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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Bible for Grown Ups
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yes indeed. He did NOT say: "Financially support your sister-in-law but stay out of her bed (sex isn't necessary anymore, your brother took care of that!) until she has a child."
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
Look, if you want proof that the ancient Hebrews had a dodgy grasp of genetics, you just need to cite that passage where Jacob breeds spotty sheep by feeding them in front of spotty strips of cloth. But none of that proves that they didn't know a man and a woman were both necessary for conception!
As someone else has already said, the proof that they knew about the birds and the bees is precisely the fact that Jesus' conception is supposed to be miraculous! If they thought parthenogenesis just happens once in a while then it wouldn't be a miracle would it!
Honestly, I can genuinely see reasons for doubting the Virgin Birth but this isn't one of them.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother’s wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Beeswax Altar
Shipmate
# 11644
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Posted
Yes, see, Onan knew where babies came from.
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Losing sleep is something you want to avoid, if possible.
-Og: King of Bashan
Posts: 8411 | From: By a large lake | Registered: Jul 2006
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
Yes. So a) he was aware that children normally result from sex-with-seed, and b) he was also aware that his father Judah was expecting him to have sex-with-seed (coitus non-interruptus?) with Tamar in order to do the necessary to bring about pregnancy. Onan is notable because he is subverting the clear expectation of his culture, which is that you will have coitus-non-interruptus NOW precisely in order to bring about the birth of a child for your dead brother, who has no other way of getting a legal heir. The reason Onan is villainized is because he refuses to do what everybody knows is necessary.
If the culture believed that it was possible for a woman to get pregnant from a previous sexual encounter (as in, more than a menstrual cycle intervening), there would be no need for levirate sex. Just continue to keep the woman around until eventually she gives birth to the long-delayed biological son of her dead husband.
The presence of the Onan story, and in fact of the whole levirate cultural thingy, demonstrates that they knew a man out of the sexual picture for more than a menstrual cycle wasn't going to be siring any babies with that woman.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
Indeed the child of the dead man's widow counted as the dead man's child, took his inheritance, and was responsible in due course for her care in her old age. That's why the nearer kinsman in Ruth wasn't that keen on getting the field when he discovered that it would also include caring for Ruth and probably Naomi too, and that it wouldn't effectively form part of his estate. But this legal fiction did not mean that they believed the child was biologically the child of the dead man. That seems to me to be an extraordinarily literalistic reading of the text.
Onan knew the child would not be treated as his heir, and he didn't want that.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
But, the story is based on a legal point - Er had died without an heir, Onan was to sleep with Tamar to provide Er with an heir. When Judah died, his wealth would have passed to his sons, with Er dead without an heir then that share of the inheritance would pass to Onan. By spilling his seed, Onan prevents Er having an heir and ensures he will inherit when Judah dies. The only reason he spills his seed is because he knows that if he doesn't then Tamar may become pregnant.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
Posts: 32413 | From: East Kilbride (Scotland) or 福島 | Registered: May 2001
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
And anyway, all this Old Testament stuff is irrelevant to what St Luke would have thought. The guy was a physician and his grasp of Greek was pretty good. Therefore, he most likely knew about Greek medicine. We don't have to guess about Greek medical beliefs - enough Greek medical texts have survived. And though they had some strange ideas about conception, none of them thought a father wasn't strictly necessary.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Jay-Emm
Shipmate
# 11411
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
The law in Deuteronomy is definitely about not remarrying a former wife after an intervening marriage..., makes no sense without a different understanding of conception and gestation.
But that understanding makes even less sense of that law (though it would make sense of in family marriage*). In that there isn't the prohibition against marrying a divorcee/widower which is what's needed. If that were the argument then the remarryer would be the better rather than yet a third contributor (fourth if the woman counts ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) ).
And generally where bio is dodgy, I get the impression that the mother get neglected.
*though so would other ideas.
The other story that needs some sense of biology, is David & Uriah.
Posts: 1643 | Registered: May 2006
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
As others have said, this is barely relevant to the topic.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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BroJames
Shipmate
# 9636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman…
I profoundly disagree that the passages you have cited reflect such a belief.
That represents a fundamentalistically literalist reading of the text, not justified by the text itself or, as far as I know by, any other evidence in the text or from our (limited) knowledge of the culture. It makes no contribution to any understanding we might or might not have about beliefs about the begetting of children either at whatever date the text came into being or in C1st BCE. It has nothing to contribute one way or the other to any discussion about what people might have believed about the claimed virgin birth of Jesus. You're right, therefore, that it's very tangential to the thread.
Posts: 3374 | From: UK | Registered: Jun 2005
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
Hatless, I have to ask - do you believe in the Incarnation? ISTM that if you do, you have already accepted the violation and everything else is straining at gnats.
The Incarnation is a tool or theme that I use as I think about my faith. It's a way of expressing the significance of Jesus Christ. But when you ask if I believe in it, I wonder what exactly you have in mind, and what a yes would be tying me to.
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.
That's OK then. I believe in the Incarnation very enthusiastically.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
Compare with the belief of the ancient Modenwestennas that two people can swap a child's existing DNA with their own via a ritual called 'adoption'. Upon signing what were called 'adoption papers' it was believed that they became the parents of the child.
