The “Biblical View of Marriage

00:00 Part I: Key Terms
2:40 Part II: Polygyny, Productivity, and Barrenness
5:49 Part III: Adultery, R@pe, Virginity, and Intermarriage
8:03 Part IV: Jesus' Teachings on Marriage
8:56 Part V: Alternative Families

During the Fall of 2020, my college course on the "Theologies of Gender and Identity" was forced to go virtual. This video is one of the pre-recorded lectures from that course that I would like to share with a larger audience. Feel free to respectfully comment and question and I will respond in kind.

This is the 7th Lecture in the Series, explaining the Biblical View of Marriage.

Recommended Reading:
"Marriage and Relations in the World of the Hebrew Bible" by Ken Stone
"Marriage and Relations in the New Testament World" by William Loader
"The Construction of Gender in the New Testament" by Colleen M. Conway

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Sneak Preview:
TERMINOLOGY
Did you know that there is no single biblical view of marriage and in fact, there’s not a single word in the Bible that corresponds to the English word “marriage” as we know it? How do we know then something like a “marriage” took place? In most cases, men are the subjects and women are the objects of transactions that constitute marriage. When the Holy Bible describes men “taking”, “giving,” and “bringing” women and other goods to create, mediate, and strengthen alliances among men, that’s when we know! For instance, Genesis 4:19 says “Lamech took for himself two women.” Translators like the New Revised Standard Version add the phrase “in marriage” without explicit linguistic justification as a way to relate to contemporary audiences. The words typically translated as “husband” and “wife” are generally used elsewhere in the Bible to refer to a “man” and “woman”: ish and ishshah. Adam and Eve, who are usually understood to be the first example of a marriage never actually got married in the Bible and the word “Wife” here is actually just “woman.” Gen 3:16 God explicitly says to the woman that her man “will rule over her.” At that moment, man then names the woman, reducing her to the status of cattle which serve as a functional utility in relation to man. The most common Hebrew term for a family or household literally translates to “the house of the father.” Two additional words that are sometimes translated into English as “husband”: ba’al (master) and adon (lord). So when translators use words like “marriage” and “husband”, they are doing so to suppress the language of male rule, since these are the same words used to describe relations between master and slave, and the relations between deities and their worshippers.

Here are some examples:
o Gen 18: “my husband is old” = “my master/lord is old.” (adon)
o Deut 24:4 NRSV refers to a woman’s “first husband” = “her first master” (baal)
o Deut 24:1 “Suppose a man enters into marriage with a woman” = “If a man takes a woman and he becomes her lord.”
o Isaiah 62:5 says a man “marries” a young woman, the Hebrew uses the verbal form of baal to indicate that he has become lord or master over her.

Did you ever wonder why in a traditional wedding ceremony the bride’s father walks his daughter down the aisle towards the groom to be met with the question, “ “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?” Or even before that day, why a man traditionally asks permission to marry a father’s daughter? Because women were considered the property of men. The exchange of daughters alongside animals and other property served to establish alliances and obligations between kinship groups. This is quite apparent when you examine the 9th and 10th commandments, when you see a “wife” grouped alongside an ox and a slave.

In short, biblical marriage meant male ownership of women who existed solely for sexual pleasure and productivity. Upon marriage, a woman’s property and her body became the possession of her new husband. As the head of the household, men usually between the ages of 18-24 years old had nearly unlimited rights over wives and children. A woman became available for men’s possession soon after she reached puberty (usually 11-13 years old), that is when she became physically able to produce children.