So why is polygamy considered morally wrong? Why is it outlawed?
Is there any Biblical injunction against polygamy which forms the basis for our laws? Or did the ban on polygamy arise as a non-religious cultural taboo?
In the Old Testament, polygamy is completely permitted (except for incetuous polygamy, e.g., marrying two sisters). It was, however, discouraged, because few men could properly provide (both physically and emotionally) the needs of more than one woman.
It wasn’t until approximately the tenth century that Jews (specifically, Rabbi Gershom, the leading Rabbi in Western Eurpoe at the time) prohibited the practice, and the reason for it was entirely due to pressures from the Christian community.
So it’s to Christians that I look for an answer…
Like I have the time and energy for more than one! :D:D
I read something somewhere by a man living in the Middle East that you need to marry 1 or 4 women. Two and three are a death sentence.
Two women will fight amongst each other for primacy and pull you in the middle.
When there’s three women two will gang up on one and ostracize her.
With four or more the political dynamics are complicated enough to be constantly in flux so peace is achieved since no one woman ever gains the upper hand for long.
[OT]
This theory can also equate to western dating. Assuming you’re likable enough you can pickup a woman alone in a bar OR a woman in a group of four or more. Women in groups of two or three you can forget.
When there are two women one won’t leave her friend alone.
When there are three women one won’t leave because she knows the other two will talk behind her back.
Four or more and again the dynamics are mixed enough that one woman can be peeled away from the group.
It is the considered opinion of myself and the people I have spoken to this about that this effect is not a social phenomena but rather a fundamental law of the Universe essentially forming an unbreakable physical bond.
If you think this is wrong test it. If you actually succeed in disproving this theory then my answer is you’re the exception that proves the rule (how’s that for covering my bases!).
[/OT]
In the NT, (I Timothy 3:12 & Titus 1:6), it is specified that the leaders of the church be monogamous. Presumably, this was due to the time & energy issues that AWB mentioned.
WAG: An Elder & Deacon are people of high spiritual quality (ideally). We all aspire to high spiritual quality (assuming the Christian mindset). Therefore, one step toward this could be monogamy. Note that Paul did not say that people who had more than one spouse were wrong. Just that they were not suited to the demands of church leadership.
Why polygamy became an injunction and not just a recommendation, I don’t know.
Tinker
I’ve heard that the catholic church came out against it mainly to keep families from growing too powerful with strategic arranged marriages. IIRC, this was a reason marriages among cousins was not allowed, in addition to some more esoteric rules, all designed to prevent dynasty-like families from overpowering the local rule.
Arjuna34
Is it just my western prejudices or does polygamy have a slightly decadent aura about it? I am thinking mostly about the Turkish Sultans. In the polygamous societies mentioned is anybody other than the very well off able to indulge in polygamy?
That said, it is to the near apes that I would look for the answer. There are taboos that, to an alien would look inexplicable, such as incest and polygamy. But to humans, they are anywhere from wrong to reprehensible.
All speculation from here on. Gorilla bands have a dominant male that mates with all the females (including daughters) and drives off any other adult male until he loses a fight. I believe that often the loser’s children are killed by the victor.
Whatever made us humans had something to do with long-term pair bonding, (year round female sexual receptivity, an extended period of juvenile helplessness, possibly the male-female division of labor).
So probably very early on, humans took the pair-bonded nuclear family route and the great apes kept the dominant male with indiscrimant mating within his harem route.
I believe the early Australopithecines made fun of any Australopithecine who kept a number of females and violated the new incest prohibition, calling them monkeys or apes, telling them to go back to the trees with the other proto-gorillas. This peer pressure eventually became hard wired into our brains as an adversion to polygamy and incest and we became at least serial monogamists.
I don’t know that it’s explicitly mentioned in the OT, but I think it’s certainly implied (i.e. one man/one woman created). If it was explicitly mentioned, it certainly was bent a lot… look at King David, a man after God’s own heart!
As for the NT, it’s mentioned several times that there should be a one to one correspondance between husbands and wives. A futher reason behind this is the idea that the marriage between a man and a woman is supposed to be a representative twin of the symbolic marriage of Jesus and the Church.
giggle I sound like a database programmer!
cmkeller:
Didn’t Jacob marry two sisters, Rachel and Leah? That whole married-the-wrong-sister, waiting seven years and then married-the-right-sister thing?
Let’s forget human morals and the Bible for a moment and look at it from a strictly practical viewpoint.
Monogamy has a socioeconomic advantage that polygamy lacks.
Back when we weren’t much more than monkeys you could do the ‘leader of the pack’ thing and maintain a harem. Usually fights for dominance were resolved without too much harm to either male. Tough luck for the other male monkeys that lost.
