What do you mean?

Now, this is interesting (at least to me). Apparently, without conferring with me, there is an argument going on amongst Christians as to whether David committed adultery with Bathsheba or rape. Alexander Abasili has written a paper on it to demonstrate that the definition of "rape" in the Bible is not the same as the definition of "rape" today. According to Abasili, biblical rape only occurs when a man uses physical force. In our modern version, rape occurs when consent is not given. Thus, what David did with Bathsheba may have included the force of his office, but in biblical terms it wouldn't have been classified as rape. (I'm not here to solve the question; I'm just reporting the argument.)

It was interesting to me because when I started pursuing the question from the direction of defining rape, I found out that we've redefined it. According to the Justice Department, in 2012 the government redefined rape as "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." The original definition was "the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will." You can see in the original definition only a woman could be raped and in the new definition it is "the victim." In the original version it was "forcibly and against her will" and in the new one it is "without consent." (There is an interesting discussion of the evolution of the term in U.S. rape laws here.)

I don't know if you recognize the difficulty here. It is the same difficulty those debating the issue of David and Bathsheba face. In the original definition here in America, force was required to commit rape, just as it was in the biblical definition. Today, we no longer limit rape to that definition. Well, actually, we've redefined "force" to include any sort of coercion at all. In the original version it was "against her will" and in the new it is "without consent," which is actually not the same thing. The former is a negative and the latter is a positive. The "against her will" requires a "no" answer and "without consent" requires a "yes" answer. (Part of the reason for that is that some are incapable of giving consent. For instance, people below legal age of consent cannot give consent no matter how many times they say, "Yes.") The new definition specifies, "Physical resistance is not required on the part of the victim to demonstrate lack of consent."

Mind you, I'm not saying the new definition is wrong, bad, or unwarranted. Not at all. I'm simply pointing out, as I appear to do too often, that our words change their meaning. It is not fair to change the meaning of a word from "then" to "now" and then reapply our new definition to "then." As the Justice Department document points out, "Because the new definition is more inclusive, reported crimes of rape are likely to increase." And the unavoidable conclusion is sure to be, "Rape is on the increase." Or "David raped Bathsheba." I use this just as an appropriate illustration of an ongoing problem for us these days. Two people use a word together, one changes the meaning and reapplies that meaning to the other, and we have a major disagreement. Over a word. I'm not saying it won't or even shouldn't. I'm saying be aware of it. "What do you mean?" is a really good question even if it is rarely asked.