Virgin Sex Slaves of the Bible
Kirk Straughen
(Investigator 213, 2023 November)
Introduction
Fundamentalist apologists often overstate claims for the Bible,
especially with regard to its ethical content, and whilst I agree that
there are noble and uplifting passages of scripture, I also maintain
that there are parts of the "good book" that are certainly far from
good, as the following quotations from the Revised Standard Version
clearly demonstrate.
Capture of the Midianite Virgins:
"Now therefore, kill
every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known
man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man
by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Numbers 31:17-18)
Capture of the Jabeshgilead Virgins:
"Go and smite the
inhabitants of Jabeshgilead with the edge of the sword; also the women
and the little ones. This is what you shall do; every male and every
woman that has lain with a male you shall utterly destroy. And they
found among the inhabitants of Jabeshgilead four hundred young virgins
who had not known man by lying with him; and they brought them to the
camp at Shiloh. (Judges 21:10-12)
Capture of the Shiloh Virgins:
"And they commanded the
Benjaminites, saying, "Go and lie in wait in the vineyards, and watch;
if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come
out of the vineyards and seize each man his wife from the daughters of
Shiloh." (Judges 21: 20-21)
Having quoted the above passages of scripture, I shall now proceed to analyse each in turn.
Capture of the Midianite Virgins
In this act of genocide everyone is killed (even children) except for
the young virgins who become prizes of war, and are destined for the
beds of their brutal captors.
How old, then, would these young virgins be? In ancient Israel the
concept of the teenager was unknown — one was either a child or an
adult. In the case of females, a girl became a woman with the onset of
menstruation. Therefore, the virgins would have ranged in age from
about thirteen to eighteen, for marriages occurred quite early, as they
still do today in some Middle Eastern countries ( fourteen years in
Yemen, for example).
"There were no
teenagers in ancient Israel, just children and adults. They had to know
the torah and its applications by the Bar/Bat Mitzvah. The Temple
leaders would then question them and let them ask questions. Legally,
boys became men at age 12, and girls were of age at 13. They could then
marry. But usually they married by age 18."
http://members.aol.com/zimlechem/Ancient_Is.html
"A few anecdotal
incidents, and a wealth of later documentation, suggest that women
married young, while still in their teens, sometimes early teens, in
fact; men waited until well into their twenties or even early thirties
before marrying." (page 37 in King, PJ & Lawrence, E: Life in
Biblical Israel, Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)
So, let us be quite clear about what is happening — what we have
here is a case of mass rape, paedophilia (remember, the emphasis is on
young virgins, in other words the minimum age of thirteen) and
exploitation of the lowest order. These girls would have had no choice
but to submit to the will of their barbarous captors — if someone is
callous enough to slit the throat of a child, then it is highly
doubtful they would have much compunction about raping a thirteen year
old girl (How many of my readers are naive enough to believe he'd wait
until she was sixteen, let alone eighteen).
"Rape?" I hear the outraged fundamentalists cry. Of course it would be
rape, for what choice would those girls have had? Their parents and
brothers have been slaughtered, their married sisters brutally killed.
They are alone in a harsh, cruel world, and at the mercy of warriors
ruthless enough to butcher babies.
In order to survive, the virgins would have had no choice but to become
the unwilling wives of those whose clutches they were in. And what
would their feelings be towards the killers of father, mother, brother
and married sister? Would it be love, or fear and loathing? Many of my
readers would no doubt have children of their own. How many of them
would care to see their daughters, granddaughters or sisters suffer
such a fate?
Capture of the Jabeshgilead Virgins
First, a bit of background history before I begin an analysis of this
outrage. There has been a civil war in Israel, and the Benjaminites,
one of the twelve tribes, have been massacred, leaving only six hundred
men alive (all the women have been killed). After the atrocity, the
other Israelites who have attacked them realize that the Benjaminites
will become extinct because they have no women to bear them sons.
So, in order to solve this problem the Israelites attack another tribe
of their own people, the Jabeshgilead, kill everyone except the
virgins, and give these poor girls to the Benjaminites to use as
breeding stock. Well, if that's not a jaw dropping solution, then I
don't know what is.
Once again, young girls are being treated as objects — did they ask
that their families be slaughtered, did they ask to be carried off
against their will? And what choice do they have but to marry the men
they are given to.
