I’m not so certain of that. After all, there are any number of unions that are prohibited even though they are not blood relatives (one’s wife’s sister, one’s father’s wife, one’s brother’s wife, etc.) and shouldn’t have any greater chance of children with birth-defects than any other two people randomly thrown together.
But if that were true, then there would also be a prohibition on marrying a sterile woman or a post-menopausal woman. But no such prohibitions exist.
Zev Steinhardt
I don’t think there is any literal belief that the blood will make anyone spiritually unclean anymore. I think that Orthodox people now just regard the menstrual prohibition as being a hygenic instruction and possibly as a discouragement from non-procreative sex but I’m not really sure about that.
**Zev[/v] or cmkeller would really be the guys to ask about that. It’s a little too esoteric for me.
The problem here is one of translation.
When one comes in contact with certain objects, one becomes tamei. There is no English term that defines tamei, but I suppose “unclean” comes closest. However, it’s not a physical uncleanliness that is meant, but a form of spiritual uncleanliness.
For the most part, one can live one’s life in a state of being tamei with few impediments. If one is in a state of tumah one could not go to the Temple or eat consecrated foods. Otherwise, one was able to live one’s life perfectly normally. One did not have to leave society if he was tamei (although if one had tzara’as (a condition usually - and incorrectly - translated as leporsy which does cause tumah did have to leave society). One could conduct buisness, go about town, travel on the roads, etc. in a state of tumah.
Since, today, there is no Temple and there are no consecrated foods, there is no problem with being tamei. In fact, we are all today tamei mes (in a state of tumah * from coming in contact with the dead).
While a niddah (a menstruant woman) is in a state of tumah until she goes to the mikvah, aside from the prohibition on intercourse, there is no other legal “penalty” involved.
In short, we don’t have sex with our wives while they are in a state of niddah not out of fear or concern over tumah (since we are all tamei mes anyway) but simply out of our belief that God commanded us not to do so.
Zev Steinhardt
*Yes, I know that not everyone has come in direct contact with the dead, but that is not the only way to contract tumas mes.)
Is the implication here that we take Leviticus at all seriously in this day and age and the only exception we make is homosexuality? Read the book straight through sometime. About half of it is devoted to animal sacrifice in *excruciating * detail and another large portion to various states of cleanliness and uncleanliness (notably involving skin lesions and mildew) that few (some Orthodox Jews excepted) would even consider taking seriously.
With all due respect to believers, I honestly consider Leviticus to be one of the most bizarre texts I have ever read. And I don’t think it’s just because it’s ancient mores. Read the Code of Hammurabi for comparison. Hammurabi appears sensible if intolerant and brutal. Leviticus comes off as schizophrenic, OCD ravings.
You can make some sense of Leviticus by trying to make sociological analyses, but most of it will still remain opaque and apparently arbitrary I think.
The fact that there’s a law is more likely evidence that there’s no innate incest taboo. If it were so innate, what would you need a law for? Innate taboos would be things that people generally avoid despite there being no formal law forbidding them. Such as, I don’t know, coprophagia.
One theory to explain the prohobitions against marrying extended family members is that, if a tribal group gets too small, not being able to marry ones aunts and uncles will encourage you to look beyond your community for mates, thus bringing small groups with isolated gene pools in genetic contact with other groups and prevent them from becoming inbred.
Another, simpler, theory is that the Hebrews simply extended the incest taboo to extended family members because they felt sleeping with some, direct, family members was wrong, and then, of course not understanding the genetic basis of these taboos, extended that prohibition to all family members through association.
As for the OP, I would say that what parts of 4 we share are mainly because we share the incest taboo with the hebrews. 4q is only resisted by some members of our society, 4o really isn’t talked one way or another besides in locker rooms, and marrying your in-laws is generally accepted. The only other prohibition is the beastiality one.
Just because there’s a innate taboo doesn’t mean people won’t do it. After all, competing with that taboo is the innate human sex drive, which is pretty persistant. I would imagine brothers and sisters who either don’t have another outlet (witness the frequency of stories about isolated families up in the ozarks) or who aren’t raised with eachother are the primary offenders. I’d imagine even they probably have to overcome a certain “ewww” factor, but again compared to a fustrated sex drive thats probably a pretty small speed bump in some cases.
Look up the Westermarck effect. The evidence for it is pretty compeling.