Seriously, child is not solely a biological category in any society. It is a cultural category just as much. To claim that the OT writers had an essentially biological understanding of whose child is whose in these texts, and that this esssentially biological understanding is faulty, is a naive eisegesis. A self-proclaimed anti-realist particularly ought not to make that interpretation.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by cliffdweller:
quote:
Originally posted by BroJames:
The Bonhoeffer reference comes from Letters and Papers from Prison from a letter to Eberhard Bethge dated 16th July, 1944. (p. 129 in my SCM Press 1981 p/b Abridged Edition).
In the letter (ISTM) he is working on his thinking about what it means to live in a world which has done away with the idea of God as a working hypothesis. His criticism of Barth and others is that they, he says, seek to assert the authority of the church or the authority of revelation in the scriptures. It is an attitude of "We believe this because it is the teaching of the Church" or "We believe this because it is what the Bible teaches" which he resists as being a leap of death into the Middle Ages.
It would be interesting to see how he would engage with the rather different discussions about the interface between science and religion which have emerged during the second half of the 20th century.
Interestingly in the context of this thread, Bonhoeffer's response to the intellectual climate as he sees it appears to be strongly rooted in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ.
That's helpful, thanks.
And yes, that does sound very much like Bonhoeffer-- and as true and relevant today as it was then. His point, of course, would seem to be the complete opposite of what you appear to be arguing here.
Could you explain why you think Bonhoeffer and I are taking opposite sides?
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
They didn't think you could get pregnant without sex with a man, and they knew it was the semen that was important, but there seems to have been a widespread belief, reflected in the passages we've been looking at, that some part of the semen remained in the woman (in her blood, it was assumed) and would be expressed, presumably to a diminishing degree, in subsequent births.
Compare with the belief of the ancient Modenwestennas that two people can swap a child's existing DNA with their own via a ritual called 'adoption'. Upon signing what were called 'adoption papers' it was believed that they became the parents of the child.
Seriously, child is not solely a biological category in any society. It is a cultural category just as much. To claim that the OT writers had an essentially biological understanding of whose child is whose in these texts, and that this esssentially biological understanding is faulty, is a naive eisegesis. A self-proclaimed anti-realist particularly ought not to make that interpretation.
This tangent refuses to die!
I'm not making any claim about the meaning of child. I know that there was a belief before modern genetics that some part of the male principle persisted in the female and could be expressed in subsequent matings with different males, and I'm suggesting that a law in Deuteronomy and levirate marriage might be evidence that some at least in ancient Israelite society held that view.
The bigger point is that there were numerous different understandings of conception and inheritance in biblical times, and we mustn't assume that Matthew and Luke's understanding of these matters, and the way they framed their ideas of the Virgin Birth on the one hand, and what seems obvious to people today (with our identical world views) on the other, are similar.
[ 29. September 2016, 22:59: Message edited by: hatless ]
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
I have in mind the idea that Christ was God in some sense that isn't true of me, you or Jeremy Corbyn.
That's OK then. I believe in the Incarnation very enthusiastically.
Well ISTM the Incarnation, with or without the Chalcedonian definitions, is already, in your terms, an example of the outside breaking in.
ISTM the dichotomy you describe already has a name in classical theo-speak: it is the Scandal of Particularity. The idea that an infinite God was bound in a particular man in a particular time and place. And this Scandal isn't a theological obscurity but lies at the heart of Christianity.
So classical theologians agree that God is the ground of our being and the Prime Mover - which corresponds to your 'nature is super' - but also, although the 'old man on a cloud' stuff that the ex Bishop of Woolwich objected to isn't literally true, it's nonetheless somehow a fitting image for God - which I think corresponds to your 'super-natural'. Just as God is the God of generalities - such as the Imago Dei in each of us - He can also be the God of particularities - the Incarnation. And in the same way, if He is the God of general scientific laws, He can also be the God of specific events, such as miracles.
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Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
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Honest Ron Bacardi
Shipmate
# 38
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Posted
hatless wrote: quote:
The bigger point is that there were numerous different understandings of conception and inheritance in biblical times, and we mustn't assume that Matthew and Luke's understanding of these matters, and the way they framed their ideas of the Virgin Birth on the one hand, and what seems obvious to people today (with our identical world views) on the other, are similar.
Is there any chance that you could point us to some source that gives evidence for this assertion about the understanding of conception (relating to the retention of the male seed), hatless? I've not heard of it, and if it exists it needs to be shown that it was believed within the community we are talking about.
There are papers on this subject, as I pointed out in another recent post. And FWIW, they don't conclude that the dominant belief was that the woman merely acted as an incubator. That would more realistically describe the medieval view, which is sometimes called sub-Aristotelian. (Aristotle believed that conception required two active principles - the seed from the man and the menstrual blood from the woman).
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Anglo-Cthulhic
Posts: 4857 | From: the corridors of Pah! | Registered: May 2001
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
So, hatless, how does Incarnation work without being physically conceived by the Holy Spirit? And if that's impossible how can dead meat be resurrected?
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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