What Would a Good Jewish Girl Do?

[RedEye]

I want to pose a hypothetical scenario. Imagine a young Jewish girl a couple of thousand years ago. She is pledged to be married but the marriage has not been consummated yet. This girl is a devout follower of Judaism like her parents and husband-to-be. She attends her local Synagogue with them and listens earnestly to the Rabbi reciting Jewish scripture and teachings. Judaism teaches that there is only one true God (Yahweh). There are no other gods or demi-gods.

The region in which she lives is occupied by the Romans and she is aware that they worship a pantheon of gods and demi-gods. (Demi-gods are produced by a male god mating with a human female or a human male mating with a female god). They even worship their emperor in Rome like a god. She has no doubt had some contact with Greeks (gentiles) in her town too and come to know that they also have a pantheon of their own gods and demi-gods. Her Rabbi warns her against such pagan beliefs and constantly stresses that all these other gods are false. There is one and only one true God and his name is Yahweh.

Then one day an apparition appears to our Jewish girl. It tells her that God wants to inseminate her so that she can give him a son. Now, what would a good Jewish girl do in these circumstances?

A. Run immediately to her parents and tell them that a pagan god wants to inseminate her before she is married. (It has to be a pagan god because Yahweh would never ask for such a thing).
B. Run to her future husband and ask for help so that she does not end up committing adultery against her will.
C. Run to her Rabbi, tell him of this blasphemous request and get advice on how to deal with this demon that approached her.
D. Acquiesce meekly despite it going against everything she has ever been taught as a devout Jew.

Which course of action makes the least sense given the cultural context?

[Willum]

[Replying to post 50 by RedEye]

The Commandments are pretty universal. Upholding them does not make you Judaic, there are many other things, and Jesus violated many of them. [Jesus violates Commandments]
Judge him by his actions, not by his words.

[RedEye]

[Replying to post 50 by RedEye]

The Commandments are pretty universal. Upholding them does not make you Judaic, there are many other things, and Jesus violated many of them. [Jesus violates Commandments]
Judge him by his actions, not by his words.

Many Christians violate the tenets of their religion. They are no less Christian for it. If someone self-identifies as a Jew then they are a Jew. You are engaging in the No True Scotsman fallacy.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 52 by RedEye]

I take it you speak for all Jews when you say all you have to do is say you are a Jew, and you are a Jew?

And if you say you are not, you are not?

That there aren't any cultural, religious, or indeed any constraints?

Oh please.

Tell anyone Jewish that they are only the member of a word-of-mouth social club. Then say to them, "I can prove it: I'm a Jew, now I'm not, I'm a Jew again! JK"
See what happens.

[RedEye]

I never claimed He had no interactions with Gentiles.

My bad. I thought you had made that claim but it was actually JW.

A Jew, no. But it might be possible that he was a descendant of the Northern Kingdom (Samaria), making him Israel. Or not, since my Lord said that He had not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.

You seem to be clutching at straws. He was a Roman centurion.

I did not claim that they had no contact. Obviously there was contact between them. But you seem to be suggesting that Mary had a number of gentile women as friends and influences - including much pagan influences - and where is your evidence for these things?

The evidence is in the gospels which show no hint of segregation between Jews and gentiles outside of maybe internal home and religious life. I didn't say anything about "influences". My point is exposure to other beliefs. You as a Christian, living in a predominately Christian community have some (limited) exposure to Islamic beliefs, do you not?

All of this is largely irrelevant though. All Mary had to know was that being asked to have a baby with God was wrong, whether or not she had some interaction with gentiles (and their pagan beliefs which accepted such things). Her own Rabbi could have taught his congregation to beware of such pagan thinking as he stressed the purity of Jewish monotheism. You seem to believe that all Jews of the time lived in a bubble where they were completely unaware of the rest of the known world. That is rather naive.

(Just as a side point: Jews and Samaritans did not speak or have contact, though you will notice that my Lord did not keep to that 'rule'. Just because He did something does not mean that the rest of the Jews did this.)

It's an irrelevant aside. That's just one Jewish sect feuding with another, similar to the sectarian conflict between Irish Catholics and Protestants even though they were both Christian. I fail to see how it is pertinent to a discussion on Jewish interaction with gentiles.

