As we attend church or read through our Bible we occasionally hear about or read about certain men in the scriptures which were married to more than one woman. But we rarely ever hear a teaching on the subject which leads us to remain ignorant on the subject of plural marriage in the scriptures.
In this teaching series we will explore what the scriptures have to say about plural marriage. This first teaching will lay the foundation for the rest of the series by defining and explaining the most relevant terms that will be used in the rest of the series as well as dispelling a few myths regarding the subject. So join us as we learn the God Honest Truth about what the bible says regarding plural marriage.
God Honest Truth episode on Yahweh:
https://godhonesttruth.com/wp/2022/11/11/sacred-name-god-honest-truth-live-stream-11-11-2022/
Is God’s name Yehovah? (Exploring the pronunciation of Yahweh):
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZk643l4iAPVAHDrtM_OvafRzf5kCyFM3
God Honest Truth episode on Yahushua:
https://godhonesttruth.com/wp/2022/03/12/yahushua-jesus-messianic-apologetics-god-honest-truth-live-stream-03-11-2022/
God Honest Truth episode on Adultery:
https://godhonesttruth.com/wp/2023/08/11/adultery-god-honest-truth-live-stream-08-11-2023/
Transcript
This is the first teaching in a series about plural marriage. The purpose of the series is to learn what the Bible says about plural marriage, understand different perspectives, and examine the pros and cons. The series will cover foundational terminology, scriptures, history, patriarchy, and videos on the subject. The names Yahweh and Yeshua are explained, with Yahweh being the Almighty Creator and Yeshua being the son commonly known as Jesus. The names have been translated and the reasons behind it are suggested for further study.
So this teaching is going to be the first in a series of teachings regarding the subject of plural marriage. Now if you see anything in here that you like or you want to know more about, by all means please go and do some more research on your own, but we’re going to provide a lot of information in this particular teaching and in this video series about the topic of plural marriage. And if you would like the notes that we have taken for each of these episodes, go down below in the description box and click on the link for the post on GodHonestTruth.com and that’ll take you to the draw slides and the on-demand video, as well as the notes that we took for this particular episode, as well as many other useful links.
And as always, if you have any feedback, comments, questions, or concerns, you can always write to us at Team at GodHonestTruth.com. Now this first video in this series is just going to lay the foundation for the rest of the series. I’m not going to call it boring, but it will be rather straightforward and maybe a little bit dry, but we do feel it’s necessary to lay this foundation so that we know what we’re speaking about as we go through the rest of this series.
Now the purpose of this series is going to be, number one, so that you can learn what scriptures the Bible actually states about plural marriage. Number two, to become more educated about this subject in general, because this series is not going to just focus on scripture, although scripture is going to be the foundation for this teaching as it should be for all of our doctrines and beliefs. But during this series, we’re also going to go over some history as well as some common modern videos that have been done and examine those in light of scripture as well.
So hopefully by the time this whole series is done, you’ll be more educated on this subject of plural marriage. We also want you to understand the position of those who are pro-plural marriage. A lot of us, especially here in mainstream America, don’t really interact with people who believe in plural marriage, so it comes across as odd at first. So this series will help you to understand where those people are coming from who do believe in plural marriage.
Not necessarily to convince you one way or the other, but just so you can understand where others are coming from. And finally, another point in this video series is to examine the pros and the cons of plural marriage. Because there are both. Again, if you come from a mainstream American background, you may not know or understand that there are positives and advantages to plural marriage. We’re going to be examining some of those in a later teaching, but not tonight.
Tonight’s going to be all about setting the foundation for this video series going forth. Now, as planned, this video series is as follows. This first episode is going to be the foundations and terminology that we’ll be using during the rest of this video series. Episode two is scheduled to be polygamy of the scriptures. Episode three is polygamy by the scriptures, examining the rules and regulations and how scripture goes about describing and talking about plural marriage, both in the Tanakh, aka Old Testament, and the Berchadashah, aka New Testament.
Episode four, we’re going to be getting into some history on plural marriage, going through the ages, starting from the early church through the Middle Ages, even up until today. Episode five, we’re going to be focusing on patriarchy. Now, you may be asking, what does this have to do with plural marriage? Well, definitely stay tuned, but just to give you a heads up, without patriarchy, plural marriage will fail. Likewise, without patriarchy, a monogamous marriage is not going to be all that it can be and all that it should be.
So, that episode is going to be important, not just to plural marriage, but also to the monogamous lifestyle as well. Episode six, we’re going to be getting into the advantages and disadvantages or the pros and cons of plural marriage. And then, episodes seven, eight, and nine, we’re going to be looking at various videos that have been done by some rather well-known internet preachers and ministries regarding plural marriage and examine if what they are saying in these videos matches up with what we have already discovered from Scripture.
