It's interesting the lengths to which some will go to find a scandal where none exists, isn't it?
In our present culture, we don't consider someone ready for marriage until at least the age of 18, and preferably at least some time into the early to mid twenties. But it hasn't been very long at all since it was common for people to marry much younger than this. For example, the famous country singer, Loretta Lynn, married at the age of 13 or 14. Another famous singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, married his first wife when she was 13; this became something of a scandal, not because of her age, but because she was his cousin. You needn't go back very many generations to get to a time when marriage at such ages was quite common.
Consider the Jewish tradition of the Bar Mitzvah. This event represents the transition from boyhood to manhood, and takes place at the age of thirteen years. Historically, it marked the point where a boy became a man, ready to take on all the priveleges and responsibilities of adulthood — including marriage.
I guess it's easy — if disingenuous — to examine the life of any historical figure, and find something that he did, which was regarded as entirely normal and proper in his time and/or culture, but not in our time and/or culture; and to condemn him for it. It obviously goes along with this tactic to say someone did “engage in a sexual relationship” and not mention that this sexual relationship took place properly within a lawful marriage — falsely implying that it did not — in order to amplify the manufactured scandal.
In our present culture, we don't consider someone ready for marriage until at least the age of 18, and preferably at least some time into the early to mid twenties. But it hasn't been very long at all since it was common for people to marry much younger than this. For example, the famous country singer, Loretta Lynn, married at the age of 13 or 14. Another famous singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, married his first wife when she was 13; this became something of a scandal, not because of her age, but because she was his cousin. You needn't go back very many generations to get to a time when marriage at such ages was quite common.
Consider the Jewish tradition of the Bar Mitzvah. This event represents the transition from boyhood to manhood, and takes place at the age of thirteen years. Historically, it marked the point where a boy became a man, ready to take on all the priveleges and responsibilities of adulthood — including marriage.
I guess it's easy — if disingenuous — to examine the life of any historical figure, and find something that he did, which was regarded as entirely normal and proper in his time and/or culture, but not in our time and/or culture; and to condemn him for it. It obviously goes along with this tactic to say someone did “engage in a sexual relationship” and not mention that this sexual relationship took place properly within a lawful marriage — falsely implying that it did not — in order to amplify the manufactured scandal.
