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> Then I pointed that their prophet had a 9 year old wife (that by the way this girl also wrote good part of their holy book) and then she said that this does n

> Then I pointed that their prophet had a 9 year old wife (that by the way this girl also wrote good part of their holy book) and then she said that this does not count... Tell a Christian that Jesus' mother, Mary, was probably 13 years old when she became pregnant, and they freak out as well. Background: * "In biblical times, people were married in early youth…" [1] * "Until late in the Middle Ages, marriage consisted of two ceremonies which were marked by celebrations at two separate times, with an interval between. First came the betrothal [erusin]; and later, the wedding [nissuin]. At the betrothal the woman was legally married, although she still remained in her father's house." [1] * "During the first century, however, it appears to have been the general rule that young people who were "of age" could arrange their own marriages. A girl was considered of age at twelve years and one day." [2] * "The betrothal period was fixed by law. For a maiden, it was from ten months to a year; for a widow, three months." [2] Sources: [1] http://www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Relationships/Spouses_and_Partners/About_Marriage/Ancient_Jewish_Marriage.shtml?p=1 http://www.myjewishlearning.com/life/Relationships/Spouses_a... [2] http://www.gospelgazette.com/gazette/2005/may/page20.htm http://www.gospelgazette.com/gazette/2005/may/page20.htm

