Cole writes: "In any case, the Bible doesn't actually say anything at all
about homosexuality, since it is a form of identity that only came into
being in modernity. (Same-sex intimacy has been there all along, but in most
premodern societies it was not a subculture, though medieval male
bortherhoods were common and in South Asia there were hijras)."
Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
No, GOP, Biblical Marriage Was Not Between One Man and One Woman
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
29 June 15
The freak-out by the Republican presidential candidates over the Supreme
Court decision on same-sex marriage provokes me to revise and reprise the
points below. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have formally pledged: "We
will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to
violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of
one man and one woman." Sen. Ted Cruz also called on Americans to ignore the
SCOTUS ruling.
Does that mean the rest of us can repudiate the decision making W. president
in 2000, and can refuse to recognize corporations as persons?
In any case, the Bible doesn't actually say anything at all about
homosexuality, since it is a form of identity that only came into being in
modernity. (Same-sex intimacy has been there all along, but in most
premodern societies it was not a subculture, though medieval male
bortherhoods were common and in South Asia there were hijras).
But wackiest of all is the idea that the Bible sees marriage as between one
man and one woman. I don't personally get how you could, like, actually read
the Bible and come to that conclusion (see below). Even if you wanted to
argue that the New Testament abrogates all the laws in the Hebrew Bible,
there isn't anything in the NT that clearly forbids polygamy, either, and it
was sometimes practiced in the early church, including by priests. Josephus
makes it clear that polygamy was still practiced among the Jews of Jesus'
time. Any attempt to shoe-horn stray statements in the New Testament about a
man and a woman being married into a commandment of monogamy is
anachronistic. Likely it was the Roman Empire that established Christian
monogamy as a norm over the centuries. The Church was not even allowed to
marry people until well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, since it
was an imperial prerogative.
Ancient scripture can be a source of higher values and spiritual strength,
but any time you in a literal-minded way impose specific legal behavior
because of it, you're committing anachronism. Since this is the case,
fundamentalists are always highly selective, trying to impose parts of the
scripture on us but conveniently ignoring the parts even they can't stomach
as modern persons.
1. In Exodus 21:10 it is clearly written of the husband: "If he takes
another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or
marital rights of the first wife." This is the same rule as the Qur'an in
Islam, that another wife can only be taken if the two are treated equally.
2. Let's take Solomon, who maintained 300 concubines or sex slaves. 1 Kings
11:3: "He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred
concubines, and his wives led him astray." Led him astray! That's all the
Bible minded about this situation? Abducting 300 people and keeping them
immured for sex? And the objection is only that they had a lot of diverse
religions and interested Solomon in them? (By the way, this is proof that he
wasn't Jewish but just a legendary Canaanite polytheist). I think a settled
gay marriage is rather healthier than imprisoning 300 people in your house
to have sex with at your whim.
3. Not only does the Bible authorize slavery and human trafficking, but it
urges slaves to "submit themselves" to their masters. It should be
remembered that masters had sexual rights over their property assuming the
slave-woman was not betrothed to another, and so this advice is intended for
concubines as well as other slaves. And, the Bible even suggests that slaves
quietly accept sadism and cruelty from their masters: 1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves,
submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and
gentle but also to the cruel." So a nice gay marriage between two legal
equals with no acts of cruelty would be much better than this biblical
nightmare.
4. Then there is Abraham, who made a sex slave of his wife's slave, the
Egyptian girl Hagar, and then abandoned her to cruel treatment.
Genesis 16:1-6:
"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian
slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having
children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through
her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in
Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her
to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then
Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I
put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she
despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me." 6 "Your slave is in
your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai
mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
So let's get this straight. Abraham isn't said to have married Hagar.
Apparently he and Sarah had separate property, because Hagar remains her
slave. So he slept with someone else's slave and got her pregnant. And then
when that caused trouble between his wife and her slave, he washed his hands
of his property-lover and let his wife mistreat her. As we know from 1
Peter, Hagar was supposed graciously to put up with this, but she was made
of fiercer stuff than that, and you really have to root for her in this
rather sick family situation.
5. According Mark 12:19, guys, if your brother kicks the bucket, you have to
marry your sister-in-law and knock her up. Since the Bible approved of
multiple wives, you have to do this even if you're already married. If you
think in-laws are hard to get along with now, try being married to them.
