biblic pedophilia

[Scarface_Z]

is there any mention of pedophilia in the bible? anything about marrying someone much younger than yourself? does the bible actually say it’s wrong? (i’m not saying it’s right, i’m just wondering if one of the great taboos of our society is mentioned in the bible)

[glee]

Surely paedophilia is having a sexual relationship with a child, not marrying someone younger?

Anyway you can have a look at Genesis 23 verses 1-2, followed by Genesis 24 v 1, followed by Genesis 25 v 1.

It doesn’t say how old Abraham was when he married Keturah, but it looks as if he was over 100.

[Sampiro]

Uncle-niece marriage is permitted in the Old Testament (though Aunt-Nephew was not, a fact revealed to Moses at Sinai, which probably hit him hard since he was born of one). Usually (though not always) an uncle would be significantly older than his niece. (Uncle-niece marriage was so common in the Herodian dynasty that Salome [of “dancing fame” {one of several members of the family to have that name] married a man who was her uncle AND her grand-uncle and had sons who were the grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of Herod the Great.

When David was ancient and wizened his advisors and caregivers brought him a beautiful young virgin, Abishag, with it would seem the consent of the priests (leastwise there isn’t an objection recorded).

[JRDelirious]

Still, incest by itself is not pedophilia, nor is necessarily (in this context) consorting with nubile young virgins. You DO have to account for (during most of the Bible) a depiction of bronze/iron-age cultures, variously agrarian or pastoral, settled or nomadic, tribal or monarchic, where a 13-year-old would be a perfectly suitable bride and not a “child”.

I cannot really recall specific explicit mentions of pedophilia, i.e. child molestation, in the Bible. It does Bible contain multiple explicit incidents of rape, incest, sexual enslavement (concubines), etc.; and prohibitions against various categories of incest, adultery, rape, sodomy, bestiality but nothing to the effect of “He who hath lain down with the girlchild, she who has yet to have her first menses, ye shall put to death, for it is an abomination unto the LORD thy God”; nor anything like “And the Prophet spake thus: Woe to thee, Schlemazel, for in thy wickedness thou who art in thy thirtieth year hath consorted with boys in their ninth, and in their eight; for this the LORD shall smite thee.”

Maybe in those chapters in Ezequiel where he details all the debauchery of the fallen kingdoms there may be something, would have to look it up.

Apparently child molesting would be handled among the israelites according to the prohibitions on rape (specifically the more severe case of rape-of-virgin), incest, and sodomy.

And in the NT there IS this piece from Jesus:

*“Whoever causes one of these [referring to the children] to be brought into sin, it would be better for him to have a millstone tied to his neck and dropped into the deep sea!” * (Matt. 18, 6)

Which pretty much covers all bases if you ask me (YMMV if you’re the Boston Archdiocese )

[danceswithcats]

Sorry, no cite for this but I’ve heard that given the life expectancy of people who lived in biblical times, and the desire for a man to continue his bloodline via male offspring, women were often betrothed to marriage at early teenage, and the age of her husband wasn’t considered to be an issue. Perhaps Polycarp might offer something more substantive.

[Sampiro]

Girls were considered legally eligible for marriage anytime after their menarche, but generally were not considered emotionally mature enough until a few years later. Male:male sex was of course forbidden of any age.

[PaulFitzroy]

I don’t know about the Bible, but I know there’s pedophilia in the Koran.

Aisha, bride of Muhammed, was six when married to him, and nine years old when she had sex with the then-53 year old Prophet.

“The Prophet married Aisha in Mecca three years before the Hijrah, after the death of Khadija. At the time she was six.” Ishaq:281 “When the Apostle came to Medina he was fifty-three.” Tabari VII:6 “In May, 623 A.D./A.H. 1, Allah’s Messenger consummated his marriage to Aisha.”

Tabari IX:128 “When the Prophet married Aisha, she was very young and not yet ready for consummation.” This is how it happened: Tabari IX:131 “My mother came to me while I was being swung on a swing between two branches and got me down. My nurse took over and wiped my face with some water and started leading me. When I was at the door she stopped so I could catch my breath. I was brought in while Muhammad was sitting on a bed in our house. My mother made me sit on his lap. The other men and women got up and left. The Prophet consummated his marriage with me in my house when I was nine years old.”

[Guinastasia]

Wasn’t Mary at most fourteen when she gave birth to Jesus? Would that count? (Although, if the Bible is correct, she hadn’t exactly had sex with Joseph yet, so that wouldn’t work…)

[Diceman]

@Guinastasia

Wasn’t Mary at most fourteen when she gave birth to Jesus? Would that count? (Although, if the Bible is correct, she hadn’t exactly had sex with Joseph yet, so that wouldn’t work…)

We don’t know her exact age, but early teens was typically when girls got married in that day & age.