speeder 13y ago
I know... Most Christians that I know refuse to read the bible properly, then I take the bible and teach them the stuff in there, several freak out, to the point I do not do it anymore to stop freaking people out... I am a Christian myself, and the bible asks you do not be a "stumbling block" (or something like that the english term), so I guessed that is good idea to stop freaking people out pointing those things. Not that I won't talk about them, to those that come to me and ask I cheerfully explain everything I know about the Bible, even the taboo (for example, why the Bible regulamentates slavery)
- dkhenry 13y ago
  I have never met a biblical scholar who denies that Mary was a young teen. In fact to the best of my knowledge there is not a single christian denomination (Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox,... ) that believes anything to the contrary. So who are these Christians you know and do they actually _follow_ their claimed religion ?
  - speeder 13y ago
    I am referring to common people, you know, the old lady that barge in a store shouting that the long haired cashier will go to hell?
    - dkhenry 13y ago
      I don't want to play the no true scottsman game here, but at some point you have to.
    - Dove 13y ago
      By that standard, the guy on the bus who tells me about lasers from outer space that make his legs hurt when he talks about the government . . . he's a fair representative of "most scientists". If you want to take random encounters with people on the street as representative of a philosophy, you have to at least go to a place where that philosophy is practiced. To talk to the 'average scientist', you'd better at least be looking for him on a university campus -- better at a conference somewhere. To talk to the 'average Christian', you had better at least be looking in a church. It's not just a sampling issue; those groups also police their membership. What you want to take an average over is not people who declare themselves 'hackers', but people who the community of hackers agrees are 'hackers'. Best way to do that is go to where they meet.
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    I'm Catholic and this was never brought to my attention. There were a lot of things which were left out which I sought out answers to later in life - like how Jesus spent the majority of his life in the Middle East, but is represented as about Anglo-Saxon as you can be. Or what was he doing between 12-30 when he suddenly reappeared and was baptized by John and starts his ministry? Again, I was never informed of these things, and to be honest, I really didn't care. These "discrepancies didn't make me a better Catholic, nor did they make me want to renounce my religion had I known them.
ChrisClark 13y ago
Growing up in a Christian household (in Canada) it was common knowledge that Mary must have been really young. Not just my family, but family friends, talking about how people long ago had a shorter childhood. It was even mentioned in church. I've never run into a single person that was upset about it.
- JabavuAdams 13y ago
  Online, when someone writes "Christian", it's hard to tell whether they're referring to fundamentalists, or not. I'm from Toronto (Canada), and it would be a bit weird for someone in my social group to just offer "I'm a Christian" except in response to "What's your religion?". It seems that in a lot of the US "I'm a Christian" is short-hand for "I'm a Christian Fundamentalist."
  - rhizome 13y ago
    I don't think that holds. I would see "Christian" as implying they're evangelical, where fundamentalists have a specific code they're living by and proselytizing, so they tend to use their specific denomination. There are lots of different kinds of Christian fundamentalists, but the specific fundamentals of their church differ between groups (7th Day Adventists, etc.).
    - te_chris 13y ago
      I agree with gp, over here the evangelical churches are almost always more extreme in their doctrine so myself and my friends perceive them as fundamentalists. You often find other Christians present themselves by their sect to distance themselves from the evangelicals.
      - rhizome 13y ago
        I understand, but my sense is that fundamentalists are separatists where evangelicals are communitarian and trying to build the flock, so to speak. Fundamentalists are "you're with us or you're with the enemy." Maybe I have only experienced relatively friendly evangelicals, though. :)
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
Also, just like dedicated kids and teens clothing are a recent invention, the idea that people under 18 are somehow not ready for marriage isn’t as old as you may think. “In 1880, the age of consent was 10 in most states but ranged from 7 in Delaware to 12 across nine states and the District of Columbia.”[1] [1] http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primarysources&source=24 http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primary...
- gngeal 13y ago
  Age of consent is one thing, but "the idea that people under 18 are somehow not ready for marriage" certainly IS old. Just FYI, the median age for a bride on her first wedding was somewhere around 22-23 in the Middle Ages.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    Citation needed. Also, in the Middle Ages, weddings were seen as business arrangements between families. Such arrangements could be made revolving very young children. Matilda was betrothed to Henry V when she was an infant and the two married when she was 12, so clearly, society didn’t feel one had to be 18 to marry.
    - gngeal 13y ago
      Citation needed. Of course, here you are: "Historians have demonstrated that peasants married at significantly later ages than aristocrats. Whereas members of the nobility usually married between age 14 and age 20, peasants probably married in their mid- to late twenties. It is likely that new families could not form until the parents of the potential couple were either dead or old enough to retire, so that they could turn over their land and dwelling to the new couple." [Linda Mitchell, Family Life in the Middle Ages, Greenwood 2007, p. 40] "Reliable statistics are rare for the Middle Ages, but the evidence suggests that the typical age of marriage among the peasantry was the late twenties for men, the early twenties for women; similar ages probably applied for the urban laboring classes. The ages decline, particularly for women, further up the social scale. Among prosperous urban families, the marriage age for women was typically the late teens; the age varied widely for men. In the aristocracy, ages in the mid-teens for women and early twenties for men seem to have been common." [Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Daily Life in Medieval Europe, Greenwood 1999, p. 27] [The following text is concerned with the very beginning of Early Modern period-post Late Middle Ages] "When individual ages are looked at, however, we do find very occasional marriages in the early teens. One girl gave her age as thirteen, none as fourteen, four as fifteen, twelve as sixteen, but all the rest of the brides in the sample, 990 of them, were seventeen or over, and more than four out of five had reached the age of twenty. Only ten of the men were younger than this. The commonest age for women was twenty-two, for men twenty-four; the median - the age below which as many got married as above it - was some 22.75 for women, 25.5 for men." [Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: Further Explored, Routledge 2001, p. 83]
leephillips 13y ago
Something rather significant in the development of the human female usually occurs between the ages of nine and 13. This does not justify sexual contact between and adult and a 13 year old, of course. Are you suggesting the Holy Ghost had taken indecent liberties and should have waited until Mary was a few years older?
dclowd9901 13y ago
Not for nothing, but she was supposedly gestating a child that was immaculately conceived, thus no sex was had... thus, not really related to sexual contact with minors. That's what a Christian would say, anyway.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  So marrying at 13 is fine as long as you don’t consummate the marriage until you’re 18? I haven’t met many Christians who feel that way. Most of the time, the rationale is ’those were different times, it was normal then’.
- cobrausn 13y ago
  I don't think so, at least not if they actually read the New Testament. I remember very little of it, but I do remember it mentioning that Joseph did not 'know' her until after she gave birth. Pretty sure that means they didn't wait another 5 years to consummate their marriage.
- fr0sty 13y ago
  In the interests of correctness, that's a (rather common) misunderstanding of the phrase "immaculate conception". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception "The Immaculate Conception should not be confused with the perpetual virginity of Mary or the virgin birth of Jesus; it refers to the conception of Mary by her mother, Saint Anne."
  - rada 13y ago
    dclowd's point was that no sex was had to conceive Jesus, which is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception#Virginal_conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception#Virginal...
jonnathanson 13y ago
"Tell a Christian that Jesus' mother, Mary, was probably 13 years old when she became pregnant, and they freak out as well." Another fun fact: in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is somewhere between 15 and 16, and Juliet is 13.
- te_chris 13y ago
  Well that explains the hysterics at the end...

