Judge Moore and Joseph the Carpenter ain't the same!
By
Habib Siddiqui
As President Trump is visiting Southeast Asia, another
Republican is making the headlines in the US news media. He is Roy S. Moore, a
70-year old former Alabama state judge best known for being twice elected to
and twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court. In 1992, he became a circuit
court judge and hung his wooden Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom. In
2000, he was elected chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court, and he soon
installed a 5,280-pound granite Ten Commandments monument in the judicial
building.
In 2003, he was dismissed from the bench for ignoring a
federal court order to remove the monument, and became known nationally as “The
Ten Commandments Judge.” Moore was again elected chief justice of the Alabama
Supreme Court in 2012, and was again dismissed for ignoring a judicial order,
this time for instructing probate judges not to issue marriage licenses to
same-sex couples.
Moore is also the founder and president of the Foundation for
Moral Law who as the Republican
Senate nominee in Alabama is now trying to fill the senate seat
Attorney General Jeff Sessions held until this year.
In recent days, Moore has been accused of sexual misconduct by
Leigh Corfman who said that she was 14 years old when an older man approached
her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden
bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy
Moore. It was early 1979. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother
said to the Washington Post, and offered to watch the girl while her mother
went inside for a child custody hearing.
Days later, Moore picked Leigh up around the corner from her
house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her
how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, he molested her. Aside
from Ms. Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in
recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and
18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the
time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women says that Moore
forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact. Gloria Thacker
Deason said she was an 18-year-old cheerleader when Moore began taking her on
dates that included bottles of Mateus Rosé wine. The legal drinking age in
Alabama was 19.
Of the four women, the youngest at the time was Corfman, who
is the only one who says she had sexual contact (but no intercourse) with Moore
that went beyond kissing.
In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations. On
Saturday, he tried to discredit the women who had accused him of sexual
misconduct. “People have waited until four weeks prior to the general election
to bring their complaints,” Mr. Moore, 70, said during a Veterans Day event in
Vestavia Hills, Ala., near Birmingham. “That’s not a coincidence — it’s an
intentional act to stop a campaign.”
Many of his party’s most powerful figures have been asking him
to end a
campaign that they worried would undermine their candidates
nationwide.
Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama, however, rebuffed calls that she
postpone next month’s election, which could leave Republicans with a narrower
majority in Washington. Moore also assured everyone that he is not quitting. Many
voters in his state also want him not to quit.
Last Thursday, Alabama State Auditor Jim Zeigler dismissed the
Washington Post report on the GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore
saying there was an age gap between the biblical Joseph and Mary. “Take
Joseph and Mary. Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They
became parents of Jesus,” Zeigler told The
Washington Examiner. “There’s just nothing immoral or illegal here.
Maybe just a little bit unusual.”
Is Zeigler right?
In the Bible, Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Joseph became
her husband. Beliefs about the specific story of Joseph and Mary and Jesus’s
birth vary widely in Christian history and across traditions. Mary is referred
to in scripture as a virgin, but there is disagreement about what that means.
Generally, however, Christians believe that Mary was a virgin when Jesus was
born. Joseph is usually referred to as Jesus’s father or a father figure.
The topic is addressed in the Gospel of Luke (1:26-38): “In
the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called
Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of
David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings,
favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and
pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be
afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in
your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and
will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the
throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever,
and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this
be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come
upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore, the
child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.’” [Note: the
gospel writer Luke never met Jesus. He was a physician and companion of Paul of Tarsus, who did not meet
Jesus before his ascension to heaven but claimed to have seen him later in
vision on his way to Damascus.]
How old was Mary when she was betrothed to Joseph? And how old
was Joseph the carpenter?
The Bible does not state Mary and Joseph’s specific ages, but
she is usually understood to be 12 years old girl when she married Joseph who
was a much older man. According to Catholic
Encyclopedia, Joseph was 90 years old then and was the father of six children,
two daughters and four sons from a previous marriage. The youngest of his
children was James who is mentioned in the gospels as "the Lord's
brother". According to Christian apocryphal writings, Joseph died around
18 or 19 C.E. at the age of 111.
De
Robigne Mortimer Bennett says that the apocrypha books ‘History of
Joseph the Carpenter’ (Historia Josephi Fabri
Lignari) and ‘Infancy
Gospel of James’ which were believed to be genuine by Early
Evangelical Church, confirm that Mary was only 12 years old when betrothed to
Joseph, the carpenter. Not just that, he also mentions when Joseph married Mary
he was 90 years old. Bernard L. Fontana also mentions that Mary was 12 years
old and Joseph 90 years old when married:
The very advanced age of Joseph, marrying Mary, was true and
accepted by most early Church Fathers. Reverend Jeremiah Jones writes
about 2 to 3 pages long that Infancy Protevangelion of James was accepted by
Early Church Fathers as truthful account of Mary and Joseph’s marriage. If one
reads the Infancy Gospel of James (Protevangelion of James), in Chapter 8 it
says that Mary was married to Joseph when she was 12 years old.