Think about it. Here was a Roman centurion willing to humble himself by asking a Jew for help with a sick servant boy. You would need to be fairly desperate to do that. A replacement servant would not be hard to come by for a senior Roman official. Therefore he must have had a "special relationship" with the boy. This was not uncommon at the time. What is even more interesting is that it hints at jealousy on the part of the centurion. Jesus himself might have had a certain reputation in that area. He surrounded himself with young men after all. The centurion was very reluctant for Jesus to cure the boy in person. He wanted Jesus to do it from a distance. What other reason could he possibly have for not wanting Jesus to meet the servant boy face to face, lay hands on him and heal him? It sounds like jealousy to me.

So just supposition (as seems to be the basis of most of your claims on this thread). I am not knocking your right to suppose things - but that does not make you correct.

No, I don't presuppose. I read the text and I draw reasoned conclusions. You read the text and just shrug your shoulders.

As for the centurion, the man might have loved his servant for many reasons.

And yet you can't offer a single one which fits the context of the narrative. The fact is that the Greek word pais was commonly used to refer to the younger partner in a same sex relationship. Remember that serving officers were not allowed to marry (women) at that time by Roman Law. That had the effect of making homosexuality relatively common in the Roman army.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexua ... e_military

• Acceptable male partners were slaves and former slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm of infamia, excluded from the normal protections accorded a citizen even if they were technically free. Although Roman men in general seem to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners, freeborn male minors were off limits at certain periods of Rome, though professional prostitutes and entertainers might remain sexually available well into adulthood.[2]

He also gave his reason for not wanting Christ to come into his house - he did not deserve to have Him come under his roof.

A Roman centurion didn't deserve to have a reputed Jewish healer under his roof? Don't be absurd. You are thinking like a 21st century Christian rather than a 0th century Roman army officer. The centurion was transparently contriving some excuse to keep Jesus away from the boy. Who ever heard of a healer at the time who did not lay hands on the person he was trying to cure? The centurion was obviously desperate to have Jesus not set sight on his boy lover.

You will need to cite a source for that. Clearly Jesus was a Jew and he interacted with Gentiles quite easily. I think you might be making this up. There is no doubt that many Jews had strict rules about diet and unclean things, but total social disconnect? No, that seems to be fiction.

I was speaking more spiritually. "There is no Jew or Gentile, male or female..."

Ah, I see. It appears that you couldn't find anything to cite.

[RedEye]

[Replying to post 52 by RedEye]

I take it you speak for all Jews when you say all you have to do is say you are a Jew, and you are a Jew?

And if you say you are not, you are not?

That there aren't any cultural, religious, or indeed any constraints?

Oh please.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/No_True_S ... n_religion

Yes, there are constraints. Violating one or more of them does not mean you cannot still self-identify as a member of the group.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 55 by RedEye]

Nope.
I put forward positive criteria for Judaism and to some degree Jewish.

You have answered with nothing refuting them.
I mean you can DISMISS the claim with non-sequitur arguments, but until you refute the claims coherently, you have done nothing.

Start with Jesus eating pork or Jesus disregard several of the 10 Commandments, or that bastard children are not Jewish according to Deuteronomy - none of these are "No True Scotsman."

[RedEye]

The fact that she asked how this could be since she is a virgin should tell you that she did not expect that she would be having sexual intercourse with the Most High, even though the child will be called the Son of the Most High.

I refer you to post #22 which you ignored:
ref:Re:%20What%20Would%20a%20Good%20Jewish%20Girl%20Do?

[RedEye]

[Replying to post 55 by RedEye]

Nope.

Please. This has become tiresome. You are committing an obvious fallacy. That you refuse to recognize it is not my problem. I have nothing further to say on the matter.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 58 by RedEye]

You do not seem to enjoy any interesting concepts in religion.
Freewill and God being able to control the masses, without paradox.
Jesus not being Jewish.

And in response to these interesting concepts, you respond in glimmering generalities.

This is a debate site, not a glimmering generalities site.

[JehovahsWitness]

The evidence is in the gospels which show no hint of segregation between Jews and gentiles outside of maybe internal home and religious life

So you are claiming that the Jews and the Gentiles had zero (your words "no hint") business and social segregation outside of the home and worship. That 100% of their social and non religious business lives were intergrated? So you claim that Gentiles and Jews worked together, they traded together and they lived in the same communities then? They shared the same local court system?

No hint of segregation? Really?

JW