Our Mutual Joy - Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side..
Quotes that I find interesting:
Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists.
...while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world.
Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women,...
Marriage, specifically, has evolved so as to be unrecognizable to the wives of Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century;
The article is claiming the the true Biblical model for marriage is very different than todays view of the model for marriage. In fact it is so different that no one in their right mind could accept the actual Biblical model. Therefore (the article advocates), lets do away with this non-sense of a Biblical model for marriage.
I guess I am in the "not in the right mind group". I accept the Bible and what it actually says (and does not say) about marriage.
3 comments:
a difficult topic, Chris. There is no "church wedding" anywhere in the Bible. We do know that God looks favorably on one man and one woman living a faithful life together. But concerning a number of other topics, we only have some or no knowledge. Why does the law of Moses regulate how to deal with multiple wives? Why should Isaiah walk naked 3 years through Israel? A lot of questions requiring faith and careful exegetical work.
Hmm, sees some confusion here between "Old" testement and the "New". Did not Christ come to make all things "New" and the concept of marriage in Heaven is referred to by him as being no longer valid in Heaven. He made all equal and FREE. I believe there will be no such thing in the future as children will no longer need the security of Mum and Dad as their identity will be in Christ alone.
Men only want polygamy for sex and women only want husbands to provide for them and their children. Who in their right minds would settle for marriage otherwise? Lol!
After this life we will be neither male nor female. But the Old Testament seems to have been very concerned about preserving and passing on the Hebrew faith/culture, which has a theoligical and a biological aspect - read and remember the scripture and beget and beget, and make sure you do not assimilate with the surrounding cultures. One of the things the surrounding cultures engaged in was sexual rituals in their temples; these involved, among other things, sexual acts between people of the same sex, with animals, dead bodies, temple prostitutes, and more.
Our post-enlightenment idea of two people developing an emotional bond and then deciding to spend life together is very different than the way couples found each other earlier. "Marriage" based on an emotional-psychological bond - that might surprise many of the faithful even 500 years ago.
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