Comments

1
Hopefully she gets pregnant.

You see, that is how God works. It's a miracle!

And she better not dare get an abortion. The zygote is more important than any woman. Even a zygote that has a rapist for a father. Even a lady zygote, until she becomes a lady herself.

Anyways, Tamar was probably wearing a mini skirt that day so, you know, Amnon couldn't help himself. They didn't have a Slutwalk back in those days.

No seriously, isn't this like the most revolting book of all time?

You would have thought that after the printing press was developed people would stop believing in this nonsense. Yuck.
2
Why was she serving him in his bedroom? If he can rape his sister, he can haul his ass to the kitchen table. Probably had permissive parents who didn't spank him enough.
3
And Lo, the King was angry with them, and drove them out of Israel. And they did move to the New World, in Kentucky. And there they did have many children who married each other. And yea, even now their tribe votes for the GOP. Amen.
4
That bread needs a pinch of salt peter.
5
Almost as sneaky as Scott Walker waiting till the 4th of July weekend to send out a press release announcing that he had signed a bill to require mandatory ultrasounds for Wisconsin women seeking abortions.
6
@2 It turns out ordering a woman to "Make me a sammich!" is religiously acceptable.

7
The Bible, rated NC-17, for graphic violence, sexual content, and rape, rape, rape.
8

A year later, Tamar was posting on My Baby Daddy Ain't Shit:

https://www.facebook.com/mybabydaddyaint…

9
I can't wait to hear about how we are taking this one out of context!
10
Absalom, Tamar's full brother and Amnon's half-brother later got Amnon drunk and murdered him. Their dad (King David) was mad about this, and also about the rape (though he couldn't bring himself to actually do anything about the latter) but eventually the murder blew over.

@3: Pretty much.
11
Good Book, alright! Man, I missed all this stuff when I was in Sunday School. It's nice to see human behavior hasn't changed.

@9 Well, let's put it in context, then! I unfortunately don't have my Bibles or Bible books handy right now, but a quick search on Google and Wiki states that they were half siblings, so the rape was technically forbidden by what we would today call Biblical law. (I'm not sure all rape was forbidden. We have a hard enough time today, in America, with our own rape laws and prosecution.) Also, it adds that the father, good old King David, did nothing about it, so Absalom, Tamar's brother, laid a Red Wedding-ish ambush and killed the SOB. The End. Fascinating stories in the Bible, I say (mostly in Old Testament/Torah).

@3 Sounds like the Book of Mormon.
12
@venomlash. I should have just waited for you.
13
@10
A tragedy all around. (With the exception of Amnon). As you are likely aware, Absalom's premeditated revenge was two years in the making, and the law against premeditated murder (Numbers 35) meant Absalom had to flee the kingdom. He went to Talmai and the court of Geshur to be with his grandfather.
14
I assume Amnon bought off David with 200 Philistine Foreskins for his silence. The Book of Samuel is completley fucked up. It makes the Book of Mormon seemed plausible. (Golden tablets vs. Ark of the Convenant).. Dagon vs. Angel Moroni...
15
If One Million Moms knew how much smut was in this book, they'd surely organize a boycott. Think of the children!
16
The lessons are as such:

1. The question of sex between a man and a woman is decided by the man. A woman can beg not to be fucked, but she doesn't have any actual say in the matter. She has no agency.

2. The technique used by a man to bed a woman is force. There is no other means and no need for any.

3. Sex = marriage.

4. Rape = marriage.

Any I missed?
17
Just on the tip of my tongue how you delicate flowers can avoid being offended by the Bible.....

That's it! Don't read it. Surprised it didn't occur to any of you really.
18
@16

I think you missed

5. Fresh bread constitutes consent.
19
In passing, it's hilarious to me that aficionados of Daniel Savage could find anything shocking at all. The man can't open his laptop or mouth without a xxx rating, but the Good Book gives you fits of outrage? As the singer says " God is great, beer is good- and people are crazy."
20
@17,
Many people become atheists because they read the bible. Reading it is almost a sure-fire way to lose your faith in christianity.

