Ep 108: "Biblical" Marriage

00:00- It starts in Deuteronomy 22, 13.

00:04Suppose a man marries a woman,

00:05but after going into her,

00:07and this is a euphemism for consummation,

00:10which is a self, a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

00:13- It's not much of a euphemism.

00:15It's pretty, it's pretty, it's pretty graphic, yeah.

00:17- Males are pretty hard, that's what I'm saying, yeah.

00:21- That's another euphemism.

00:22(upbeat music)

00:25Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:28- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:29- And you're listening to the Data Overdogma podcast,

00:32where we're increasing public access

00:35to the academic study of the Bible and religion,

00:37and we are combating the spread

00:40of misinformation about the same.

00:41I'll go with things today, Dan.

00:43- Ah, things are going, rockin' and rollin',

00:46havin' a good time, I'm lookin' forward to today's show,

00:50'cause we're gonna be talkin' about something

00:51that is becoming, oddly, a hot, hot button issue

00:57in these United States and elsewhere, I suppose,

01:02but it doesn't feel like it should be cropping up right now,

01:07but it kind of is, it's love and marriage today,

01:11and we're gonna be talking about marriage.

01:14And then also, in the latter half of the show,

01:17we'll do a chapter and verse about divorce.

01:23So in and out of marriage-- - Could be a quickie.

01:28- But let's start with our first segment,

01:34which is taking issue.

01:36(upbeat music)

01:39And today, Dan, we're taking issue with biblical marriage.

01:44- Well, I understand that I have a biblical marriage,

01:47don't you have a biblical marriage, Dan?

01:48- I mean, I know my lady wife in the biblical sense,

01:53is that what you're talking about?

01:56- She is known to you.

01:57Okay, well, the adjective biblical gets slapped on

02:02to so many things these days by folks who want to insist

02:06there's a right way and a wrong way to go about everything.

02:09And so there's a lot of talk of biblical marriage,

02:13and in short, you don't want a biblical marriage.

02:16(Dan laughs)

02:19But there are also many different kinds of biblical marriages,

02:23and you don't want any of them.

02:24- Okay, all right, we'll get to that.

02:26We'll get to that.

02:27One of the things that I did when I was sort of researching

02:30this for the show was I remembered that there's this thing

02:35that's happening in the US.

02:39Several states have already adopted this thing,

02:41and other states are trying to push for

02:44what they're calling covenant marriages.

02:47And what this is, is a different type of,

02:52like, extra special marriage

02:54when you file for your marriage license or whatever,

02:57you check the box. - Super size me.

02:59- Yeah, for covenant marriage.

03:02And the idea is that it's a lot harder to get a divorce,

03:07and you have to enter into the marriage,

03:09you have to have done counseling with a priest,

03:13or like with some sort of religious person,

03:16it's not with a marriage counselor,

03:17but that's neither here nor there.

03:20- Yeah, it's gotta be someone who's entirely unqualified

03:23to say anything at all about marriage.

03:26- Especially if it's a, you know, if it's a Catholic priest,

03:30someone who's not even allowed to participate themselves.

03:33- I've heard tell that this is how it goes.

03:36- And then it's like, you know, you really can't

03:40get divorced unless, you know, it kind of eliminates

03:42the idea of no-fault divorce, which I think a lot of

03:47very right-wing religious people have been hitting hard

03:52that like divorces this great tragedy or whatever.

03:56And so what we do is we enter into this covenant marriage

03:59where it's much, it's, and they really are trying to make

04:03sort of, the end goal is to make some form

04:08of biblical Christian marriage the legal standard.

04:12- Yeah.

04:13And I think there are a couple of different reasons

04:15for this, the end of no-fault divorce is something

04:19that I see a lot of Christian nationalists advocating for

04:21on social media, which is, it's basically men saying,

04:26I should be able to be a garbage human being

04:30and my wife should not be allowed to take leave

04:34of our relationship.

04:35- Right.

04:36- Because, you know, no-fault divorce was implemented

04:40precisely to give women access to a little bit more agency

04:45within marriages, and marriages for a long time,

04:48there has been a significant power asymmetry.

04:51And when we get into the biblical stuff,

04:54you're going to see that that's even more entrenched

04:58in biblical marriage.

05:00And so this is basically just men saying,

05:03I don't like women being able to make decisions for themselves.

05:07I should be the one in charge of them.

05:10And these are the same men who are out there saying,

05:13every household should have one vote.

05:15It should be the man who decides.

05:17And, you know, it's fair because his wife is allowed

05:21to share her feelings with him before he makes the decision.

05:24And you will listen to her about as much as those guys

05:24- Right.

05:28tend to listen to their wives.

05:30- Yeah, yeah.

05:31And so it's just garbage human beings who wants their

05:36garbage-ness to be authorized by the state.

05:39- To be enforced by the state.

05:41- Enforced by the state, yes.

05:42Over and against the interest in the agency and the consent.

05:45These are the same folks who insist there's no such thing

05:48as marital rape, which is also something we will talk about

05:52when you get into our discussion a bit.

05:55- The Bible kind of backs them up on that.

05:58- Yeah, unfortunately.

05:59- Yeah, it definitely is a trump card in a lot of ways.

06:04If you think the Bible is an authoritative text

06:07and you accept the way it is interpreted

06:10by the garbage humans that are out there right now.

06:13You know, yeah, it's an issue.

06:17And one thing I find funny about this is they use this word

06:21covenant because a lot of people think covenant is just

06:24this magical word for that, you know,

06:26Christians and Bible believers can use because you've got

06:29covenant, the word is, you know, all over the Bible

06:33in particular.

06:34- It means more than just promise.

06:35It's bigger.

06:36It's more important than just-

06:39- And I think that's the other reason people are trying

06:41to do this is because now gay marriage is legal.

06:46And so they're like, well, I don't want to be a part

06:49of this anymore.

06:50I don't want regular marriage.

06:51I want extra super special plus marriage so that it is

06:55distinguished from gay marriage 'cause I don't want

06:58the ickiness.

06:59- And I want something that excludes them.

07:03I don't want them to have, I want something that is my own

07:06that they don't get.

07:08- Right.

07:09- Right.

07:10Because this is about access to power and resources.

