of the apocryphal ravings."[11]

Interestingly enough, the Protoevangelium actually affirms Mary's perpetual virginity, so either way, she did not have any sexual contact with Joseph.

Anyway, regardless what her age was, Mary's marriage with Joseph was what's called a Josephite marriage, in which the couple dedicate themselves to God and abjure sexual activity.

Spiritual marriage or chaste marriage[1] comes from the original divine law that marriage should be the union between soulmates who are attracted to each other by divine magnetism and not by the animal magnetism of sexual activity.

A feature of Catholic spiritual marriage, or Josephite marriage, is that the agreement to abstain from sex should be a free mutual decision, rather than resulting from impotence or the views of one party.

Mary's perpetual virginity is affirmed by the vast majority of Christian authorities. Other Christians are silent on it mostly for Sola Scriptura reasons; that is, they do not necessarily deny it, they simply don't hold it as definitively true, since if something isn't in Scripture then it can't be considered undeniably true.

The perpetual virginity of Mary is a Marian doctrine, taught by the Catholic Church and held by a number of groups in Christianity, which asserts that Mary (the mother of Jesus) was "always a virgin, before, during and after the birth of Jesus Christ."[2][3] This doctrine also proclaims that Mary had no marital relations after Jesus' birth nor gave birth to any children other than Jesus.[2]

By the fourth century, the doctrine was widely supported by the Church Fathers, and by the seventh century it had been affirmed in a number of ecumenical councils.[5][6][7] The doctrine is part of the teaching of Catholicism and Anglo-Catholics, as well as Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, as expressed in their liturgies, in which they repeatedly refer to Mary as "ever virgin" (Greek: ἀειπάρθενος, translit. aeiparthenos).[8][9][10] The Assyrian Church of the East, which is derived from the Church of the East, also accepts the perpetual virginity of Mary by titling her the "Ever Virgin", after the "Second Heaven".[11][12][13]

Martin Luther believed that Mary did not have other children and did not have any marital relations with Joseph. The Latin text of the 1537 Smalcald Articles, written by Martin Luther, used the term "Ever Virgin" to refer to Mary.[77] The perpetual virginity of Mary was Luther's lifelong belief, even after he rejected other Marian doctrines except "Mother of God".[77][80][81][82]

Huldrych Zwingli directly supported perpetual virginity and wrote: "I firmly believe that [Mary], ... forever remained a pure, intact Virgin."[83] Like Zwingli, the English reformers also supported the concept of perpetual virginity, but often varied on their reasons for the support.[78] Luther and Zwingli's support of perpetual virginity was endorsed by Heinrich Bullinger and was included in the 1566 Second Helvetic Confession.[84]

John Calvin "was less clear-cut than Luther on Mary's perpetual virginity but undoubtedly favored it".[78] He cautioned against what he thought as "impious speculation" on the topic.[84]

The Anglican reformers of the 16th and 17th century, such as Hugh Latimer and Thomas Cranmer,[14] supported perpetual virginity "on the basis of ancient Christian authority".[77] In the 18th century, John Wesley, one of the founders of Methodism, also supported the doctrine and wrote that Jesus was "born of the blessed Virgin Mary, who, as well after as before she brought Him forth, continued a pure and unspotted virgin."[77][89][90]

[Cyclops]

According to Bible, Joseph didn't have sex with Mary

According to which Bible? Mark 3:31 Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55 all state Jesus had siblings without qualification. St Paul, arguably the founder of Christianity, calls James the Just "the brother of Jesus" in First Galatians (a letter of undisputed authenticity).

It is the work of queasy heretics like Augustine that try to erase sex from the story of Christ and insist bizarrely on matters like perpetual virginity and culminating in the futile 19th century innovation of the immaculate conception. Christians who knew Jesus called James his brother. Only later are weird relationships and monumentally false mistranslations papered over the truth in service of weird Gnostic body hate.

and Jesus' consummation was result of a "miracle" rather direct sex act with Yahweh.

The act of conception is undescribed: in Luke and Matthew the angel Gabriel announces to Mary and Joseph respectively that she will be impregnated by the Holy Spirit (and in Luke she consents, the issue of consent in Matthew is left unclear-in current terms it looks more like rape, but IIRC at the time it would be considered quite legal if Joseph consented), but whether this involves sex is not revealed.

It was described as a miracle, but so are many of Zeus' sexual exploits and they definitely involve a penis. If we are judging Mohammed (thx Abdul for the correction) by modern standards and knowledge then its fair to infer God has sperm, and used it on Mary.

