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And I want you to know that I am in no way slamming the Mormons. I find that *most* religions use methods of theological rationalization of some form or another, and while I think that a good case can be made for the Mormons (or LDS, which I prefer to call them) it is by no means unique to them. The same can be said of the protestants, Catholics, and even some versions of Buddhism that I have studied.
"There is no specific condemnation of polygamy in the New Testament, except a recommendation from Paul to leaders in a specific area where monogamy was the norm."
That would speak to Buffy's verses from the "Household Codes" of the later epistles, but not to mine. If you read the entirety of 1 Corinthians 7, Paul is recommending that people do not marry unless they find it necessary to prevent immorality. He then says that in this case, you may marry, but only one person. The extension of this to the leaders of the community is interesting in this respect because they were examples to the others. This was put up as the ideal, that "Each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband." For disregarding this as only pertaining to a certain area, see below.
I am also aware of the argument that the LDS used against this verse, which is circuitous at best.
"Paul had a lot of interesting comments about women and marriage that you won't find elsewhere in the Bible."
Paul had points on lots of stuff that wasn't anywhere else in the bible, but this isn't unique to Paul. He is far from my favorite Biblical character, and in fact, I would just choose to ignore him altogether if I could. However, here in lies the issue in theology and biblical studies: who gets to decide? By choosing to ignore or theologically weigh some sections heavier than others, a person can justify almost anything, especially when we take the biblical content out of it's original context and start imposing select facts or opinions onto the text based on modern sensibilities. Therefore, I think it's a better methodology to use the Bible as a whole, and (with a very few exceptions in the Torah based on literary methods of the time) trust that the early Christian redactors *at the very least* created a work that was for the most part logically coherent based on their practices. Hell, they changed enough stuff--they should have gotten it right at some point.
"Jews practiced polygamy in Jesus' time and there's no record of his objection. Historical documents also show there were early Christians who practiced polygamy."
Jews practiced polygamy but it was the exception, not the rule at that time. There were people that did, that is true. However, taking a few recorded instances and projecting it onto the whole society is fallacious. If a man showed up with his three wives, let's say, and Paul converted him, he wasn't going to make him divorce them. No Christian of church rank would have done so. It was more important that they were brought into the church, and nobody was thinking long term at this point. Paul didn't think that a spouse that wasn't Christian should be divorced. But he also thought that people that could avoid it shouldn't be married at all. This is why: Paul's eschalogical viewpoint. Paul thought that Jesus was a comin' any second. He didn't think that *anyone* should be making any long term plans or commitments, and that marriage should only be undertaken as a short term vehicle for avoiding sexual sin. This wasn't a regional thing. This was the foundation of his theology, and everything that is genuinely Pauline needs to be read with this in mind.
"The suggestion that condemning divorce is somehow a condemnation of polygamy at the same time is counterintuitive."
I don't think that I ever would have argued that point. In bringing it up at all, I was just providing background. I agree that it was a trivial bit of info.
"There are a lot of good arguments about why polygamy is a bad idea, but you won't find them in the Bible. This is something that all of Christianity has in its past."
Really, I'm not trying to say that polygamy is bad or not. If you read my earlier posts in this thread, I think that it has some pretty good points. If the people involved are all willing, I think that they should be able to go for it!
I also agree that Judaism is the legacy of Christianity. Learning about their religion sheds oodles of light on Christian beliefs, especially the early ones. I will also gladly lay claim to the Patriarchs as such--polygamy and all.
However, the lack of an explicit injunction against polygamy in the Bible is a pretty poor case for it.
"If any, monogamy became the norm among Christians due to their adaptation to Roman cultural norms, which may be what Paul was suggesting to Timothy."
Actually, the Jews--previous to Jesus' time-- were the ones that had adapted to Roman norms. They had been under Roman dominion and previous to that were under the Dominion of the Ptolemaic dynasty--hence the koine greek of the NT. They had adopted much of that culture as well. However, the origins of Judaism came from a people that saw themselves as a people apart--God's chosen people. One of the most telling interpretations of Jesus' teachings puts him in the light of a revolutionary against this cultural movement (of adaption of foreign cultures) and can be found in the works of John Dominic Crossan-- one of the founders of the Jesus Seminar.
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