07:13It's about structuring power.

07:15So the garbage humans are on top and everybody else has to

07:19smell their garbageness and be subordinate to it.

07:25- Well, let's dive into like biblical marriage.

07:29What is, what are we talking about?

07:32When does it, well, yeah, I don't know.

07:36You probably have a lot to say about it.

07:39- Well, and I brought up the word covenant because when you,

07:42when you look in the Bible, there's a lot about covenants

07:44between God and humans.

07:46- Right.

07:47- And the concept of covenants that we find in the Bible

07:49is actually derived from Neo-Assyrian vassal treaties.

07:54And so the people tend to treat a covenant as a mutual

07:58agreement between two parties.

08:00But what is often glossed over, particularly by folks who

08:03want to appropriate the idea from the Bible is the fact

08:07that in the Bible, these are not equal parties.

08:10- Right.

08:11- The vassal treaties are treaties that were struck

08:14between a sovereign nation and a subjugated nation.

08:19It was the one who was bigger and stronger and in charge,

08:26basically saying, oh, let's drop a little contract.

08:29Wouldn't want anything bad to happen to this lovely little

08:32country you got going on over here.

08:34So here's what'll happen.

08:36You will give us money and you will send us troops to fight

08:40in our wars for us.

08:41And then we will protect you from ourselves.

08:46- Yeah, probably.

08:47- Basically we will not destroy you.

08:49- Yeah.

08:50- And so it's framed as a, SR Haddon was a Neo-Assyrian

08:55emperor who framed it in terms of covenantal love.

09:00- You will love me and then I will, yeah, for the sake.

09:05And that's what's being picked up in Deuteronomy.

09:09They're basically copying what's going on in the vassal

09:12treaties of these Neo-Assyrians.

09:13And so marriage is very similar in the Bible.

09:17It is not two equal parties entering into a contract.

09:20The way the legislation exists and particularly

09:23in the Pentateuch, but we find it hinted at in stories

09:27and things elsewhere, the contract was between two men

09:32and it was usually the man who wanted a wife

09:35and whatever man had rights over the sexual availability

09:40and the pro-creative capacities of the woman.

09:44And usually that was her father, but it could be her master.

09:48- Right.

09:49- She could be enslaved and her father could sell her

09:52as a concubine or a sex slave.

09:56So there were different kinds of contracts

09:58that this could be, but basically the man was purchasing,

10:03and the bride price was the price of the transaction.

10:08Her sexual availability and her pro-creative capacities,

10:13which were not her own.

10:15- Right.

10:16- So those were commodities that unfortunately,

10:18she went along with and he basically had control of that.

10:24So in the Bible, there-- - You said she went along with,

10:26it's not like, I mean--

10:28- Not a sense of consent, but in the sense of physically,

10:32she was a part of the transaction

10:34because those things cannot be decoupled from her.

10:39- Yeah, she was not given the choice to go along with it.

10:43She was made to do it.

10:46- And women would have been conditioned to think of this

10:51as a great blessing, as something good for them,

10:55because in the ancient world,

10:58women were not really social agents of their own.

11:02They had no real social autonomy.

11:05Their identity was subordinated to a man's identity,

11:08whether it was the household of their father

11:11or the household of their husband.

11:13And like even when we get down to Roman times,

11:16even in the Greco-Roman world,

11:19they would have like arrangements so that a woman

11:22could get married, but if her husband died

11:26or divorced or whatever, she could revert back

11:29to the household of her father.

11:33Whereas prior to these time periods,

11:36she was basically left to drift in a patriarchal world

11:40where she had no identity of her own.

11:42And so she was always tied to a patriarchal household

11:47of some kind or another.

11:49And so yeah, she's a commodity.

11:53And absolutely, there are other dimensions to this.

11:56You have a lot of discussion of love

11:58and things like that in the Hebrew Bible.

11:59It's not exactly the same as the way we think

12:02and talk about it today, but you can look in the song

12:05of songs for erotic poetry that includes

12:09a lot of very lovely poetry about desire and about love

12:13and care and intimacy and things like that.

12:17And you see other places, but with Ruth, for instance,

12:22this is not a love story.

12:24This is a story about convenience and meeting needs

12:29where Naomi's like, here's how you trick a man

12:32into marrying you so you can be a proper Israelite wife.

12:37And then Boaz is like, whoa, we don't need to do all this.

12:42I will take the high road and I will go ahead

12:45and facilitate this marriage

12:47so that you can be a proper Israelite wife

12:50because I've seen the chesed that you have done

12:53for your mother-in-law and for the people.

12:56And so it's a story of a bunch of people

12:59who are going above and beyond what's expected

13:01and demanded by the law, not because they have

13:05some deep and abiding love for each other,

13:07but they're functioning as models

13:11of behavior related to social expectations.

13:14But I think we've talked about Deuteronomy 22 before.

13:19- You'll have to remind me.

13:21- Deuteronomy 22 is some rules about marriage, sex,

13:26adultery, and sexual assault.

13:29- Right, and just remembering there was a thing

13:31about a virgin who was proven not to be a virgin,

13:36was stoned to death, that sort of thing, is that--

13:38- Something like that, yeah, it starts in Deuteronomy 22, 13.

13:42Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going into her,

13:45and this is a euphemism for consummation,

13:49which is a self, a euphemism for sexual intercourse--

13:52- It's not much of a euphemism, it's pretty,

13:54it's pretty, it's pretty graphic, yeah.

13:56- Males are pretty hard, that's what I'm saying, yeah.

13:59- That's another euphemism, but after going into her,

14:04dislikes her and makes up charges against her,

14:07slandering her by saying, I married this woman,

14:09but when I lay with her, I did not find evidence

14:12of her virginity, and this is authors of this part

14:17of Deuteronomy, who do not have a remedial grasp

14:22of a female anatomy, and how that works,

14:25but basically the idea is, because she's a commodity,

14:29she's expected to be in pristine condition,

14:32gotta have that new wife smell.

14:33- New in the box, that's right.

14:34- And if someone else has already been there,

14:38then that is, for lack of a better phrase, tainted goods,

14:42and so the contract has been violated, basically.

