爲什麼強姦出現在了大多數宗教的開端

Stories like the virgin birth lack freely given female consent. Why don't they bother us more?

故事就像被大多數女人認爲的那樣-處女生育會缺乏自由。只會給我們帶來很多麻煩?

Powerful gods and demi-gods impregnating human women—it's a common theme in the history of religion, and it's more than a little rapey.

強大的神和半神血統的人類女性-這是在宗教史上的一個共同的主題，就非常怪異了。

Zeus comes to Danae in the form of a golden shower, cutting "the knot of intact virginity" and leaving her pregnant with the Greek hero, Perseus.

宙斯看到了達那厄後乘她睡覺的時候化做一陣金雨與達那厄交配（結束了達那厄童貞）並生育了珀耳修斯。

Jupiter forcibly overcomes Europa by transforming himself into a white bull and abducting her. He imprisons her on the Isle of Crete, over time fathering three children.

宙斯變成了一頭白牛並且說服了歐羅巴，綁架了她。他禁錮她在克里特島，隨着時間的推移，他們生下三個孩子。

Hermes copulates with a shepherdess to produce Pan.

赫爾墨斯交配牧羊女生下潘。

The legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus are conceived when the Roman god Mars impregnates Rea Silvia, a vestal virgin.

羅馬傳奇的創始人,羅穆盧斯和瑞摩斯是當時羅馬戰神讓西爾維亞公主懷孕（一個處女）的結果。。

Helen of Troy, the rare female offspring of a god-human mating, is produced when Zeus takes the form of a swan to get access to Leda.

特洛伊的海倫，當宙斯化妝成天鵝勾引麗達時，一個罕見人神交配的雌性後代產生了。

In some accounts Alexander the Great and the Emperor Augustus are sowed by gods in the form of serpents, by Phoebus and Jupiter respectively.

在有些傳說中，偉大的亞歷山大和奧古斯塔斯大帝各自是由日神菲博斯和宙斯化身蛇播種生下。

Though the earliest Christians had a competing story, in the Gospel of Luke, the Virgin Mary gets pregnant when the spirit of the Lord comes upon her and the power of the Most High overshadows her.

即使最早的基督教，也流行着一個故事，即在盧克福音中，上帝遇到聖母瑪利亞，並且使聖母成功受孕。

The earliest accounts of Zoroaster's birth have him born of a human father and mother, much like Jesus,; but in later accounts his mother is pierced by a shaft of divine light.

最早的傳說中，拜火教聖人是人類父母的兒子，很像耶穌。但隨後流傳的故事中講到他母親是由神靈受孕而產下了他。

The Hindu god Shiva has sex with the human woman Madhura, who has come to worship him while his wife Parvathi is away. Parvathi turns Madhura into a frog, but after 12 years in a well she regains human form and gives birth to Indrajit.

印度教中的造物主席爾瓦令人類女孩馬杜拉受孕。在他的妻子帕爾瓦蒂離開時，馬杜拉基於對席爾瓦的崇拜使兩人處在一起。之後帕爾瓦蒂將馬杜拉變成了青蛙。但12年後在一口井中，她又恢復人形，並生下了因陀羅。

The Buddha's mother Maya finds herself pregnant after being entered from the side by a god in a dream.

釋迦摩尼的母親瑪雅夜裏夢見與一個神仙交歡後懷孕。

Underneath this remarkably enduring and widespread trope lie two assumptions that, in their most primitive form, may trace their roots all the way back to evolutionary biology.

在這些不同尋常並且廣爲流傳的故事中，存在兩個假設，即以最原始的方式，追尋生物進化論的根源。

The biology hypothesis, much oversimplified, goes something like this: Males and females of each species have instincts that maximize their genes in the next generation. Among humans, females seek the highest quality sperm donors that they can attract. They maximize the quality and survival of their children by mating with high status, powerful males. Males, on the other hand, maximize the quality and quantity of their offspring by seeking young fertile females (with beauty signaling fertility), controlling some females and fending off other males while also spreading their seed around if they can get away with it.

