But in the case of the Zeus or Mary stories you’re explicitly talking about culture – about what was imagined and believed by most people, which is all about consensus, popularity and tradition. As @Scribblesome noted, it’s a common mistake to think that medieval European culture (to say nothing of “the” cultural Christian aesthetic more broadly) normalized the marriage of very young girls. Lifespan notwithstanding, most non-nobles married in their twenties, not their teens, as people did in plenty of other agrarian societies with low life expectancy worldwide. (There have of course also been societies where teen and pre-teen marriage was more common – they’re just not as common or as causally connected with short lifespan as many people assume.)
Most people in that culture didn’t depict or think of Mary as a young teen – that was a minority cultural current. Whether she “really” was or not is both unknowable (there’s no compelling reason to think we have texts written by anyone who met her, certainly not the extra-Biblical ones) and irrelevant to the point you raised.
Your words followed on from “gods didn’t always seem to morally or legally need consent from lesser life forms,” so I figured pointing out the consent in the story would be relevant. You’re right that nothing in the story is phrased as a permission request, but mistaken to suggest that it’s phrased as a command. I don’t see anything in the imperative after “be not afraid.” It’s an announcement of things intended to come; the question of what would have happened if Mary had resisted or fled rather than assenting doesn’t come into the text, but the mainsteam tradition has seen her acceptance as both real and important.
Don’t read me as offended, please – I’m not at all. Just trying to help you in your goal of being pro-context.
Okay, whew! To clarify, my use of “consensus, popularity, and tradition” in the OP was about the depiction of Jesus as Caucasian and/or of Mary as a post-teen mother. I agree that societal norms are precisely dictated by that list, but I wouldn’t call them “truths.” Like, it can be true that most Americans find that xyz is creepy, but not “true” that xyz is creepy. Something definable and measurable, like skin color or birthing age, I would see as closer to having a truth. Maybe “objective fact” is a better descriptor? If it matters, I think there is census data which you can reverse engineer from the date of the data to determine Mary’s age. I’m not hung up on the point. Herodotus’ accounts have been used to back up Jesus’ existence, despite being extrabiblical.
Re: immaculate conception. Immediately following “be not afraid” (v.30) comes what I interpreted to be a directive (v.31): “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.” I’m open to the idea that it isn’t. But, I maintain that the HS (which did the conceiving) didn’t speak with her and that there wasn’t a question involved. I’m not implying anything beyond it. Way back, I was using it as an example of how things are more complicated and relative than can be easily judged. Just because the gods (Greek or Christian) didn’t say their own acts were “sin,” doesn’t mean that I, personally, think they aren’t wrong. On the contrary, U.S. courts would (possibly) contest Mary’s ability to give consent.
I think this is a really important conversation. Much of the draw of IF seems to be romance. And, much of the IF material seems to deal with either history, other cultures, or fantasies (I clumped mythologies with elves and cyborgs). That’s my longwinded way of saying thanks for talking to me about things my neighbors would punch me in the face for even thinking of. @Havenstone
Hm perhaps it should be mentioned that only because a marriage was legal, that does not mean such a marriage was normal.
In Germany the avarage age in 1700 was about 27-28.
For the middleages in europe historians mention that Common folks married later than nobility because for a marriage people had to have enough money for a Family, so the age would be over 20, too.
Half my age plus 7 would be the youngest I feel comfortable with, or twice my age minus 7 for older. I know it’s a silly rule, but like it works. 20 feels too young for me, but not creepy, and 45 is certainly pushing it, but I can see it being tolerable.
You started out talking about the “cultural Christian aesthetic” and how it continues to shape attitudes and taboos. I think that’s the right thing to be focusing on here, rather than objective but unrecoverable facts of history. We know Jesus wasn’t Scandinavian looking; we don’t know what shade of brown he actually was; but we can also know lots of facts about the cultural impact of the widespread depiction of him as a blond white guy, and we could I think have a much more interesting conversation about that (on another thread!) than we could about his fundamentally unknowable actual skin tone.
