Eristhophanes
Member
Hey Y'all
I've been doing a lot of study over the past few years, starting with the issue of divorce. A few years ago I thought divorce was *the* major problem in the church today. Well, I sure learned different. It turned out that divorce was related to the issue of polygyny, but I didn't understand how for a long time. That led to the issue of how the claim that polygyny is sinful causes words like lust, fornication and adultery are used to describe concepts that flat out don't exist in the Bible. One of the interesting rabbit-trails was the issue of female-female sexual contact, which an Orthodox priest told me was the real reason why polygyny wasn't allowed by the church (Leviticus 18:17-18 is part of the incest statutes, it isn't the husband committing incest, it's the wives, ergo- the Law presumes some sexual contact between wives).
That tidbit led to a study of the history of the church's doctrines on sex and marriage and I discovered a gold mine with Brundage's book "Law, Sex and Christian Society In Medieval Europe." Seriously, that book completely explains where all the anti-poly stuff comes from, as well as the "sex doesn't make you married" and "you aren't married until you have a ceremony" doctrines.
Eventually all this led me to study Genesis 2:24, which is the law concerning marriage. That is an eye-opening study, let me tell you. The authority to marry was given to the man (not the church or state) and the man marries a woman by having sex with her (confirmed by Exodus 22:16-17 and Deut. 22:28-29), which is why there is no prohibition anywhere in the Bible on a man having sex with a woman he is eligible to marry (except for the restriction on having sex with whores in 1st Cor. 6:15-16). So, sex makes you married and the guy who gets a woman's virginity is her husband whether it was a publicly agreed on thing, a seduction or a rape. She's married and her consent isn't required. If she's not a virgin and not married, her consent is necessary (1st Cor. 7:39) but the fact is that if a guy has sex with her and she doesn't consent to marry him then they aren't married and it isn't a sin.
That one causes Christians everywhere to come unglued.
Genesis 2:24 says what it says, but there are two things that it doesn't say which are relevant to the folks here. The first was pointed out by Christ in Matthew 19:3-6. The Pharisees asked what the grounds for divorce were and Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24, then said "so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate." In other words, there are no grounds for divorce. The Pharisees said "Oh yeah? Well why did Moses tell us to divorce our wives?"
Jesus corrected them, saying "For the hardness of your hearts Moses *permitted* you to divorce your wives" (this is the critical point) "but from the beginning it has not been that way." See that? Jesus is pointing to the fact that Genesis 2:24 is the authorization for the man to marry, but that grant of authority DOES NOT contain the authority to terminate the marriage. However, because they'd brought up Moses, Jesus then explained what Moses meant by "indecency" in Deuteronomy 24:1, saying that the only allowed reason for divorce was immorality. That agrees with Matthew 5:31-32.
So, Jesus is pointing out that what Genesis 2:24 DIDN'T say was important (no authority to divorce) and that should point to the fact that it also didn't contain any limitation on how many times a man initiated marriage. In other words, no restriction as to the number of wives. We check to see if Scripture backs that up and we find that God regulated polygyny in the Law, He condoned it (2nd Samuel 12:8), He commanded it (levirate marriage- Deut. 25:5-10) and according to Jeremiah 31:31-32 God had two wives. So, looks like that one is set in stone.
Everybody likes to claim that the "shall leave, shall cleave and shall become one flesh" in Genesis 2:24 represents leaving, having the ceremony (getting married) and THEN becoming one flesh. That's wrong and Jesus said so. The man leaves and cleaves, God is the one who makes them become one flesh. When does He do that? When the man cleaves to his wife and consummates the marriage. So, "shall become one flesh" is an imperative, which means it's happened, it won't change. Same thing with Deut. 22:29 and the "shall become his wife." It isn't something that happens in the future, it's the same as "shall become one flesh" and it happened when the guy took her virginity. They are married and there's no way around that.
The church *really* hates this.
The passage in Malachi 2 is interesting to parse because from the reference to godly offspring (which is a reference to Leviticus 21:13-15) it appears that the men were ditching the wife of their youth in order to make way for a woman who was not a virgin. In other words, a divorced woman. In doing so they were divorcing their wives illegitimately (the wives were not unfaithful) and that was treachery both for the illegitimate divorce and for the fact the men could have taken a second wife and continued to honor the first wife.