很多關於進化論的假說都過於簡單，大體上都這樣表述：每個物種的雄雌兩性都具備本能，最大程度地把他們的基因傳遞給下一代。在人類中，女性追求她們所能吸引到的最高質量的精子貢獻者。通過與強壯俊美的男性交配，保證繁衍出最佳質量的下一代。另一方面，男性通過尋找年輕的生殖能力出衆的女性（美麗容貌象徵着生育能力），從質量和數量兩方面保證繁衍出自己的最佳後代。他們控制住某些女性，並且防止周邊其他男性的介入。

Biology may be the starting point, but over time, human impulses are embellished and institutionalized and made sacred by culture and religion. The mythic trope of gods mating with human females embodies powerful cultural and religious beliefs about sexuality. Familiar stories of this type derive from male dominated societies, which means they legitimize male reproductive desires: Powerful men not only want to control the valuable commodity of female fertility, they should. Gods ordain it and model it. And they prescribe punishments for those—especially females—who violate the proper order of things.

進化論或許是起點，但歷經滄桑，人類的本性衝動受到修飾和系統化加工，並且被文化和宗教賦以神話論。神話中的上帝與人間女子的交合便體現出強大的文化和宗教對性本身的信念理解。類似的故事從父系社會中流傳下來，意味着子承父業的繁衍。強大的男子希望控制女性的繁殖權，他們也能夠做到。上帝賜給他們權力並且成爲典範。他們爲此建立了懲罰機制，尤其對於婦女，那些要違反正確規律的人。

The miraculous conception stories I listed may have roots in pre-history, in early religions centered on star worship and the agricultural cycle, but they emerged in modern form during the Iron Age. By this time in history, most women were chattel. Like children, livestock and slaves, they were literally possessions of men, and their primary economic and spiritual value lay in their ability to produce purebred offspring of known lineage. The men at the top owned concubines and harams, and virgin females were counted among the spoils of war. (See, for example, the Old Testament story of the virgin Midianites in which Yahweh commands the Israelites to kill the used women but keep the virgin girls for themselves.)

我列出的這些神話故事或許紮根於史前時代，早期的宗教以人神崇拜和世代農耕爲中心，但在石器時代融入了現代的形式。在那段歷史時期，大多數婦女作爲貨品，像兒童、工具和奴隸一般，他們幾乎是屬於男性的財產，他們基本的經濟和意識形態價值在於是否具有能夠爲名門望族進行生育的能力。高高在上的男人們妻妾成羣，處女們被當做戰爭中的戰利品。（例如，舊約故事中，耶和華命令以色列士兵殺死米甸人中已爲人婦的女子，而留下處女爲其享用。）

It was also a time when gods picked favorites and meddled in the affairs of tribes and nations, and great men were born great. Small wonder, then, that so many powerful men claimed powerful paternity. In the tradition of the ancient Hebrews, this took the form of an obsession with lineage and pure, favored bloodlines. Writers of the Hebrew Bible trace the genealogy of King David back to Abraham, for example, and the genealogy of Abraham to the first man, Adam. In the Greek and Roman worlds, entitlement claims took the form of assigning supernatural paternity to public figures. The Christian tradition, somewhat awkwardly, tries to lay claim to both of these—tracing the lineage of Jesus through his father Joseph back to King David, while simultaneously denying that he had a human father.

