Adam and Eve is an origin story for humanity, how the hell would Adam and Steve make any sense as an origin story?!
Polygamy was the standard for Near East civilizations; I’m willing to bet that Judaism adopted monogamy as a result of Greek, and later Roman, influence.
Well then, you’ve answered your own question. Polygamy was not only permitted, it was required under circumstances which would have occurred fairly frequently in Israel after the Exodus, when there was a lot of fighting, and student deferments were tough to get.
If you were in Ancient Greece, you might write about Adam and Steve (and Adam’s wife, Eve).
Off-topic: Not only that – it doesn’t even tell us which kind of fruit it was that Eve ate. It just says “fruit.” Could have been an apple, could have been a grape, a fig, a pomegranate – who knows. Speculation abounds.
On-topic: I am yet to hear of a Biblical verse which explicitly condemns polygamy. (No, Mark 10:7-8 doesn’t count.)
Sure but Steve is pretty irrelevant, unless he is also fathering kids with Eve.
Were Adam and Eve even married?
Getting back to the OP…
When we discuss the definition of words, context is extremely important. The concept of polygamy has been mentioned several times in this thread. But just as “marriage” might mean different things to different people, so too might “polygamy” mean different things to different people. And we must be extremely careful to take nothing for granted.
Specifically: Suppose a man has two wives. That situation might exist under two very different constructions. (A) There might be two separate marriages, such as where John married Jane, and in a separate ceremony he married Sally. (B) Or, we might be talking about a group marriage, where the three of them all married each other together.
It seems to me that the group marriage is clearly inconsistent with the idea of “one man one woman”, but it could be argued that the two separate marriages would not be inconsistent with it.
Here’s another way of phrasing what I’m trying to say: If a law would be enacted defining marriage as “one man and one woman”, that would not necessarily make the anti-bigamy laws obsolete, depending on how they are phrased.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said he was “big” on the topic, but he was quite clear that is was a sin. In Matthew 19, as SageeRat posted, and repeated in Mark 10 and Luke 16. In The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 he expanded adultery to include lust and to illustrate how serious adultery is said to avoid lust to pluck out your eye because it’s better to lose a part of your body than go to hell. Then he followed that with a talk about divorce=adultery.
I have asked and so far none have able to show me which then leads to them telling me that since I’m not a Christian I don’t know what I am talking about. However I was raised as a Christian and I have read the Bible and I’ve not seen ‘marriage’ defined anywhere, but I could have missed it.
But that only says Jesus was against no fault divorce, not divorce. Divorce is A-OK when infidelity is involved.
No offense, but this is exactly the kind of non-answer I didn’t want.
However it does bring up another question, circumcision is required for Jewish and Muslim men, is there any place in the Bible where circumcision is required of Christian men? Is it even mentioned at all?
It is often mentioned.
Circumcision is not required of Christian men.
I Corinthians 7:18-19:
A discussion of that issue is found in Acts chs 11 & 15.
And in Acts 16:3, Paul circumcised Timothy (possibly to avoid confrontation with Jews?)
I live in Maryland and I wonder why they aren’t going up against the crabbing industry as well.
People will tell me that the Bible defines marriage as one man and one woman while they are chowing down on a big pile of steamed crabs.
Lots of things to respond to here, I’ll start with the OP:
In Jewish law, this comes from Deuteronomy 24:1 (NIV translation provided), “If a man marries (literally: takes) a woman.” It is from this passage that the laws of marriage (in Judaism) are based, and the verse says a singular man, and a singular woman.
The Bible does not mandate that males be married to only one woman. However, a “marriage” is only between one man and one woman, and a man may have many marriages simultaneously. Polygamy in Jewish law is not a single multiple-participant relationship; it’s multiple two-participant relationships. In practical terms, if a polygamous man wants to divorce one of his wives, it does not legally affect the status of the other wives, nor does the act require their input in any way, as their marriages to him are distinct relationships.
Since male polygamy is permitted by Biblical law, if a brother dies childless, his widow may marry one of the other brothers (assuming she’s not forbidden to him for other reasons) even if they are all already married.
Saint Cad:
The opt-out clause would have been his prerogative, but he did not desire to exercise it, so it was irrelevant to the story - he wanted to have sex with her but did not want to get her pregnant in his brother’s name, so he went ahead with he ceremony, and then backed out in the middle of the act. For the selfishness of this attitude, he was punished.
Sudden Kestrel:
The brother-in-law marriage only applies to women (and, for that matter, men) who are capable of bearing (and begetting) children.
Alessan:
Not quite; Judaism didn’t adopt monogamy until about 1000 years ago, under an edict by Rabbi Gershom Me’or Hagolah, who was the pre-eminent Rabbi of France and Germany in the 10th century. And in fact this edict wasn’t accepted by Jews of Eastern lands; the Sephardim consented to abide by it only upon the establishment of the modern State of Israel, and in fact, some polygamous marriages of refugees from Arab lands were allowed to stand in the State of Israel as having been “grandfathered” in.
It’s quite clear that none of you bothered to actually read the passages in question. Divorce, in and of itself, is not necessarily a sin–it depends on the circumstances.
What IS a sin, however, is remarrying while the divorced spouse is still alive.
Matthew 19:9–
And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.
Mark 10:11-12–
And he saith unto them, Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.
Luke 16:18–
Whosoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another, committeth adultery: and whosoever marrieth her that is put away from her husband committeth adultery.
And incidentally–there are an awful lot of people who claim to be Christians who are no such thing–in large part because they are divorced and remarried while their first spouse is still alive.
Define Bible. I think that the old testament certainly does not condemn polygamy and concubines and so on, but the new one may well do so. It seems to me that Christians ignore whatever in the old testament they don’t like. E.g., they eat pork and shellfish, they do not honor the sabbath and so on. (I should mention that Sunday is not the sabbath and early Christianity did not have a standard day of worship.)
Study and a lot of research helps, or makes it as clear as mud, whichever. I have used this site to help with some of the tougher questions. Hope it may help.
but remember that the translation of hebrew to english sometimes leads to misunderstatements.
Maybe legally; culturally, I suspect that the post-Hellenic Jews considered monogamy the social norm. IIRC, the Hasmoneans (who despite their politics, were largely Hellenized), were all monogamous.
Hoo hah! “I wasn’t unfaithful to you, dear - I was being serially faithful one woman at a time.”
My great-grandfather was supposedly a Talmudic scholar, so I love that kind of reasoning.