Recently the Logos Bible Software blog posted an excerpt from David Instone-Brewer’s book Moral Questions of the Bible: Timeless Truths in a Changing World that argued that “Jesus criticized polygamy as a warped version of the lifelong committed relationship of a one-plus-one marriage.” Instone-Brewer recognizes that up until the Roman era (about the time of Jesus), polygamy was considered a valid marriage model both in biblical thought and within Judaism in general, but he argues that “Jesus took the side of the Romans against the Jewish establishment on this occasion.”
I have been concerned for quite some time about a modern tendency to twist the Bible to say what we want it to say rather than to listen to what it actually says, and here, in my opinion, is a classic example. In this article, I want to show how Instone-Brewer has twisted the words of Jesus and Paul to oppose polygamy. In a subsequent article I will survey the biblical teaching on the subject, showing that the Bible does not condemn polygamy, and consider what the Bible’s failure to oppose polygamy means for the church today in view of the recent uptick in “ethical non-monogamy.”
The (Foreign?) “Problem of Polygamy”
The blog post begins with a section titled, “The Problem of Polygamy Today,” though its focus is on polygamy encountered on the mission field, with no mention of the fact that ethical non-monogamy is not a merely foreign issue that missionaries encounter in some distant land. Increasingly the western world is questioning the normalization of monogamy, with one recent study noting that 24% of Gen Xers and 37% of Millennials failed to “somewhat agree” or “strongly agree” with the statement that couples should be monogamous. So we don’t need to make this an issue that relates to some hypothetical “African tribal chief” out there as Instone-Brewer does. This is an issue that is all around us. I know of people who don’t go to church anymore because they are afraid that their relationship will not be accepted by churchgoers.
The Instone-Brewer quote in this section on “The Problem of Polygamy Today” is particularly troubling:
When an African tribal chief converts to Christianity, what happens to all his wives? Should he divorce them and send them back to their parents’ home in shame and penury, or should he live away from them in a separate house, but continue to provide for them financially? This is a classic problem for missionaries in countries that practice polygamy, and one to which there is no easy answer—just the fervent hope that the next generation will marry only one wife! It must seem very strange for those polygamous families when their normal, socially acceptable lifestyle is suddenly regarded as immoral.
No, Dr. Instone-Brewer, there is an easy answer: stop imposing Western values on the peoples we do missionary work amongst! Stop opposing the words of the prophets about divorce (Malachi 2:16) or the words of Jesus that what God has joined together, let no one separate (Mark 10:9)! If, as you admit, the Old Testament and other Palestinian Jews of Jesus’ day saw polygamy as acceptable, who are we to regard the polygamy of your hypothetical African tribal chief as “immoral”? When sending people away in shame is considered a better option than fidelity to marriage, you know that Western values have trumped biblical values, especially if, as we will note in the next post, the Bible never opposes polygamy.
Did Jesus Side with the Romans against the Old Testament?
But Instone-Brewer has what he considers a biblical reason for thinking divorce or separation is better than polygamy. He argues that while “[p]olygamy had been considered perfectly normal and proper [in Judaism] until the Romans took over, … Jesus took the side of the Romans against the Jewish establishment.” With these words Instone-Brewer commits a common and troubling rhetorical move, referring to “the Jewish establishment.” Christians have long struggled with anti-Semitism (yes, even us evangelicals today!), and we have trouble hearing the words “the Jewish establishment” and not automatically thinking, “That must be right, because we know that opposing the Jewish establishment was what Jesus was all about.” Jesus the Jew had a much larger problem with Roman beliefs and ethics than he did with his own religion and especially with a practice that was rooted in the Old Testament and practiced by the most faithful Jews throughout history. (On the Old Testament view of polygamy, see my other post, “The Bible, Polygamy, and the Church Today.”)
But another problem should be immediately evident to us: Jesus never addresses the topic! Instone-Brewer has to take Jesus’ teaching about divorce in Mark 10:1-12 and make an inference from it about what Jesus thinks about polygamy. His logic, however, is so convoluted that we have to admit it is an effort to twist Jesus’ words to make the Bible say what Instone-Brewer wishes it would say. Here is the logic:
First, Dr. Instone-Brewer notes that there were some Jews in Palestine (specifically the Qumran community) and many outside Palestine (in the greater Roman world) who agreed with the Romans that polygamy is immoral. He then notes that the Qumran community read Genesis 1:27 (“God created them male and female”) alongside Genesis 7:9 (“two and two, male and female, they went into the ark”) to imply that only two people could marry. His point is not that these passages make this point or that the logic of the Qumran community is a good interpretation of these texts. (“We may not be convinced by their logic, but as far as they were concerned it was case proven.”) He just wants to make the point that Genesis 1:27 is important to the Qumran community for this reason.
