Question: Why were polygamous relationships accepted in the past, such as with Abraham and David, but considered wrong now?
What does the New Testament say about polygamy?
New Testament. Three passages in the pastoral epistles (1 Timothy 3:2, 1Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6) state that Church leaders should be the "husband of one wife." This has been read by some Christian denominations as a prohibition of polygamy.
Did Jesus forbid polygamy?
Polygamy is Forbidden in Scripture (Wikipedia):
Building upon the original institution of marriage in Genesis 2, Jesus made it clear that marriage is a bond between a man and a woman where the two become one.
Polygamy is "the practice or custom of having more than one wife or husband at the same time." Polygamy has been practiced by many cultures throughout history.
Although the Old Testament describes numerous examples of polygynous (one male, one wife with multiple concubines) instances of polygamy among devotees to God, most Christian groups have historically rejected the practice of polygamy and have upheld monogamy alone as normative. Nevertheless, some Christian groups in different periods have practiced, or currently do practice, polygamy. Some Christians actively debate whether the New Testament or Christian ethics allows or forbids polygamy[5][better source needed] and there are several Christian views on the Old Covenant.
The practice primarily focuses on polygyny (one man having more than one wife) and not polyandry (one woman having more than one husband), as polyandry is implied to be unlawful by the Hebrew Bible's laws of adultery (e.g., Deuteronomy 22:22) and in the New Testament (e.g., Romans 7:3).
In the Bible, King Solomon and other kings and royalty had many wives for a variety of reasons, including political and personal gain, and to ensure they had heirs:
· Political expediency: Solomon married foreign women, or "strange women", to form alliances with other states and noble families.
· Personal reasons: Solomon may have had personal reasons for marrying many women.
· Heirs: Having many wives ensured that the king would have many heirs.
However, Solomon's foreign wives brought their idols and heathen worship to Israel, which corrupted Solomon and the people. Solomon's wives turned away his heart after other gods, and he did what was evil in the sight of the LORD
Background on Polygamy (Google)
Polygamy means multiple spouses. The most common form is polygyny, where a man can have many wives. Less common, but found in some societies such as Tibet, is polyandry, where a woman can have many husbands. Polygyny was accepted or even preferred in three/fourths of preindustrial traditional societies, though it was seldom practiced by the commoners or lower classes. It tended to occur most frequently in societies where the route to winning wealth and political power was through attracting followers or having lots of sons to hunt for the family head or defend the family’s land. So a man might marry several wives and have them produce textiles he could trade, or grow food for elaborate feasts he could use to put poorer members of the community in his debt.
In other cases, wealthy men accumulated many wives to produce more sons. It was very common for kings and other royalty to have many wives, both as a way to make alliances with other states or noble families and to ensure that they would have plenty of heirs. The king of the Merina in the highlands of Madagascar had twelve wives, each with a palace in a different part of his country. He stayed with whichever one was nearest when he traveled through the kingdom, thus avoiding the juggling problems that are fictionally portrayed in the HBO series, “Big Love.”
It takes a certain amount of wealth to support more than one wife, but in many pre-industrial societies, having several wives increased a man’s wealth and political power rather than being a drain on his resources. Polygyny is not usually associated with a high status for women, and in many cultures it involved very young women being forced to marry older men. Still, in a society where gender roles are very rigid and women do most of the work around the farm and household, some women like having a co-wife. In Botswana, women have an interesting twist on the old saying “a woman’s work is never done.” They say “without co-wives, a woman’s work is never done.” Such women claim that having other wives to help meet some of their husband’s demands and to share the child-rearing gives them more freedom than women in monogamous unions.
An example of this from America can be found among the Plains Indians. The traditional division of labour between men and women, where man hunted and women tanned the hides, was pretty evenly divided in the old days. But when the men acquired guns and horses from the Europeans and started to kill more buffalo for the fur trade, the most successful and richest hunters began to marry more wives. The age of marriage fell, and restrictions on women’s independence became harsher. Yet some women actually welcomed the extra help when their husband took more wives. A researcher who worked with the Cheyenne Indians in the 1930s and 1940s told the story of a chief who wanted to get rid of two of his three wives. The wives joined ranks and said that if he sent two away, he would have to send the third as well.
Polygyny is not so much about sex as it is about hoarding the productive and reproductive labour of women. It has often been used to deny younger men access to wives and hence to adult status, increasing the authority of older men over younger ones. There are easier ways for a man to get sex, if that’s all he wants, and cheaper ones too, in societies where women’s labour is not essential to family subsistence. Polygamous societies are often ones where both men and women are more emotionally invested in their relations with siblings and parents than in their marriage relations. The main tensions among wives in polygynous societies are not usually about sex, but about the distribution of resources among the wives and to their children. In many ancient kingdoms, these tensions often led to one wife plotting to kill the children of another. Polygamy of either sort is far less common than it used to be, and is now concentrated in Africa, the Middle East, India, Thailand, and Indonesia.
The trend over the past century has been toward limiting polygamy. Some societies have introduced a gradual reduction in the number of wives permitted, while others have relegated the status of secondary wives to that of concubines, and some have outlawed it outright. The Mormons are an exceptional case of polygyny being adopted in an industrializing society. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began in 1830 with a revelation about the role of Jesus in the New World. Early Mormons condemned much of nineteenth century Christianity as a corruption of the true church, and sought to return to a purer faith, one which harkened back to God’s ancient law. Among other important innovations, Smith’s 1843 Revelation on Celestial Marriage reinstituted polygyny, and referred to the law of the family followed by Biblical patriarchs. Patriarchal marriage, as it was often called, was believed to elevate the family in this world and the next, and those involved in polygyny had access to higher levels of salvation. They were also the leaders of the church in this world.
Smith never lived openly with his plural wives, but when the Mormons migrated to Utah after Smith’s martyrdom, polygyny was more openly practiced. Brigham Young had more than 50 wives. Nineteen of them were connubial wives, and they bore him 56 children.
However, the U.S. government moved to penalize Mormons through a series of federal statutes that outlawed polygamy and limited the power of the Mormon Church to acquire property (1862); provided that non-Mormons could serve on juries (1874); punished the practice of living with more than one wife (1882); and forfeited Church property (1887). The Supreme Court upheld these statutes, despite Mormon claims to a right to practice their faith without outside interference. In 1890, the church president issued a Manifesto forgoing plural marriage. Some Mormons persisted in the practice and a relatively small number of new polygamous marriages were celebrated after the Manifesto, but since 1904 the Church has had a policy of excommunicating followers who practice it.
Groups of disaffected former Mormons, who have generally refused to accept the Manifesto, have formed polygamous communities or enclaves. Some communities are isolated in rural locations, while others exist in more settled and populous areas. These groups have stimulated much public discussion and debate. Advocacy groups such as Tapestry Against Polygamy, composed of former plural wives, are countered by defenders of polygyny such as the women who wrote Harmony of Polygamy.
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