Polygamy

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http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... se/272726/

Interesting article. Thanks.

No, not really. What about Joseph's brothers selling him into slavery? He ends up in prison in Egypt, goes straight to Pharaoh's court, ends up being the power behind the throne, and saves his own family as well as the entire nation of Egypt. All that after his brother tried to get rid of him. God turning evil intentions into ultimate good is a recurring theme throughout the Bible.


At the cost of harmony within his family. Isaac and Rebekah, a monogamous relationship, did not have that problem. Isaac's struggles dealt with the troubles his sons made for themselves. Now, Isaac could have done a better job emulating his father, for example, sending out servants to do his dirty work and thus securing the same kind of marriage stability that he had. Jacob made foolish choices and ended up having to deal with internal squabbles because he couldn't keep his b!tches in line.


I didn't say life was perfect. I just said that it seems like that had a perfect thing going. And no, it's not so much that Sarah was jealous. As a matter of fact, the Lord revealed to Abraham that Sarah was right and that he should listen to her. Hagar was a handmaiden to Sarai and needed have been nothing more or less. Being able to do what Sarai could not unnecessarily built up Hagar's status in the household, or at least so she thought. It was Hagar's arrogant response to Sarah that provoked Sarah, so Sarah can hardly be blamed for feeling the way she did.

And who said Leah and Rachel weren't mean to their handmaidens? Forcing someone into sexual slavery for the sake of getting her knocked up repeatedly doesn't sound very nice to me. I mean, look, this competition between two sisters for the attentions of a shared husband ultimately cost Jacob the life of his favorite.

My wife has a close friend that she's known through school and college years. I wouldn't say this woman is attractive in the usual sense, but it is no secret among the three of us that this friend captures my fascination every time we get together. She has been and continues to be unlucky in the love and romance department. So it's no surprise that trying to find some "concubinage" arrangement has already occurred to me and even been brought up in conversation. My wife is averse to the idea, which makes me sad. It's all about the reasons why...#1 She doesn't think she could stand being around me if her friend were to move in, and #2 she strongly doubts her friend would be willing to go for it, either.

And, of course, there is a third reason. #3 My wife has made it perfectly clear in no uncertain terms that she doesn't want someone else's leftovers when it comes to relations in the sack.

At any rate, I doubt this sentiment is only a recent development exclusive to western culture. Once you throw competing wives/concubines into the mix, you are sowing seeds (take that how you will) of contention and strife. I could handle two wives if at least one of them can agree to keep her head down and her mouth shut, and since I think women in today's society expect a better status than that more equal to their mates, I sincerely doubt I'd ever meet another woman that both I AND my current wife could live with. 1:1 pairing is ideal for a lot of reasons, and keeping an emotionally balanced and functional home is just one.

That still doesn't make it right.

Having a surrogate in the ancient world makes a lot of sense, so I can understand that. There are other situations that are understandable as well.

However, marriage to a woman carried with it obligations that the husband had to meet. Housing, for instance. Other basic needs such as food. Sexual intimacy and making babies. Supporting all those children. And all wives were to have equal status--no "favorites." Given all the obligations and responsibilities, it's not as easy as simply raiding a village, picking the 14 hottest teen girls, and just holing them up in a corn crib until you're ready for them. It's all about building and maintaining relationships, fairness, and solidarity above and beyond your day job. While there are no laws against plural marriage, it is not a practice that is condoned in the Bible and in some ways is actually discouraged.

Jesus pointed out the difficulties of family devotion in just monogamous relationships, that is, man and woman become one flesh, therefore it is adultery to get divorced for anything other than infidelity. The disciples responded that if staying married is so hard to do, it's just better not to get married in the first place. Check me on Matthew 19, btw, but that's how I see it.

And it reveals something else: It reaffirms the monogamous ideal "from the beginning." Plural marriage, like divorce, is allowed because of the hardness of men's hearts. And like divorce, it was not like that "from the beginning." Forbidding institutions wholesale is disruptive to society until society can come around on its own to reject them, like divorce, polygamy, and even slavery. While I don't condone slavery nor do I suggest that what wealthy southern plantation owners did was a good thing, it shouldn't have taken war and massive bloodshed to end it in the United States. However, the war brought a relatively quick end to slavery, whereas trying to, say, regulate it to death might have taken well into the civil rights era to finally take it off the books. I like to think mechanized farming would ultimately have shut down the plantations given the cost of slave labor to the owners. Slaves would have taken over the land, and with a tiny amount of federal subsidizing the face of farming (no pun intended) would be drastically different from what it is today. I mean, maybe, maybe not... The point being that institutions that are inherently unjust sooner or later come to an end.