14:48But here, the story is that he's made this up,

14:51he's looking for an excuse to get rid of her,

14:55but even more to have her killed,

14:58and it says, "The father of the young woman

14:59"and her mother shall then submit the evidence

15:01"of the young woman's virginity

15:02"to the elders of the city at the gate."

15:05- Good luck, enjoy, have fun with that.

15:08- Yeah, this is presumed to be sheets

15:13that indicate there has been a hemorrhaging.

15:19- Right, because everyone knows that there's no chance,

15:23no way for a hymen to be broken other than

15:25through the initial Coital Act.

15:29- Yes, yes, if the hymen is ever,

15:35intact enough, integral enough that it is broken,

15:38and there is any kind of bleeding.

15:41The father of the young woman shall say to the elders,

15:43"I gave my daughter in marriage to this man,

15:44"but he dislikes her, and now he has made up charges

15:47"against her, saying I did not find evidence

15:50"of your daughter's virginity,

15:51"but here is the evidence of my daughter's virginity.

15:54"Then they shall spread out the cloth

15:56"before the elders of the town,

15:58"because you couldn't fake something like that."

16:02- No, I would, I'm impossible.

16:04- Yeah, the elders of that town shall take the man

16:06and punish him, they shall find him 100 shekels of silver,

16:09which they shall give to the young woman's father.

16:13- Right.

16:14- Because he has slandered a virgin of Israel.

16:17What happens when you slander a virgin?

16:19You pay the virgin's father.

16:21- She shall remain his wife.

16:21- Right.

16:25Oh, goody.

16:26- Right, there's a lot of moments where it's like,

16:29oh, this marriage is gonna be fun.

16:31This is good for her.

16:33- Yeah, it's definitely keeping her agency

16:36and consent in mind.

16:38He shall not be permitted to divorce her as long as he lives.

16:42And then it goes, "But if it happens to be true,

16:45"they stoner to death."

16:47- Because she's committed-- - Yeah, there's also this sense

16:50that unlike marriage of today,

16:54because a lot of sort of the Christian nationalist set,

17:00the ultra right wing Christian conservatives of now,

17:05try to make it seem like this is the ideal,

17:08like you should not be allowed to divorce,

17:10you shouldn't like,

17:11and the problem is that marriage is then, as you say,

17:16the woman is considered property,

17:19which I don't think we think of,

17:20I don't think even those people think of women as property

17:24anymore, at least they wouldn't say it out loud.

17:28- Some of them have, but-- - Oh, okay, well, there's that.

17:32Yeah, I guess there is the very extreme set.

17:34But the other thing is, so this is an economic institution.

17:40This is not a love institution marriage in that environment

17:45what had nothing to do with how we determine

17:51how we see marriage now.

17:54It's a totally different institution.

17:57Yeah, and the folks who talk about,

18:00even within my own religious tradition,

18:04there's a discussion of the nuclear family,

18:08which really is phenomenally modern,

18:10like it's not even been a century

18:12that the nuclear family, as we conceptualize it,

18:15has been understood to be the fundamental unit of society.

18:20And there are many parts around the world today

18:24where you go find multi-generational households

18:27and the nuclear family is not the fundamental unit of society.

18:32There's an awful lot of ethnocentricity

18:35and an awful lot of myopia.

18:37A lot of Christian nationalists have the blinders on

18:40when it comes to how they understand love and marriage.

18:45It's an institute you can't disparage.

18:48This, I tell you, brother.

18:51- Brother-- - Sorry, got into my hulk.

18:57- Hulk and hulk and... (laughs)

19:00- I-- - It's--

19:01- Also an awful example of a family man.

19:04- Yeah, there you go, that's right. (laughs)

19:06(upbeat music)

19:09- I was gonna say, it's funny because earlier

19:13you were talking about sort of ancient views on marriage

19:18and especially women in marriage.

19:23And it's, like you say,

19:26it is a very new idea.

19:28Like there are people alive today

19:31who were married under similar ideas.

19:35You know what I mean?

19:36Like it wasn't until the '60s

19:38that women in the United States could get alone

19:40without their husbands co-signing on it.

19:43It was like, this is not,

19:45this is the autonomy of a woman is so extremely new.

19:50It's literally shocking to me.

19:55- Yeah, well I remember the first time I heard

19:58that a woman couldn't get a credit card

20:00until this 1970s.

20:02- Yeah.

20:03- That like, I, well that just baffled me.

20:07And we are so not far removed from that

20:12that the folks who were like,

20:14oh, we gotta make marriage great again

20:17by going back to the periods before women

20:20had any agency of their own.

20:23- Yeah, again, garbage humans and yikes.

20:28- I was gonna say that like one of the things

20:29that we need to talk about

20:30when we talk about the idea of biblical marriage

20:34is that polygamy was a huge thing.

20:39- Yeah, it was normative.

20:41It was not the norm because you needed to be able

20:43to financially sustain multiple households.

20:47But yes, it was normative in that if you could do it,

20:51you would do it and there were no,

20:53nobody had any concerns with it.

20:56And this raises such an interesting thing about adultery.

20:59Adultery was a very unequal requirement

21:04because a man could have intercourse

21:08with an unmarried woman who was not his wife,

21:12that was not adultery.

21:14And that's why sex workers were prolific in this time period.

21:21And it wasn't, yeah, I mean, there are multiple,

21:25I remember, oh gosh, who was the character who was it?

21:29His daughter-in-law tricked Judah, Judah, Judea, Judea.

21:33- The guy who was like, oh, is that?

21:35That looks an awful lot like my staff.

21:36- Yeah, yeah.

21:38But like she acted as a sex worker.

21:42He partook and at no point in the story,

21:47is that the bad thing?

21:49- Yeah.

21:50Even though presumably he's a married man.

21:53So yeah, I think that's a fascinating part of this.

21:59- Yeah, the sex in the ancient world was not a mutual act

22:03that was engaged in by two equal partners.

22:06It was something that an active sexual agent

22:08did to a passive sexual object,

22:10whose agency, whose consent was really immaterial.

22:14And so as a result, any passive sexual objects

22:18who were not already claimed by another man were fair game.

22:23And later the idea would develop

22:25that the act of sex comprised the act of marriage.

22:30So they could just be like, hey, go to the bar,

22:35have a few drinks, take somebody home, boom, married.