6. So I don't think this happens very much, but guys, in biblical marriage
you might have to cut your wife's hand off if she defends you too
vigorously. That's right. Say you're at a bar and this big bald badass with
tats starts smashing your face in. And say your wife likes you and wants to
stop the guy from giving you a concussion. Say she reaches down and gets him
by the balls. So the Bible would reward her for loyalty and bravery and fast
thinking, right?
Nope. Now you have to cut off her hand. I mean have to. You're not allowed
to have a moment of weakness and think about how pretty her fingers are. Off
with it, to the wrist
GOP, you think I'm making this up, right?
Deuteronomy 25:11-12: "11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of
them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and
seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no
pity."
I'm not sure exactly what kind of weird marriage Deuteronomy is
recommending, where certain actions taken by they wife to keep herself from
being turned into a widow are punished by her husband by chopping off her
hand.
7. The Bible doesn't even approve of marriage at all! 1 Corinthians 7:8 "To
the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single
as I do." So contrary to the GOP's notion that the Bible authorizes only a
single kind of marriage, of which it approves, actually it much prefers
believers to die out in a single generation. Only the weak and unbiblical
get married.
So this is the real problem. People like Huckabee and Cruz shouldn't be
married in the first place, much less holding up some imaginary ideal of
biblical marriage for everybody. And if all the biblical literalists would
just obey 1 Corinthians, the whole problem would be over with in just a
generation. Then the rest of us could get some peace and make rational
policy on social issues.
And as for getting married biblically, you can do that in all kinds of
imaginative ways- take two wives and someone else's sex slave as Abraham
did, or 300 sex slaves as Solomon did (not to mention the 700 wives), or
your brother's widow in addition to your own wife. And remember, if your sex
slave runs away because you're cruel to the person, the Bible (Philemon)
says that other people have the duty to return the slave to you, i.e.
basically imposes the duty of trafficking slaves back to sadistic sex
maniacs who exploit them. But if the owner is nice and a good Christian, he
might consider letting the sex slave go. But he doesn't have to.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
http://www.juancole.com/2015/06/biblical-marriage-between.htmlhttp://www.jua
ncole.com/2015/06/biblical-marriage-between.html
No, GOP, Biblical Marriage Was Not Between One Man and One Woman
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
29 June 15
he freak-out by the Republican presidential candidates over the Supreme
Court decision on same-sex marriage provokes me to revise and reprise the
points below. Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee have formally pledged: "We
will not honor any decision by the Supreme Court which will force us to
violate a clear biblical understanding of marriage as solely the union of
one man and one woman." Sen. Ted Cruz also called on Americans to ignore the
SCOTUS ruling.
Does that mean the rest of us can repudiate the decision making W. president
in 2000, and can refuse to recognize corporations as persons?
In any case, the Bible doesn't actually say anything at all about
homosexuality, since it is a form of identity that only came into being in
modernity. (Same-sex intimacy has been there all along, but in most
premodern societies it was not a subculture, though medieval male
bortherhoods were common and in South Asia there were hijras).
But wackiest of all is the idea that the Bible sees marriage as between one
man and one woman. I don't personally get how you could, like, actually read
the Bible and come to that conclusion (see below). Even if you wanted to
argue that the New Testament abrogates all the laws in the Hebrew Bible,
there isn't anything in the NT that clearly forbids polygamy, either, and it
was sometimes practiced in the early church, including by priests. Josephus
makes it clear that polygamy was still practiced among the Jews of Jesus'
time. Any attempt to shoe-horn stray statements in the New Testament about a
man and a woman being married into a commandment of monogamy is
anachronistic. Likely it was the Roman Empire that established Christian
monogamy as a norm over the centuries. The Church was not even allowed to
marry people until well after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, since it
was an imperial prerogative.
Ancient scripture can be a source of higher values and spiritual strength,
but any time you in a literal-minded way impose specific legal behavior
because of it, you're committing anachronism. Since this is the case,
fundamentalists are always highly selective, trying to impose parts of the
scripture on us but conveniently ignoring the parts even they can't stomach
as modern persons.
1. In Exodus 21:10 it is clearly written of the husband: "If he takes
another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or
marital rights of the first wife." This is the same rule as the Qur'an in
Islam, that another wife can only be taken if the two are treated equally.
