Dr Paul Allen

Bathsheba was ‘raped’ by King David — a violation that went against her will. Most Bible scholars, leave this situation vaguer and simply say David committed adultery with her, leaving her volition ambiguous, maybe even suggesting that she was a willing participant in the sin.  Is there any evidence in the Bible of whether Bathsheba was willing or unwilling?   David's power as a male king over her, a subject, would immediately classify this as a rape, even if she put up no resistance. Are there any pointers for us in the text itself?” There are pointers that David exerted a kind of pressure on her to warrant the accusation of rape. The act couldn’t be consensual given the power dynamics at play. It is possible for a woman to be sinfully complicit in committing adultery with a very powerful man. There is no evidence for that in this text. He Took Her There are two indications that David threw his weight around — threw his power, his influence, his position — in such a way as t...

Adultery or Rape? What happened between David and Bathsheba? I’ve been looking at a number of different scholarly works on this question over the last few days, and I have found a great deal of help in an article written by Alexander Abasili titled “Was It Rape?: The David and Bathsheba Pericope Re-Examined.” This article gets pretty deep into the weeds. Abisili is doing careful work in the Hebrew and Greek texts, so those trained in biblical languages are probably in the best position to benefit from Abasili’s work. In this article, Abasili argues that much of the debate among commentators is due to varying definitions of the term “rape.” He argues that modern definitions of rape differ from that found in the Old Testament. He writes: Some of the opposing views of exegetes are caused by the imposition of today’s definition of rape upon the narrative of 2 Sam 11-12. [pp. 2-3] In the Hebrew Bible, the concept of coerced sexual relationships is not as wide and all-e...