Posted on 07/04/2015 2:11:54 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
That is an interesting subject. I’ll have to see what Rabbi Daniel Lapin says about this (American Alliance of Jews and Christians).
It may have allowed polygamy as an act of mercy, but it also mentioned many wrongs of Israel. The fact that it mentioned wrongs is not evidence of approval.
The prophets often mentioned that, because Israel chose to worship Baal, many curses was pronounced on the state of Israel. Polygamy may have been one of those curses because we know today that polygamy often makes a society more violent because it leaves many males without hope for a mate.
Rabbi Lapin says
“Years of slavery in Egypt damaged Jewish family life. For its very first ritual as a nation, God gathered the Israelites, not into political, tribal, gender, or labor groupings but into individual families. By asserting the bond between husband, wife and children, God was reestablishing the importance of the family as societys fundamental element. Hence, rule number one.”
In today’s modern world, with jet airplane and ship travel, how could “many males” in our society be left without hope for a mate? There are four countries I can think of, right off the top of my head, that contain HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of females willing to marry a Western male and no, Russia and the Ukraine are not on that list.
Females are more willing to share a mate than males are. If Western society permits widespread polygamy, there will be males somewhere that will not have mates. Non-mated males tend to be very risk oriented and will do things when they aren’t being kept in check by somebody.
Anyone who interprets their reading of The Bible “allowing” polygamy has a reading for comprehension problem. Polygamy stories ALWAYS go South and many of our wourld’s problems today can be traced straight as an arrow back to these disasters thousands of years ago.
Do you want me to list those four countries? It’d be easy to double that.
I think the Rabbi is saying that it isn’t proscribed.
Then you got nothing to worry about. Let us legalize polygamy.
Progress!
I’m already married and have been for some time.
Interesting speculation.
Regards,
Yeah, I get that, and the history he quotes supports him. Having read the Bible for myself a few times I have to say you having to really be trying to come up with “the Bible supports polygamy”.
Hardness of heart is also behind the example of the rabbi who married hundreds of women and provided them with food. There was a famine, the author says ... but obviously there was enough food, or the rabbi wouldn't have it for his wives. The problem was hardness of heart when it came to distribution ... and apparently nobody was willing to help a starving woman unless he got to use her for sex.
As I understood the story, they could not eat of the priest’s allotments unless they were in his family and marriage accomplished that, so that he “saved” 300 women.
That’s what it said. However, the fact is (according to the story), there was plenty of food. The food was concentrated in a few hands, rather than available to all.
It’s true, as a simple matter of economics, that one way to allocate food resources is for the man who controls them to use them to buy other people, but it’s difficult to consider that a religious ideal.
Again, it would seem that the rules say he cannot just pass out that temple food willy-nilly, but only to certain people, as it is a tithe.
Then the people who gave him the food needed to use it to feed the starving, instead. There’s a reason God said, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” The hard of heart will use any excuse not to help others.
Fortunately it was late '80s and I wasn't sent up for a Courts Martial....
Polygamy is evil. Justifications are BS. 300 wives to solve a famine problem? Really? The Rabbi had what? Massive grain silos? Sounds like Soviet-style socialism to me. He obviously didn’t work for those grain silos.
I realize that a lot of things happened in history that shouldn’t be judged by today’s standards. At the same time we shouldn’t bend over backwards to apologize for the bad behavior of ancient wrong-doers. If you have 300 wives you are a slave-holder. Ok so slavery was part of the ancient world, yes. But please don’t call it Good.
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