speeder 13y ago

I know... Most Christians that I know refuse to read the bible properly, then I take the bible and teach them the stuff in there, several freak out, to the point I do not do it anymore to stop freaking people out... I am a Christian myself, and the bible asks you do not be a "stumbling block" (or something like that the english term), so I guessed that is good idea to stop freaking people out pointing those things. Not that I won't talk about them, to those that come to me and ask I cheerfully explain everything I know about the Bible, even the taboo (for example, why the Bible regulamentates slavery)

dkhenry 13y ago
I have never met a biblical scholar who denies that Mary was a young teen. In fact to the best of my knowledge there is not a single christian denomination (Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox,... ) that believes anything to the contrary. So who are these Christians you know and do they actually _follow_ their claimed religion ?
- speeder 13y ago
  I am referring to common people, you know, the old lady that barge in a store shouting that the long haired cashier will go to hell?
  - dkhenry 13y ago
    I don't want to play the no true scottsman game here, but at some point you have to.
  - Dove 13y ago
    By that standard, the guy on the bus who tells me about lasers from outer space that make his legs hurt when he talks about the government . . . he's a fair representative of "most scientists". If you want to take random encounters with people on the street as representative of a philosophy, you have to at least go to a place where that philosophy is practiced. To talk to the 'average scientist', you'd better at least be looking for him on a university campus -- better at a conference somewhere. To talk to the 'average Christian', you had better at least be looking in a church. It's not just a sampling issue; those groups also police their membership. What you want to take an average over is not people who declare themselves 'hackers', but people who the community of hackers agrees are 'hackers'. Best way to do that is go to where they meet.
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  I'm Catholic and this was never brought to my attention. There were a lot of things which were left out which I sought out answers to later in life - like how Jesus spent the majority of his life in the Middle East, but is represented as about Anglo-Saxon as you can be. Or what was he doing between 12-30 when he suddenly reappeared and was baptized by John and starts his ministry? Again, I was never informed of these things, and to be honest, I really didn't care. These "discrepancies didn't make me a better Catholic, nor did they make me want to renounce my religion had I known them.

ChrisClark 13y ago

Growing up in a Christian household (in Canada) it was common knowledge that Mary must have been really young. Not just my family, but family friends, talking about how people long ago had a shorter childhood. It was even mentioned in church. I've never run into a single person that was upset about it.

JabavuAdams 13y ago
Online, when someone writes "Christian", it's hard to tell whether they're referring to fundamentalists, or not. I'm from Toronto (Canada), and it would be a bit weird for someone in my social group to just offer "I'm a Christian" except in response to "What's your religion?". It seems that in a lot of the US "I'm a Christian" is short-hand for "I'm a Christian Fundamentalist."
- rhizome 13y ago
  I don't think that holds. I would see "Christian" as implying they're evangelical, where fundamentalists have a specific code they're living by and proselytizing, so they tend to use their specific denomination. There are lots of different kinds of Christian fundamentalists, but the specific fundamentals of their church differ between groups (7th Day Adventists, etc.).
  - te_chris 13y ago
    I agree with gp, over here the evangelical churches are almost always more extreme in their doctrine so myself and my friends perceive them as fundamentalists. You often find other Christians present themselves by their sect to distance themselves from the evangelicals.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      I understand, but my sense is that fundamentalists are separatists where evangelicals are communitarian and trying to build the flock, so to speak. Fundamentalists are "you're with us or you're with the enemy." Maybe I have only experienced relatively friendly evangelicals, though. :)

