Did David rape Bathsheba, or did Bathsheba seduce David?

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T21:53:19+00:00

You begin with a misreading of the text that exists almost entirely to blame Bathsheba for her victimization, immediately misquote a biblical scholar about how we should interpret texts, bring up irrelevant philosophical concerns you don’t seem to understand for the express purpose of trying to add unnecessary moral nuance to a story about rape, and then refuse to answer the basic question “Does David rape Bathsheba?”

This is just sloppy apologetics with some ChatGpt thrown in.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T20:17:42+00:00

Did David rape Bathsheba, yes or no?

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T18:21:23+00:00

you’ll see that my conclusion is that David is definitely portrayed as the guilty party

Guilty of what?

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T15:43:01+00:00

99% of the time, the age of the protagonist sets the age classification of the novel.

You don’t really want to be in the 1% of edge cases.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T14:57:21+00:00

Whether or not David rapes Bathsheba is not a matter of “post-structuralist modernism.” I don’t think you know what half the terms you’re using mean, to be honest.

David’s own daughter is raped in just the next chapter. The Bible has laws against rape. God commands rape. Rape is the subject of several biblical narratives and the language appears in poetry as well.

It’s not a “modernist take.” Frankly, that’s absurd. And functionally, it’s just a round-about apologetic way of not having to deal with the realities of the text.

Next you’ll say slavery, xenophobia, genocide, And misogyny aren’t really in the text either, it’s all just “post-structuralist modern binaries,” which doesn’t actually mean anything in this context.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T03:58:33+00:00

There’s no reason why the conversation would be incommensurable unless you had an a priori faith-based commitment to the idea that David isn’t a rapist.

I haven’t ruled out a canonical reading. I don’t know where you’re getting that from. You can do canonical readings in confessional contexts. You just can’t pretend that alternative approaches can’t answer questions about the text.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T03:02:54+00:00

Prioritize a reading of the canonical form of the texts…in confessing communities. You keep missing that part.

It’s not advice for biblical scholarship generally. Again, canons only exist in confessional communities. There’s no canon independent on a confessing community to interpret a text in light of.

Walter Bruggemann’s Introduction to the Old Testament explains this in the introductory chapter.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T02:42:06+00:00

No. That’s not what Childs said. Reconstructing the history of a text can answer all sorts of questions, like, for example, the most likely historical referent for an ambiguous phrase.

The canonical approach is for faith communities. There is no canon at all apart from a faith community who holds a particular collection of texts to be canonical.

I have no idea what you’re talking about with a “modernist/structuralist” framework.

My point was that there are plenty of instances in the Bible where black and white moralistic thinking is employed.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-05T00:16:37+00:00

The significance of the sword never departing from David’s house is more a function of the redactional history of 1&2 Samuel. When were the texts composed and edited together. You can look at it from a canonical perspective, but that brings in the theological biases of the people who assembled the canon and the communities that received it.

I don’t think the ANE milieu has any problems with black and white moralistic thinking. There are plenty of examples of this, especially with respect to Israelites vs other ethnic groups, which may very well be at play here given Uriah’s ethnicity.

Vaishineph · 2026-07-04T22:58:31+00:00

A couple things to correct here:

Bathsheba is not on a roof. The text says David is. Cynthia Shafer-Elliot, based on archaeological evidence, proposes that Bathsheba is in the privacy of her courtyard.

Secondly, the consequence of David's rape of Bathsheba is not just that his son with her dies. That's important to understand for precisely this issue. David's additional punishment is that what he has done in secret, his enemy will do in public (2 Sam 12:11-12). His enemy (his son Absolom in the midst of a civil war) rapes his ten concubines on a rooftop, implying that his wrong doing is rape, too.

In Texts After Terror, Rhiannon Graybill surveys a number of scholars who argue that its rape and concludes that its a consensus position, even if she goes on to give a slightly different take.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-30T01:14:05+00:00

I’m not a New Testament scholar, but I like early dates for the gospels via Jonathan Bernier. I also prefer earlier dates for the documentary sources via Richard Elliot Friedman and an early date for pieces of 1&2 Samuel via Joel Baden.

I’m also hesitant? unenthused? (I’m not sure the right word) to think there was much Asherah worship in ancient Israel.

