on Marriage in the Christian Bible

A Forum Comment, by Vong Chen Wen. Content quoted below is reproduced with permission from the author. Content is not to be reproduced without the author's explicit permission.

I would perhaps weigh in on marriage in the Bible since it seems relevant to the conversation.

Our first ideas of it come from as early as Genesis (the first book of the Bible). But it is hardly a "Christian" telling of it.

These are stories such as Jacob working 7 years for a girl, getting tricked cos he got too drunk and being married instead to her elder sister, then working another 7 years for the right girl.

Or more controversially, Abraham living estranged from his wife, Sara, at the end of his life with another woman. Not to mention he tried to pimp Sara out twice during their marriage for his own safety.

There is no sense of conservative morals in these stories. Only an odd tale of how some strange belief of avoiding man-made cities, to find the city made by God in the wilderness, passed from one generation to the next within a wandering family.

The next mention of marriage is of course controversial: the Mosaic law. The Mosaic law is complex in both intention and execution. For example shouting angrily at your parents was punishable by death. But we don't seem to have a record that mass teenage killings were common practice by the ancient Jews. Or they had very obedient teenagers (it would be a first in any culture)?

So we have horrifying laws such as, if a girl is raped she is to be married to the rapist. While horrific to the modern reader (and possibly no explanation will make it appear less so), the context without the law must be taken into account.

Generally, if a girl was raped (or any family member hurt), the males of the family were duty and honour bound to seek vengeance for the wrong (still actually a practice in some parts of the world today). This does happen in a Biblical story too when some of them decide to forsake Mosaic law: Dinah. Because the cultures then were not as individualistic as ours is today, not only was the rapist at fault, but their parents, their siblings, their friends, their servants, their tribe, their deity, and in some cases even their animals were also at fault.

This would then result in bloody generational family feuds.

Moses it seems, was attempting to get the Jewish nation instead of enacting tribal vengeance, the offending family was to offer repair and remorse by caring for the girl by treating her as family, ala: marriage. Again, how much this was really practiced falls under the same question of teenagers being put to death for shouting at their parents.

Anyway, agree with it or not, Moses' intention when creating laws were for the surrounding nations to look in at them and the wisdom of God to be revealed in their law. This is something the Jewish nation ultimately failed at.

Jesus comes next with rather strange words on marriage. He protects the adulterer, says if you even look at the girl a wrong way that is adultery, and that in the Kingdom of Heaven people will not be given in marriage. To be extremely clear, Jesus announces he has founded the Kingdom on earth. Meaning his ideas on the union of male and female were not some informational teasers of the afterlife, but one he intended to occur within the earthly life within the nation he had just formed.

Then enter Paul. Here we get into more controversy as many think Paul is a misogynist with strict, arbitrary moral codes. I think that very untrue but let's stick to the marriage discussion.

Paul seems to take the Mosaic intention and Jesus' example into a new practice for the first century church.

As mentioned in previous comments by others, marriage by and large is simply a way for money and power to flow through bloodlines. It is an efficient way to prevent violence in the dearth of power following the death of an influential person. Also, sex generally was not done just within marriage, as it could be fulfilled anywhere else as long as the official heir was recognised to be the correct inheritor of the money and power. Of course this deal is far worse for women.

So Paul declares in the midst of this, "Marry for love instead! Not money and power." In doing this he hopes the love and faithfulness of God is demonstrated, continuing the mission of Moses. And it has a whole new meaning in the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, as Jesus expounded.

Today is not Paul's day. Christianity does not get to define marriage to everyone else (if it ever did have that right to begin with).

So, Biblical readers should not be taking Bronze Age, first century, eleventh century, or sixteenth century practices and without Wisdom insisting upon them in the twenty first century,

Rather, it behooves us to do as Moses, Jesus, and Paul did: to rethink very carefully what does marriage (and divorce) mean in this day and age, amidst all the new issues we have to consider - individualism, capitalism, the empowerment of women, medical technology, democracy, lgbtiq rights, scientific discovery and understanding etc. etc.. And how can it be used anew to remind and represent to human beings, the nature of the Creator.