Polygamy is essentially slavery. The early Hebrews did all sorts of things that we wouldn’t do now, and in fact God educated them away from these things as He gradually built His Chosen People. The Old Testament is essentially the story of this, and it is clear that polygamy was one of the things that God led the Jews away from.
Few people understand how much Christianity has done for women. Coming into cultures where women were part of a herd owned by the more powerful men (because polygamy also means that there are some less powerful men who will never have a chance to marry), Christianity freed them essentially by treating them as individuals who had free will, an independent existence, and who deserved to love and be loved individually, as one woman by one man, bringing the beautiful imagery of the Old Testament into these brutal cultures.
This has completely transformed the lives of women, who because they are physically weaker and also bound to their children do not have the power in a primitive culture to resist polygamy/slavery without the support of the different world-view that is embodied in the Gospels. It’s interesting that all rejections of Christianity immediately go back to a primitive tribal culture. This includes Islam and Mormonism, the private “revelations” of individual wackos who essentially dumped Christianity and Judaism to legitimize their personal desires - for women, wealth, or conquest - in a faux version of the Old Testament. This means that the power of the group’s leader is all-controlling, decisions are made by a select few as the result of secret visions, slavery is practiced, including the enslavement of women in polygamy, blood fueds resume, and essentially the culture is a complete rejection of the individual-based, natural law infused culture brought by Christianity as it extended God’s message to the Jews to include the Gentiles as well.
Many of the things that the Jews were weaned away from would fall nowadays under the catchall expression, "values of the marketplace". Sometimes the markets are not your friend.
John Bunyan referred to worldly values frequently in his Pilgrim's Progress as impediments to the pilgrim. Worldliness was a particular concern of Reformation-era English Protestants.
Few people understand how much Christianity has done for women. Coming into cultures where women were part of a herd owned by the more powerful men (because polygamy also means that there are some less powerful men who will never have a chance to marry), Christianity freed them essentially by treating them as individuals who had free will, an independent existence, and who deserved to love and be loved individually, as one woman by one man, bringing the beautiful imagery of the Old Testament into these brutal cultures.Thank you for posting this. The writer of the posted piece is either a moron or a marxist. Why would a marxist praise polygamy? Simple. They are enraged at the end of the Soviet Union and are trying everything they know, including supporting muzzies, to bring down western civilization.
That's why the hags & btches of NOW never say a word about the slaughter, mutilation and slavery of muzzie women around the globe.
And that's why the slimey disgusting skank who wrote this piece cares not a whit about the implications that polygamy has for the freedeom and liberty of women everywhere.
How paganly ignorant can you get!!!!!!!!!!!! [The very wording of the Ten Commandments presupposed theft, adultery, murder, envy, coveting, idolatry, misuse of the tongue, workaholism, and the like! That doesn't mean any of these practices were great Biblical traditional "heritages" to follow!!!]
This is what happens when liberals try to impose their lifestyles over the Bible & cut & paste only minute portions of it to evaluate.
From the article: The hypocrisy of the monogamist majority reached its height in the denial (often heard in Congress) that there could be a serious religious argument for polygamy: hypocrisy, because the monogamists were denying their own heritage. Joseph Smith did not pull polygamy out of the air. He found it in the Old Testament, where many patriarchs are represented as polygamous. Yet in 1878, the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold an anti-polygamy statute...So the justices did not see themselves as repudiating their biblical heritage, although this is precisely what they were doing.)
Many?
(1) Jacob, who was deceived into entering the practice of polygamy.
(2) Many mistake Abraham for a polygamist, but he slept with "the help" for one night for surrogacy purposes, and after doing so, none of the biblical narrators or commentators ever refence Hagar as anything but either a slave or servant (and that lineup is pretty impressive, for it includes Abraham himself, Hagar herself, Sarah herself, Moses as author, the apostle Paul, and even the Angel of the Lord--whom some say was the appearing of the pre-incarnate Son of God!).
(3 & 4) That leaves David & Solomon...Solomon was judged for allowing his heart to be led astray by foreign wives (1 Kings 11:3-4, 9-11), which God warned would happen because of polygamy (Deut. 17:17)...David was judged for his affair with Bathsheba and lost an infant son over it...and with David, it's not clear which wives died when, and some of them were concubines who slept with his adult son, Absalom...so if the behavior of David's concubines was worth emulating, then I'd guess the "biblical heritage" Nussbaum is talking about should = servant help sleeping with family members!!!
(5) (Of course, some others did practice polygamy in OT times, but I wouldn't reference them as the pillar "patriarchs")
Polygamy is essentially slavery. The early Hebrews did all sorts of things that we wouldn’t do now, and in fact God educated them away from these things as He gradually built His Chosen People. The Old Testament is essentially the story of this, and it is clear that polygamy was one of the things that God led the Jews away from. [Livius]
Well, when this author claims that 19th century monogamists were denying their own heritage, the fact is monogamy was indeed the standard for both old & new testament times:
OLD: Deut. 17:17 & Gen. 2:23-25 + implied by Hebrew laws in Ex. 20:17; 21:5; Lev. 18:8,16-20; 20:10; Num. 5:12; Deut. 5:21.
NEW: Monogamy practiced as "THE" standard: 1 Tim. 3:2,12; Titus 1:5-7; 1 Cor. 7:2; Matt. 19.
Excellent post!
Bookmark, great post!
Great post. That’s a keeper.