22:40And because that was the ceiling of the deal, so to speak.

22:45And there was absolutely nothing untoward

22:48about that kind of activity because nothing said,

22:51there were no rules that the man was only allowed

22:54to have one and only one wife.

22:56- Right, there's also this idea of,

23:01I mean, you say there's no consent,

23:03but there is kind of a consent issue

23:04because if a woman, if a man rapes a woman

23:09and she cries out, you know, there's that whole thing

23:12about if she cries out, then he's done something wrong,

23:17but if she doesn't cry out,

23:19then she must have been okay with it.

23:22But then even then, the remedy, if she does cry out

23:27if he was taking her against her will,

23:30is often that he has, he's forced to marry her

23:33and pay the bride price to her father.

23:36- So that's still in Deuteronomy 22.

23:39And the crying out is actually unrelated

23:41to the unmarried woman.

23:43The crying out as if it is an engaged woman.

23:47So the betrothed woman, yeah.

23:49So in between betrothal and marriage,

23:52and betrothal could last for like a year or more,

23:55but betrothal was basically the man and the father

23:59inking the contract basically.

24:03But then there was a key--

24:04- Hemmering out the details and stuff.

24:05- Yeah, yeah, entering into the negotiations and everything.

24:09And then there could be like a year or more period

24:13of betrothal.

24:14And at that point, she's in the eyes of the law,

24:18she belongs to her husband,

24:20even though it has not been consummated yet.

24:24And so the Deuteronomy 22.8 is like,

24:27well, let's see what happens if a betrothed woman

24:29is sexually assaulted.

24:31And it's like, if it happens in the city,

24:34then they're both stoned because she should have cried out

24:38and obviously somebody would have come and stopped it.

24:42- Right.

24:43- But if it happens in the open country,

24:47then obviously she did cry out,

24:48but nobody was around to come and stop it,

24:50so she didn't do anything wrong, so only he is stoned.

24:53And then we get to the woman

24:55who's neither betrothed nor married,

24:56and that's where if he grabs her and lays with her,

25:00and a lot of apologists want to try to insist

25:03that the verb "tafas" there in Hebrew,

25:06means it's just a taking hold of,

25:08there's no force implied, 100% false.

25:12It is entirely about grabbing someone against their will

25:17and restraining them.

25:18And in that case, what happens is the man must marry her

25:24and then pays the father an elevated bride price.

25:31And the idea there is that, again,

25:34by rendering her tainted goods

25:38so that she cannot enter into proper Israelite marriage,

25:41he has deprived the father of the income

25:46from the bride price.

25:47And so the restitution, the first restitution

25:50that is mentioned is 50 shekels to the young woman's father,

25:55and she shall become his wife.

25:57Again, obviously not really worried

26:00about what the woman thinks,

26:01because what she thinks doesn't matter,

26:04it's the people who are writing this law

26:06are trying to make it sound like they're covering all the bases.

26:09We've accounted for that.

26:11He has to marry her.

26:12He can't divorce her for the rest of his life.

26:15That way we're taking care of her.

26:17She can be a good contributing member of society

26:21as a wife of her rapist.

26:25And a lot of people suggest that the Bible requires

26:29the victim of marry her rapist.

26:31And that's kind of the consequent

26:36that's turning the law around.

26:40In reality, I don't think that ever would have happened.

26:43One, Deuteronomy was not enforced.

26:45This was not actual legal code.

26:48This is propaganda.

26:49But two, we have a similar case in Exodus 22,

26:54where if a man seduces an unbatrossed woman,

26:57he's got to pay an elevated bride price to the father.

27:00But then the father has the prerogative

27:03to take the money and deny the man his daughter.

27:06Oh, wow.

27:07Can say, give me the money and I will also,

27:10my daughter will be staying with me in my household.

27:13So you can all fade away.

27:15And I don't know if anybody's gonna get that movie reference.

27:19(laughing)

27:21Somebody's gonna get it.

27:22Somebody's gonna get it.

27:23(laughing)

27:25And that's a slightly different law.

27:28But I think if any actual judicial rubber

27:32had hit any judicial road regarding a circumstance like this,

27:36the father would have been able,

27:38like I have no doubt the father would have been able to be like,

27:40"No, I'll just take the money."

27:42Yeah.

27:43And yeah, I don't wanna see you.

27:45And why wouldn't his parts?

27:46Yeah.

27:47'Cause hopefully the father actually

27:53has some care for his daughter.

27:55Yeah, it'd be nice.

27:57Yeah. I mean, it's, you know,

27:59the world doesn't always work out in the best ways.

28:03(laughing)

28:03One of the ways. Not always.

28:04One of the kinds of marriage

28:06that we have already talked about on this show

28:09is leverate marriage,

28:11which I don't think anyone is pushing for that to come back

28:15(laughing)

28:16that I've heard about yet.

28:18No, no, not really.

28:20Because that's one of the things

28:22that's actually kind of hand-cuffing

28:26men a little bit, right?

28:28And you wanna know in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries,

28:32the slang term for handcuffs is esposos.

28:36Oh, wives. (laughing)

28:38Wives, okay.

28:39But this,

28:40here the idea is that if a man marries a woman

28:47and then he dies without having impregnated her,

28:49in order to ensure that his line is carried on

28:54and also that the property stays within his family.

28:58The, any brothers that he has

29:01or the closest male relative

29:03has the obligation to marry that woman

29:06and raise children by her

29:08in the name of the deceased kin.

29:12And so that's something that,

29:17and we see from the story of Onan,

29:19Onan was like, I'm getting a raw deal here.

29:22I don't want my kid to be my brother's son.

29:27Yeah, so he's, this is a quote from some movie.

29:31I don't know what it is,

29:32but somebody says I denied her my seed.

29:36But that's basically what Onan is doing.

29:39Because Onan is a garbage human being.

29:42And God gives him the old forearm shiver.

29:46The old fever.

29:48Yeah, into into the shell, into the realm of the dead.

29:52And yeah, because it was a requirement

29:57that was intended to keep like the society together,

30:01but didn't really serve the interests of the individual.

30:06And so obviously that one went away.

