Christian perspectives on Deuteronomy and rape as warfare

[yourfriendrick]

Here are two passages which (after a bit of study and cross-checking) appear to be talking about the use of rape as a weapon of war.

(Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
 
     As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace.  If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor.  But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town.  When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town.  But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder.  You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
 
(Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)
 
    "When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house.  But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive's garb.  After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife.  However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion."

Clearly, these passages are saying that God is giving Israel a military mission, and hostages are required to be taken. The second passage, in particular, specifies that female captives are allowed one month of mourning before their sexuality is no longer their own.

1. Christian thinking admits various miracles. If the Bible says that the common practices of nature were suspended for a while so that two men could disembark from a boat and walk around on water during a storm, typical Christian interpretation says that's factual, because it's a miracle. So assuming that one month of mourning was observed, it's entirely possible that God commanded capture of hostages, and yet none of them were raped, because one month of captivity was sufficient to make all hostages completely consenting to all wishes of their captors. (I would regard such an event as no less miraculous than a walk on stormy waters, but that's beside the point.)

2. An alternate Christian perspective is that the women in question were not good people when they were captured: they had been worshiping false idols and evil spirits, and they were given a privilege when they were captured, so God was commanding their captivity as a deserved punishment.

3. Another possible interpretation was that God was providing the opportunity of marriage, but that the prospective wives would have full freedom to refuse if they so desired, so God never condoned rape.

4. Still another perspective might be that while Christian scripture is perfect, Old Testament Scripture was written down incorrectly, because the Old Testament had scribes who were inferior to the scribes of the New Testament. Thus any rapes that might have resulted were the fault of the scribes, not of God's perfect commandments. Indeed, the incarnation of Jesus might have been appropriate precisely because human interpreters of God's will tended to make this sort of mistake.

[yourfriendrick]

Many people presume that by telling the soldiers to spare the young girls that permission was being given to sexually abuse them or keep them as sex slaves. However this is a PRESUMPTION and one not based on what we know about the Hebrew system.

The Hebrew system included divorce.

he had to marry her first (automatically making her a free Citizen and giving her the same rights as any Jewish wife)

A bone of contention is whether Hebrew wives had any significant rights. If adulteresses were getting stoned to death, I don't think the mobs would stop and say, "Oh wait, she was a prisoner of war, let's stop and think it over and make sure she's getting due process regarding the accusation of adultery."

Deuteronomy 24:1 : "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house."

Exactly what kind of uncleanness would be necessary? Any violation of kosher taboo? Sex while menstruating? Leprosy? Anything the priests say is unclean at the time?

"If a man sleeps with a female slave who is promised to another man but who has not been ransomed or released, there must be due punishment" (Leviticus 19:20)
... There was no temple prostitution in the hebrew system, no sex worship

Due punishment might be interpreted as marrying the rape victim, using her, and then divorcing her when convenient.

As to whether the Hebrew "system" ever included sex worship, if I show evidence of sex worship, a trivial rebuttal would be that sure, the people who did that were Hebrews, but they were disobeying a "system" that gets defined in hindsight.

Deuteronomy 24:1 : "When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favour in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house."

Thus a man can capture an enemy, forcibly marry her without her consent, and divorce her without her consent; the only thing he's not allowed to do is fail to go through the bureaucratic procedures of marriage and divorce. That looks like sex slavery to me.

Suggestions that the Law allowed for the keeping of sex slaves is unfounded supposition.

I disagree.

[yourfriendrick]

As an example of how deep the linguistic controversies go, I note that:
http://www.answering-christianity.com/s ... oun_16.htm

presents various arguments on sex in the Old Testament, relating to how to translate various words such as taphas and shakab. While I read Hebrew, I am not an authority, and I need to refer to vastly more established scholars to even begin to address the linguistic history that is relevant.

While I have a tendency to lean heavily on sources I have already read, such as:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Elliott_Friedman

there are numerous scholars who disagree with the sources I would *like* to consider authoritative.

It is difficult, but IMHO necessary, to assemble a list of prestigious scholars. I would *like* to discount Zaatari's arguments offhand; it takes an effort to try to place Zaatari in the context of other scholars and to try to address his scholarship rather than his personality.

[cnorman18]

The Hebrew system included divorce...

A bone of contention is whether Hebrew wives had any significant rights.

Not much of a bone. Jewish divorce didn't allow the husband to just throw the wife out and leave her destitute, and since it was a major provision of the divorce that the woman be allowed to marry again (see Deuteronomy 24), that must have been pretty common.

To this day, the most essential document for a Jewish marriage is a Ketubah, which is a contract that specifically spells out the husband's duties vis-a-vis the wife, and not vice versa; it is therefore precisely a definition and establishment of the wife's rights.

If adulteresses were getting stoned to death, I don't think the mobs would stop and say, "Oh wait, she was a prisoner of war, let's stop and think it over and make sure she's getting due process regarding the accusation of adultery."

Non sequitur. First, that is not known to have happened, ever; second, that punishment was not to be carried out by "mobs," but only at the decision of the Sanhedrin (which is not known to have ever done it) or by a Bet Din (a rabbinical court, and again, no such decision has ever been recorded); and third, if that decision ever HAD been handed down, the origin of the marriage would be totally irrelevant.

Due process was a given in capital cases; you are assuming facts not in evidence -- and, actually, facts known NOT to be in evidence. IF any woman ever HAD been stoned to death by a mob as in the example you give, that would have been an illegal lynching and totally irrelevant to Jewish law.

Thus a man can capture an enemy, forcibly marry her without her consent, and divorce her without her consent; the only thing he's not allowed to do is fail to go through the bureaucratic procedures of marriage and divorce. That looks like sex slavery to me.

Since all that applied to wives taken in ANY manner, never mind warfare, you're making a case for marriage in the ancient world generally being tantamount to sex slavery. Of course, some modern women make the same claim about marriage in our own society today, so I guess that's defensible.

I still maintain that the Hebrews' approach was superior to that of other societies of the day, in which wives were more or less disposable property and where there were no "bureaucratic procedures" at all; divorce consisted of "Get out." It isn't either fair or accurate to assume that the "bureaucratic procedures" of Hebrew courts were mere rubber stamps with no concern for justice or the welfare of women or their children. You might want to do a bit of actual research on this first.