If the deity got that poor kid Mary pregnant, it would be considered a paedophile today, as she was likely to have been a young teenager and below the age of consent! Much more likely of course Mary had sex in the usual way with Joseph or another! However if the deity was responsible it should have married her itself, rather than let Joseph pick up the pieces!
It annoys me that in times past, and even today, some Christians are very nasty about a girl getting pregnant before marriage, when Mary was in the same boat!
I think you've started 4 or 5 almost identical threads to this over the months, Floo. You clearly don't agree with the responses you've had before, so why not use one of those threads to put your argument forward properly.
I suspect that I've posted this response on 3 or 4 previous occasions but it doesn't harm to repeat it.
In Jewish culture, betrothal was and remains as legal a contractual agreement as marriage is today. That is why we are told that Joseph considered divorcing Mary when he heard that she was pregnant. The difference was that, in a culture where marriages were arranged, families lived in more extended family settings, and the time between the arrangement and the betrothal usually far shorter than today's engagements, there was a need for the groom to build his own 'home' before he could bring his wife back to it. In most cases that was an extension to or a separate building alongside his family's property, and the custom was that he would 'marry' his bride, return home and build his accommodation and then go to his bride's familial home and collect her.
Regarding the age of consent, this has varied widely over the centuries, and didn't exist in law until the 13th century. This piece from the Wikipedia entry on 'Age of Consent' underrlines th complxities.
The first recorded age-of-consent law dates to 1275, in England, as part of the rape law, a statute, Westminster 1, made it a misdemeanor to "ravish" a "maiden within age," whether with or without her consent. The phrase "within age" was interpreted by jurist Sir Edward Coke as meaning the age of marriage, which at the time was 12 years of age.
In the 12th century, Gratian, the influential founder of canon law in medieval Europe, accepted age of puberty for marriage to be between 12 and 14 but acknowledged consent to be meaningful if the children were older than 7. There were authorities that said that consent could take place earlier. Marriage would then be valid as long as neither of the two parties annulled the marital agreement before reaching puberty, or if they had already consummated the marriage. It should be noted that Judges honored marriages based on mutual consent at ages younger than 7, in spite of what Gratian had said; there are recorded marriages of 2 and 3 year olds.
Yet again, Floo, you are imposing 20th and 21st century understandings on a historical situation - something you are extremely good at doing, but which misses out the whole historical context of such situations.
Regarding the idea that the deity should have married Mary 'itself', as you put it, how would you suggest that it did that?