That's why everyone should read it. The fewer religious people out there, the better. They demand everyone follow their faith and they don't even read their own fucking holy book.
21
absalom got himself kilt later on too. his dad was all upset and cried 'absalom! absalom! would to god i had died for you!' or somethin' like that. david had one fuuuucked up family, that's for sure.
22
@20

With respect, people find what they seek. If Mr. Goldstein was seeking proof of the lack of a divine being cherry picking mostly OT biblical verses for his certainty seems a bit intellectually dishonest, but his call.

Atheists seem to me willfully blind. Regarding the marvelous complexity and loveliness of the created world and refusing the evidence of my senses that a conscious mind of some kind is behind it strains my credulity too much, frankly.
23
When I was a little girl, I heard a terrifying sermon with this as the text. The moral of the whole story, it turned out, was that girls should not put out, because if a guy fucks you without being married to you, he will then hate you. The fact that this was rape was apparently irrelevant; it was still Tamar's fault that he did it.
Years later, of course, after my father raped me, it was understood that he would hate my guts (and I his), and that the whole thing was somehow my fault. "For the Bible tells me so."
24
It's only wrong because they weren't married.
25
@23

Violating the trust and love of his daughter and sexually assaulting you is horrible.

However, using out of context or maliciously twisted Biblical references to justify his vile behavior reflects far more on your father than on Christianity.
26
@222, you're not really in a position to be speculating about the processes of a conscious mind.
27
@26

And you have a pleasant Sunday as well.
28
@ SB, given that folks like you - millions of you - look to this book as a guide to morality, it's well worth knowing all this stuff.

So, if this is cherry picking, what is the full context this verse fits in?
29
@27: Your appreciation for the majesty of "the created world" has no bearing on the truth of this particular text or its suitability as a guide for moral behavior. This passage from the Bible, like many of the others Goldy has quoted in this forum, is so egregious that it's noteworthy. If you're defending this story's take on morality, grow a pair and do so; say outright that you think this story presents a model for how modern people should conduct themselves. Explain why the "delicate flowers" who take offense at this story being presented as a morality tale are wrong for doing so.

As to 'context,' the context here is that the Bible is regularly held up as a divinely-inspired, infallible text that provides complete and faultless instructions for moral conduct. Any example culled from its pages, however obscure, is relevant.
30
It doesn't tell us what she was wearing.
31
@22 - Atheists seem "willingly blind"? Whaaaaat?

Faith is by definition willingly blind, so please see:
The Earth is only 6000 years old...
Noah collected 2 of every species...
Burning bushes that talk...

I could go on forever about the aspects of the "Good" Book's total fiction, but you will never get it, because it is you that is willingly blind, not the non-believers out there.
32
@21: Yeah, Absalom got involved in some rebellion (don't remember if he started it or not) and King David sent his troops to restore order and bring him in alive. Unfortunately, while Absalom was trying to ride off and avoid capture, his hair got caught in some branches and his horse ran out from under him, leaving him dangling there. And then some jackass stabbed him to death with a spear, and David was like "THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT, HE'S MY SON EVEN IF HE DID SOME STUPID STUFF".
@22: Ah yes, the watchmaker defense. As an agnostic theist, I say you belittle God by comparing Him to a human craftsman. Can the mind of the Holy One (blessed be He) even be compared to the consciousness of a human?
And as a scientist, I challenge you to provide a SINGLE thing in the universe that cannot have come about except by divine intervention. (Just because something seems unlikely does not mean it must have been directed.)
33
Lannisters!
34
@22,

And christians, muslims, jews, hindus, etc., (i.e., the worshippers of man-made gods) strike me as willfully blind, clinging to faiths that are completely unsupported.

As an atheist, I only posit that there is woefully inadequate evidence for the existence of any of the gods as described by any religious faith that has ever existed. That doesn't mean I'm correct though. There could be gods, just as there could be a teapot orbiting the sun. But the lack of credible evidence allows me to confidently dismiss both gods and orbital teapots.

But more to your point, I could fathom the possibility that some intelligent force created everything. It's most certainly possible, and perhaps even as likely as any of the current theories about non-intelligent universe creation. However, if that's true, it's an intelligence humans either cannot perceive or it is dead, departed, or hiding. The idea that it is the christian god as described in the bible? That's pure fantasy. Preposterous. Christian ideas of what the supposed intelligent creator is are entirely ridiculous.
35
I always took David's failure to defend and comfort his daughter, and deal with his rapist son, etc., was because he realized how messed up he was when he took Bathsheba, got her pregnant, and had her husband murdered.

