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?

[JehovahsWitness]

I never claimed He [Jesus] had no interactions with Gentiles.

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

Are you claiming I have mentioned Jesus even once before this point t in this tread? If so, please present evidence. If not it would be good show to retract your remark as being in a accurate.

Regards,


JW

[RedEye]

I never claimed He [Jesus] had no interactions with Gentiles.

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

Are you claiming I have mentioned Jesus even once before this point t in this tread? If so, please present evidence. If not it would be good show to retract your remark as being in a accurate.

ref:Re:%20What%20Would%20a%20Good%20Jewish%20Girl%20Do?

• "No. Gentles[sic] and Jews did not mix, period".

Jesus was a Jew. He had interactions with Gentiles. Jews and Gentiles mixed.

[RedEye]

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?

Jewish law was inseparable from Jewish religion at the time. As to the rest, there were certainly some social prohibitions depending on the particular Jewish sect involved. Actual segregation though? I'm not aware of any. And it really doesn't matter as I have already explained. Jews didn't live in a bubble where they were totally unaware of anything non-Jewish in the world around them. They were under Roman subjugation and were on a major trade route with all that entails in terms of regular exposure to Gentiles and their customs/beliefs. To pretend that Jewish people were somehow cocooned is absurd.

[JehovahsWitness]

So when you say no hint you mean "some hint" ? "No" means some?

...there were certainly some social prohibitions ....

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

SEGREGATION The action or state of setting someone or something apart from others.

You claim absolutely zero separation between Jew and Gentile on a social level. Transport, trade and commerce, marriage, Medicale, dietry, dress, grooming, entertainment, "NO HINT" (zero hint) of social separation between the two cultures, anywhere to be found in the entire territory of ancient Palestine.... unless no hint means something other than zero indication, this is your claim. Correct?

[JehovahsWitness]

I never claimed He [Jesus] had no interactions with Gentiles.

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

Are you claiming I have mentioned Jesus even once before this point t in this tread? If so, please present evidence. If not it would be good show to retract your remark as being in a accurate.

ref:Re:%20What%20Would%20a%20Good%20Jewish%20Girl%20Do?

• "No. Gentles[sic] and Jews did not mix, period".

Jesus was a Jew. He had interactions with Gentiles. Jews and Gentiles mixed.

I asked you did I mention Jesus, the answer will be" yes" or "no".

It's not a debatable question, it involves finding a five letter word in a post, I do believe a sighted four year old could answer this question. I repeat, have I mentioned Jesus previously in this thread. Would you like to try again?




JW

[tam]

Peace to you!

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?

You did notice that my post 45 (which you have partially quoted above) is in response to post 22, right?

This is not the first time that you have referred me back to the OP or to some other post that I JUST responded TO. What is the point in doing that? I get that you might not be able to see or accept a different perspective than what you have asserted. But if you are just going to link me back to the same post I JUST responded to, then how is my response going to be any different? There is simply no moving the discussion forward at that point. So on that particular post, I have nothing more to add.




Peace again to you!

[tam]

Peace again to you,

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 have no need to clutch at straws redeye. It does not matter to me either way: either the man is a descendant of Israel or he is a gentile who displayed great faith, like the gentile woman, so that Christ made an exception for him (just as he did for her).

In fact, the story of the gentile woman REVEALS that this was an exception and NOT the norm.

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?

As to the contact between Jews and Gentiles, I will refer you to some information from post 44.


As to 'influence', are you not suggesting that Mary's (limited) exposure to pagan beliefs influenced her far more than her exposure to her own religion and her own God?

(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.

Because you said that Christ interacted commonly and easily with Gentiles, and I thought you must be referring to the Samaritans, because those are the only people outside of the Jews that Christ had much interaction with. The examples we have of Him interacting with Gentiles (most clearly the example of the woman) show that this was an exception, and not the norm... and on each occasion they came to Him, He never went to them.

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.

(And yet the centurion had enough faith to come to Christ and believe that He could heal the servant without touching him.)

As to the rest, you have no evidence (perhaps the servant might be a lover, but that is supposition... or perhaps the servant was just a loved one... for whatever reason, the servant was valuable to the soldier). You must also change what is written in the story and spoken by the soldier to come to your 'theory' that the man was simply jealous, rather than that the man said he did not deserve to have Christ come under his roof.

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.

It does not appear that you do see. It does appear that you "imply" motivations to people other than what they have told you. So I suppose it is not surprising that you would ignore the Centurion's words about not deserving Christ to come under his roof, and assign to him some other motivation instead.





Peace still to you.

[RedEye]

You claim absolutely zero separation between Jew and Gentile on a social level. Transport, trade and commerce, marriage, Medicale, dietry, dress, grooming, entertainment, "NO HINT" (zero hint) of social separation between the two cultures, anywhere to be found in the entire territory of ancient Palestine.... unless no hint means something other than zero indication, this is your claim. Correct?

I answered your objections in my previous post. Now you engage in selective snipping of my argument (yet again) in order to attack individual phrases instead of the coherent whole. I have said what I wanted to say and I am not going to condone your behaviour by responding to you further.

[RedEye]

I never claimed He [Jesus] had no interactions with Gentiles.

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

Are you claiming I have mentioned Jesus even once before this point t in this tread? If so, please present evidence. If not it would be good show to retract your remark as being in a accurate.

ref:Re:%20What%20Would%20a%20Good%20Jewish%20Girl%20Do?

• "No. Gentles[sic] and Jews did not mix, period".

Jesus was a Jew. He had interactions with Gentiles. Jews and Gentiles mixed.

I asked you did I mention Jesus, the answer will be" yes" or "no".

It's not a debatable question, it involves finding a five letter word in a post, I do believe a sighted four year old could answer this question. I repeat, have I mentioned Jesus previously in this thread. Would you like to try again?

There is no need to try again. You made a categorical statement about all Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Therefore you have implicitly included Jesus in your categorical statement.

General Case: Gentiles and Jews did not mix, period.

Specific Case: Jesus did not mix with Gentiles, period.

The specific case follows automatically from Jesus being a Jew. Are you denying that Jesus was Jewish?

[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?

You did notice that my post 45 (which you have partially quoted above) is in response to post 22, right?

It may have been a token response to my post #22 but you completely failed to acknowledge any of the arguments that I made in it let alone rebut any of them. That is why I referred you back to post #22, otherwise we are just talking past each other.