In “primitive” societies, you become an adult much earlier than you do around here.

[BrainGlutton]

Well, there’s “Suffer the little children to come unto me . . .”

[JRDelirious]

@Guinastasia

Wasn’t Mary at most fourteen when she gave birth to Jesus? Would that count? (Although, if the Bible is correct, she hadn’t exactly had sex with Joseph yet, so that wouldn’t work…)

The Gospels do not mention at any time any age for Mary. Some noncanonical apocryphal and traditional sources have pegged her as being bethrothed to Joseph at 14.

Still. Not. Pedophilia. IIRC the tradition and custom of the time was that you were nominally “legal” for marriage at 12 years and 6 months of age, and even then it involved a 1-year bethrothal period; as mentioned by Sampiro, it was still not necessarily so that the girl HAD to be married and squeezin’ 'em out immediately.

BTW PaulFitzroy, (a) that’s the Hadith, not the Qur’an and (b) that was not the question.

[Anaamika]

I don’t have any proof, just the absence of proof. I’ve always wondered why pedophilia wasn’t mentioned in the Ten Commandments, the (supposed) arbiter of goodness and morality. As far as I can tell it isn’t mentioned in any of the different sets of commandments. (If I am wrong, please correct me).

You’ll notice the first commandment is don’t worship other gods. I’m inclined to agree with certain people who think Moses dropped the ball - and the third tablet -with the rest of the rules on it.

Disclaimer: I am not Christian.

[Thudlow_Boink]

Isn’t the idea of childhood as a special, protected time a relatively modern one? For instance, weren’t there young children working in factories and coal mines a lot more recently than Biblical times?

[Kythereia]

Thudlow, I think the conception of children as pure and innocent beings really came into vogue around the mid to late 1800s–ironic, considering this coincided with the Industrial Revolution and the use of child labour in mines–along with the explosion of gothic / romantic literature at the time.
Can’t think of any instance of pedophilia in the Bible off the top of my head.

Why the question? curious

[Scarface_Z]

@Kythereia

Thudlow,
Why the question? curious

just curious, with catholic priests in hot water, just wondering what the bible might have to say on the matter.

[Kythereia]

@Scarface Z

just curious, with catholic priests in hot water, just wondering what the bible might have to say on the matter.

In that case, I doubt the Bible will help them out in their defense…

[Thudlow_Boink]

In order to have the concept of pedophilia as a taboo or crime, you need to have the concept of children as a distinct class, whom it would be wrong or exploitative to treat in ways that would be acceptable for adults. I was questioning whether they had such a concept In Those Days. There is (perhaps surprisingly) little in the Bible about children in general or how they should be treated; and I wondered if this was typical of pre-modern cultures.

[BrainGlutton]

@Thudlow Boink

In order to have the concept of pedophilia as a taboo or crime, you need to have the concept of children as a distinct class, whom it would be wrong or exploitative to treat in ways that would be acceptable for adults. I was questioning whether they had such a concept In Those Days. There is (perhaps surprisingly) little in the Bible about children in general or how they should be treated; and I wondered if this was typical of pre-modern cultures.

From the Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia:

Sexual acts between adults and children are both a taboo and a crime in almost all cultures because, among other reasons:

children in modern, western society are seen as unable to understand the physical, emotional, and social consequences of sexual acts and are therefore unable to give informed consent;
underage sexual acts often involve coercion and abuse of power, which can break bonds of trust between adults and children; and
sexual acts can, for children at puberty, lead to pregnancy, a condition for which they may well be unprepared.
Most pedophiles avoid sexual contact with children. International studies indicate a recidivism rate for pedophiles of 40-50 percent, as opposed to only 22 percent for all sexual offenders (Egg 2001). The probability is much higher for those attracted to boys, as compared to those attracted to girls.

The percentage of pedophile perpetrators in cases of child sexual abuse is estimated to be 2 to 10 percent (Kinsey-Report, Lautmann, Brongersma, Groth). Abuse is mainly a phenomenon of heterosexual and homosexual orientation. Statistics from the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics (Home | Office of Justice Programs “5 percent of sex offenders rearrested for another sex crime within 3 years of prison release”) indicate that while sex offenders in general reoffend 5.3 percent of the time, child molesters reoffend only 3.3 percent of the time (though the latter statistic only counts child sexual abuse as opposed to all sex crimes).