Also, in reference to the OP, aren’t these polygomous families we’re talking about? I would think that that would be a pretty strong blow against the argument that the sexual mores of the ancient hebrews are that applicable to modern day Americans.
Ok lets see how I’m doing:
a. anyone of your family (I tried with my cousin… trying counts?)
n. a woman’s sister while still the woman is still alive
(did this once… wanted to do it a second time with another GF’s sister !)
o. a woman during her period (several times)
p. your neighbor’s wife (yup… and it was good)
Overall the most “dispensable” would be the “having period”. I think not having kids with your cousins would help some red necks too 
And it’s not just about becoming “inbred” – the proscriptions against sex with various in-laws such as the sisters of your still-living wife also have to do with the role of marriages and children as a form of establishing bonds and alliances between families, clans and tribes. While you do want to stay within the nation/greater tribe if at all possible (to avoid assimilation), you do not want a particular household/clan/subtribe to become totally insular and self-contained: you want them marrying folks from multiple other families in so that in a crisis, they’ll be obligated to come to each other’s help. OTOH, competing for mates with your own father-in-law or your own sister or your own grandparent can create serious frictions within the family/clan unit, and you want your in-laws’ extended family on good speaking terms with yours when the Phillistines show up.
Notice it lacks one proscription that is culturally ingrained among some modern Westerners: that against pairing off with your first cousin. This makes sense if you think that if you have two first cousins of marrying age, then the sibling parents would already be heads of separate households (or wives thereof). Now, those uncles and aunts (and their spouses) remain forbidden, because they still are in the line of authority/hierarchy in YOUR family even if they have started one of their own – but the cousins aren’t.
First cousins are actually allowed in the Levitical rules, unless the Rabbis put a fence around that.
If Leviticus were the only source for Biblical sexual morality, I admit I’d find it difficult to apply to Gentiles or to those of us in the Christian world, however, I think the primordial law of marriage is Genesis 2: 24- “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh”- heterosexual, outside the direct parent-child lineage and as much as possible outside the immediate family (the families of Adam & of Noah were special cases in which sibling marriage may have been allowed but only until the families became extended enough to marry more remote relatives), monogamous and for life (with divorce being allowed later because of human failings), oh yeah- and human-human L
The menstrual taboo- one could argue its application to Gentile Christians in Acts 15:29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well.
Thou
Nope. First cousin marriages are perfectly legal - as are uncle-neice marriages (although aunt-nephew marriages [both natural and by marriage] are forbidden).
Zev Steinhardt
Genetically they are dangerous though… retardation and other risks.
But it only truly becomes a major problem if there is a recurring pattern of cousin-marriage in a limited population pool… or, of course, if harmful recessive mutations are present to begin with in both bloodlines.
Otherwise an ocassional cousin-marriage here and there does not create as huge a degeneracy risk as often assumed. If a particular defect has an average 5 in 1000 incidence, doubling the risk barely gets you to 1 in 100.
General Questions is for questions with factual answers. There is no universal ethic, so there is no factual answer to your OP.
Feel free to open a thread in Great Debates.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
Oops.
o. is a no-no in the orthodox church as well. that would be a 1-??? in the christian column.
the simple rule for sex in the orthodox church would be no sex of any kind unless you are married. there are rules of what you can and cannot do sexually once you are married… o would be one of them.
Interesting that you consider roughly 700-600 BCE “primordial”.
De-lurking to ask: Zev, is this due to Judaism being passed down in a matriarchal line?
This is true, although it should be stated that this is not an absolute rule as in Judaism, but a longstanding pious tradition that may be modified or dispensed with at the discretion of one’s spiritual father.
RE your cite, I don’t agree with the JEDP Documentary Hypothesis.
I lean more to the ANAJMJS Documentary Hypothesis- that Genesis was a composite of records kept by Adam, Noah, Abraham and others, edited together by Joseph, revised by Moses, with explanatory passages added by various Scribes with final approval given by Ezra. I do believe that Gen 2-3 is an accurate record of the emergence of Adamic humanity- the first people to recognize God as Parent as us as His children, and in spite of this realization, to still break trust with Him. This would be at the latest around 4000 BC, but probably much earlier.
Whether or not, the Adamics were the only humans, or the first humans to have this Revelation and then spread it to the rest of humanity, I’m regard that as debatable.