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I said to my wife, "Of course Mary experienced trauma, if, according to the myth of the annunciation described in the first chapter of The Gospel According to Luke, she was actually visited by an angel and told she was going to bear the savior of the world!"
My wife, who may have heard something in the headline I missed, replied, "Mary was raped."
That's it, I thought. Of course! Mary the mother of Jesus had been raped—she hadn't been given a choice about being impregnated! And not just raped, but raped by God the Father himself, who had for whatever reason chosen Mary to bear His son Jesus.
This explains what Richard Mourdock said during his election campaign as the Indiana Republican Senate candidate. It gives Biblical justification for his statement that if a woman becomes pregnant as the result of a rape, it's "God's will." A good, God-fearing, Bible-revering, Republican Christian like Mourdock could hardly have taken any other stand, could he, if his own God had committed rape in order to "save the world"?
If you believe things you read in the "word of God" that aren't consistent with reality, you're going to end up saying irrational things the way Richard Mourdock did. And some Americans, at least, are going to catch you on it.
Note, by the way, that Mary's body didn't seem to be working to prevent impregnation the way Missouri Republican Senate candidate (and member of the U.S. House of Representatives) Todd Akin said it usually would during the commission of a "legitimate rape." But then, how could God the Father's rape of the Virgin Mary have been "legitimate"?
I haven't been able to track down a verbatim transcript of the NPR headline, but what my wife and I were half-listening to in the car seems to have been an advertisement for a story about the staging of a play titled The Life of Jesus Christ by inmates of a prison in Louisiana. NPR's web article includes the following passage about the actress who played the Virgin Mary:
_______________Many of the inmates interviewed...say their roles in this play have deeply affected them. Serey Kong, playing the Virgin Mary, is serving 15 years for armed robbery*...Now 31, Kong has spent a third of her life in the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, an hour-and-a-half bus ride away [from where the play was staged]. She is one of 19 women in the play.
Kong says the role of Mary has helped her deal with a trauma she experienced as a teenager that she'd never spoken about, until now.
"They say Mary is 14, 15, something like that, and when I was that age, I came up pregnant," she says. "I ended up having an abortion. And Mary gave birth to God, and, I don't know, doing this part is kinda healing for me in a sense, with the abortion I had at 14."
* According to World Magazine: Today's News|Christian Views's somewhat conflicting story at about the same time as the NPR story, Ms. Kong is in an even more terrible plight:
[She] was born in Cambodia and brought to New Orleans as a baby. She's in her 10th year of an 11-year sentence for armed robbery and expects to be deported upon release.Copyright © 2012 by Morris Dean
Mary raped? How do we know that her impregnation was not consensual? But maybe your point is that God committed statutory rape?
ReplyDeleteGeorge, you ask how we "know," which I have to put in quotes because it's a curious form of knowing, seeing as how our only account of the story (that I'm aware of) is the one I identify in the post: the first chapter of The Gospel According to Luke, someone who didn't have first-hand knowledge of that whereof he wrote, unless, I suppose, it was Luke's pure concoction, in which case I guess his first-hand knowledge was as good as what any fiction writer has of what he makes up.
DeleteAnyway, I'll quote here for your convenience [from the Standard King James Version (Pure Cambridge)]:
26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth,
27 To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary.
28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
29 And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.
30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.
32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:
33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
35 And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.
36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren.
37 For with God nothing shall be impossible.
38 And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.
Note that Mary's conception is presented to her as a fait accompli. Her apparent assent in Verse 38 can hardly be taken as a choice made; it is rather an act of submission to a paternalistic inevitable.
Note also that Mary's age is not specified here (nor anywhere else that I'm aware of), although the director of the inmates' production seems to have told Ms. Kong that Mary was 14 or 15 (or "something like that").
The passage does not deal with Mary's thoughts or feelings, merely with dutiful acceptance. Is this the first time that Moristotle has advocated a literal reading of the Bible?
DeleteIn any case, this is the strangest account of a "rape" that I know of.
George, one can read the Bible however one wants, to serve one's purpose. As you well know. No advocacy is intended, or even pertinent to the immediate task at hand.
DeleteAs for the superlative you accord the post, just remember this: You read it here first, on Moristotle, where creative thought and writing are—and long have been—hallmarks.
"Your son will be savior of the world" would have to rank right up there as possibly the all-time most imaginative line a guy has ever come up with to talk a women into consenting to sex. Assessing what has so far resulted from her immaculate conception, would Mary feel any better about falling for that one rather than a more traditional pickup line?