Most early church fathers believed Mary was married off when
she was 12 years old and Joseph the carpenter was a very old man. Here is the
list of fathers who believed that Joseph was fourscore years old when he
married 12-year-old Mary:
1. Epiphanius (310 – 403AD)
2. Hilary (Hilarius) of Poitiers (300 – 368AD)
3. John Chrysostom (Born between 344 and 349 – Died 407 AD)
4. Cyril of Alexandria (376 – 444 AD)
5. Saint Euthymius the Great (377 – 473 AD)
6. Theophylact of Ohrid (also known as Theophylact of Bulgaria) (1055 – 1107 AD)
7. Cecumenius
8. Eusebius (263 – 339 AD)
2. Hilary (Hilarius) of Poitiers (300 – 368AD)
3. John Chrysostom (Born between 344 and 349 – Died 407 AD)
4. Cyril of Alexandria (376 – 444 AD)
5. Saint Euthymius the Great (377 – 473 AD)
6. Theophylact of Ohrid (also known as Theophylact of Bulgaria) (1055 – 1107 AD)
7. Cecumenius
8. Eusebius (263 – 339 AD)
Is there a moral equivalence between Joseph’s marrying a much
younger girl (Mary) and Judge Moore’s alleged sexual misconduct (with 14-18 old
girls)?
Moore was 30 and single when he joined
the district attorney’s office, his first government job after
attending the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, serving in Vietnam,
graduating from law school and working briefly as a lawyer in private practice
in Gadsden, the county seat. By his account, chronicled in his book “So Help Me
God,” Moore spent his time as a prosecutor convicting “murderers, rapists,
thieves and drug pushers.” He writes that it was “around this time that I
fashioned a plaque of The Ten Commandments on two redwood tablets.”
“I believed that many of the young criminals whom I had to
prosecute would not have committed criminal acts if they had been taught these
rules as children,” Moore writes.
In an email to supporters on Thursday, Moore told his
supporters: “The forces of evil are on the march in our country. We are in the
midst of a spiritual battle with those who want to silence our message.” He
wrote in his email to supporters. “That’s why I must be able to count on the
help of God-fearing conservatives like you to stand with me at this critical
moment.”
On Friday, Moore’s brother Jerry was quoted by
CNN
correspondent Martin Savidge comparing the accused judge to Jesus. “When I
asked what does he believe the motivation is with these women coming forward
making the accusations they have, again, Jerry Moore says it’s money and the
Democratic Party, implying that they are doing this because they’re being paid
in some way, and it is for the purpose of derailing or interrupting this
campaign,” Savidge said. Jerry Moore added “that his brother is being
persecuted, in his own words, like Jesus Christ was.” “Their goal is to
frustrate and slow down our campaign’s progress to help the Obama-Clinton
Machine silence our conservative message,”
It is worth mentioning here that Alabama is one of the most
solidly evangelical states in the country. According to the Pew Research
Center, 86 percent of Alabama residents identify as Christian, and 49 percent
are evangelical. White evangelicals have
become much more likely to say a person who commits an “immoral” act
can behave ethically in a public role. In 2011, 30 percent of these
evangelicals said this, but that shot up to 72 percent, according to a
survey published last year by the Public Religion Research Institute.
Earlier this year, Judge Moore received high-profile
endorsements from conservative leaders such as psychologist and radio host
James Dobson, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and National
Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown.
Multiple evangelical leaders have slammed Alabama State
Auditor Ziegler for comparing Judge Moore with Joseph the carpenter.
“Bringing Joseph and Mary into a modern-day molestation
accusation, where a 32-year-old prosecutor is accused of molesting a
14-year-old girl, is simultaneously ridiculous and blasphemous,” said Ed
Stetzer, a pastor and church consultant who holds the Billy Graham Chair of
Church, Mission and Evangelism at Wheaton College. “Even those who followed
ancient marriage customs, which we would not follow today, knew the difference
between molesting and marriage.”
“Women were chattel back then, they were traded — of course
they married men who were much older and had multiple wives,” said the Rev. Amy
Butler, senior minister of the Riverside Church, a historical and
prominent interdenominational church in New York City. “It’s completely
ludicrous to equate the sex assault of a minor with an ancient culture. It’s ludicrous. . . It makes me want to rip the church back from
these people.”
As I have maintained elsewhere
viewing things of the distant past with today’s lens and social norms is very
problematic, and often wrong. In pre-modern days (and for that we need not turn
our clock back to the first century of C.E., even the early 20th
century is sufficient), it was quite normal for females to get married quite
early, soon after their first menstrual cycle. So, when Mary, the mother of
Jesus, was betrothed to Joseph at that tender age of 12, it was kosher per both
the norms of the period and the Jewish law.
On the other hand, what Judge Moore did, if the allegations
against him are true, are simply immoral. It is called fornication outside
marriage, a charge which cannot be lobbed against Joseph the carpenter. What he
did, if the allegations are true, are also illegal by the laws of his own state
since the legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under
Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19
years old who has sexual contact with someone older than 12 and younger than 15
has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as
touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by
up to one year in jail.
The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a
child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual
intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable
by up to 10 years in prison.
As I see it, what Ziegler tried to do in support of Moore is a
false equivalence. He is wrong trying to equate the case of Moore with that of Joseph.
And so is Jerry when he tries to equate his brother’s troubles with those of Jesus.
They ain’t the same!
It would, however, be wrong to single out Judge Moore for
seemingly using his authority or power to make sexual advances on others. From
the former president George
H.W. Bush to Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, actor Kevin
Spacey and comedian Louis
C.K to Fox
News Chairman Roger
Ailes and star Bill
O’Reilly, let alone the current POTUS,
the list is too long with such sex offenders who believe that they have the
right to use their status to molest others. We truly have a pervasive
culture of sexual misconduct
and harassment.
And the sad story is we live in a time when such abuses have become the new
normal and are brushed off as unimportant things by our voters in the USA. The American
voters chose Donald Trump, and Alabamans may do the same for Moore, unless he
decides to withdraw from the senatorial election voluntarily. This voter apathy
speaks volumes about the moral bankruptcy of America!Can a nation lead others when it has lost its own moral compass?
Comments
Post a Comment