In Reply to: polygamy posted by porceleindoll on August 15, 2003 at 18:12:05:
Hi PD,
A curious question, yes. I have pondered it as well. It appears that Jesus didn't really address many questions specifically, but went more to the heart of issues. A good example was when Jesus was asked about Moses giving them the right to divorce. Jesus stated that Moses gave it because of the HARDNESS OF THEIR HEARTS, and stated that God's idea in the first place was for A man to leave his father and mother and cleave to his WIFE. I think the ideals in many things are far from that the law allowed. Like slavery; Paul did not take on the whole Roman system and blast slavery but encouraged the Christian slave owners to treat them as brothers and sisters in Christ. That was the standard used in the British Parliment that finally brought slavery down in England. They found that to enslave another human as an animal was just not Christian.
So, looking at polygamy I tend to look to the history of it. Yes, there were those who were protected by being taken in and cared for like Ruth and Naomi. OK, that's good. Then there were women who were horridly abused in these relationships. In Genesis we meet Hagar, a slave, given to a Abe to sleep with and then thrown out when she got a bit upidy. Hey, what else did she have to feel good about. She has no life. Sarah feels rejected, as common custom of her time expected her to “produce” one way or the other, and she throws Hagar out when she has her own child. Who's wrong and who's right? Who cares. Two women dealing with emotions that are brought on by the male system of valueing women by their child bearing ability. At Sarah's death she is living away from Abraham indicating Abe may have already been with Katurah before Sarah's death; Keturata, to who's children went none of Abe's inheritance. Leah, given in secret and rejected, Rachel, barren, Bilhah and Zilpah, two slave girls given to produce children for their mistresses, no life there. Oh yea, later BIldah is sacked by her half son. Dinah, Leah's daughter given to the man who raped her by her father. Her brothers had other plans. Tamar, sent home when her husband dies, denied her inheritance, so she picks up (and “plays the whore“) with her father in law, who later wants to kill her for sleeping around but find's that baby is his. Yuck! DISFUNTIONAL written all over this bunch.
These are the women we meet close up. What about the others we never know of. We later meet Samuel's mother, Hannah who is so deeply grieved at her lack of “provision” and being provoked by the other wife, “Peninnah” that RSV calls her “rival” who “ provoked her sorely”, (not to mention her shame of barrenness), that the priest thinks she's drunk.
I don't think we understand the depth of the shame society laid on women of that era. God's warning to Eve in the garden, “He will rule over you” was brought to many ugly conclusions and still is in many countries today.How about ol' King Davis and his many wives, and we all know of his son Solomon's wives and concubines (those he just kept around for sex but who offered no political advantage), not happy loving wives but property, bought, sold, given and taken back at the will of one man or another.
In the days of Jesus birth, Elizabeth, the mother of John, known as the Baptist, rejoices in finding her self PG in her old age, saying, “ Thus the Lord has done to me in the days when he looked upon me to take away my reproach among men.“ (that's anthropos and thus her shame was universally understood) The woman Jesus met at the well had had 5 husbands. She was no prostitute, as some say, but one passed from man to man (possibly because she was barren) and now only taken in to be fed by some kind fellow, but too ashamed to come to the well in the cool of the day.
All that to say, what is God's ideal. Paul, in a crisis, insists that Timothy choose husbands of ONE wife to serve as elders. Becomming a Nun is a pretty weird concept to us today but to a 12 year old being bartered off to some older man to be his sex toy and baby factory and at the mercy of HIS family (what happened to “leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, HUH?), maybe being a nun didn't seem such a bad alternative. At least she had one. She could determine her life by her service to God, not her womb. Christianity is one of the few cultures that offerers that a woman can be more than property or a womb. Jesus said of Mary, Martha's sis, “ she's chosen the better part (to sit at his feet and LEARN), and I will not take it from her” A woman like that is about all most men can handle, if she'll have him. :)