The problem is a woman is married to the man who gets her virginity. Period. Think about the implications of that and you'll understand why this is such a hot-button topic. According to the CDC, in the general population only about 5% of the population are virgins when they get married. According to some Baptist organization's polls, amongst "highly religious groups" up to 20% of the folks getting married are virgins. That means if you look around your church somewhere between 8 and 9 out of 10 of the couples aren't actually married to each other, they're living together in adultery. If you think trying to talk about polygyny is bad, try discussing the implications of "yes, sex does make you married."
There are three ways out of that unintentional marriage, but only one that works 100% of the time, which is Numbers 30:5 in which her father annuls the marriage in the day he hears of it (illustrated in Exodus 22:16-17 and implied in Deut. 22:28-29 if they are not discovered). That's because the father's authority to annul any vow, agreement or even the rash words out of her lips with binding obligations, while she is a youth living in his house, is unlimited and there is no time limit on it, he can do so in the day he hears of it and learns of the obligations.
So... didn't marry a virgin? Better have her call her daddy, confess what she did and ask him to forgive her and forbid her marriage to the guy she gave her virginity to. If her father is no longer around, then hope the guy wasn't a Christian (Christians married to Christians are forbidden to divorce, no exceptions, 1st Cor. 7:10-11). If he'd not a Christian he can give her a certificate of divorce for adultery. If that's a no-go, if he's not a Christian and he refuses to live with her, provide for her and husband her, she's free of him (1st Cor 7:15).
Anyway, anything and everything related to sex and marriage is rooted in Genesis 2:24, either directly in what it says or indirectly in what it doesn't say. If anyone is interested, I prepared a chart that has the complete exegesis of Genesis 2:24, along with an explanation of how the church "developed" the doctrines we have today. It covers both polygyny and divorce, as well as the issue of the unintentional marriages resulting from the church preaching their "sex doesn't make you married" doctrine.
This is about a 12 MB .jpg (a rather large file). It works best to save it to disk and look at it with something like the windows photo viewer. As one of my friends has pointed out, it has something there to offend just about everyone and just because God's Word allows something doesn't mean you have to do it.
https://artisanaltoadshall.files.wordpr ... large4.jpg
I've been doing a lot of study over the past few years, starting with the issue of divorce. A few years ago I thought divorce was *the* major problem in the church today. Well, I sure learned different. It turned out that divorce was related to the issue of polygyny, but I didn't understand how for a long time. That led to the issue of how the claim that polygyny is sinful causes words like lust, fornication and adultery are used to describe concepts that flat out don't exist in the Bible. One of the interesting rabbit-trails was the issue of female-female sexual contact, which an Orthodox priest told me was the real reason why polygyny wasn't allowed by the church (Leviticus 18:17-18 is part of the incest statutes, it isn't the husband committing incest, it's the wives, ergo- the Law presumes some sexual contact between wives).
That tidbit led to a study of the history of the church's doctrines on sex and marriage and I discovered a gold mine with Brundage's book "Law, Sex and Christian Society In Medieval Europe." Seriously, that book completely explains where all the anti-poly stuff comes from, as well as the "sex doesn't make you married" and "you aren't married until you have a ceremony" doctrines.
Eventually all this led me to study Genesis 2:24, which is the law concerning marriage. That is an eye-opening study, let me tell you. The authority to marry was given to the man (not the church or state) and the man marries a woman by having sex with her (confirmed by Exodus 22:16-17 and Deut. 22:28-29), which is why there is no prohibition anywhere in the Bible on a man having sex with a woman he is eligible to marry (except for the restriction on having sex with whores in 1st Cor. 6:15-16). So, sex makes you married and the guy who gets a woman's virginity is her husband whether it was a publicly agreed on thing, a seduction or a rape. She's married and her consent isn't required. If she's not a virgin and not married, her consent is necessary (1st Cor. 7:39) but the fact is that if a guy has sex with her and she doesn't consent to marry him then they aren't married and it isn't a sin.
That one causes Christians everywhere to come unglued.
Genesis 2:24 says what it says, but there are two things that it doesn't say which are relevant to the folks here. The first was pointed out by Christ in Matthew 19:3-6. The Pharisees asked what the grounds for divorce were and Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24, then said "so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate." In other words, there are no grounds for divorce. The Pharisees said "Oh yeah? Well why did Moses tell us to divorce our wives?"