The terms hebephilia and ephebophilia are sometimes used to describe attraction to youths or adolescents, as distinct from attraction to children, since a high age of consent may also forbid sex with adolescents. Sexual desires including youths are quite common among people with a heterosexual and homosexual orientation, though their attraction is not specifically to persons that young. Only when that is the case it can be reasonably labeled ephebophilia as a sexual orientation.

Most cases of father-daughter incest are believed to involve fathers who are situational offenders, rather than pedophiles. Some have argued that these cases are triggered by the withdrawal of the mother from the family, often due to physical or mental illness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephebophilia:

Ephebophilia, also known as hebephilia or Lolita syndrome, is the sexual attraction of an adult to adolescents. It is a chronophilia, i.e. belongs to a group of paraphilias of the stigmatic or eligibilic type in which the paraphile’s sexuoerotic age is discordant with his or her actual chronological age and is concordant with the age of the partner. Pederasty is the attraction to male adolescents.

Some argue that only men who consistently prefer prepubescent girls are practicing an unsound reproductive strategy (pedophilia), while men who prefer postpubescent girls may practice a very sound reproductive strategy (Ephebophilia). Sociobiological research shows that all primate males prefer young females. A study on human male preferences showed that all males in the study from 7 years and up preferred the faces of 17-year-old girls.

In Japanese society the attraction towards teenage girls (high-school students) is a widespread cultural phenomenon. The manifestations of such attraction, such as lolicon art, school uniform fetishes and sexual relations with teenage girls (e.g. enjo kosai) are more tolerated by society than in the West, but are often illegal.

Often pedophilia and ephebophilia are confused. The reason for this is that definitions of the legal age and the biological age of a child conflict. According to some Catholics, the child abuse cases in the American church often are instances of ephebophilia rather than pedophilia. (See: Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal)

(Regarding that aspect of it – I must admit I wouldn’t mind a bit if the age of consent in my state were lowered to, say, 16 or 15. )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty:

Pederasty is a term originally coined by the ancient Greeks to describe a certain type of relationship between an adolescent boy who was about to come of age and an adult man outside of his immediate family. The word derives from the combination of paides (Greek for ‘boy’) with erasteio (Greek for ‘to long for’).

In those societies in which pederasty was prevalent, such as Ancient Greece, pre-Modern Japan, Melanesia, or Renaissance Florence, it manifested as one pole of a quasi-universal male bisexuality. Historically, it exists in a zero-sum relationship with egalitarian same-sex love relationships, in which one or the other – but usually not both – bears a burden of societal disapproval.

The Ancient World

Social Aspects

Pederastic relationships were dyadic mentorships. They were sanctioned by the state, as evidenced by laws mandating and controlling such relationships. Likewise, they were sanctified by the church, as can be seen from the many myths describing such relationships between gods and heroes (Apollo and Hyacinth, Zeus and Ganymede, Hercules and Hylas) and between one hero and another (Achilles and Patroclus, Orestes and Pylades). (It is interesting to note that the Greeks tried to project a semblance of pederasty (read: “propriety”) onto these last two pairs, despite a great deal of evidence that the two myths were originally intended to symbolize egalitarian relationships.)

Historical as well as mythographical materials suggest that pederastic relationships also had to be approved by the boy’s father. As Xenophon claims in his Symposium, “Nothing [of what concerns the boy] is kept hidden from the father, by a noble lover.” This is consistent with the paramount role of the Greek patriarch, who had the right of life and death over his children. It is also consistent with the importance that a son would have had for him. Besides the bond of love between them, a son was the only hope for the survival of a Greek man’s name, fortune and glory.

Boys entered into such relationships in their teens, around the same age that Greek girls were given in marriage – also to adult husbands many years their senior. There was a difference between the two types of bonding: Boys usually had to be courted and were free to choose their mate. Girls, on the other hand, were used for economic and political advantage, their marriages contracted at the discretion of the father and the suitor.

The function of the relationship seems to have been the introduction of the young man into adult society and adult responsibilites. To that end the mentor (known as erastes, lover, in Athens, or eispnelas, inspirer, in Sparta) was expected to teach the young man (known as eromenos, beloved, in Athens, or aites, hearer, in Sparta) or to see to his education, and to give him certain appropriate ceremonial gifts (in Crete, an ox, a suit of armor, and a chalice (from kylix, Greek for wine cup), signifying his empowerment in agriculture, war and religion). The bond between the two participants seems to have been based in part on mutual love and desire – usually sexually expressed – and in part on the political interests of the two families. The relationships were open and public, and became part of the biography of the person. Thus when Spartan historians wrote about a personage they would usually indicate whom it was that he had heard or whom it was that he inspired.