30:10When people got tighter control of how marriage worked,

30:16they were like, well, we're not doing that one.

30:17And it's also it presupposes polygamy.

30:21Because like, if I'm required to,

30:24so say a brother is there who's not married yet,

30:27he's required to marry his dead brother's wife

30:31and all their kids are raised up in the name

30:34of the deceased brother.

30:36But now he doesn't get to raise children in his own name.

30:40So you're really just reproducing the problem

30:43unless polygamy.

30:45Right, and then he's got one wife that produces

30:48his brother's kids and one wife that produces his own kids.

30:51And this is, this is my nephew trans kids that I'm raising.

30:56And this is my other nephew.

30:59And yeah, I wonder if to the degree

31:04that Leberate Marriage was widely practiced,

31:06I wonder if families had like the one guy

31:09where they were like, he'll take her.

31:11He's into this.

31:14Let's get Mikey. He'll take any life.

31:16Yeah, he's already got seven of them.

31:19He'll take another.

31:20Which would have been, I'm sure that would have been

31:24quite the relief valve for some people involved,

31:26but except for the wads, the wads were probably like,

31:28I heard about Mikey.

31:29I don't want to belabor.

31:33You know, there's a meme that went around

31:36that was sort of making fun of the people

31:39who talk about biblical marriage

31:42and we have to get back to biblical marriage.

31:45And the way that the meme worked was just,

31:47it listed all the ways that a biblical marriage exists.

31:51And it's like, you know, a man, a woman and her slave

31:55or whatever, you know, referencing Sarah and Abram

31:59and there, and then, and Hagar.

32:02And so I don't want to go through all of those,

32:06but I think that the main comment,

32:08that the main thrust of it is what we've been saying,

32:11which is just that it was like,

32:15how could any of this apply in a society

32:18where women aren't considered a property?

32:23- Yeah, and they're trying to make it apply

32:26because again, the garbage people,

32:28they want to have control over other individual women.

32:35And I think they have to feel like

32:39they're doing something right.

32:41I mean, certainly there are those of them

32:44who know this is garbage human activity,

32:48but just want to exploit it anyway.

32:51But I have to imagine that some of them at some level

32:55sincerely think they're actually trying to restore

32:58something that's important to God.

33:00But yeah, in that time period marriages

33:04were phenomenally unequal.

33:05And to try to restore that is to try to

33:09revert us back to a society where women are property

33:14that are exchanged for money.

33:17And yeah, that's as I am, won't to say pure

33:22and utter nonsense.

33:24- All right, well, to get to the remedy of this idea,

33:29I think it's time for us to go to our chapter and verse.

33:34- All righty.

33:35- And what is the chapter and verse for this week?

33:42What are this, the reading this week

33:45comes to us from Matthew, chapter five.

33:49- Matthew, yeah, from the gospel according to Matthew.

33:54We're gonna be in, yeah, this is the Sermon on the Mount.

33:58We're gonna be in chapter five, verses 31 and 32.

34:01Concerning divorce is the section heading

34:05that we generally see in Bibles that ad chapter,

34:10or section headings.

34:13If I were putting this section in a book of mine,

34:16I would have to give it a song title or song lyrics

34:19or something like that as a name.

34:21Concerning divorce, they're not a lot of songs

34:24about divorce, aren't they?

34:25- No, there should be.

34:26- Yeah.

34:27- Or if they're not, the word divorce is not in the title.

34:31- No, no, it's not.

34:32There are a lot of country songs.

34:35I can think of like some Toby Keith songs.

34:37- My wife left me and my dog left me

34:42and my truck left me, you know what I'm saying.

34:45- Well, yeah, I think there's a song

34:48that ain't my truck in the drive or something like that.

34:52So from the NRSVUE, it was also said,

34:56and this is Jesus, who's basically saying,

34:59here's what's written, and I'm overruling that.

35:03- Or, yeah, yeah, here's what's written.

35:06Yeah, in this case, here's what's written and also,

35:09and I raise you.

35:11- Well, and that's what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount.

35:14Jesus is, 'cause Jesus says,

35:17unless your righteousness exceeds

35:19the righteousness of the Pharisees,

35:20you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

35:22So a lot of people are thinking,

35:24Jesus is replacing the law of Moses

35:26with the law of the gospel.

35:28No, not in Matthew, Matthew is a Judaism.

35:31Matthew is saying, I see your law of Moses,

35:33I raise you, don't even think about it.

35:36And here he says, it was also said,

35:38whoever divorces his wife, let him give her

35:40a certificate of divorce.

35:42But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife,

35:45except on the ground of sexual immorality,

35:47causes her to commit adultery,

35:50and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

35:54And so that is bonkers to me.

35:58First of all, first, will you walk me through something?

36:02Because I, when I first read this passage,

36:07my brain immediately assumed that it knew

36:09what sexual immorality was,

36:12and then I thought, you know what?

36:14This is the Bible, I might not know what that's referring to.

36:18Like, I don't think I should just automatically assume

36:21that I understand what we mean when we say sexual immorality.

36:26And that's, and that's a hurdle that you have cleared

36:29that probably 95% of Bible believers either struggle

36:34with clearing or just refuse to even try to clear.

36:38And that's a wonderful point.

36:39So the word here should be poor Nia.

36:44Let me just, yes, poor Nia's, logo poor Nia's PE.

36:49So poor Nia refers to, like sexual immorality

36:54is a fine translation.

36:57The word is most closely related

36:59for the term for a sex worker.

37:01And so there are the two like central kinds

37:06of sexual indiscretions that were associated with poor Nia

37:11in this time period would have been sex work and adultery.

37:15Now we talked just a minute ago

37:16about how sex workers were prolific in ancient West Asia

37:21in the first half, probably most of the second half

37:27of the first millennium BCE.

37:29They're a little more stigmatized in this period.

37:32They're not quite as prolific.

37:33Like polygamy is not outlawed within Judaism,

37:37but it's kind of, most folks are like,

37:41we don't really do that much anymore.

37:44So that's kind of, that's not really going on.

37:47But so adultery, sex work,

37:52and then anything else that was considered sexually immoral

37:55by whatever group is using the term.

37:58So you can't go back and find a list of everything

38:03that constituted poor Nia.

