R&I – FS
Hi
Early Marriage in Jesus’ Time for Jewish Girls.
Two thousand and more years ago Jewish girls were married off by their fathers at 12 years of age. Everyone now would say it was too young as a 12-year-old today is seen as a child. In the present day, we see anyone under the age of 16 as being sexually abused. Yet, in what is supposed to be western civilization, girls in Europe in the medieval age were married at 10 years of age, and in America, the same was seen with the early pioneers. In Tennessee, between 2000 and 2010 three girls were married at age 10, and over 200,000 girls are married in the US 15 years of age and under.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/200-000-children-married-us-15-years-child-marriage-child-brides-new-jersey-chris-christie-a7830266.html Yet, some states in America have no age limit for child marriages, which are predominantly in the Bible Belt allowing girls age from 12 onward, with not much happening in 2,000 years.
UNICEF states that 250 million young girls around the world are getting married before age 15.
However, Christians turn a blind eye when it concerns the age of the mother of Jesus. She has been shown in Apocryphal scriptures and Christian text to be in her 12th-year when married to Joseph, a man of 70 years or more her senior. But, it was the Jewish law at the time and was still practised in medieval times.
So according to the Apocryphal gospel, Mary was married off (by lots) to Joseph at age twelve. Meaning if she got pregnant straight away, she would have been less than 13 years giving birth to Jesus. See Joachim Jeremias below for full details.
Many Christian scriptures and text try to stretch out the age of Mary to age 14-15 or even 20 years old at the time.
Christian art can also be deceiving when it comes to the age of the madonna. If we take Jesus’ age at death (with 3-year ministry) was 33 years old, making the age of Mary 46. However, Michelangelo’s Pietà shows a youthful Mary no more than 18 years of age, cradling her dead son, Jesus. While Jesus himself is portrayed as being in his mid-30s.
The Semitic scholar Jeremias wrote: The patria potestas (paternal power) was extraordinarily far-reaching over the minor before her marriage; she was totally dependent upon it. There were very precise distinctions between the minor (qetannãh, small girl to the age of ‘twelve years and one day’), the young girl (naCardh, between twelve and twelve and a half), and the maiden of full age (bogeret, a girl that has reached adulthood or above twelve and a half). Up to the age of twelve and a half years, her father had full power over her. She had no rights of possession; the proceeds of her work and anything she found belonged to her father (M. Ket. iv.4; b. Ket. 40b et passim). A girl under twelve and a half had just as little right to dispose of herself, for her father could cancel her vows; he represented her in all legal matters; acceptance or refusal of a marriage offer, in particular, was exclusively in his power or in that of his deputy. Up to the age of twelve and a half, a girl had no right to refuse a marriage decided by her father, and he could marry her even to someone deformed. [Joachim Jeremias (1962), JERUSALEM in the Time of Jesus, Chapter XVIII, pp 363-5, Fortress Press, Philadelphia.]
What do you say about Mary’s age and role through her biblical life?
Should Christians and their art be deceptive?
Cofion
Jero Jones
Article URL : https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/discuss/