“Biblical” has become a major buzz-word lately, and the issue of how to define marriage is up for major debate. For many, it has turned into an ugly culture war, and even within Christianity there are multiple perspectives all claiming to be “biblical.”
So, let’s take some time to survey what “biblical” marriage actually looks like.
- Genesis 2: one man and one woman (later called Adam and Eve, or “man/human” and “life”)
- Genesis 16: one man, his wife/wives, and wife’s female slave(s)
- Genesis 38:6-10: one dead man, dead man’s brother(s), and one woman
- Exodus 21:4-6: one man, one female-slave, and one male-slave to whom the man gives female-slave to as a wife (of course, the owner gets to keep the female-slave-wife and kids if the male-slave decides he wants freedom more than his family)
- Numbers 31:1-18, Deuteronomy 21:10-14: one man, virgin female POW(s) (man can decide to keep her and force her to submit to him, or he can send her away after he sleeps with her if he doesn’t like her)
- Deuteronomy 22:28-29: one man and rape victim (or, it could be argued, one man and one woman caught having sex without her father’s consent to the relationship; see also Exodus 22:16-17)
- Across the Old Testament: one man, many wives
- Across the Old Testament: one man, his wife/wives, and concubines
What can we take from this?
- Biblical marriage is patriarchal; men own women as property (just like they “owned” slaves, children, and livestock).
- For women, virginity is everything. Premarital sex isn’t a punishable offense, but the loss of property value (virgins were worth more money than non-virgins) for the father is what really matters.
- Biblical marriage is primarily about sexual reproduction for the sake of producing male heirs and building up the family estate. It generally has nothing to do with romantic love (or sexual orientation, for that matter).
- While it can be argued that polygamy was not God’s intent or ideal (i.e. Genesis 2:4, 1 Timothy 3:2, 12, and Titus 1:6), it is irrefutable that God still recognized these other kinds of marriage as marriage and, at times, blessed them as godly family units.
My point with all of this isn’t to try and justify any “liberal” or “immoral” view of sexuality that I want by doing “theological gymnastics” with these texts; my point is that we all pick and choose how to read and apply the Bible in our own lives. Fitting biblical marriage into the 1950’s nuclear family ideal takes just as much “theological gymnastics” as does justifying cohabitation or same-sex marriage. Truly literal biblical marriage is the product of several very different cultures existing many thousands of years ago and adhering to multiple very different ideas about men, women, marriage, family, sexuality, inter-personal relationships, and ownership.
A few easy-to-read resources:
(Disclaimer: The views of these authors, articles, or websites may not always reflect my own, just as my views may not necessarily reflect theirs. My posting of these articles should not be confused for my total and complete endorsement of the authors and their views or those of the websites that feature them.)
Marriage in the Bible
Marriage and families in the Bible
Jennifer Wright Knust on marriage and sexuality in the Bible (NOTE: there are three parts to this)
Sexuality in the Bible
This post is part of a Marriage and Sexuality series.
Jul 24, 2012 @ 10:20:26
Don’t forget that Jesus, Peter, and Paul all also addressed marriage — if you’re going to talk about “biblical” marriage, especially in the Christian context. All of your examples are from Old Testament Law. For example, Matthew 19, 1 Peter 3, 1 Corinthians 7. Jesus, as the fulfillment of the Law, is a bit more authoritative than OT examples, don’t you think? How do these passages affect your understanding?
Jul 25, 2012 @ 09:11:27
Good point. I did consider highlighting New Testament examples as well, but they all pretty well fit under the #1: “One man, one woman” option. I would agree that Jesus is more authoritative than the OT–in fact, more than any other biblical writer no matter what testament they ended up in. A lot of American Christianity, however, sees all of the scriptures as equally authoritative, meaning they have to square with the diversity of arrangements that were called “marriage” in the OT as authoritative.
A few things should be noted about marriage in the NT, though. First, Jesus only talked about two aspects of it–that divorce (which in those days meant a man sending away his wife, probably leaving her destitute) is tantamount to adultery. This is because, unless she had died or cheated on him, he was going back on his word to her and her father (since marriage was a business deal between men) that he would care for her needs all of his life. Second, the hierarchical passages in Peter’s and Paul’s writings on marriage (wives, submit to your husbands) sit in the context of slaves and children. This tells me that the culture still saw women as property just like slaves, children, and livestock. It makes perfect sense because both Jewish and Roman cultures were patriarchal.
As for 1 Corinthians 7, I’m not gonna lie, that passage makes me smile. “Oh, if only you sex-crazed losers could be awesome like me and never get married…” Haha. Oh, Paul.
The NT does arguably give us a better picture of what marriage should be than the OT (though I make an exception for Song of Songs, for that is an exceptional book), I still don’t believe it’s the whole picture… and I still don’t believe it truly matches up with what many of the more vocal conservative Christians are calling “biblical.”
Jul 24, 2012 @ 14:17:11
What people mean by “Biblical”, most of the time, is “just like I imagine my Grandpappy did things.” They don’t want to know about what’s actually in the Bible — or think about how much of that was God’s idea, how much was a divine “Oy veh, what will you people think of next?”
Hence William Stringfellow’s idea that instead of reading the Bible Americanistically, we needed to construe America Biblically. Not meaning plagues of locusts for people leaving rubbers in the alley, but (for example) wondering whether imperialist foreign policies should be considered a side effect of a culture dedicated to the Principality called ‘Death’…
Jul 25, 2012 @ 08:55:17
Hahaha. So true. Great thoughts!