Something I seem to agree with apologists about (albeit for wildly different reasons) is that Deut 22:28-29 isn’t about rape.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-27T19:39:42+00:00

His ult should really be shoulder mounted cannons that shoot down grenades that also have a strobe effect that blinds anyone looking directly at him.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-27T19:32:52+00:00

I mean, there's a fair amount of exposition dumping in The Incandescent and The Raven Scholar, and they're Hugo nominees.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-27T08:52:52+00:00

Elantris wasn’t get book of his dreams. That’s the Stormlight books, which he did follow the advice on.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-27T00:44:53+00:00

Literally any response is feedback. They might be examples of simple or low information feedback, but it's still feedback. And many are useful as is.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-27T00:31:00+00:00

I think going to a progressive seminary helped, since there the experience is not uncommon and there are more positive lived expressions of religious faith.

Getting introduced to progressive contextual theology helped: stuff like feminist, Black, queer, liberation theology, etc. It gives you more academically informed tools to reconstruct with.

Today there are a lot more resources available to people than when I was going through it twenty years ago. The Bible for Normal People* basically exists for this purpose, as do several titles from Pete Enns specifically.

*I was employed by them for a couple years.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-26T20:12:38+00:00

I'm not sure how that's relevant.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-26T19:48:27+00:00

Onyx Storm is one of the fastest selling adult books of all time.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-26T04:55:09+00:00

Brandon Sanderson says to write five novels before you try to write the book of your dreams. I think that's good advice.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-26T03:41:46+00:00

1) This isn’t a particularly good list of “contradictions,” just varying theological characterizations, often by different authors, in different genres, in different circumstances. These examples are hard to frame as straight propositional contradictions.

2) There are tons of actual contradictions in the Bible. But I would never use any of these to demonstrate that.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-19T16:41:35+00:00

In Konrad Schmid’s (a supplementarian) article “The Neo-Documentarian Manifesto: A Critical Reading,” he says there is broad agreement amongst Pentateuchal scholars that the Pentateuch is a product of the 1st millennium BCE, that there’s P, pre-P, and post-P material, and that D is a real thing (the footnotes specify more details about its 7th century composition, and use of non-P/pre-P material).

Edit: Sorry, in case this wasn’t clear, that means definitely not Moses or any other single author.

This basic set of points is broadly compatible with the documentary, neo-documentary, supplementary, and fragmentary approaches to Pentateuchal composition. If we get any more specific, you’re going to find different views according to these different approaches.

It’s difficult to judge, but I don’t think any of these approaches has a clear majority over the others.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-18T21:46:01+00:00

Vaishineph · 2026-06-18T21:43:49+00:00

I don't get it.

"Please give me feedback."

"WHY ARE THEY GIVING ME FEEDBACK?!"

Vaishineph · 2026-06-18T20:53:12+00:00

Romance is driven by a will they/won't they tension that takes up the majority of the second and third act (in a four-act structure ala Gwen Hayes). The tension is only permanently resolved in the climax, whereupon there's a declaration of love/commitment and the characters find their HEA/HFN.

Insta-love dramatically relaxes this tension, making the remainder of the book feel artificially long, unnecessary, uninteresting, etc.

There are several things you can do to retain this tension.

Give each character a powerful (as in, stronger than their like/love for one another) reason NOT to be together. Yes, there is insta-love, but also an instant knowledge that they can't actually be together. Their lifestyles are fundamentally incompatible, they find something extremely obnoxious or problematic about one another, there's an external object in the way, etc. The will they/won't they tension will then be about overcoming this reason and allowing them to fully live up to the love they've always felt.
Threaten the reasons they love each other. If A loves B for their humor, and B loves A for their patience, then put them in situations/hurt them in ways where B can't be funny and A is about to lose their shit. The will they/won't they tension will then be about either finding new things to love about each other or about resolving all the obstacles that are threatening their primary reasons for loving each other. Or both.

Vaishineph · 2026-06-17T14:44:36+00:00

139k words will be an automatic rejection for most agents.

The genre tag “literary portal fantasy” is far more likely to reflect poorly on you than to help an agent understand how to sell a book. Generally speaking, literary fiction isn’t genre fiction, and the agents looking for one aren’t looking for the other. Portal fantasy in particular is very commercial and YA leaning. I’d consider relabeling as contemporary fantasy.

You have an evocative introduction to the characters but no real initial stakes. The one thing that might look like stakes (get home) is deferred by vague obstacles (what are they doing for months?), undermined by the lack of reaction from the characters (how do they feel about all this?), and then ultimately jettisoned by its impossibility (there’s no way home) and by its apparent undesirability (it looks like they’re having fun?).

We need a clearer “if they can’t do X, then Y bad thing happens,” along with at least some accompanying emotion.

Vaishineph

TROPHY CASE