Captive virgins, polygamy and sex slaves, Oh My!

[Soph0571]

The point is that marriage has changed tremendously since the Iron Age when the Bible was written. For centuries, concubines and polygamy were debated by Christian leaders – accepted by some and rejected by others. The nuclear family model so prized by America’s fundamentalist Christians emerged from the interplay between Christianity and European cultures including the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire. As humanity’s moral consciousness has evolved, coerced sex has become less acceptable even within marriage while intertribal and interracial marriage has grown in acceptance. Today even devout Bible believers oppose sexual slavery. Marriage, increasingly, is a commitment of love, freely given. Gay marriage is simply a part of this broader conversation, and opposition on the part of Bible believers has little to do with biblical monogamy.

Since many Christians haven’t read the whole Bible, most “Bible believers” are not, as they like to claim, actually Bible believers. Biblical literalists, even those who think themselves “nondenominational,” almost all follow some theological tradition that tells them which parts of the Bible to follow and how. Granted, sometimes even decent people do get sucked into a sort of text worship that I call bibliolatry, and Bible worship can make a person’s moral priorities as archaic and cruel as those of the Iron Age tribesmen who wrote the texts. (I once listened, horrified, while a sweet, elderly pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses rationalized the Old Testament slaughter of children with the same words Nazis used to justify the slaughter of Jewish babies.)

[link:https://www.rawstory.com/2018/02/captive-virgins-polygamy-sex-slaves-heres-marriage-look-like-actually-followed-bible/|

[edhopper]

1. There seems to be a disconnect

between Christians who maintain God/Jesus is all about love and the God of the Old Testament, who was cruel an vengeful.

They say he is the same God (he would have to be, being eternal and all) but why acting in such a schizophrenic way goes unexplained.

What changed? Did he need to come to Earth as a baby to learn about being loving? What does that say about an all-knowing God?

If he did change, why do so many Christians still hold the Old Testament as sacred text? Why forgive God for his murderous ways.

If we just accept those stories as allegory and myth, where was God during these times is these things didn't really happen?

Who did he really talk to in those books? Was God absent from man in those ages, or did he do the things the Bible says he did?

If they are myth, why isn't the New Testament as well?

And so on.

[Nitram]

2. Conservatives have increasingly retreated to the dark vision of a jealous, angry God in

the Old Testament. Conservatives just can't help it that they have authoritarian instincts.

[MineralMan]

3. The Bible has always been used to support a wide range of things.

It's easy. Selective use of scripture can justify almost anything at all. So, that's what people do and have done with it, for both good and ill. The sheer size of the Bible means that you can find something about just about everything in there, and from multiple points of view.

That fact is not one of its best features, frankly.

[struggle4progress]

4. Whoever wrote this, demonstrates an astonishing ignorance of the sexual mores of the Roman world,

evidenced by such claptrap phrases as "the monogamous tradition of the Roman Empire"