My favorite read on this has to do with the tale of the Roman soldier Pantera. There's a story he had sex with Mary. Given the Romans were occupiers and Mary was a poor member of the colonized class, Pantera essentially raped her. Since she hadn't consummated a marriage, on one technical hand she was a virgin, but on another hand her pregnancy would have still meant she was shunned and looked down on. Joseph steps in and shows her mercy and love in a society that would have labeled her an outcast.
Who knows if it's true or not. It's not like the Bible is a collection of perfect texts. It's riddled with inconsistency, error, and without any complete original manuscripts.
But this tale does have a narrative ark consistent with the rest of Scriptures, at least from the way early Christians read it (until the time Constantine bastardized the religion for convenient political purposes) -- that being a divine figure in search of humans, standing up for the downtrodden and disenfranchised, seeking justice against those who persecuted, envisioning a world where militant grace was the norm, building a kingdom on that, recognizing the divine in all. "Some trust in chariots, but we our Lord," "justice rolls down like a river," "turning swords into plows," practices of jubilee, the entire book of James as a treatise against the wealthy who took advantage of the poor & withheld wages from day laborers, Revelation as a coded political treatise & rant against an oppressive warring regime.
Given that the US church is literally part of today's empire, there's so much beauty we miss in these ancient texts, even if they're not "true" in a literal way but instead in a soulful way.
j p o wrote:
windywave wrote:
Guff wrote:
windywave wrote:
Ruined it? It wasn't funny and is obviously illogical
The humour of it is in the silly little paradox.
Religious conservatives believe that having two fathers makes people gay.
They also naturally balk at Jesus being gay.
And their dogma tells them Jesus has two fathers (Joseph and God).
Yet those three statements clearly create a paradox.
P.S. Damn you for making me explain this.
But he was raised in a household with a mother and father. The joke still fails. (Also you know what they say about if you have to explain a joke....)
You know, I grew up Catholic and I don't like ripping on the Virgin Mary. But if your young daughter came home pregnant and said, "Honest, I've never had sex. God must have done it." You'd probably have your doubts.