ReplyDelete"I just love your eyes" or "babe, you are smokin' hot" might have at least brought a touch of romance to a situation that seems to have so far not turned out as promised - just like most lines guys use.
motomynd, I commend you on the excellent humor-writing today's post inspired you to write!
DeleteBut excuse me for not taking your comment equally seriously (as equally as humorously, that is), for you, like George, suggest that Mary's spreading her legs (so to speak) might have been consensual. And that's just one of your two points.
Delete1. Where I assumed that being told she would mother the "savior of the world" would be frightening and off-putting, you seem to have assumed that it would be a real turn-on. I guess it depends on which of us more successfully entered into Mary's mind. And who would decide that?
2. Your other point has to do with those regrets that so often accompany a girl's thoughts and feelings after she has allowed herself to be swayed by whatever seductive blandishments may have been whispered in her ear[*], when she realizes he wasn't quite the wonderful guy she let herself be persuaded he was.
Actually, the second point is intimately related with the first. I may have been giving Mary the benefit of foresight while you were allowing her the weakness necessary to have the wool pulled over her eyes.
_______________
* Writing about boys whispering in girls' ears reminds me of observing one of my college roommates doing just that as he and his date for the weekend sat demurely on the sidelines of a party mutually absorbed in whatever line of bullshit he was feeding her. To hear him tell it later, he rarely missed.
The line you quote was spoken by the angel Gabriel, not by God. The Bible, ever tasteful in its reportage, does not tell about the endearments spoken, or not spoken, by the Holy Ghost when He "overshadowed" Mary. Whatever the details might have been, I'm sure they enjoyed a glass of wine first.
ReplyDeleteGeorge, are you suggesting that Gabriel hadn't been officially commissioned by God to deliver the message?
DeleteI think I have to admit that you may be right about what was not "reported." Overshadowing is a powerfully evocative metaphor (like Yeats's swan's covering Leda with his wings as he thrust into her) for deeply arousing and satisfying sex, possibly with dozens of orgasms for this "highly favored" woman, on whom, because she hadn't yet known a man, they likely made quite an impression.
Or, for that matter, like Boone Waxwell's rape of Vivian Crane in John D. McDonald's sixth Travis McGee novel, Bright Orange for the Shroud. Waxwell withheld his ejaculation for hours as he brought Vivian's body to such a level of pleasure that she committed suicide afterwards from the guilt of having enjoyed it against her will.
Just being clear about who said what and when.
DeleteRaising the subject of a "pickup line" puts an entirely different slant on the rape question. If a woman consents to sex because of the power of a pickup line—it's clever, she's feeble-minded, whatever—is it rape?
George, I defer to motomynd to comment on your conjecture about "pickup lines." Hell, I defer to Ken or Tom.
DeleteAn intimidating pickup line couldn't be worse than a case of sexual harassment, and God could count on jury nullification to beat that rap.
DeleteKen, Morris and George, perhaps we are projecting onto Mary the personality traits of women we have shared time with in our own lives? If Mary had been of the mindset of most of the women I have known, her son may have been a savior, but I doubt he would have preached turn the other cheek pacifism.
DeleteI can't think of a woman I have ever been involved with who would have succumbed to an "intimidating" pickup line - more likely they would have responded with a hard right to the jaw or a roundhouse kick to the ribs. And I think most of them would have seen the idea of giving birth to the future savior of the world as an interesting challenge rather than a fearful undertaking. Such is the fate of a man who has spent most of his time with women who enjoy outdoors adventure activities or compete in extreme sports and martial arts.
motomynd, thanks for sharing your own biases for projecting onto women. I am not at all confident I could specify my own in that regard. A rigorous course in psychoanalysis might be required.
DeleteWhen a man keeps company with what could be described as "warrior-minded women" he learns early on to be very clear-headed about his hopes and goals for those relationships. So the psychoanalysis, I guess, is done upfront. If not, it would surely be needed afterward.
DeleteOver the years I have learned that most people project their beliefs and values onto situations, and that those who are devout in their belief in a god often are the quickest to cast themselves in the role of also playing god, so that is probably the basis for my main doubts about the accuracy of any religious document, book, or oral history handed down over the centuries. It is all the work of people with a personal prejudice and usually a hidden agenda, so why do we waste time trying to find validity in any of it?
Because it's also history and cultural anthropology. All accounts of the past are flawed in some way, but they all have something to tell us about ourselves.
DeletePhil, excellent points, but the same could be said for the Viking sagas. And yet the descendents of the Vikings aren't out there today still trying to force others to believe in Yggdrasil (the mighty ash) and its related myths. And they don't take out their ire on those who don't believe.
ReplyDelete