Speaking of divorce, what I seem to observe is more people not taking their vows as seriously and "playing at" marriage more than actually acting the way married people should act. This isn't something taken lightly in our home. As easily as other seem to screw it up, I do wonder why people even bother with getting married. I'm pleased to see at least at my church that groups of families tend to be tighter knit and within those groups the marriages seem to be a lot stronger than with other families we know. It makes me think that divorce is only more prevalent because people just get married because they're bored. Maybe they'll have kids, get them off to college, and then they're bored again. So they get divorced so they can just continue to be bored in separate apartments.

Yes it does. That which is not prohibited is permitted.



I think that surrogacy is a modern phenomenon.



Where does it say that "favorites" aren't allowed? Of course, wives took priority over concubines, and Jacob preferred Rachel to Leah.



Oh, really?






Jews that still live in Moslem countries can, and still do, have multiple wives.



The idea of monogamy was more of a Greco-Roman concept, which Christianity adopted.


No it doesn't.



Only divorce was cited as having been allowed because of the hardness of men's hearts. Plural marriage was not mentioned.


Nope. Divorce was as old as the Torah.


This would seem to be a Marxist slant--that the world is moving towards a communist eutopia. Different forms of justice and injustice come and go as history proceeds.


Perhaps.

This doesn't mean that polygamy was bad. This could have happened even if all 12 boys had been born from the same mother in a monogamous marriage.


I suppose that a preacher could get a number of sermons out of this theme.



Who says it was a "problem?" Jacob still had a good time with his wives and concubines. The more the merrier.


Jacob's sons also made trouble for themselves.


Jacob's father-in-law tricked him into marrying Leah instead of the hot piece of ass that he had wanted, and made him work 7 years longer to get the younger sister. The "squabbles" were over who got to have coitus with the husband. It really wasn't that bad of a situation in which to find one's self.


Sure, take Sarah's side. She could have been nicer to Hagar.


They didn't exactly raise any objections. And, they weren't banished into the wilderness with their children. Nor were they beaten up.


Who?



Maybe if the ladies were bisexual....

However, in doing a bit of fact-checking



According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanomami



Also, her assertion that



contains a suspicious number of Feminist buzzwords, seeking to promote, as self-evident truth, the notion that non-Western (or non-Modern) societies were simple and egalitarian. Traditional Polynesian cultures, for example, are extremely hierarchical, complex, elaborate, a very non-egalitarian, even without massive government bureaucracies.

And, in her sidebar concerning polyandrous societies



Well, of course not. Why even put such a statement in the sidebar?

Consequently, I retract my earlier praise of the article.

Okayyyyyyy.
Stopped reading right there.

Stop being so lazy.

I will concede that the Bible does have its fair share of ironic twists.



And here the Israelites considered themselves largely the descendents of sisters (plus their handmaidens) married to the same revered patriarch.

Agreed. I find AP's tone and style to be highly irreverent...and thus entertaining. While understandably not palatable to politically correct feminazi types out there, I see nothing wrong with meeting AP in a similarly irreverent fashion.

My aim is not to PURPOSEFULLY offend anyone. But having accepted that my mere presence is enough to offend some people, I don't exactly make it a priority to be overly concerned about it. In other words, I'm a lot more sympathetic to women's causes than I probably let on.

Aha! A closeted Feminist!

Shhhh!! ! Don't tell anyone! I might inadvertently get labeled as a terrorist!! ! Don't forget I'm a Republican voter, and that label just wouldn't look good.

To be fair, though: if, 100 years ago, I had committed the indiscretion of calling a Biblical personnage a "b***h", within earshot of your wife, sister, mother, or other female relative, then, of course, she would have fainted, and you would have been obliged either to punch me in the face or to challenge me to a duel.

In the modern era, with all of this feminization, the ladies still want to call the shots with regard to what is and isn't offensive. But, they can't demand that the wimpy men in their lives obtain satisfaction on their behalf any more.

Moderators have since taken over this traditionally male role.

In Tibet brothers will marry one woman,this keeps the land from being divided up and provides plenty of farm hands.And her offspring would be from the same family.it would not matter who the father was.

I only demand fairness. I'm all about equality for women. However, I don't believe that "equality" has to come at the expense of compromise. If, for example, LKL had responded in a misandrist way (because what I wrote might be seen as misogynistic), I likely wouldn't have said anything else about it.