For the youth – and his family – one important advantage of being mentored by an influential older man was the social networking aspect. Thus some considered it desirable to have had many older lovers / mentors in one’s younger years, both attesting to one’s physical beauty and paving the way for attaining important positions in society. Typically, after their sexual relationship had ended and the young man had married, the older man and his protégé would remain on close terms throughout their life. For those lovers who continued their lovemaking after their beloveds had matured, the Greeks made allowances, saying, You can lift up a bull, if you carried the calf.

As with all social institutions, pederasty was the idealized form of an age-structured homoeroticism that had other, less idyllic, manifestations, such as prostitution, or the use of one’s slave boys. However, certain forms were prohibited, such as slaves penetrating freemen, or paying free boys or young men for sex. Free youths who did sell their favors were generally ridiculed and later in life were prohibited from performing certain official functions. And, even when lawful, it was not uncommon for the relationship to fail, as it was said of many boys that they “hated no one as much as the man who had been their lover”. Likewise, the Cretans required the boy to declare whether the relationship had been to his liking, thus giving him an opportunity to break it off if any violence had been done to him.

<snip>

Recent developments

In the modern age the term has been appropriated to describe any sexual relations between an adult male and a boy, or sometimes (as in France), two adult males. In the English-speaking world the term is now used to describe sexual relations between adults and boys below the age of consent in their respective community. In the news media, the term tends to be used incorrectly as a synonym for pedophilia, even though the latter designates the sexual obsession of adults with prepubescent boys or girls.

Starting in the 1960s, the gay liberation movement made progress in having the laws against homosexual sex lifted that had existed in several countries. Also as part of the sexual revolution, the legal age of consent was lowered somewhat and usually set equal for heterosexual and homosexual sex. With a change in the homosexual beauty ideal from boyish to masculine, homosexual relationships tended to become more equalized in terms of age difference. The assumption of a progression from ancient pederasty to modern homosexuality is not fully accepted (see first external link).

At the present time no society is openly making use of liminal homosexuality – relations with young people who have just reached legal age – to accomplish social goals. Though the laws of many countries (such as those in the European Union, Canada, and other jurisdictions granting erotic emancipation to adolescents sixteen years of age or under) would seem to have created a space within which lawful pederasty could manifest, the lack of a social framework, as well as the stigma still attached to same-sex love, has prevented the establishment of any institution resembling pedagogic pederasty. Likewise, parental control, a key element of the traditional practice, is also rare. To date, only one country, Holland, has enacted a statute granting parents a measure of oversight over their offsprings’ early sexual lives by not prosecuting adults in relationship with adolescents between the ages of twelve and sixteen unless a parent (or social worker) files a formal complaint.

Though instances of spontaneous legal pederasty are occasionally reported, most present-day intergenerational homosexual relationships either involve youths below legal age, or remain on a physical level, or both. As a result, intergenerational relationships have a difficult, somewhat polarized social status. On one hand, the media capitalize on sex scandals (such as the one involving the Catholic Church) that may involve pederasty, conflating it with pedophilia because people take an (perhaps partly voyeuristic) interest in these matters. On the other hand, sexual liberation and the presence of media like the Internet cause homosexual youths to discover their sexuality and have their coming out at a much younger age than before, and frequently they enter first relationships with males somewhat older than themselves, prompting mixed emotional reactions from their parents. This lack of parental control combined with a culture of casual encounters is associated with a high sexually transmitted disease infection rate, including HIV and AIDS, for the young people engaged in these relationships.

Hope that helps.

[cmkeller]

Well, the only way (in Biblical terms) in which children were different from adults was that adults were respoinsible for themselves, and children were the responsibility of their parents, who were expected to make the proper life decisions for them.

As such, the Bible allows a father to marry off his under-age daughter to a husband he deems appropriate, but not that said children cannot be married at all, and not that the sexual aspect of marriage is any different for married minors than for married adults.

(Underage boys could not be married, because in (Orthodox) Jewish (i.e., Biblical) law, the man is the initiator of the transaction that marriage is, and initiation cannot be done by proxy. The woman merely needs to accept, and for a young girl, her father’s acceptance on her behalf is sufficient.)

[Angua]

@PaulFitzroy

I don’t know about the Bible, but I know there’s pedophilia in the Koran.

Aisha, bride of Muhammed, was six when married to him, and nine years old when she had sex with the then-53 year old Prophet.

CITE???

Neither my copy of al-Koran, nor the online texts I’ve searched mention this.

Does every single copy of al-Koran, apart from your own, censor this out?