Happy Birthday, LoAL!
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Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc
Hoom, hoom, this is about interpretation and the discussion will stray too far... well even further than it did now... if we continued that. But simply put, my point was aimed the way that I would not consider using it the way you use it "fair". All the stories, and with the biblical ones it can be seen very well, as they are very old, can be interpretated in different ways and new meanings and interpretations fitting the context of the current time may be applied to them in every century. That's normal, and of course even good.
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Just one cynical note: Words from a god should be more absolute and clear if one is to escape eternal damnation by their proper interpretation. In the words on Agent Smart, "Missed it by THAT much!"
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And that's a common thing everywhere. So because of this, one important thing is to take care and consider where the original story aims.
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Something I've always hoped to point out is that ancient stories and myths had to have a peer audience, meaning that these stories weren't just written for people thousands of years in the future, but for the contemporary culture as well (if not exclusively).
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Yet both of Lot's daughters immediately become pregnant - isn't it curious? And their motives for the incest? "Our father is old, and there's not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth." So instead they decided to make their father drunk and have children from him. Lot, probably, although he was drunk, also isn't without guilt, but that'd be for really too long and far more speculative. In any case, the daughters' stance is obvious fear, maybe even the sight of hopeless situation face to face to the end of the lineage. They choose this very odd way to make the lineage continue, their own short-sighted solution for their cornered situation; and indeed, they immediately give birth to two sons, how great! But who becomes of such sons? Ammon and Moab. No chosen people, not even any special descendants of pure bloodline (cf. my previous post), but some "losers", or how to say that. So as if this was saying: dear daughters, this was not a good way you chose to solve your situation. (So you see, it does concern incest itself rather from just rational, calculated reasons.)
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I know that this too may be even more tangential, but from the above I'm reminded of the story of Noah Arkwright, when, having survived the Deluge, raised grapes, made wine, and his son Ham did something that made Noah not curse Ham but Ham's son Canaan, as stated here:
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Originally Posted by Genesis 9:20-27
Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father's nakedness.
When Noah awoke from his wine and found out what his youngest son had done to him, he said,
"Cursed be Canaan!
The lowest of slaves
will he be to his brothers."
He also said,
"Blessed be the LORD, the God of Shem!
May Canaan be the slave of Shem.
May God extend the territory of Japheth;
may Japheth live in the tents of Shem,
and may Canaan be his slave."
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I've read that one interprets the sin of Ham of having impregnated Noah's wife, Ham's mother. The son she bares is then cursed.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that it's not always the women involved in incest.