Also, how many girls would have reached their prospective husbands with
their virginity intact? History teaches us that rape in war is
distressingly common, even in modern times, and the ancient Israelites
were just as human as the rest of us:
"There is no reason to
believe that mass wartime rape was less common prior to the 20th
century. Perhaps most well documented historical wars include examples
of widespread military rape. For instance, mass rape is well documented
in the wars between Jews and their enemies described in the Bible
(e.g., Deuteronomy, 21; Isaiah, 13:16; Lamentations, 5:11; Zechariah,
14:2), in AngloSaxon and Chinese chronicles (Littlewood, 1997), in
Medieval European warfare (Meron, 1993), during the crusades
(Brownmiller, 1975, p. 35), in Alexander's conquest of Persia (Hansen,
1999, p. 188), in Viking marauding (Karras, 1990), in the conquest of
Rome by Alaric (Ghiglieri, 2000, p. 90), in the petty wars of Ancient
Greeks (Finley, 1954), and so on. It is important to note that the
level and extent of mass rape in many conflicts — for instance, the
German "rape of Belgium" in World War I — has been hotly contested by
scholars (Gullace, 1997). Yet, a review of the historical evidence
conveys the distinct impression that whenever and wherever men have
gone to war, many of them have reasoned like old Nestor in the Iliad,
who concludes his pep talk to war-weary Greek troops by reminding them
of the spoils of victory: "So don't anyone hurry to return homeward
until after he has lain down alongside a wife of some Trojan" (Homer,
1999, Book 2, 354-355)."
Explaining Wartime Rape:
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-119269006.html
Capture of the Shiloh Virgins
Unfortunately, there's not enough virgins to go around, so the
Benjaminites, incited by their Israelite brothers, kidnap the Shiloh
teenagers to make up the difference. And where is God when all this
tragedy is unfolding? The god who is portrayed as intervening in so
many other parts of the Bible? Where is the Lord when children's
throats are being slit and virgins raped? The only thing God has to say
about the matter is this when asked:
"Shall we yet again go
out to battle against our brethren the Benjamites, or shall we cease?"
And the Lord said, "Go up; for tomorrow I will give them into your
hand." (Judges 20:28)
The all-knowing Lord could have easily added: "But I absolutely forbid
you to kill women and children." God's silence, however, is deafening.
Think of it this way: Suppose you overheard criminals planning a home
invasion - they are going to break into a house, murder a couple and
kidnap their teenage daughters. You know who the criminals are, you
know who the victims are, you know the time and place of the crime.
What do you do? Do you take action to stop the crime, or do you do
nothing? What would you think of a person who, knowing all these facts,
did nothing to prevent the crime?
Teenage Marriage is Exploitative and Dangerous in Primitive Conditions
Unfortunately, marriage at a very early age is still occurring today,
and sex of course leads to pregnancy, which is more dangerous in women
under twenty, especially when they don‘t have access to the best that
modern medicine has to offer. So the young virgins suffer a cruel twin
fate — rape and possible death due to teenage pregnancy:
Millions of adolescent girls around the world marry at a very young age.
Eighty-two million girls in developing countries who
are now 10 to 17 will be married before their eighteenth birthday.1 In
Nepal, 7% of girls are married before age ten, and 40% by the time they
are 15.2 …
Typically, their husbands are much older, and have or
have had other partners. Research from 16 countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa indicates that husbands of 15 to 19-year-old girls are on
average ten years older than their wives.3
Pregnancy at a young age is dangerous.
Young women aged 15 to 19 are twice as likely as those
in their twenties to die from childbirth; girls under 15 are five times
as likely to die.12 Pregnancy is the leading cause of death for 15 to
19-year-old girls worldwide.2
Factsheet: The Reality of Adolescent Girls' Lives,
http://www.iwhc.org/resources/adogirlsfactsheet.cfm
Research has also revealed the previously hidden exploitative nature of
early marriage, where older men can take advantage of young girls
because of an inequality of power in the relationship:
"Young women's
initiation into sexual activity often occurs under coercive conditions.
Thus, even within unions that are formally consensual, non-consensual
sexual activity is common (Heise, Ellsberg, and Gottemoeller 1999).
This is particularly the case when girls are economically dependent on
their husbands, and are thereby not in a position to resist violence.
Too Young to Wed, page 13:
http://www.icrw.org/docs/tooyoungtowed_1003.pdf
Given the similarity of conditions, it is highly likely that many married girls in ancient Israel were raped by their husbands.
Conclusion
There you have it — God encourages war, and all the atrocities that
follow. There is no mention of the Geneva Convention (which God, being
omniscient, would have known about), no injunction concerning the
slaughter of children or rape of teenage girls, only the promise that
"I will give them into your hand." And the fundamentalist apologists
have the audacity to claim the entire Bible is the literal word of a
benevolent God. What utter nonsense!
