Recently Bob Enyart said something that got me excited.
On his show, Bob Enyart Live: Real Science Radio he bragged that he had debated only the best in the field.
Real Science Radio: the Cosmological Principle
25:22 On this show, when we want to debate polygamy, and show that it is wrong, then we get.... Who is the nations best-known polygamist? Leland Freeborn. We get him, you know, a Mormon, and we debate him.
-End of Transcript-
Is Leland Freeborn the "nations best-known polygamist"? I had never heard of him, but I have other things to discuss with Mormons.
Well, let's just say Leland Freeborn did not do so well. What did Bob expect?
Nevertheless, Bob Enyart gives up the Old Testament right out of the gate, and that is very interesting.
Bob Enyart Live: Polygamist Meets Bob
Downloadable from
www.kgov.com
Lead in song. ( very cool!)
0:42
Bob Enyart: Greeting to the brightest audience in the country. I am Bob Enyart. Americas most popular, self proclaimed right wing religious fanatic, homophobic, anti-choice talk show host. I'm not going to give out our call-in number just yet, as we told you earlier in the week, tonight we, we are going to have a discussion, at least the first part of the show with a man who advocates polygamy. Who believes that polygamy is just. And not only that it is just but that the Bible promotes polygamy and defends polygamy.
And when God in Genesis, He made Adam and Eve, and God instituted marriage with Adam and Eve it was one man and one woman, and they married.
But then as you read through the story of the Bible, Abraham had his wife Sarah, and then he took another woman, Hagar as a concubine. Abraham had Isaac. Who had Jacob. Jacob, the patriarch of Israel, had two wives. He had Leah and Rachel, and then he also had two concubines.
Moses was married to two, Zipporah the Medianite and then later married an Ethiopian woman. In fact his brother and sister, Miriam and Aaron were upset because he took the Ethiopian woman, and God had defended Moses.
Of course we know that David, David married Saul's daughter. He married Bathsheba, Solomon's mother. He married. In fact David had a handful of wives. A handful of wives.
And...
One of the prophets of Isreal wrote that, in the latter days, that that seven women shall take hold of one man saying we will eat our own food and wear our own apparel. Only let us be called by your name to take away our reproach.
So that as we see, that as you go through the Hebrew Scriptures, the Old Testament, that there is an overwhelming amount of material that tells us that polygamy was common among Israel. Common among the leaders of Israel. Common among the most righteous men described in the Bible, for the most part.
And did not the Mosaic Law itself codify polygamy, and emphatically teach that it was acceptable to marry more than one woman?
I'd like to ask that question to Leland Freeborn. Leland, welcome to the show...
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I hesitate to include the debate. Leland Freeborn does so poorly defending the practice from only the Bible. He is a self-proclaimed prophet, though not a Mormon, he does affirm the works of Joseph Smith. To be fair, I do not think he was ready for a debate, especially contained to the Bible. The way Leland Freeborn rambles, it seems he thinks he is being interviewed. What is sad about this whole thing is that Bob Enyart gives Leland Freeborn two softballs, and I believe the answers are right in the speech He (Bob Enyart) just had made in the lead-in and I have transcribed for you here.
Just to summarize the debate:
Leland Freeborn begins by citing Isaiah 4:1. Bob Enyart acknowledges the prophecy, but asks if it is necessarily a good thing. Leland Freeborn biffs on it. Bob Enyart compares this prophecy to one in Leviticus 26 about ten women baking their bread in one oven. Leland Freeborn consents to Bob's point. Which was only that the prophecy in and of itself did not make the practice of polygamy a good thing.
Bob Enyart then cites the "one woman" requirement of leaders in the New Testament.(sloppy but that's where it went) Leland Freeborn, handles the text at face value and is thrown off by the literal Greek. "one woman man". Leland Freeman had never heard the literal Greek, and he was stumped. Bob Enyart graciously asks Leland Freeborn to come back on his show when he is better prepared.
I could not find if Leland Freeborn ever returned, so I wrote to ask him if he had. He denied ever being on the show.
