Posted on 12/16/2019 8:08:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Bible talks about polygamy but that doesn't mean God endorsed it, said Peter Gentry, a professor of Old Testament interpretation who stressed the importance of understanding historical narratives in Scripture.
In a video posted on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's YouTube channel on Monday, Gentry said readers must distinguish between what God commands versus how He treated His people and how His people, who were not faithful, treated Him.
"God is the one that designs marriage. God is the one who invents marriage. Marriage is not something invented by humans. God is the one who gives the first woman to the first man. God is the one who presides over that marriage ceremony," he explained.
Thus, in Genesis 2:24 when Moses writes of a man leaving his mother and father and clinging to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh, that is God's original standard, he said. Much of the Old Testament, however, is the documented history of God's covenantal relationship with his people.
"A covenant is like a marriage, where two parties make a commitment to be devoted to each other, to be loyal, to be faithful," he said, noting the Old Testament contains a series of these covenants.
Such covenants are where God makes new starts with people like Noah, with Abraham and his family, and with Israel. But history shows that the human partners in the covenants are the unfaithful, disloyal, and rebellious ones, a history where a constant violation of the original standard occurred, he said.
An example of this is how Abraham did not trust God or wait for His promise of a son, and then has a relationship with Hagar, yielding Ishmael. Another is Jacob's relationship with two wives, which was not a wonderful arrangement as the Bible shows how it brought about all kinds of trouble, he said. The book of Judges also recounts how the judges had multiple wives because they were aspiring to be king.
"Most people in the ancient near East had only one wife. Only kings could afford to have many wives," Gentry added.
"When you read the Bible, the Bible is not promoting polygamy. It's showing us that only royal figures had many wives. It's also showing us that this is not ideal, that this caused all kinds of difficulty and hardship and trouble and the fighting among the wives. And it's not a satisfactory relationship."
Another example of how God did not endorse the practice of many wives is when King David was confronted by the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. Nathan told the king a parable about a man who had many sheep and a poor man who had only one sheep. The man with many sheep stole and slaughtered the sheep of the poor man for himself when he had to show hospitality to a guest.
The prophet's message of rebuke to David was, essentially, "You have many wives and still you're not satisfied, and you have to go an steal the one woman that this one person has," Gentry said, underscoring the recurring theme that polygamy yields turmoil.
Further still, he continued, "Solomon was a tragic figure because he did not practice what he preached."
Although Solomon produced volumes of wisdom in his writings, it was not displayed in how he lived, he said.
"He disregarded his own wise principles, he multiplied wives, which is expressly forbidden for kings in Deuteronomy 17," he said.
"Because who is the king going to marry? He's going to marry a princess from another country and it is going to create a political alliance and they're going to trust in that alliance and they are not going to trust in the Lord."
The biblical history shows that these men might have had faith in God, but that does not mean they were men of morality or that all their actions were moral, he said.
"If you look at the New Testament and you look at what Jesus says in the New Testament and look at what the apostles say, they never hold up anyone from the Old Testament as a moral example. They hold them up as examples of faith, but not as examples of morality," Gentry emphasized.
"There is a very clear difference between what God commands and instructs us to do in marriage and how His people actually behaved in the history that is recorded for us. Just because these things happened in the Old Testament, we have to listen to what the narrator is saying. The narrator is not saying this is good thing. He's showing that this is a bad thing ... because it is abandoning the Creation standard."
I always assumed that the brother in that case was to be a single man.
Then how did the Mormons support polygamy in their original manifestation?
However, as political units grow larger, warfare increasingly occurs on borders far distant from most people's lives. Warfare also increasingly becomes the preserve of a specialized (or regionalized) military caste; the division of labor tends to separate the typical peasant from the need to bear arms except when things go very badly wrong on the frontiers (or Vikings start rowing up the rivers …).
Polygamy makes sense when boys start tending flocks at age 10 and become targets of constant raising from the clan from over the hill. When a very high percentage of young men die by violence at a young age, a tribal society will adopt polygamy to provide partners for the surplus young women. That's where the institution comes from.
Or become cannon fodder, or bring in foreign women as wives, whether voluntarily or otherwise, which simply exports the problem.
God directly describes making Adam out of the ground and placing him in the Garden of Eden. Then forming Eve for him. He says nothing about Adam being in heaven or leaving Him or any “mother.”
Adam has no mother. He was made directly by God from the dust of the ground.
And yes there is one specific situation in the OT where polygamy IS condoned.
...............
That is not polygamy; it is levirate marriage. Its intent is to provide a child who can take over the property of the deceased.
So glad that I do not have to marry any of my sisters-in-law. May they live well and long.
“And who would their mother be? Pachamama?”
Your mother and my mother.
Remember, we believe we were spirit children in heaven befor Heavenly Father built this world for us.
"We?? I believe no such thing. Not even remotely.
My soul, with is spirt, did not exist at all until my conception in my mothers womb. It was created then and there, by God.
And I've never even met somebody who believes such a thing --- about spirit children in heaven with a spirit-Father and spirit-Mother in heaven--- unless they were polytheists.
So I guess you're a polytheist? Don't be afraid to say. There are plenty of polytheists out there.
There is only a Heavenly Father.
There is only a Heavenly Father.
You must be one of the very few that does not know I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
That is the we i speak of.
polytheists
Since we do not force Father and Jesus into the same personage, yes they are both part of the Godhead. Jesus takes His direction from Father.
“””about spirit children in heaven with a spirit-Father and spirit-Mother in heaven”””
I said nothing about spirit parents, just spirit children.
“Adam has no mother. He was made directly by God from the dust of the ground”
You speak of his body. His spirit is a spirit child of heavenly parents. Just like you and me.
”26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over [g]all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. ”
Nothing about a spirit child here (or anywhere else). Adam became alive when God breathed into him, that is, into Adam’s body that He made.
I was thrown off when you said "Remember, we..." as if I shared these distinctive beliefs with you.
You also said, "Since we do not force Father and Jesus into the same personage..." I again didn't catch what you're talking about, since I don't even know anybody who "forces Jesus and the Father into the same personage." I have no idea what that even means.
Evidently as a Mormon you don't believe in the Trinity as understood by historic Christianity over the millennia, i.e. that the Trinity consists of three co-equal, co-eternal, Persons. Not entities jammed into one "personage."
I not sure this discussion is going to be fruitful unless we both stop making any assumptions about then other person's beliefs.
I don't have much time for a real comparison, but I have a good will toward you and wish you well.
I have to go make my lattice-top apple pies. It is quite a project.
“I have to go make my lattice-top apple pies. “
With course sugar that gets over cooked on top i hope.
Wish you could email me a slice.
There was also Jacob, who married Leah and Rachael
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+29%3A18-30&version=NIV
Or Sugar, sure!
“Adam, the first man in the flesh, left his father and mother in heaven to cleave to his wife.”
No. Just NO! Stop the insanity.
Can you IMAGINE the quarrels that would be a daily, constant barrage?
The King of Saudi Arabia can have more than one wife, but then he's the King. But the rest of the Saudis say the same thing that the Pakistani said. The problem is that if a man gives one wife a new car he has to give all the other wives the same thing. So he would have to be a very rich person.
Plus I was reading about the Yanomami in the Amazon, who to a certain extent practice(d) female infanticide. Naturally that means that when they come of age to seek mates, they can't find enough females in their tribe, so they raid neighboring tribes for women.
Feuding, banditry, raiding, abducting women--- that's how they live and die.
It's obvious they were (maybe still are) stuck in a hell of their own making.
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