OLD-TESTAMENT MARRIAGE WAS NOT RAPE
Anonymous
(Investigator 214, January 2024)
AVOID MISREPRESENTATION
In the story about Hansel and Gretel the "wicked witch" ends up getting
burnt to death in an oven. If we ignore the context, including the
witch's habit of fattening up lost children to cook and eat them, then
the story could be misrepresented as teaching that innocent elderly
women should be killed as cruelly as possible.
Misrepresentation is easy to do. Mr Straughen (Investigator 213) has
done it again with his Sex Slaves of the Bible which he enlivened with
superfluous, unwarranted emotive concepts like "genocide", "mass rape",
"barbarous", "brutal", "paedophilia", etc.
JUDGES
If we don’t distinguish imperatives (i.e. commands) from statements of
fact (e.g. history) the result is foolish comment. Only a fool, for
example, would conclude from a history book about Australian
bushrangers, that the author is ordering him to rob banks and shoot
policemen!
The theme of the book of Judges is what happens when there is no
effective central government, and God's law is forgotten, and people
follow their subjective notions of what's good or evil:
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes. (Judges 21:25; 17:6)
Moreover, that whole generation was gathered to their
ancestors, and another generation grew up after them, who did not know
the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the LORD ... they followed other gods. (Judges 2:8-11)
Most characters in Judges are moral morons and include assassins,
idolaters, polygamists, and bi-sexual perverts who raped a woman to
death. A secondary theme, therefore, is that God can use lawless
scumbags to accomplish his will when no one else is available.
The reports about the Jabeshgilead virgins (Judges 21:10-12) and the
Shiloh virgins (Judges 21:20-21), which Mr Straughen falsely presents
as moral teaching that readers are meant to emulate, are cases of
people doing "what was right in their own eyes". It is history to
illustrate that humans cannot distinguish good and evil without God; it
is not moral discourse on how everyone should behave.
MIDIANITE VIRGINS
The Midianite virgins episode occurred prior to the Judges period during the wars with Canaanites:
“Now therefore, kill
every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known
man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man
by sleeping with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (Numbers 31:17-18)
As discussed in Investigator
#213 execution of children was common in warfare when care for them was
unavailable. A quick death was more merciful than leaving them to die
from thirst, starvation, wild animals, or be found by slave raiders and
used for sexual slavery or human sacrifice. Even in modern warfare,
with all our technology, prosperity, communications and resources —
which ancient nations lacked — children still suffer in war. In
the "Battle of Hamburg" in 1943 close to 5000 German children perished
in one night! The problem is war itself — without wars no children
would die in war. War is an ungodly invention, part of humanity's
rebellion against God, which the Bible predicts will be abolished when
God retakes control. (Micah 4:3; Psalm 46:9)
The execution of the married Midianite women took place because these
had been used as weapons of war, as a strategy to destroy or at least
weaken Israel. As skilled prostitutes they had enticed Israel's men to
a place called Baal-peor and seduced them sexually in a worship
ceremony to Midianite idols. (Numbers 25:1-5)
The Wycliffe Bible Commentary says:
In the Baal cult,
spring festivals dramatized, in act, the mating of Baal with the
goddess of fertility. Archaeological discoveries have revealed that the
devotees of Baal practiced prostitution as a part of their worship.
This sordid practice was adopted by the Israelites. (p. 145)
The LORD commanded the destruction of the Midianites
because they were the vile people responsible for the Baal-Peor orgy
(ch. 25) For light on the degradation of Canaanite worship, see G. E.
Wright, Biblical Archaeology, pp 111-119) When the Hebrew warriors
returned from the battle, with the Midianite women and children as
captives, Moses reminded them that these were the very women of
Baal-peor, and that they were morally debased and must die. This seems
a cruel judgment, but it was the lesser of two evils. The alternative
was to allow the Midianites to live and corrupt Israel, which would
have compounded human suffering as well as brought dishonor to God. The
Midianite male children were also slain, for if they had been reared
among the children of Israel, they would have destroyed the inheritance
of Israel's sons. The only ones saved alive were the virgin girls, who
could be assimilated into Israel. (p. 149)
The virgins were uninvolved in the sex-orgy plot and did not deserve
the retribution on the prostitutes. Assimilation of them into Israel
was compassionate compared to leaving them, unprotected, and preyed on
by tribes whose gods might be as debased as Midian's.
Nor was it rape as Straughen falsely claims although it's been
explained to him before. Throughout the ancient world parents or
guardians usually negotiated marriages for their sons and daughters.
It's a practice still followed in many nations today, across Asia and
Africa. To imply that this different cultural practice makes them all
rapists is prejudice at best, and an attempt to provoke violence with
false accusations at worst.