Whatever Mary’s age was, European culture has been slightly shaped by traditions and depictions of her as a teen and much more shaped (I’ve been arguing) by depictions of her as an adult mother. The songs people sang, stories they told, and pictures they painted of her-- that’s what matters when it comes to how it affected their thinking on age gaps in relationships.
The historic fact of Mary’s age is unknowable – even if we could cleverly work out the average age of first marriage in 1st century Nazareth, believe me, there’s no contemporary evidence of which side of that average Jesus’s mother might have been. Her actual age is also kind of irrelevant to the impact of Christian culture on age taboos – the culture has been driven by how people imagined Mary, regardless of the historical validity of those imaginings. (And btw I think you mean Josephus and/or Tacitus rather than Herodotus.)
“You will conceive” is predictive, not imperative. I agree that nothing in the story is framed as a question, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not a story about consent being sought. We could talk more about what it means for an angel to appear and whether that simply is how God speaks to people in these stories… but I think that would derail the thread further.
I said and meant Herodotus, although I’m familiar with those others. I appreciate the fact that ideas surrounding the subject are more than just factual or not to some people. Perhaps it was a poor choice as it became, rather than supported, the point. I suggested Mary’s age is knowable. There are a lot of broad claims in there purporting to be rigorous which I, in honesty, have doubts about. Please don’t take this as provocation, simply an observation for what it’s worth.
Another thing which interests me, but which would further derail, is the idea that the possibility of Mary being a teen mother might diminish her (to some and in some ways). Having known one or two, I’ve found the role to be actually quite heroic. I agree that angelic modus operandi is also very interesting. And I would love to discuss, elsewhere. In my OP, I said cultural considerations were important to age gaps in romantic options. Unless I’m mistaken, we don’t disagree on this. @Havenstone Apologies for the circular and digressive path I’ve steered the thread onto.
Even though he died more than 400 years BC? I’m interested but skeptical… feels a bit like Martin Luther providing historical evidence for the existence of John F. Kennedy.
If you can link to any 1st century historical references for Mary’s age, I’d be more than interested. The earliest source I’m aware of is believed to have been composed a century after her death, with a clear theological agenda shaping its composition:
That doesn’t make it false, but does make it dubious enough that I’d not call an argument based on it “knowable”.
I don’t think the image of Mary as unwed teen mother diminishes her at all – it’s very much in keeping with the theme of the lowly being lifted up. I’ve got no theological, aesthetic or historical problem with the possibility. I’m just arguing that as a matter of fact, that image has not been as culturally influential as I took you to originally suggest – it would be a wild overstatement to suggest that Christian culture has as one of its foundational ideas or images an adult-teen relationship age gap.
Hmm, looks like you’re right. Had to pull an old paper on biblical historicity. I cited “Herod Antipas” in Tacitus’ Annals, not Herodotus, who is in the same paper wrt Pharaoh. Anyway, wrong is wrong. The point of my even mentioning it was that extra-biblical sources (archaeology as well as texts) come to bear on biblical information. That point stands.
Re: Mary’s age. I’d have to double check the text, but I think one of those apocryphal gospels (St. Joseph? One that maybe Catholics accept, but Protestants don’t) has her betrothed after or around 12? I remember having a conversation with a professor about Hipploytus (sp? Also not “Herodotus”) that placed her death 10 or so yrs after Jesus. So, something about subtracting a number taken from another source from 41AD. I’m not 100% bought into the selection methodology which determined which books were excluded and included from the NT as we know it. Much of exclusion seemed to be on the basis of confirmation bias, when the two surviving accounts Matthew (?) and Luke don’t entirely agree. Besides that, the whole messianic line in Matthew is based on Joseph who isn’t even Jesus’ blood father. Anyway, there’s sociological evidence that puts Jewish marriage tradition in the 1st century for women between 14-17. It seems like there’s something “righteous” at stake with how guarded people become about this possibility which there is clearly precedent for. But, this conversation has veered SO far from the reason it was even mentioned–sorry to have been sloppy w the details. Again it wasn’t my major or the point I was trying to make:
In my OP, I was citing the irony that Judeo-Christian ethics of Western society form the basis of sexual taboo when it is likely that Jesus’ parents had a marital arrangement which would be frowned upon in the modern day. I wasn’t saying it was influential; I was saying the opposite. The image is not influential. It’s overlooked, which is possibly hypocritical.