In any case even a miraculous pregnancy would be legally dubious, women under 18 and not allowed access to reproductive technology like IVF. Once again if we judge God and the Holy Spirit as described in Scripture by modern standards they look morally dubious at best.

Also I'm not a Christian, but the parallel you are desperately trying to create doesn't really work.

The thesis that God impregnated an underage girl is plausible. I don't think there's an orthodox account of Mary's age at the time of Jesus conception (just odd apocryphal texts, NT apocrypha is really weird). Its likely she had reached menarchy (a pretty normal age of consent in premodern societies) so 12-14 is quite likely (9-17 the plausible outliers, I think 6-20 are at the bounds of reason), but not scriptural so Christians are not required to believe in the legality of impregnating a child.

If you try to fit a modern moral mould over scriptural actions they stink because times change and so do beliefs. We can play "sic et non" with the Bible until the cows come home, but its just unpleasant trolling Christians who by and large are good people trying hard, and they don't need the grief. Nor do Muslims.

Its a fun game to taunt narrow minded religious literalists (and by all means screw with the Salafists, they deserve it) but smearing Muhammad as a paedo is patent trolling.

Going a bit meta, the overlords (I don't mean (((overlords))), I mean $$$overlords$$$) love this sort of crap. Get the dispossessed in the West to fight the dispossessed in the East, and the billionaires everywhere can laugh at the stupidity of the "little people" while they tread on all our necks. If you buy into these fights you're just enslaving yourself and your children, and their children, and so on for the benefit of Mr Walton and his friend Mr Sotros and their friends the Kochs and the Rockerfellers and the ibn Sauds and the Saxe-Coburg und Gothas (not to mention their little servant Mr Trump) etc.

[fkizz]

It was described as a miracle, but so are many of Zeus' sexual exploits and they definitely involve a penis. If we are judging Mohammed (thx Abdul for the correction) by modern standards and knowledge then its fair to infer God has sperm, and used it on Mary.

In any case even a miraculous pregnancy would be legally dubious, women under 18 and not allowed access to reproductive technology like IVF. Once again if we judge God and the Holy Spirit as described in Scripture by modern standards they look morally dubious at best.

Well, brushing aside the Phalocentrism in your post, back then it was common to assume/claim characters of above average merit had Virgin Births. Pythagoras, Alexander the Great, and other characters also tried to claim the same thing, despite their degree of sucess in the claim being inferior.

Virgin Birth is ironically a very pre-Christian cultural habit/title, a claim to give to people that achieved very high levels of reputation, and was a said claim/title that Christianity adopted as part of cultural inheritance of the Pagan world, rather than being an invention of Christianity or the Church.

Had Church back then rejected idea of Virgin Birth, people would see Jesus as a lesser person, as someone to not follow..

It was part of the language of 2000+ years ago, and in a sense it may be lost in translation for us today, except for some Philologists or people passionate for learning about the subject.

[conon394]

Alexander the Great

Only in the Alexander romance. I'm pretty sure that if Olympias would have actually claimed a virgin birth Philip II would offed her and her bastard. It was hard enough to maintain the crown w/o cheating wives. The men who really did fighting and the killing for Alexander had no doubt they were following the entirely mortal son of Philip II.

[Cyclops]

Well, brushing aside the Phalocentrism in your post,

Are you suggesting penises are irrelevant to pregnancy? They are definitely relevant where questions of virginity (in the classical sense) are concerned.

back then it was common to assume/claim characters of above average merit had Virgin Births.

No it wasn't. It was common to claim divine influence at birth (such as Cyrus with weird dreams and abandonment stories), or actual divine parenthood (as Alexander seemed to do). Virginity was important from the point of view of guaranteeing the identity of the father: there was also some important virgin goddesses like Athena, but they were quite rare compared to mother (and Mother) goddesses.

Pythagoras,

Pythagoras AFAIK has a human father as described in Herodotus. Is this some new age rubbish?

Alexander the Great,

No source claims Olympias was a virgin when Alexander was born, and Phillip acknowledged Alexander as his heir (an unlikely decision if he never had sex with Olympias). Arrian claimed special divine dreams for both parents before Alexander's birth, typical "divine influence/parentage" imagery and nothing to do with virginity.

Divine parentage in Hellenic myth does not involve the mother remaining a virgin: the only true virgin birth is Athena who is a perpetual virgin herself, who springs from Zeus' unvirginal brow. Pershephone, also known as 'the virgin" kore loses her virginity to Hades (and I think Zeus fathered several Gods and godlets on her).

and other characters also tried to claim the same thing, despite their degree of sucess in the claim being inferior.

Like who? Plenty claimed divine ancestry.