The American/European method whereby youngsters themselves scout for
partners leads to about 500,000 illegitimate births per year. Led
astray by sweet slogans like "Let me love you forever" teenage girls
give consent which they might not give if told the truth that they'll
probably be discarded when pregnant if not sooner. I know of some so
treated who became prostitutes. I wonder if that's not much nearer to
being raped than Asian parents, or ancient Israelites, selecting
husbands for their daughters.
Deuteronomy states that Moses' law covenant was the best law in the
world (Deuteronomy 4:5-8), not barbarous as Straughen claims. Its Ten
Commandments and two greatest commandments still guide millions of
people now. If the husbands adhered to Moses' law the Midianite virgins
would be looked after for life and also would not have to have sex with
animals, sons, brothers in law, or fathers in law; nor would their
children be sacrificed to Molech or other gods. Why not? Because: "You
shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, nor
shall you do as they do in the land of Canaan... You shall not follow
their statutes." (Leviticus 18:3)
Real rape, for Straughen's information, occurred when Nazi officers
drove past columns of refugees being marched to their deaths, and
pulled pretty ones into the car for sex, and afterwards tossed them
out; and when hordes of Communist atheists devastated Germany's eastern
provinces in 1945 and raped 2 million females aged 7 to 80, some up to
200 times!
The Mongols too were great rapists. Consider Tamerlane:
... sometimes several days were spent torturing the civilian population and raping the women, before all were killed...
In October 1400, Tamerlane took Aleppo by storm. The
sack of the city lasted four days; all the men and children were killed
immediately, but the women were retained for some days for the
amusement of the troops. A few days later, the same scenes were
repeated in Hama...
[In Damascus] All the women were herded together to be
raped, while the men were tortured in public with every form of
sadistic refinement. This orgy of brutality lasted for nineteen days.
(Glubb 1969)
Straughen claims: "... it is highly likely that many married girls in
ancient Israel were raped by their husbands." We have no statistics on
this; Straughen is attempting a smear campaign. He should be more
concerned about how many atheists rape their women nowadays!
AGE AT PROCREATION
Straughen criticizes the marriages of teenage girls in ancient Israel.
He alleges that their youth made pregnancy risky. The Bible rarely
mentions women's age at marriage and pregnancy, but that most were
young is plausible.
One website summarizes the current worldwide situation:
• "As
of 2019, adolescents aged 15–19 years in low- and middle-income
countries had an estimated 21 million pregnancies each year, of
which approximately 50% were unintended and which resulted in an
estimated 12 million births."
• Based on 2019 data, 55% of
unintended pregnancies among adolescent girls aged 15–19 years end in
abortions...
• Mothers aged 10–19 years "face
higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic
infections than women aged 20–24 years", and their babies "face higher
risks of low birth weight, preterm birth and severe neonatal condition."
The risks in pregnancy depend on the total situation not just age. A
teenager giving birth in a modern hospital is safer than impoverished
older women giving birth in third-world countries.
In ancient times most people experienced levels of poverty that we can
barely imagine. Long work-days, no scientific health care and inferior
nourishment contributed to premature aging. The safest age for
pregnancy under ancient conditions may, therefore, have been as
teenagers.
CONCLUSIONS:
We have a world full of sexual abuse, suffering, crime, poverty and
war, but implacable Straughen ignores virtually all of it and for 27
years attacks (usually mistakenly) the Bible, the book which opposes
all evil!
The married Midianite women were executed because of their active participation in war, and the boys because, as discussed in Investigator
#213, ancient conditions lacked merciful alternatives. However, similar
still happens — in 1943 almost 5000 children were bombed to death in
one night, as part of the process of defeating Nazism! The biblical
answer is to ban war (Micah 4:3), and to cultivate truthfulness
which would undermine the deceitful ideologies war is often based on.
The Midianite virgins became not "sex slaves" but married women living
under the world's best legal system, so advanced that many religions
today, about 3400 years later, still adhere to its "ten commandments"
and two "greatest commandments". Marriage was the best treatment
available in ancient times to surviving virgins when war
destroyed their homeland. Transferring this interpretation to today's
world, means offering the best help possible (and not what the atheists
did in 1945). This godly principle Mr Straughen hopefully now
appreciates!
REFERENCES:
Glubb, Sir John 1969 A Short History of the Arab Peoples, Stein & Day, pp 224-226
Pheiffer, C.F. & Harrison, E.F. 1962 The Wycliffe Bible Commentary, Moody Press
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/adolescent-pregnancy