38:05It was basically, again, another example

38:09of choose your own adventure.

38:10It was whatever the group decided was problematic.

38:14- I think that that's a really interesting

38:15and useful point.

38:17It's, I think it's useful to point out

38:21that even within the Bible,

38:24the more is change over time and it becomes,

38:29and so like to say that the Bible says X

38:33about how marriages should work is ignoring the fact

38:38that that actually modifies itself

38:41even through the Bible as their society progressed

38:46through time.

38:48- Yeah, and when you look in the Bible,

38:51you brought up polygamy earlier.

38:54Like if you just go by the numbers,

38:57it's like a thousand to zero.

38:59There's no part of the New Testament

39:01that prohibits or even bad mouths polygamy.

39:05And there are a bunch of passages that treat it as normative

39:09that presuppose its normativity.

39:11And yet Christians will be like,

39:13"Oh, no, no, no, no, I can't do believe me."

39:14That's against the rules.

39:16It's like that's not a biblical principle.

39:18I mean, at best you've got a passage in the pastoral epistles

39:22that says an overseer will be the husband of one wife,

39:27which could mean monogamy.

39:29If you want to be an overseer,

39:31then you have to adopt this higher law

39:34or it could just mean they didn't get remarried

39:37after divorce or after the death of a spouse

39:40or something like that.

39:41So there's even that, which is the best they have

39:46is not crystal clear.

39:47So yeah, it's not univocal.

39:49And if you're going by the numbers,

39:51polygamy way outweighs opposition to polygamy.

39:55And so the, yeah, this probably is a reference to,

39:59I mean, somebody in the first century CE heard this,

40:02their assumption probably would have been, oh, adultery.

40:05- Okay.

40:06- But yeah, it could include that in a sense.

40:09- And again, adultery in this case,

40:11because I mean, we talked earlier about how adultery

40:14didn't mean what we assume it to mean now,

40:17at least in older times, what does adultery mean in this case?

40:22- By this time period, there's a lot more parody.

40:25So that a man was not supposed to engage in sexual intercourse

40:31with someone else because polygamy

40:33is kind of on the outs a little bit.

40:35That was not your relief valve.

40:37That was not like, whoa, I can do this if I want.

40:40Now, whether or not that was the case,

40:43that's a different story.

40:44Whether or not anybody ever would have actually gotten

40:47in trouble for that, the only examples we have

40:52of somebody getting a scriptural finger wagging

40:56in the New Testament for adultery,

40:58it's when it's the woman.

40:59- Right. - In our story of the woman

41:01taking an adultery, the dude was presumably

41:04just left there, like, all right, I'll take care of myself.

41:08- And the mob grabbed the woman and went to stone her.

41:13- And so they had no concern for his culpability,

41:17but also this was a time period when slavery

41:20was also normative and whatever someone's position

41:24would have been about a man having sexual intercourse

41:27with an unmarried, unbatrothed, free woman.

41:31Their concern would have not even been a fraction

41:34of that concern if he was engaging in intercourse

41:39with an enslaved person.

41:42One of his own slaves, that would have been like,

41:46they would have been like, yeah, not my business,

41:47not my business.

41:49And so there were ways for men to get what they wanted.

41:52(upbeat music)

41:56- Okay, so we have this idea of Jesus saying,

42:01sexual immorality is the only reason

42:06that he accepts for a divorce.

42:10- Right. - But clearly,

42:11just by the context of what he's saying,

42:14that's not the social norm.

42:17The social norm is someone can get,

42:22like, we have the concept of a certificate of divorce.

42:26So that exists.

42:28- Yes, and that's, we don't have a piece of legislation

42:32in the Hebrew Bible that's like,

42:34and now we're gonna talk about certificate of divorce,

42:36but we do have in Deuteronomy 24, 24-1,

42:39suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman,

42:41but she does not please him

42:43because he finds something objectionable about her.

42:46And there's a lot of debate about what this means

42:49if like he had to have really good reason

42:51or if he just didn't like the way she cooked or something.

42:54Like, we don't know, presumably he could have gotten away

42:57with just about anything.

42:59And so he writes her a certificate of divorce,

43:01puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house.

43:04Then she leaves his house and goes off

43:07to become another man's wife.

43:08Then suppose the second man dislikes her,

43:10writes her a bill of divorce, puts it in her hand

43:12and sends her out of his house,

43:13or the second man who married her dies.

43:16Her first husband, who sent her away,

43:18is not permitted to take her again to be his wife

43:21after she has been defiled.

43:24I imagine the verb there in Hebrew is anah,

43:28but I did not look this up.

43:30- We're all very disappointed in you, Dan.

43:34(laughs)

43:36(sings)

43:38- Oh, no, it's not.

43:43It is the, it's the hot pieo of Tamah to be unclean.

43:48So she has been rendered unclean, excuse me.

43:54For that would be abhorrent to the Lord,

43:57and you shall not bring guilt on the land

43:59that the Lord your God is giving you as a possession.

44:02And again, we're going back to this idea

44:05that these actions generate some kind of metaphysical

44:07contamination that gets out onto the land,

44:10and it's the land itself that cannot tolerate these things

44:14because it's going to barf you out.

44:17It's gonna get all barfala mew on you.

44:22Hopefully you get that movie.

44:25- That one I got.

44:26Thank you.

44:26- Okay, good.

44:27And so we have this weird thing where they're basically saying

44:32she leaves one guy, goes and marries another guy,

44:34she can't go back to the first guy

44:35because she's been, you know,

44:37she's tainted goods all over again or something like that.

44:41There's a lot of debate about all the different aspects

44:43of this, but we get this idea of he can be like,

44:48"All right, look, I'm writing you a certificate

44:50"take it and go."

44:52But one of the things that this kind of contributes to

44:55is the idea that the man had unilateral authority

45:00over divorce and even in the New Testament,

45:04it is the woman who is the victim of this.

45:07And in fact, a lot of folks think this is precisely

45:09what Jesus or the author of Matthew is doing

45:14in these passages 'cause you have this here in Matthew five

45:17and also in Matthew 19, where Jesus is talking about

45:21how men cannot divorce a woman

45:24because that then sets her adrift without this patriarchal

45:29anchor or buoy or whatever to exist in the ancient world.