Virgin Birth is ironically a very pre-Christian cultural habit/title, a claim to give to people that achieved very high levels of reputation, and was a said claim/title that Christianity adopted as part of cultural inheritance of the Pagan world, rather than being an invention of Christianity or the Church.

Divine parentage is a very pre-Christian cultural habit title. The hysterical insistence on Mary's perpetual virginity (the peaks in the 19th century ultrmontane Catholic doctrine of Immaculate conception) is AFAIK uniquely Christian.

Had Church back then rejected idea of Virgin Birth, people would see Jesus as a lesser person, as someone to not follow..

Jesus did teach about the son of god, and this was interpreted after his death as establishing his Godhood but this was not universally held (there was a strong "Jesus as a Man" movement in Antioch facing off the "Jesus as a God" movement in Alexandria). These collided in the trinitarian compromise of Nicaea and Chalcedon (which formulated a position pretty much no one who cared about the issue agreed with) soi its clear that in the ealry Churhc there was a large sector headed by th patriarch of Antioch committed to jesus as not divine.

It was part of the language of 2000+ years ago, and in a sense it may be lost in translation for us today, except for some Philologists or people passionate for learning about the subject.

As I say divine ancestry is not the same as virgin birth.

[Aexodus]

Are you suggesting penises are irrelevant to pregnancy? They are definitely relevant where questions of virginity (in the classical sense) are concerned.

Christians believe Mary was literally a virgin, whether or not that is true isn’t really of consequence in practice.

[Diocle]

Christians operated in a Hellenistic world and in the years Christianism became state religion its biggest competitor was Mithras, who was born from a rock. How could they explain to commom people (most of them followers of Mithras) that their incarnate God was simply born of a man and a woman, just like any poor beggar on earth? They needed something special .. and here it comes the virgin birth of Jesus; Constantine, who was a half-illiterate ignorant soldier son of a whore, evidently appreciated the whole tale, even though we today have some problem in fully undretsnding it.

[Cyclops]

Christians believe Mary was literally a virgin, whether or not that is true isn’t really of consequence in practice.

Irrelevant. We were discussing instances of virgin and divine birth in ancient mythology, not the beliefs of modern Christians.

Christians operated in a Hellenistic world and in the years Christianism became state religion its biggest competitor was Mithras, who was born from a rock. How could they explain to commom people (most of them followers of Mithras) that their incarnate God was simply born of a man and a woman, just like any poor beggar on earth? They needed something special .. and here it comes the virgin birth of Jesus; Constantine, who was a half-illiterate ignorant soldier son of a whore, evidently appreciated the whole tale, even though we today have some problem in fully undretsnding it.

Look thats an imaginative explanation but I don't think its true. Mithraism wasn't really the main competitor to Christianity, it was a professional military cult: the main rival to Christianity was Paganism. There were many gods, worshipped in many forms from classical pagan cults administered by traditional priesthoods (plus the new-fangled ruler cults in the same style), to New Age style mystery cults (think L Ron Hubbard meets the Freemasons: the Pythagorean cult murdered ex-members who revealed maths secrets), to rustic shrines and household altars (basically superstition and folk beliefs) and Christianity denied not just their authority but their reality.

The Jewish followers of rabbi Jesus (he is called teacher in scripture) had to defend their leader against criticisms from other jews, both Temple (Saducee) and other rabbis (Pharisees) and that of course involved reference to Jewish scripture. Moments like Pentecost showed the Jesus followers he was more than an ordinary man, he had returned from beyond the grave. To their eyes he was God's anointed, and scripture ostensibly about past kings and heirs ("unto us a son is born!", and the punishment of the nation ("the suffering servant") was revealed to their understanding as describing Jesus.

A key verse about Emmanuel prophecy is the child born to a virgin (there's a discussion about the meaning of the term used but the readers read it this way). There are other prophecies about Bethlehem. These facts were assumed to be true about Jesus: even though he was know to be Nazarene two of the gospels found ways to place his birth in Bethlehem. By logical extension Mary must have been a virgin. What does that mean? the meaing seems to have changed over time, at first it meant Joseph was not Jesus' father, it was the Big Guy.

Most children of deities are seen as powerful, to a pagan listener Jesus being "son of God" literally would make him worth listening too, and the virgin bit 1. satisfies a prophecy and 2. is a little extra bit of purity "definitely not Joseph's son, because she was a virgin" that apatriarvchal society could understand "don't want used gods old chap, this messiah's a purebred!".

Later squeamish monk types couldn't bear the idea of Mary having sex with anyone ever and they changed it further(" no really, Mary stayed a virgin, that word "brother" actually means "cousin"...oh shut up or you'll be burnt").