Then Instone-Brewer notes that Jews in the diaspora (i.e., those outside Palestine) had another way of seeing polygamy as against Scripture. He gets this idea simply from the fact that when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the translators “added a word to Genesis 2:24.” Whereas the Hebrew text could be translated, “Therefore a man will leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and they will be one flesh”; the Greek translation says, “For this reason a man will leave behind his father and his mother and cling to his wife, and the two will be one flesh.” Instone-Brewer argues that the words “the two” were added to “to show that polygamy was wrong.”
But the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Hebrew Bible regularly uses dynamic equivalent translations, and Instone-Brewer is probably reading too much into why the translators used the words “the two” here. Since the passage was speaking of two people here, Adam and Eve, the words “the two” would have been a natural choice. Furthermore, even polygamists saw marriage as a union between two people; they simply thought that the man could become one flesh with one woman and then one flesh with another. Even the apostle Paul could apply Genesis 2:24 to the case of a married man having relations with a prostitute: now he, who is one flesh with Christ and with his wife, is also one flesh with a prostitute (1 Corinthians 6:16). It is not at all clear how saying that “two” become one in marriage tells us anything about whether that two-to-one transformation can happen with another person after the initial marriage union. When Abraham took Sarah as his wife, the two became one flesh even though Abraham also had concubines (Genesis 25:6) and, after Sarah’s death, took another wife, Keturah (Genesis 25:1), who presumably also was made “one flesh” with him. It says in 2 Samuel 12:8 that God “gave” King David multiple wives, but this does not mean that there was no point at which “the two” became one flesh. Polygamy in the ancient world was a repeated experience of two becoming one flesh. Why David Instone-Brewer reads the Greek translation of Genesis 2:24 as an attempt “to show that polygamy was wrong” is unclear.
But the argument gets even more convoluted. Instone-Brewer writes:
When the Pharisees were questioning Jesus about divorce, he took the opportunity to set them straight about polygamy, too. Jesus used both sets of arguments used by other Jews. He quoted the key verse used by Qumran Jews (Gen 1:27) and even said this was what happened “at the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6, which presumably reminded his listeners that Qumran Jews called this “the foundation of creation”). Then he quoted the verse preferred by Jews outside Palestine—Genesis 2:24—including the additional word “two” (Mark 10:8; Matt 19:5). By deliberately using both arguments, Jesus emphasized that he agreed with those Jews who taught monogamy, contrary to the Pharisees.
This argument is loaded with problems. First, Jesus did not take “the opportunity to set them straight about polygamy, too.” There is no indication in Mark 10 that the issue of polygamy has even entered Jesus’ mind. The passage is about divorce, and Jesus argues that Scripture is on the side of those who do not permit it. This is where Jesus keeps his focus throughout the passage, and it is twisting the words of Jesus to imply that he is addressing a different issue than the one the passage is about. It is possible when we speak to one topic that what we say may have implications for another topic, but to claim that Jesus was trying to “set them straight about polygamy, too” is to twist Scripture.
Of course, Instone-Brewer claims that this is what Jesus is doing because he thinks that the word “the two” here in the Gospel of Mark means Jesus took the side of those who thought marriage was limited to two people, but this is problematic as well. First of all, the Gospel of Mark is written in Greek, not Hebrew, and Mark regularly quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament though Jesus would have quoted the Hebrew text that did not contain the words “the two.” This is the way the Gospels generally work. If I quote Jesus, I generally quote an English translation. This doesn’t mean I think Jesus used the exact words in this translation; it’s just a way of quoting the text as my audience is familiar with it. By using the words “the two,” Mark simply quotes the text as his Greek audience knows it, without making any claim that Jesus used those words over the Hebrew version of Genesis 2:24 or that Mark prefers the use of the words “the two” over a version that lacks those words. Instone-Brewer is reading too much into the form of Mark’s quotation here.
There is another problem with Instone-Brewer’s argument. He implies that Jesus’ reason for quoting both Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24 is because Jesus wants to show his agreement with both anti-polygamist groups (neither of which he is a part) over against the mainstream view of Palestinian Jews (the group he is in!). Not only is this a wild guess at why Jesus quoted these two passages, but it is unlikely. Remember that Jesus is addressing the issue of divorce, not polygamy. Would it not be natural – even if polygamy is not on your mind – to turn to the two creation texts that address marriage when discussing the legality of divorce? Why suggest that Jesus turns to these two texts because he happens to know that some scroll stored at Qumran uses the one text against polygamy and that someone might (mis)read the Greek translation of the other text as opposing polygamy? Jesus’ audience is an Aramaic-speaking audience in Palestine, not the community gathered in Qumran or diaspora Jews who would have been most familiar with the Greek form of the text. Instone-Brewer’s argument is so forced that we must conclude it is nothing other than eisegesis, an effort to make Scripture say what we want it to say, which should strike us as quite troubling!