還是在那個時期，上帝來挑選喜歡的東西，並且插手部落和宗族事務，使得偉大男人天生便偉大。因此，很多強權男人們可以憑藉父輩擁有權力。在古老的希伯萊傳統中，以血統和純粹的天賦血脈而擁有權力。希伯萊聖經的作者們將戴維大帝的族譜追溯到亞伯拉罕身上。例如，亞伯拉罕傳承到下一代是亞當。在希臘和羅馬世界，皇權天賦凌駕於普通大衆之上。基督傳統有些尷尬，試圖將耶穌的血統追溯到其父親耶和華以及戴維大帝的身上，而同時否認耶穌有一個人類父親。

This is the context for the miraculous conception stories, and in this context, the consent of a woman is irrelevant. Within a society that treats female sexuality as a male possession, the only consent that can be violated is the consent of a woman's owner, the man with the rights to her reproductive capacity—typically her father, fiancé, or husband. Many Christians are surprised when told that nowhere in the Bible, either Old Testament or New, does any writer say that a woman's consent is necessary or even desirable before sex.

這構成了這些神話的背景。在這種背景下，取得婦女同意無關緊要。在一個把婦女的性權利當做男人財產看待的年代，唯一需要同意的便是婦女的主人，男人們有權主宰婦女的生育，通常是她的父親、未婚夫或丈夫。很多基督徒感到吃驚，因爲在聖經中，無論是舊約還是新月，沒有任何作者寫道在與婦女交歡前需要取得他們的同意。

This omission is more than regrettable, it is tragic. Two thousand years after Hebrew and Aramaic texts were assembled into the modern Jewish Bible, 1600 years after a Roman Catholic committee voted books in and out of the Christian Bible, 1400 years after Muhammad wrote the Koran (which draws heavily on the moral framework of the Judeo-Christian tradition), we still struggle with the question of female consent. Our struggle is made immeasurably harder by the presence of ancient texts that have become modern idols— texts that put God's name on men's desires.

這種疏漏非常令人遺憾，造成了悲劇。希伯萊和阿拉伯教義合併成現代猶太聖經後已經過去了2000年，羅馬天主教委員會表決選用聖經已經過去了1600年，穆罕穆德完成古蘭經（很大程度上借鑑了猶太教與天主教的共同道德經典）已經過去了1400年，我們還在爲徵求婦女同意這一問題而苦苦鬥爭。古老的經文直到今天也是崇拜的對象，它們以神的名義爲男人的慾望背書，這使得我們不得不付出多得多的努力。

The most extreme example may be a document published by the Islamic State, outlining rules for the treatment of sexual slaves, rules drawn from the Koran. Closer to home for most Americans is the awkward but widespread existence of Christian leaders who teach that a woman's glory is in childbearing, and that a woman who fails to service her husband whenever he desires is failing to serve God.

最爲極端的例子莫過於伊斯蘭國家頒佈的法令，古蘭經的條文規定對待性奴的處理方法。說到底，大多數美國人會有些尷尬，但基督教領袖們廣泛宣揚婦女們最高榮耀是生育子孫，而且沒能在丈夫有需求的時候服侍好丈夫的女人，也是對上帝的忠實。

But even closer to home for many is the shocking prevalence on college campuses and in society at large of sexual manipulation and coercion perpetrated by males who otherwise seem morally intact. One can't help but notice that a large number of high-profile cases involve high-status males: fraternity members, a famous actor, a radio host, small-town football stars and big-league professional athletes—men, in other words, who think they are gods. These men are so convinced of their own deific qualities, they believe the object of their attentions has gotta want it—and if she doesn't, well, that's fine too, because when a god wants a woman, consent isn't really part of the story.

但進一步觸及痛處，令很多美國人震驚的是放眼國內，美國高校和社會中存在大量男性性侵和強制猥褻事件，而且實施者表面上看卻並非作惡多端，行爲下流之人。我們不禁要注意到，大量廣受注目的案件發生在知名男性身上，包括：大學兄弟會成員、著名演員、廣播主持人、小鎮足球明星以及大聯盟球星。換句話說，認爲自己是上帝的男人們，非常自信自己具備神一般的素質，以至於他們相信自己所關注的目標會願意讓他們爲所欲爲。如果她不願意，那麼好吧，因爲傳說中上帝需要女人時是不需要徵得同意的。