2. Let's take Solomon, who maintained 300 concubines or sex slaves. 1 Kings
11:3: "He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred
concubines, and his wives led him astray." Led him astray! That's all the
Bible minded about this situation? Abducting 300 people and keeping them
immured for sex? And the objection is only that they had a lot of diverse
religions and interested Solomon in them? (By the way, this is proof that he
wasn't Jewish but just a legendary Canaanite polytheist). I think a settled
gay marriage is rather healthier than imprisoning 300 people in your house
to have sex with at your whim.
3. Not only does the Bible authorize slavery and human trafficking, but it
urges slaves to "submit themselves" to their masters. It should be
remembered that masters had sexual rights over their property assuming the
slave-woman was not betrothed to another, and so this advice is intended for
concubines as well as other slaves. And, the Bible even suggests that slaves
quietly accept sadism and cruelty from their masters: 1 Peter 2:18: "Slaves,
submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and
gentle but also to the cruel." So a nice gay marriage between two legal
equals with no acts of cruelty would be much better than this biblical
nightmare.
4. Then there is Abraham, who made a sex slave of his wife's slave, the
Egyptian girl Hagar, and then abandoned her to cruel treatment.
Genesis 16:1-6:
"Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian
slave named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The Lord has kept me from having
children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through
her." Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in
Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her
to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.
When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then
Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I
put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she
despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me." 6 "Your slave is in
your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai
mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.
So let's get this straight. Abraham isn't said to have married Hagar.
Apparently he and Sarah had separate property, because Hagar remains her
slave. So he slept with someone else's slave and got her pregnant. And then
when that caused trouble between his wife and her slave, he washed his hands
of his property-lover and let his wife mistreat her. As we know from 1
Peter, Hagar was supposed graciously to put up with this, but she was made
of fiercer stuff than that, and you really have to root for her in this
rather sick family situation.
5. According Mark 12:19, guys, if your brother kicks the bucket, you have to
marry your sister-in-law and knock her up. Since the Bible approved of
multiple wives, you have to do this even if you're already married. If you
think in-laws are hard to get along with now, try being married to them.
6. So I don't think this happens very much, but guys, in biblical marriage
you might have to cut your wife's hand off if she defends you too
vigorously. That's right. Say you're at a bar and this big bald badass with
tats starts smashing your face in. And say your wife likes you and wants to
stop the guy from giving you a concussion. Say she reaches down and gets him
by the balls. So the Bible would reward her for loyalty and bravery and fast
thinking, right?
Nope. Now you have to cut off her hand. I mean have to. You're not allowed
to have a moment of weakness and think about how pretty her fingers are. Off
with it, to the wrist
GOP, you think I'm making this up, right?
Deuteronomy 25:11-12: "11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of
them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and
seizes him by his private parts, 12 you shall cut off her hand. Show her no
pity."
I'm not sure exactly what kind of weird marriage Deuteronomy is
recommending, where certain actions taken by they wife to keep herself from
being turned into a widow are punished by her husband by chopping off her
hand.
7. The Bible doesn't even approve of marriage at all! 1 Corinthians 7:8 "To
the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single
as I do." So contrary to the GOP's notion that the Bible authorizes only a
single kind of marriage, of which it approves, actually it much prefers
believers to die out in a single generation. Only the weak and unbiblical
get married.
So this is the real problem. People like Huckabee and Cruz shouldn't be
married in the first place, much less holding up some imaginary ideal of
biblical marriage for everybody. And if all the biblical literalists would
just obey 1 Corinthians, the whole problem would be over with in just a
generation. Then the rest of us could get some peace and make rational
policy on social issues.
And as for getting married biblically, you can do that in all kinds of
imaginative ways- take two wives and someone else's sex slave as Abraham
did, or 300 sex slaves as Solomon did (not to mention the 700 wives), or
your brother's widow in addition to your own wife. And remember, if your sex
slave runs away because you're cruel to the person, the Bible (Philemon)
says that other people have the duty to return the slave to you, i.e.
basically imposes the duty of trafficking slaves back to sadistic sex
maniacs who exploit them. But if the owner is nice and a good Christian, he
might consider letting the sex slave go. But he doesn't have to.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