We could take this section as an example of how children watch and learn from our actions and choices.
36
@32
If I recall my Joseph Heller correctly, the jackass in question was Joab, cousin or uncle to David and basically he chief enforcer.
37
@32, it's funny, because every Christian I've ever met loves to claim an interest in the Glories of God's Creation, but I've never met one who was actually interested in finding out more about those glories, or who didn't start getting really uncomfortable around the real, fascinating worlds of biology. Sit and watch one of David Attenborough's programs about birds, or life in the undergrowth, or whatever, and see how they start to sweat and twitch.

Christians don't actually have any faith in this amazing world we live in, and while the people who study it are sometimes people of faith they are virtually never the kind of rigid, prejudiced, fearful nitwits that Seattleblues and his compadres are.
38
@23: Ugh, I remember that sermon too. May I ask what denomination you were? I was going to a Reformed Presbyterian church (Calvinist and very sexist) as a teenager and I still remember the preacher pausing to say, "Listen, young women, listen!" before reading the verse about Ammon hating Tamar after raping her. Then going on to say that if you let a guy fuck you, he isn't going to love you after. Although I had no feminist vocabulary at the time, even then I realized that this interpretation was fucked up... Tamar didn't let him fuck her! She was raped!

If there is a moral to this story, it's that even your relatives and other people that you know are Schroedinger's rapists.

39
@22: Fair enough. I think we can agree to disagree without undue rancor or name-calling. But I will offer a clarification for your post @19: it's not the smuttiness of the passage that us Savage Love readers find objectionable, it's the misogyny, victim-blaming, and the sexual assault.
40
There no point in liberal Christians discussing this issue on SLOG.

I've pointed out that the majority of Catholics and mainline Christians support marriage equality (http://jezebel.com/5835789/poll-shows-ma…) and been told it doesn't matter until the churches themselves officially support it. I can point out that Pew says that while only 6% of scientists are Republicans, 33% believe in God and another 18% believe in a "higher power:" http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/p… but when somebody who I respect like Fnarf is deep in denial on the existence of liberal Christian scientists, what hope do I have with people that I don't know?

No, if we're lucky, we're told we're apologists or we are slapped with the NALT label (which is just an all purpose 21st century "Uncle Tom" ad hominem.) If we're unlucky, our existence is denied and it's assumed we're really just John Birch Society sock puppets.

So I'm done with "Slog Bible Study." Enjoy the echo chamber.
41
@40: I believe in liberal Christians. My mother's a liberal Christian, and I hold no animus towards those who believe in that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that this belief does not require shitting on gay people to be expressed. If I had to guess, the reason the NALT Christians (which as a black person I must say is not an Uncle Tom ad hominem, not even close- NALTs embody the true Christian spirit of charity and empathy far more closely than fire-and-brimstone condemners, Uncle Toms simply kowtow to a bigoted, bullshit vision of "virtue" held up to them by the bigots themselves) still get shit from Sloggers is that you've allowed the frothing-at-the-mouth extremists to hijack not just The Message but your public image. Shouldn't you be righteously pissed at this rampant misprision of faith? And shouldn't you be vocal about it towards them not us? I don't question your existence; I just wish you were a lot louder. My mother certainly is.
42
The moral of the story is that you don't want to be a woman named Tamar in the Bible. Remember the touching love story of Tamar and Judah where she almost got executed by burning because she was pregnant? (Which is a piece of Biblical wisdom that the "pro life because God" crowd hasn't addressed as far as I know. THat would be interesting).
43
I've never understood the "God is real because the world is amazing" thesis. It seems like an enormous failure of imagination to theorize that based on everything we know about the world, the only possible explanation is the one that a small Middle Eastern mountain tribe came up with thousands of years ago.
44
Atheists seem to me willfully blind. Regarding the marvelous complexity and loveliness of the created world and refusing the evidence of my senses that a conscious mind of some kind is behind it strains my credulity too much, frankly.
I'm a pantheist, not an atheist, but I'd still have to say that there's a willful blindness, in my view, in the presumption that complexity is a sign of something other than dissolution and entropy, that the essential character of the universe is order rather than chaos, and that the beauty in the universe we observe is divisible from its cruelty and obscenity.

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