OP Excerpt
Beyond that (making the comparison to Zeus), I was hi-lighting the fact that the HS didn’t talk to Mary or ask permission. This wasn’t to flame Christianity or anyone’s personal beliefs. It was to say that what is considered wrong varies according to place and time–temporal relativism. Please, actually look at the OP, #2, 10 or so posts above.
I’m happy to chase down the sources, if I can–I don’t have my own copy of the excluded apocrypha. But, it’s so aside the point I was originally trying to make that I no longer feel like it’s the same conversation. It seems like sniping at tangents in order to invalidate the central claim–God didn’t ask Mary. Forgive me if I’m mistaken. I would very much like to discuss what you mentioned about the use of angelic messengers, but maybe DM would be more appropriate?
Ah, thanks for correcting my mistaken reading of your point.
Why I didn't initially read you as ironic
I’d read you in the OP excerpt as stating that “the cultural Christian aesthetic” (not only Christianity as a historical phenomenon) was “more or less founded on” the marriage of young teen Mary with 30-somthing Joseph. You can perhaps see why someone would assume that an image or idea that a culture is “more or less founded on” would be considered influential on that culture – especially in the context of a wider argument that marrying young and big age gaps were not particularly unusual in medieval or early modern Europe. The ironic switch in your second sentence wasn’t obvious.
Absolutely, what’s considered wrong varies by place and time – you’ll get no argument on that from me or (I think) most people here. The question for purposes of this and similar Forum debates is how and whether that affects our game writing.
If we’re writing historical fiction as a window on a time whose values and assumptions were very different to our own, how do we treat actions that were standard for the time but which the author (and potentially many readers) judges to have had awful consequences that the historical culture ignored (i.e. oppression and injury to women, minorities, slaves, children, and other groups whose stories played a marginal role in the culture)?
Do we follow the historic culture in celebrating the norms and ignoring the costs? Or do we use our imaginations, building on the thin historical evidence we have from the margins, to convey what it was like to be on the downside as well as the upside of that value-set?
And if we’re writing fantasy to a rough historical template, do we put in the work I just described above, or just tweak the historical template so that some of the cultural values are closer to our own and less likely to alienate our readership?
I’ll move my other comments off-thread to try to refocus this one on the original topic.
You’re right that nothing in the story is phrased as a permission request, but mistaken to suggest that it’s phrased as a command. I don’t see anything in the imperative after “be not afraid.” It’s an announcement of things intended to come; the question of what would have happened if Mary had resisted or fled rather than assenting doesn’t come into the text, but the mainsteam tradition has seen her acceptance as both real and important.
To clarify, my use of “consensus, popularity, and tradition” in the OP was about the depiction of Jesus as Caucasian and/or of Mary as a post-teen mother. I agree that societal norms are precisely dictated by that list, but I wouldn’t call them “truths.” Like, it can be true that most Americans find that xyz is creepy, but not “true” that xyz is creepy. Something definable and measurable, like skin color or birthing age, I would see as closer to having a truth. Maybe “objective fact” is a better descriptor? If it matters, I think there is census data which you can reverse engineer from the date of the data to determine Mary’s age. I’m not hung up on the point. Herodotus’ accounts have been used to back up Jesus’ existence, despite being extrabiblical.