45:34And this kind of turns the tables on the folks

45:41who are trying to restore this concept of marriage

45:45for today because these are the folks who are like,

45:48"I don't want my wife to be able to divorce me."

45:51- Right.

45:52- Now back then, they weren't allowed to at all

45:55and all of the concern about divorce was concern

45:58for the abuse of women on the part of men.

46:02Jesus is basically saying, "No, you can't just divorce

46:05"your wife for whatever reason 'cause that's gonna

46:08"royally screw her over and so we're making this rule."

46:13And the thing that I always come back to

46:16is when you're trying to change behavior,

46:18you gotta look at what's motivating the behavior

46:21'cause if you just try and implement a law

46:22saying, "Don't do that,"

46:24that's frequently not gonna be incredibly helpful.

46:26It's not gonna actually fix the problem.

46:28- Right.

46:29- And the problem underlying this issue is garbage humans.

46:34(laughing)

46:38- The issue of a divorce you mean?

46:40- Yeah, well, at least the issue with people today

46:44trying to implement these covenant marriages

46:48just to institutionalize their garbage-ness.

46:52- It is funny to me.

46:53- We gotta find a vaccine for the garbage humans.

46:56They will refuse to take it, obviously.

46:59- That's the problem.

47:00- Yes, but there's gotta be some way to help them out.

47:04- Yeah, it's fascinating to me.

47:08The other thing that's weird that I wanted to get to

47:11going back to Matthew is the idea

47:15that divorcing a wife except on the ground

47:20of sexual immorality causes her to commit adultery.

47:24Like it causes her, the thing that you're doing

47:28makes her a sinner.

47:30- Yeah.

47:30- Like what the heck?

47:31- And to quote it also-

47:34- But it also makes, yeah.

47:35(laughing)

47:37- Quote the raven, "Call?"

47:40And also whatever man marries her

47:44is also committing adultery.

47:45- Yeah, by my standards, that feels a little messed up

47:50and I don't think I understand it at all.

47:52I don't know, so-

47:54- Yeah, the idea there is that that marriage,

47:58that contract is so sacrosanct,

48:00that the only thing that legitimately breaks it

48:04were annulls it would be that pornea,

48:07would be that sexual immorality.

48:09And so if you divorce,

48:12and it's kind of addressing the way things were at that time,

48:16Jesus was not saying, I'm now making it illegal

48:20for you to do this.

48:21He didn't have that authority socially.

48:24What he was saying was, if you do this,

48:27just know in the eyes of God, you're still married.

48:31God has not annulled that relationship,

48:34and therefore, if she goes off

48:36and goes and marries somebody else,

48:38she's getting married for a second time,

48:40she's committing adultery.

48:41If anyone marries her,

48:42they're marrying somebody who's already married,

48:44they're committing adultery.

48:45And additionally, the implication is that the man himself,

48:49if he went off and tried to marry someone else,

48:53would also be committing adultery,

48:55even though that's not explicit.

48:57But I think in Matthew 19,

48:59you have a little more explication there.

49:01- Okay.

49:03- So this is where they say some Pharisees came to him

49:05to test him.

49:06They asked, is it lawful for a man

49:09to divorce his wife for any cause?

49:10And Jesus cracked his knuckles

49:12because he had recently gotten done,

49:14explaining this.

49:15He answered, have you not read that the one who made them

49:18at the beginning made them male and female,

49:20and said, for this reason,

49:21a man shall leave his father and mother

49:23and be joined to his wife,

49:24and the two shall become one flesh.

49:28A bit of a fallacy here that scripture

49:31has nothing to do with this.

49:32So they are no longer two but one flesh.

49:34Therefore, what God has joined together,

49:37let no one separate.

49:39In other words, the marriage is that link

49:41is something that God has created,

49:44and you don't have the authority to annul it.

49:47They said to him, why then did Moses command us

49:50to give a certificate of dismissal and divorce her?

49:55And so they're basically saying, hey, the scripture say

49:59that we can do this.

50:00And Jesus appeals to a rationalization

50:05that a lot of apologists appeal to.

50:08He was the time, they were products of their time.

50:12He says, it was because you were so hard-hearted

50:14that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives,

50:16but from the beginning it was not so.

50:18And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife,

50:22except for sexual immorality,

50:23and Mary's another, so here we have

50:26the dude doing the divorcing is shackled to this as well.

50:31And Mary's another commits adultery,

50:34and he who marries a divorce woman commits adultery.

50:36So in Matthew 19, both of the adulterers

50:40are the men involved.

50:42The disciples said to him if such is the case

50:44of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.

50:47And then that's when he goes, get ready to live

50:51because you got to be a eunuch.

50:54Or the real ones are going to make themselves eunuchs

50:57for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

50:59Let anyone accept this who can, and they all go.

51:02- Right.

51:04- Not me, I'm not the one.

51:06- No, thank you.

51:07I don't want that.

51:09- Yeah.

51:10- You know, I can see why people who are trying

51:15to follow Christ would then,

51:20going by these scriptures that we've just read,

51:24this is red letter stuff.

51:25This is like straight out of the man's mouth.

51:28I can see why they would think this is what we have to do.

51:32Like we need to lock down this divorce thing

51:35because it's not okay.

51:38So I don't know, it's not my aesthetic.

51:44It's not my, like morally I think that it's wrong.

51:47The, we have to think of this as a much more,

51:52in a much more modern way.

51:54But I can see why when it's out of Jesus' own mouth,

52:00they're preaching this.

52:02- Yeah.

52:03And I don't think they understand it the way it was intended

52:08as a way to provide a little bit of relief

52:11for the women of that time period

52:14who were getting the short end of the social stick.

52:17Today it's primarily one, it's an identity marker

52:22for Christian nationalism and they're trying

52:24to structure power and everything and it's two.

52:26And two, it's a bunch of dudes who want more control

52:30over the women in their lives.

52:32- Yeah.

52:33- But it is, I mean, I would say that their position

52:38is pretty strongly biblically defensible.

52:43- Yes, as long as we gloss over all the different approaches

52:48to marriage that we've discussed

52:50and we just go to this idea that marriage ought

52:53to be something that is not so flippantly

52:58entered into and departed from.