Jesus corrected them, saying "For the hardness of your hearts Moses *permitted* you to divorce your wives" (this is the critical point) "but from the beginning it has not been that way." See that? Jesus is pointing to the fact that Genesis 2:24 is the authorization for the man to marry, but that grant of authority DOES NOT contain the authority to terminate the marriage. However, because they'd brought up Moses, Jesus then explained what Moses meant by "indecency" in Deuteronomy 24:1, saying that the only allowed reason for divorce was immorality. That agrees with Matthew 5:31-32.
So, Jesus is pointing out that what Genesis 2:24 DIDN'T say was important (no authority to divorce) and that should point to the fact that it also didn't contain any limitation on how many times a man initiated marriage. In other words, no restriction as to the number of wives. We check to see if Scripture backs that up and we find that God regulated polygyny in the Law, He condoned it (2nd Samuel 12:8), He commanded it (levirate marriage- Deut. 25:5-10) and according to Jeremiah 31:31-32 God had two wives. So, looks like that one is set in stone.
Everybody likes to claim that the "shall leave, shall cleave and shall become one flesh" in Genesis 2:24 represents leaving, having the ceremony (getting married) and THEN becoming one flesh. That's wrong and Jesus said so. The man leaves and cleaves, God is the one who makes them become one flesh. When does He do that? When the man cleaves to his wife and consummates the marriage. So, "shall become one flesh" is an imperative, which means it's happened, it won't change. Same thing with Deut. 22:29 and the "shall become his wife." It isn't something that happens in the future, it's the same as "shall become one flesh" and it happened when the guy took her virginity. They are married and there's no way around that.
The church *really* hates this.
The passage in Malachi 2 is interesting to parse because from the reference to godly offspring (which is a reference to Leviticus 21:13-15) it appears that the men were ditching the wife of their youth in order to make way for a woman who was not a virgin. In other words, a divorced woman. In doing so they were divorcing their wives illegitimately (the wives were not unfaithful) and that was treachery both for the illegitimate divorce and for the fact the men could have taken a second wife and continued to honor the first wife.
The problem is a woman is married to the man who gets her virginity. Period. Think about the implications of that and you'll understand why this is such a hot-button topic. According to the CDC, in the general population only about 5% of the population are virgins when they get married. According to some Baptist organization's polls, amongst "highly religious groups" up to 20% of the folks getting married are virgins. That means if you look around your church somewhere between 8 and 9 out of 10 of the couples aren't actually married to each other, they're living together in adultery. If you think trying to talk about polygyny is bad, try discussing the implications of "yes, sex does make you married."
There are three ways out of that unintentional marriage, but only one that works 100% of the time, which is Numbers 30:5 in which her father annuls the marriage in the day he hears of it (illustrated in Exodus 22:16-17 and implied in Deut. 22:28-29 if they are not discovered). That's because the father's authority to annul any vow, agreement or even the rash words out of her lips with binding obligations, while she is a youth living in his house, is unlimited and there is no time limit on it, he can do so in the day he hears of it and learns of the obligations.
So... didn't marry a virgin? Better have her call her daddy, confess what she did and ask him to forgive her and forbid her marriage to the guy she gave her virginity to. If her father is no longer around, then hope the guy wasn't a Christian (Christians married to Christians are forbidden to divorce, no exceptions, 1st Cor. 7:10-11). If he'd not a Christian he can give her a certificate of divorce for adultery. If that's a no-go, if he's not a Christian and he refuses to live with her, provide for her and husband her, she's free of him (1st Cor 7:15).
Anyway, anything and everything related to sex and marriage is rooted in Genesis 2:24, either directly in what it says or indirectly in what it doesn't say. If anyone is interested, I prepared a chart that has the complete exegesis of Genesis 2:24, along with an explanation of how the church "developed" the doctrines we have today. It covers both polygyny and divorce, as well as the issue of the unintentional marriages resulting from the church preaching their "sex doesn't make you married" doctrine.
This is about a 12 MB .jpg (a rather large file). It works best to save it to disk and look at it with something like the windows photo viewer. As one of my friends has pointed out, it has something there to offend just about everyone and just because God's Word allows something doesn't mean you have to do it.
https://artisanaltoadshall.files.wordpr ... large4.jpg
But the great thing is that here we are all talking to each other still!