[PointOfViewGun]

Christians believe Mary was literally a virgin, whether or not that is true isn’t really of consequence in practice.

Then you agree that Jesus was the result of a child pregnancy of Mary. Whether it was a virgin birth doesn't really matter as you say. Basically, the holiest man of Christianity was given birth to through a child pregnancy. Aisha, on the other hand, most likely didn't even ever had sex with Muhammad, regardless of her age.

[basics]

But God is. As is St Joseph. Both of which happily shagged a 12 year old Virgin Mary...

Again the silence is deafening...

TheLeft,

That is a disgusting thing to say for it you read a Bible it will tell you that a union of Jesus and an egg of Mary took place supernaturally achieved by the Holy Spirit so that God could come into this world as a man. There was no lust involved as is the case in human sex so enough of the vile comments. Joseph himself did not have sex with Mary until after Jesus was born and that only after her cleansing time had passed which was some thirty plus days after giving birth and possibly longer. Therefore Mary was probably into her fourteenth or fifteenth year before Joseph knew her and how long after before she fell pregnant is anyone's guess so she could have been fifteen or sixteen when she bore James by Joseph.

[TheLeft]

Mary was probably into her fourteenth or fifteenth year before Joseph knew her and how long after before she fell pregnant is anyone's guess so she could have been fifteen or sixteen when she bore James by Joseph.

So she was still underage then.

In the UK today, a grown man enjoying carnal relations with a 14 year old girl would find himself imprisoned and with a place on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life.

[95thrifleman]

TheLeft,

That is a disgusting thing to say for it you read a Bible it will tell you that a union of Jesus and an egg of Mary took place supernaturally achieved by the Holy Spirit so that God could come into this world as a man. There was no lust involved as is the case in human sex so enough of the vile comments. Joseph himself did not have sex with Mary until after Jesus was born and that only after her cleansing time had passed which was some thirty plus days after giving birth and possibly longer. Therefore Mary was probably into her fourteenth or fifteenth year before Joseph knew her and how long after before she fell pregnant is anyone's guess so she could have been fifteen or sixteen when she bore James by Joseph.

Ok so Joseph wasn't a child rapist forcing a 12 year old girl to go through the traumatic process of giving birth before her hips and body was fully developed.

GOD is a child rapist forcing a 12 year old girl to go through the traumatic process of giving birth before her hips and body was fully developed.

[sumskilz]

These facts were assumed to be true about Jesus: even though he was know to be Nazarene two of the gospels found ways to place his birth in Bethlehem.

I know it's a widely held belief, but I don't think Nazarene refers to Nazareth. In Greek it's written with a zeta which is equivalent to the Hebrew/Aramaic letter zayin, but Nazareth is spelled in Hebrew and Aramaic with a tsade. That in itself doesn't mean anything for certain, because it's not uncommon for Greek texts to render a tsade as a zeta despite it being a completely different sound, but there is a word that actually uses the zayin/zeta sound. That's the word translated as Nazirite. Compare the spellings Ναζιραῖος to Ναζωραῖος. The latter is the spelling of the word commonly assumed to mean Nazarene. The only difference is one vowel. Vowels tend to shift easily in Semitic pronunciations since they aren't really that important to meaning, just links between consonants. A Nazirite is someone who has vowed to dedicate their life to God as a symbolic or literal sacrifice.

[fkizz]

Only in the Alexander romance. I'm pretty sure that if Olympias would have actually claimed a virgin birth Philip II would offed her and her bastard. It was hard enough to maintain the crown w/o cheating wives. The men who really did fighting and the killing for Alexander had no doubt they were following the entirely mortal son of Philip II.

Alexander wanted to Divinize himself, wanting to be remembered in History more a mythological figure like Hercules, rather than a human one, but the project halfways was abandoned, and even led to serious quarrels with his former mentor Aristotle. So the claim of Virgin Birth lost steam on Alexander case.

Ironically, Alexander due to his military victories against enemies and enslavers of the Hebrews, fufilled some of the conditions to be considered the Messiah, and some even believed him to be so, but Alexander dropped that idea as well, and he didn't fufill all the conditions.

So he ended up resigning himself to "merely" be remembered as an extremely sucessful military leader.

Divine parentage is a very pre-Christian cultural habit title. The hysterical insistence on Mary's perpetual virginity (the peaks in the 19th century ultrmontane Catholic doctrine of Immaculate conception) is AFAIK uniquely Christian.

Where do we exactly disagree then? It seems we have more or less the same idea, asides from the emotional luggage in your post which I do not fully understand.