Posted on 05/29/2005 6:21:09 PM PDT by Coleus
I believe the authors points are well taken too.
Bump.
Long but interesting read!
Minor point...
Polygyny - - one man many wives.
Polyandry - - one woman many husbands.
Polygamy - - any combination thereof, including homosexuality and pederasty.
The main issue (I do agree with the general arguments of the article) I see is the ongoing, perpetual struggle between the forces of Paganism and the Judaic.
This violent struggle from the very beginning of human history is manifested, only in part, by sexuality...
Pagan Babylon, pagan Egypt, pagan Greece, pagan Rome, pagan Islam, pagan National Socialism, pagan Marxism, pagan neo-Islam (once again), and modern neo-pagan New Agers.
Mosaic Law is the foundation of Western Civilization, it is something that neither the pagan Islamic thugs or the neo-pagan Left can abide and seek to destroy... they both seem to be on the same side, don't they?
Your loss.
The Torah was a stroke of genius. In this concise handbook, Moses gave the Jews an identity, a moral code, and above all he set them apart from their masters, the Egyptians who treated the Pharaoh as a god. Moses’ single greatest contribution is to set God above man, and made certain that no man was a god. I don't even recall any Jewish Kings in the Torah. Order was kept through the Levities (an early version of lawyers). This does not translate into a JEWISH concept of MARRIAGE is the greatest thing to reach the planet and thereby lifted the Jews and subsequently the Christians to a higher level of success as espoused in the Catholic article. Jews could have more than one wife. They could own slaves. This was the way of the times.
The idea that God is the supreme authority did have some influence in holding back societies from treating Kings and Emperors as deities. However, most western monarch's achieved their goals by brute force. Quite often they didn’t care about God, they just killed their enemies. It was the re-emergence of Classical thought that launched Europe to a level beyond anywhere else in the world. It was the same classical thought that created the Roman Empire and taught Alexander the Great how to think. The early Roman farmer could own property and could own weapons to defend their land. He was free unlike medieval Christian serfs. He did have Aristotle as a teacher. Aristotle taught how to think in a straight line whereas most of the world used circular reasoning, which is a basic mode of thinking in Christian thought. Western Europe ascended principally as a result in advances in science. This gave them wealth which in turn gave them more time to refine culture.
Christ’s contribution to Judaism was to make the Jewish Bible universally available to everybody. He spent much of his time irritating Rabbis who were ingratiating themselves rather than doling out wisdom and guidance to followers. Christ spent much time rebelling against established order, but he also asked his followers to follow his order. He also asked people to give up their property and go with him. He never got married so far as I know. I could say this about many of today’s socialists.
To blame the success of Western Europe solely on Moses and Christ, but ignore the heathen Greeks and Romans does a real disservice to intellectual thought. It is pure Catholic dogma that flies in the face of experience. I do seem to recall that secular law had to be made in America to prevent Mormons from practicing their version of Christianity that reaches back to the days when men could have more than one wife.
It became customary around the time of Ezra says some - but it was the Christian church which introduced it - and the pagan Greeks and Romans were monogomous since recorded history.
Very true. I agree with you, but with regard to the Greeks and Romans, the problem was that they had a very limited view of who qualified as a "person" under their law. Slaves and members of other lower orders weren't considered legal people, which is what led to the famous slave rebellions.
Judaism, however, regarded any Jew as a person. Obviously, there were class differences and there were certain heirarchical differences in families (those who were priests and those who were not). However, the reason that somebody like Jesus - who was a nobody - could go into the Temple and teach was that he was a Jew. Obviously, the "regulars" at the Temple, who were probably well-off and considered themselves scholars, were a little annoyed by this. But they couldn't stop him, because he was a Jew and therefore a person.
What Christianity did was extend this to all of humanity.
Well, not in the Law of Moses. Many examplary persons described in the Old Testament had more than one wife and it was acceptable thing. It was the Christians who raised the moral requirement (yes, closer to the standards of Paradise) and they they were imitated by the rest of mankind.
Because it's "icky?"
Mark
You are confusing the worship of pagan idols with the veneration of sacred images like the ones in the First Temple.
"So Solomon overlaid the house within with pure gold: [...]
And within the oracle he made two cherubims of olive tree, each ten cubits high.
And five cubits was the one wing of the cherub, and five cubits the other wing of the cherub: from the uttermost part of the one wing unto the uttermost part of the other were ten cubits.
And the other cherub was ten cubits: both the cherubims were of one measure and one size.
The height of the one cherub was ten cubits, and so was it of the other cherub.
And he set the cherubims within the inner house: and they stretched forth the wings of the cherubims, so that the wing of the one touched the one wall, and the wing of the other cherub touched the other wall; and their wings touched one another in the midst of the house.
And he overlaid the cherubims with gold.
And he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved figures of cherubims"
No, it is the Law of New Testament combined with the learning of the Greeks and statecraft of the Romans which is the foundation of Western Civilization. Give me one example where the Mosaic Law took precedence before Christian doctrine. Not in the case of poligamy!
That the sense of him was Hellenize by Paul (though also a Jew), and carried into "gospel" form of which he was unaware doesn't alter that history from which he drew fluently in his lifetime.
Thus he also would have had some sense of Deuteronomy 4:19 and Malachi 1:11 (prior to their numerated versification of course.)
All Good....
What this "Hellenization" by Saint Paul consisted of? Could you specify?
long, but geat article.
Not so. You are confused by the fact that the Old Testament does not condemn polygamy explicitly. You forget that the "intertestamentary period" was 400 years long. Jewish society changed and evolved during those four centuries. By the time of Jesus, polygamy was considered to be decidedly undesirable by the Jewish leadership and virtually all of the Jews.
will read later
You mean the perdiod in which the books of Bible later removed by the Jews and Protestants, were written? Like Books of Maccabees (where the Hanukkah is described) or Book of Sirach and others?
By the time of Jesus, polygamy was considered to be decidedly undesirable by the Jewish leadership and virtually all of the Jews.
Maybe they got "Hellenized"? :)
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