There are other problems here, including how Instone-Brewer subtly identifies the pro-polygamy stance with “the Pharisees” though I am not aware of any evidence that suggests it was a particularly Pharisaic belief, and how he suggests that Jesus is reminding his listeners of Qumran views when it is not clear that others wouldn’t have called this “the beginning of creation” or that Jesus’ audience was that familiar with Qumranic theology. But to keep this brief I want to focus instead on Instone-Brewer’s claim that Jesus “deliberately us[ed] both arguments” to “emphasize[] that he agreed with those Jews who taught monogamy, contrary to the Pharisees.” This is a twisting of Jesus’ argument plain and simple. Jesus is not speaking about the issue of polygamy; he did not use arguments against polygamy here but simply quoted Scripture having to do with marriage and divorce; he never contrasted himself to the Pharisees with regard to polygamy; and he does not here express any agreement or disagreement with anyone on the issue of polygamy. Instone-Brewer is wrong on every point.
This is not to say that Jesus didn’t have a stance on polygamy. Jesus seems to have been pro-celibacy in general (Matthew 19:10-12). One can imagine that if someone asked him, “Should I take a second wife?” he would have answered, “Better is he that takes no wives at all!” But would he have seen those with multiple wives as having engaged in an “immoral” activity by marrying them? There is nothing in the Bible that suggests this.
Did “Jesus and Paul Change God’s Commands”?
Instone-Brewer follows his discussion of Mark 10:1-12 with an argument that Paul “took the teaching against polygamy further by reversing the command that a man had to marry his dead brother’s wife.” In short, the Old Testament commands that if a man dies, having given his wife no children, his next of kin is obligated to marry her (even if that man already has a wife) and to give her a son who could carry on his brother’s family line. Instone-Brewer takes Paul’s command that a widow is “free to marry whomever she wishes” (1 Corinthians 7:39) as a reversal of this Old Testament law. But there are two major problems with his argument.
First, the levirate marriage law is specific to widows who have no sons and would not have applied to widows in general. Second, the law was not taken in Paul’s day (or even in Ruth’s day a millennium earlier!) as requiring the woman to marry the next of kin if there was another potential suitor for her. This law was already understood within Judaism to give the widow the freedom “to marry whomever she wishes.” To see Paul’s words here as reversing an Old Testament command is to twist Paul’s words out of a desire to make the New Testament anti-polygamy.
Instone-Brewer then asks, “Why did Jesus and Paul change God’s commands?” His answer: God’s commands are temporary and it’s God’s purposes that should always be the focus. He explains this as follows:
God’s purpose for marriage was to help individuals find mutual support in families. When there were too few men due to warfare, this purpose was accomplished by allowing polygamy to ensure male heirs. In more stable times, polygamy resulted in many men remaining single because wealthy men could have many wives. In order to maintain God’s purposes at times like these, the rule about polygamy had to change. God’s purposes are eternal, but his commands change in order to carry out those purposes in different situations. We might summarize God’s purpose in the words of Psalm 68:6: “God sets the lonely in families.”
In other words, Instone-Brewer suggests that polygamy was intended for times where there is a great disparity between the number of men and the number of women in a culture. If there is no such disparity, polygamy is immoral because it opposes God’s ideal of setting the lonely in families. (One could note that polyandry, the marriage of multiple men to one woman, could reverse any disparity created by polygyny, the marriage of multiple women to one man, but this is besides the point here.) Here again, Instone-Brewer is twisting Scripture. Psalm 68:6 is not giving the purpose of marriage. It is a verse about how God provides a home for the fatherless and the widow. The NRSV gives a more literal translation than the NIV here: “God gives the desolate a home to live in.” This is not about “loneliness” so that it should be applied to the poor man who is single because the rich men have taken all the available wives; it is about a person who does not have family – no brothers or cousins or anyone to take them in. Mephibosheth is a classic example (2 Samuel 9). He didn’t need a wife; he needed a king to take him into his home. Marriage may be one way that God gives the desolate a home to live in, but we show our lack of awareness of ancient Near Eastern hospitality when we think that Psalm 68:6 means everyone should be able to marry someone. That is not at all what David was talking about in this psalm.
Conclusion
David Instone-Brewer concludes that “Jesus criticized polygamy as a warped version of the lifelong committed relationship of a one-plus-one marriage.” When we examine his arguments, we find that he has built one forced argument on another to make Jesus say something that Jesus does not say. This should trouble anyone with a commitment to Scripture, regardless of what we think of the ethics of polygamy.
God forbid that any of us should let our traditions trump Scripture. God forbid that we should use our intellectual prowess and our research (two things Dr. Instone-Brewer has in abundance!) to twist the words of Jesus! We may think marriage should be a lifelong union between one man and one woman, but let us not make out the Bible to say this just because we believe it.
If we are going to be faithful to Scripture, we need to be more open-minded when reading it. We need to listen to what the Bible actually says rather than what we want it to say. In my next post, I will attempt to do this, surveying the Biblical teachings on polygamy and then considering why monogamy might be desirable even if it is not mandatory. But we should always start with Scripture and move to interpretation. If we start with the interpretation we want and then seek words like “the two” and “whomever she wishes” as phrases that we can hang new meanings on, then Scripture is no longer our guide; instead we have decided that we will guide Scripture according to our values. And that is a troubling abuse of Scripture.