53:01Yes, I think that would be something

53:04that has biblical support.

53:06I don't know if I would unilaterally call it biblical

53:09because you do have a lot of other folks

53:11who like Paul, for instance, was not really

53:14riding the marriage train.

53:16Paul was like, hey, only if you can't hack celibacy.

53:19If you're weak and you can't hack celibacy,

53:22go ahead and get married for your occasional

53:25prophylactic, passionless sex.

53:28But don't be thinking about kids or anything like that

53:31'cause Jesus is coming.

53:32- Right, and Jesus himself never married.

53:34So that says a lot as well, I suppose.

53:37- At least there's nothing about Jesus

53:40getting married for sure.

53:41And if he was, like Matthew portrays him as an ascetic

53:46and apocalyptic ascetic Jewish person.

53:51- Yeah.

53:52- And if he was those things, then it makes sense

53:56that he would not have married.

53:57- Yeah.

53:58- It would have been celibate.

53:59But the degree to which that reflects

54:02the historical Jesus' actual circumstances

54:05versus being a literary creation

54:07or a traditional creation of the time

54:09following his death.

54:11I don't know that we can reconstruct that.

54:13- Yeah, I just think, I think if nothing else,

54:17one of the articles that I read on this

54:23was a blog post that titled Take It From Me,

54:28Don't Get A Divorce.

54:32And it was a woman writing to ostensibly

54:35another woman that she knew,

54:37just sort of talking about how she had been divorced

54:41and how hard it was on her and on her family

54:44and blah, blah, blah.

54:45And basically the advice was, yes, oh, it's too hard,

54:50it's too impossible, don't do it.

54:52And every step of the way she kept saying,

54:54I mean, it worked out for me in the end,

54:57it was fine for me, but it might not be for you.

55:00And yes, my family's fine and we all love each other

55:04and we're all doing well.

55:06But we might not have been,

55:08so don't, it's a very strange position to take.

55:13- Well, certainly divorce causes a lot of trauma,

55:15particularly for children and a lot of people

55:19are never the same and a lot of people never get over that.

55:23And at the same time, divorce saves lives

55:25in a lot of instances.

55:28- Because marriage often causes trauma.

55:30- Yeah.

55:31- Because not everybody marries somebody

55:33who is good at marriage.

55:35- Yeah, and not all marriages are, you know,

55:38like you don't know if you're gonna be,

55:40if your marriage is gonna work.

55:41The only way to test whether your marriage is going to work

55:45is to get married and then it's too late.

55:47So there's no way to know for sure.

55:51I think it's, I think I personally feel like divorce is,

55:56if I were a believer, I would think it was a gift from God.

56:03Because there's so many people

56:05for whom it is the savior of their lives.

56:08It literally makes their lives tolerable again.

56:12- Yeah, and to try to compel people

56:17or try to make it seem like you're not a real Christian

56:21or you're not really married

56:22or you're not a real American

56:23unless you enter into this double super secret

56:27covenant marriage like that.

56:32- That's so ridiculous, and really it's,

56:35it's really doing one over on the marginalized groups

56:40and particularly women who have always had a lot less power

56:46when it comes to marriage and particularly divorce.

56:49And so I think divorce serves the interests of women

56:52far more than it does the interests of men.

56:55But I think that is something that people need.

56:58They need that available and maybe people

57:02make the wrong choice by it.

57:03But yeah, just as many people make the right choice by it.

57:07And I think even if there's trauma involved

57:09who's to say that the trauma would not have been multiplied

57:12had a couple stayed together.

57:15- Right.

57:16- Yeah, so I think the retreating to kind of blanket

57:21counsel for all people, divorces unilaterally a bad thing

57:27or unilaterally a good thing, I think is more ideological

57:31is more dogmatic than database.

57:33- Well, as the comedian said,

57:36no happy marriage has ever ended in divorce.

57:39So there you go, I, again, I think what we've done

57:44is muddy the waters and not.

57:49- And run away. - And run away.

57:50So let's run away, thanks.

57:53- Before we go, just to make it a little personal,

57:56I have very little connection to divorce.

58:01My parents are still married.

58:02However, all four of my grandparents divorced

58:07and were with other people.

58:11All that happened before I was born.

58:12So I only got, I got to know four different sets

58:15of grandparents.

58:16Have you had any interactions with divorce?

58:20- My parents divorced when I was in my late teens

58:23and I've been divorced.

58:25- So yes, I've been touched by it in many different ways.

58:29- Okay, so some of us are, 50% of us at least,

58:34are speaking from direct experience.

58:36- Yes indeed.

58:37- Okay, I just wanted to, just in case anybody was wondering

58:41if any of us had any leg to stand on in that regard.

58:46- Absolutely.

58:47- And sorry to out you if that was not something that--

58:50- No, I mean, you know, I think you felt okay doing that

58:55'cause you know that I'm kind of an open book

58:56about these sorts of things.

58:58But yeah, I mean, I had a previous marriage.

59:02My wife was part of a previous marriage,

59:05so I guess I'm causing her to commit adultery.

59:07I just realized that, according to Jesus, that's a little.

59:10- It's quite a pyramid scheme.

59:12- Yeah, it is, it is.

59:14Well, there's a whole bunch of adultery happening,

59:16apparently. - Yeah.

59:18- But yeah, I mean, for both of us,

59:21and for, you know, and I think,

59:24I won't speak for our former partners,

59:28but for both of us, divorce was absolutely the right thing

59:31and a very positive step,

59:35even though like we both continued to love our partners.

59:40Like it wasn't, it wasn't that, you know,

59:42but it was, you know, and you know,

59:45my wife, her ex is one of her best friends.

59:50She loves him. So, you know, it doesn't have to,

59:54it can be this horrible, traumatic, very difficult thing.

59:58It can also be just exactly the right thing

60:01and what is called for.

60:03- Yeah.

60:04- And I don't think that any one, as you say,

60:08I don't think that any one rule can encompass

60:12what this thing is.

60:14So there you go.

60:16- There you go.

60:18- And there you guys go.

60:20We'll leave it at that.

60:22Thanks so much to all of you.

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60:56- Bye, everybody.

60:57(upbeat music)

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