Then you get smart monkeys. Slowly it becomes apparent that physical strength alone won’t do the trick combined with a willingness to kill your rivals as opposed to just roughing them up a bit. You’re bigger than me? I’ll just wait till no one is looking and push you off the cliff or I’ll wait in a tree with a big rock and drop it on your head (rocks eventually giving way to ambushes with knives and eventually guns). No longer can the ‘big’ monkey dominate an entire harem. The other male monkeys intend to get some and get some they will.
I’d maintain that the quest to get laid is the primary motivating factor behind the advancement of society. Think about it. You want to get some and unless you’re a rapist you need to show women that you’re desirable. How do you do that? Well, you want it to appear that you’re the equivalent of the strongest monkey on the block which is now done by the accumulation of wealth which is generally only achieved by working harder or smarter than the next guy. Voila…guys are running around dreaming up new inventions and ways to make money…society/human knowledge advances.
In a polygamist society you, as a male, have less chance to nab a woman than in a monogamus society. In the polygamist society a relatively few men snap-up the women leaving a smaller field for the rest to fight over (and presumably a less desirable field as well since the rich guys are going to pick from the cream of the crop). Somewhere near the bottom guys are going to fall out of the race and hence have less desire to achieve much on their own. Making just enough money to go home, get drunk and buy some porno to masturbate to will do them just fine.
In a monogamist society the line where guys drop off the bottom is much lower. There is a roughly one-to-one numerical pairing in the society. The women want to get laid as much as the guys do so they grab the best they can hope for and settle for that (the ‘stronger’ women having already picked from the top…a pecking order sort of thing).
As a result all but the biggest losers can hope that someday they can improve their lot and pick a choicer mate. Western society holds out the potential for ANYONE to achieve this. Even if you do nothing you can always get lucky and win a lottery and even if you’re still a major loser boy you can now afford to pay for ‘services’ if nothing else.
In the end these sort of ‘practical’ societal aids drift into religion or laws as a way to enforce the behavior so society as a whole prospers.
Five:
Yes, but that was prior to the revelation of the law at Sinai, so that restriction was not yet extant.
Chaim Mattis Keller
I’m more curious as to why women would go along with this at all.
There’s certainly nothing decadent about the creepy polygamists of Utah.
As a female serial monogamist, I’ll add my $.02
I can think of many times when it would be nice if it was someone else’s turn. Sharing a husband with several others would mean that I’d have more time to focus on only my own selfish interests. Kinda like when he travels - I don’t have to consider anyone’s preferences other than my own. I can dine on the foods he hates and listed to the music he hates without feeling that I’m imposing my will on him. There would be predictable periods of solitude punctuated by predictable periods of togetherness.
Hmmm… Having a part time companion & mate could be just the ticket.
“Polygamy is one wife too many. Monogamy is the same” - Oscar Wilde
My favorite author, Sir Richard F. Burton, who visited many cities in the Middle East (and made a famous undercover pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, posing as a Muslim doctor), journeyed out to Salt Lake City in part to investigate reports of polygamy there. Burton was very familiar with polygamy in the Middle East, and his interest was not the prurient interest of the sensationalistic press. He also wanted to look into Mormonism. His book, “The City of the Saints”, is probably the most sympathetic book on Mormonism at the time to be written by a non-Mormon.
On the other hand, his comments amount to “it’s not any more absurd than any other religion”, so he’s not more widely cited. He also saw Mormon polygamy as more puritanical than Muslim polygamy. I should in fairness add that recent critiques of Burton note that, while his evidence suggests that polygamy was very sex-positive from a male point of view, the women would probably not have seen it as so very wonderful.
A very interesting and useful book is “Harem: The World behind the Veil”. I don’t recall the author, but it is by the grand-daughter of a woman who lived in a harem. Profusely illustrated.
From the accounts I’ve seen on TV (newsmagazines doing interviews with people pro and con, that kind of thing), it struck me that the women advocating polygamy were unwilling to become entirely adult. They preferred the “girls’ dorm” atmosphere of a house with many women. Also, I would imagine that polygamy relieves a lot of the pressure to relate to your spouse and accomodate differences. So, based on this admittedly limited information, I personally find the system to be bad for the women. Also, people against polygamy claim that it encourages child molestation - 12 year old girls getting married and so forth.
However, I have recently been asking myself, “If my philosophy is that consenting adults can do what they want, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else, on what basis can I object to polygamy?” If separate laws against child and spousal abuse are upheld, I really don’t see any reason to outlaw this practice.
Well, from this woman’s point of view, I’m sure not interested in a “dorm” atmosphere. What appeals to me is the part time spouse part of it.
I don’t need someone to support me. I do like 99% of the aspects of marriage. A couple of weeks a month would be just fine - sort of like a joint custody agreement - especially if the other wife/wives were in another part of the country.
The reason it was originally outlawed is still valid- to keep individual families from getting too powerful. This is also the point of the estate tax. I suppose you could rework the tax laws to work around polygamy, though, if you worked at it.
Arjuna34