Samuel_Michon 13y ago

Also, just like dedicated kids and teens clothing are a recent invention, the idea that people under 18 are somehow not ready for marriage isn’t as old as you may think. “In 1880, the age of consent was 10 in most states but ranged from 7 in Delaware to 12 across nine states and the District of Columbia.”[1] [1] http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primarysources&source=24 http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/teaching-modules/230?section=primary...

gngeal 13y ago
Age of consent is one thing, but "the idea that people under 18 are somehow not ready for marriage" certainly IS old. Just FYI, the median age for a bride on her first wedding was somewhere around 22-23 in the Middle Ages.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  Citation needed. Also, in the Middle Ages, weddings were seen as business arrangements between families. Such arrangements could be made revolving very young children. Matilda was betrothed to Henry V when she was an infant and the two married when she was 12, so clearly, society didn’t feel one had to be 18 to marry.
  - gngeal 13y ago
    Citation needed. Of course, here you are: "Historians have demonstrated that peasants married at significantly later ages than aristocrats. Whereas members of the nobility usually married between age 14 and age 20, peasants probably married in their mid- to late twenties. It is likely that new families could not form until the parents of the potential couple were either dead or old enough to retire, so that they could turn over their land and dwelling to the new couple." [Linda Mitchell, Family Life in the Middle Ages, Greenwood 2007, p. 40] "Reliable statistics are rare for the Middle Ages, but the evidence suggests that the typical age of marriage among the peasantry was the late twenties for men, the early twenties for women; similar ages probably applied for the urban laboring classes. The ages decline, particularly for women, further up the social scale. Among prosperous urban families, the marriage age for women was typically the late teens; the age varied widely for men. In the aristocracy, ages in the mid-teens for women and early twenties for men seem to have been common." [Jeffrey L. Forgeng, Daily Life in Medieval Europe, Greenwood 1999, p. 27] [The following text is concerned with the very beginning of Early Modern period-post Late Middle Ages] "When individual ages are looked at, however, we do find very occasional marriages in the early teens. One girl gave her age as thirteen, none as fourteen, four as fifteen, twelve as sixteen, but all the rest of the brides in the sample, 990 of them, were seventeen or over, and more than four out of five had reached the age of twenty. Only ten of the men were younger than this. The commonest age for women was twenty-two, for men twenty-four; the median - the age below which as many got married as above it - was some 22.75 for women, 25.5 for men." [Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost: Further Explored, Routledge 2001, p. 83]

leephillips 13y ago

Something rather significant in the development of the human female usually occurs between the ages of nine and 13. This does not justify sexual contact between and adult and a 13 year old, of course. Are you suggesting the Holy Ghost had taken indecent liberties and should have waited until Mary was a few years older?

dclowd9901 13y ago

Not for nothing, but she was supposedly gestating a child that was immaculately conceived, thus no sex was had... thus, not really related to sexual contact with minors. That's what a Christian would say, anyway.

Samuel_Michon 13y ago
So marrying at 13 is fine as long as you don’t consummate the marriage until you’re 18? I haven’t met many Christians who feel that way. Most of the time, the rationale is ’those were different times, it was normal then’.
cobrausn 13y ago
I don't think so, at least not if they actually read the New Testament. I remember very little of it, but I do remember it mentioning that Joseph did not 'know' her until after she gave birth. Pretty sure that means they didn't wait another 5 years to consummate their marriage.
fr0sty 13y ago
In the interests of correctness, that's a (rather common) misunderstanding of the phrase "immaculate conception". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception "The Immaculate Conception should not be confused with the perpetual virginity of Mary or the virgin birth of Jesus; it refers to the conception of Mary by her mother, Saint Anne."
- rada 13y ago
  dclowd's point was that no sex was had to conceive Jesus, which is correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception#Virginal_conception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception#Virginal...

jonnathanson 13y ago

"Tell a Christian that Jesus' mother, Mary, was probably 13 years old when she became pregnant, and they freak out as well." Another fun fact: in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is somewhere between 15 and 16, and Juliet is 13.

te_chris 13y ago
Well that explains the hysterics at the end...