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Re: xkcd: 2018

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In article <efb3ee36-35cb-41e8-9630-f04f0ae93768@googlegroups.com>,
 <mcdowell_ag@sky.com> wrote:
>
>There is of course the church tradition that Joseph was an old man and
>"Portraying him as a very old man, they thought, was the best way of
>upholding belief in the perpetual virginity of Mary and Joseph". Perhaps
>you have hit on a theological innovation :-)

Once long ago the local classical music station got together with
one of the local record stores to put on a Bach festival, and
they got an actor to come dressed as Bach and sign autographs in
a very creditable imitation of Bach's signature.  He had done his
homework, and stayed in character throughout.

And at one point somebody asked him, "When your first wife died,
you already had twenty children.  Why did you marry *again?*"

And he said, "Because I had twenty children!  Somebody had to
look after them."

Which would explain why Jesus had brothers.  Half-brothers by
Joseph's late first wife.  As to Mary's perpetual virginity,
if you were a pious man and believed (because an angel had told
you) that your new wife was the bride of the Holy Spirit, would
you feel entitled to go to bed with her thereafter?  So far as I
know, no theologican has yet put forth this hypothesis, but it
makes sense to me.

Now as you know, Bob, Christianity represents (inter alia) a
fusion of Jewish and Indo-European cultural elements.  

In traditional Jewish culture, all young women were supposed to
marry and have children.  Remember Jephtha's daughter, whose sad
tale mirrors the initial premise of _Beauty and the Beast_?  Her
father had vowed that if he won his battle, he would sacrifice to
the Lord the first creature he saw when he got home.  And that
was his daughter.  So she asked him to hold off for a season so
that she could go apart and "bewail her virginity" -- that is,
that she would die a virgin and never be a mother.

Indo-European culture, on the other hand, appears to have had a
tradition of some women remaining virgins and devoting themselves
to God or the gods.  Consider the Vestal Virgins in Rome.  The
goddess Vesta, and her Greek counterpart Hestia, correspond to
the _filia de astro_ (the hearth-daughter) in mortal families,
the youngest daughter who did not marry but stayed home to care
for her parents in their old age.

But there's an Indian* story recounted by Georges Dumezil, which
goes as follows.

There was a king who had everything he wanted -- including sons,
we must assume, because if he had had no sons he would have had
an entirely different story -- except four magnificent horses,
each of which belonged to one of his four fellow kings.

So he went to one of his fellow kings, and said, "What will you
take in trade for your magnificent horse?"  And the other king
said, "A son of mine born of your daughter."  And the other three
kings said the same.

The king's only daughter was a pledged virgin, living deep in the
forest serving the gods.  But her royal father sought her out and
explained his difficulty ... and she said, "All right, I can do
that."

So she went and lived with the first horse-owning king, became
pregnant by him, bore him a son, gave him to a wet-nurse, and as
soon as she recovered, went to the next king and repreated the
process.  And so on, until each king had a son by her and her
father had the four magnificent horses he wanted.

*And then she went back to the forest and resumed the life of a
pledged virgin, serving the gods.*

It would appear that the concept "virgin," to these earlyish
Indo-European speakers, meant not "never had sex" but "doesn't
have to bring up children, which can take up all your time and
attention and leave nothing for anything else."

Which is perfectly true.

_____
*Dot, not feather, as they say in the UK.

-- 
Dorothy J. Heydt
Vallejo, California
djheydt at gmail dot com

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xkcd: 2018 Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2017-12-29 13:16 -0600
  xkcd: 2018 mcdowell_ag@sky.com - 2017-12-29 11:32 -0800
    Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2017-12-29 11:46 -0800
    Re: xkcd: 2018 Lynn McGuire <lynnmcguire5@gmail.com> - 2017-12-29 15:43 -0600
      Re: xkcd: 2018 mcdowell_ag@sky.com - 2017-12-29 22:23 -0800
  xkcd: 2018 Jack Bohn <jack.bohn64@gmail.com> - 2017-12-29 12:45 -0800
    Re: xkcd: 2018 Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy <taustinca@gmail.com> - 2017-12-29 13:19 -0700
      Re: xkcd: 2018 David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2017-12-30 03:37 -0600
    Re: xkcd: 2018 nebusj-@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) - 2017-12-31 06:59 +0000
    Re: xkcd: 2018 Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2018-01-02 07:23 -0700
  Re: xkcd: 2018 Cryptoengineer <treifamily@gmail.com> - 2017-12-29 20:51 -0600
    Re: xkcd: 2018 David DeLaney <daviddelaney@earthlink.net> - 2017-12-30 03:40 -0600
      Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2017-12-30 05:22 -0800
        Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-30 15:07 +0000
          Re: xkcd: 2018 William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2017-12-30 12:23 -0800
            Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-30 21:10 +0000
              Re: xkcd: 2018 William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2017-12-31 12:09 -0800
          Re: xkcd: 2018 Jerry Brown <jerry@jwbrown.co.uk.invalid> - 2017-12-30 20:53 +0000
            Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-30 21:10 +0000
              Re: xkcd: 2018 Jerry Brown <jerry@jwbrown.co.uk.invalid> - 2017-12-31 07:48 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2017-12-31 01:11 -0800
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-31 15:05 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Wolffan <aklwolffan@gmail.com> - 2017-12-31 11:06 -0500
                Re: xkcd: 2018 mcdowell_ag@sky.com - 2017-12-31 08:23 -0800
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-31 17:26 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 William Hyde <wthyde1953@gmail.com> - 2017-12-31 12:23 -0800
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-31 17:02 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2017-12-31 10:03 -0800
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2017-12-31 11:35 -0800
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2017-12-31 21:23 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2018-01-01 02:08 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) - 2018-01-01 03:33 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 djheydt@kithrup.com (Dorothy J Heydt) - 2018-01-01 05:19 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) - 2018-01-01 06:40 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 goldfarb@ocf.berkeley.edu (David Goldfarb) - 2018-01-01 06:48 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 D B Davis <g@crcomp.net> - 2018-01-01 18:22 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Greg Goss <gossg@gossg.org> - 2018-01-02 07:33 -0700
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Lawrence Watt-Evans <misenchantedpress@gmail.com> - 2018-01-02 15:20 -0500
                Re: xkcd: 2018 wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) - 2018-01-02 22:14 +0000
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Lawrence Watt-Evans <misenchantedpress@gmail.com> - 2018-01-03 02:21 -0500
                Re: xkcd: 2018 Kevrob <kevrob@my-deja.com> - 2018-01-02 14:50 -0800
      Re: xkcd: 2018 Robert Carnegie <rja.carnegie@excite.com> - 2017-12-30 08:23 -0800
  Re: xkcd: 2018 Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> - 2018-01-03 08:06 -0800

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