So, definitely stay tuned and watch each of these episodes to be more educated and further informed on the subject of plural marriage. We have also created two different playlists to go along with this teaching series. Number one, down below, and this is going to be on our YouTube channel. The playlist is going to be just the video series that we’re doing here from God Honest Truth. And the second playlist is going to be external videos regarding the subject of plural marriage as well.
So, go check out both of those. We’re going to be including both of those links down in the description below, so you can go watch at your convenience. So, like I said, this episode is going to be all about setting the foundations going forth so we know what we’re talking about. And starting out with our foundational terminology in this episode, it’s going to be the names Yahweh and Yeshua. Now, a lot of you may not know these names, especially if you come from a very, very traditional background like I did, like from a Baptist church.
You didn’t really hear these names most Sunday sermons, right? So, we’re going to explain exactly what these names are and not really go into a lot of in-depth stuff, but we’re going to explain what we’re talking about when we mention these names. First off, it’s going to be the name Yahweh. We read in Genesis 4, verse 26, And to Sheth, to him also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. Then it was begun to call on the name of Yahweh.
So, who is Yahweh? Well, Yahweh is the name of the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth, better known to most Christians by the title God. God is not a name, it is a title. And lots of things and people can be called a God or called God. Not to get into too much detail on all of this, but the actual name of the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth is Yahweh, as we see in Exodus chapter 3, verse 15.
And Elohim said further to Moshe, Thus you are to say to the children of Yisrael, Yahweh Elohim of your fathers, the Elohim of Abraham, the Elohim of Yitzhak, and the Elohim of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my remembrance to all generations. So, we can see that who it was that revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai was named Yahweh, the Creator of heaven and earth. This is a name that’s repeated thousands of times throughout scripture, especially or actually only in the Tanakh as we have it nowadays.
We see it again in Proverbs chapter 18, verse 10. The name of Yahweh is a strong tower. The righteous run into it and are safe. Again, Isaiah chapter 42, verse 8. I am Yahweh, that is my name. In my esteem, I do not give to another, nor my praise to idols. And we see this name comes from the Strong’s Hebrew word H3068, commonly pronounced by some as Jehovah or Yehovah, but not to get into the weeds, but that doesn’t exactly correspond to the way it would have been pronounced way back then, especially the J part, but I’m going to get off of that for right now.
Anyways, here’s your Strong’s definition and your Brown Driver Briggs definition. Proper name of deity Yahweh, the proper name of the God of Israel. And just for your reference here is the Jesenius’ Hebrew lexicon and Klein dictionary entries for this. Now we have cut these entries down for the sake of the slides, but if you would like the full entry, you can look it up yourselves or again, go to the notes that we have taken on GodHonestTruth.com, the link of which is down in the description below.
Now unfortunately, this name has been translated, again translated, not transliterated into other words, commonly as G-O-D, God. King James is very famous for doing this, but at least they put it in all capital letters so you know who it is you’re speaking of, but whatever. King James translates it as God, Jehovah, Lord or Lords, New American Standard does pretty much the same thing, English Standard, and many, many others. They transliterate names like Moses or Joshua or even Jesus.
But for some odd reason, they simply translate or replace the name of Yahweh. It goes back to Jewish tradition as a study for you to take up on your own. We’re not getting into depth here. If you would like a more in-depth study, please go to our teaching on the name of Yahweh that you can find not only on our website, GodHonestTruth.com, but you can also find it on our YouTube channel, our BitChute channel, our Rumble channel, or our Odyssey channel, or any one of the numerous audio podcasting platforms.
So that’s what the name Yahweh is and who we’re talking about when we say Yahweh. That’s the name of the almighty creator of heaven and earth, our heavenly father. That’s Yahweh. Now his son is commonly referred to as Jesus. We read in Matthew 1, verse 21, and she shall give birth to a son and you shall call his name, a lot of translations put here, Jesus, but it says you shall call his name Yeshua or he shall save his people from their sins.
Now Jesus wasn’t American or English or Anglo-Saxon. He didn’t have an Anglicized name. So could not have been Jesus. It goes back to the early, early English word yesus, which goes back to the Greek yesus, which goes back to the Hebrew or Aramaic Yeshua. That’s a matter of transliteration as it’s come down to us today. This comes from Strong’s G2424, yesus, but it says here in Strong’s definition, it’s the name of our Lord and two or three other Israelites.
You’ll see in the King James, they actually mix up Jesus and Joshua in at least one instance, which also have here on screen the Thayer’s Greek lexicon entry and the Greek English lexicon of the New Testament entry. His name is Yeshua. That’s our one and only Messiah, the son of our heavenly father Yahweh. Again, Messiah’s name is Yeshua, commonly known nowadays as Jesus or Jesus Christ. So that’s who we’re talking about when we talk about Yeshua.
Now again, the way this has come down to us today as Jesus is, well, comes from an earlier word that’s spelled exactly the same, but way back when the J had more of a Y sound. So you would see it spelled J-E-S-U-S, but it’s actually pronounced yesus. And of course this comes from the earlier word spelled with an I, yesus, which comes from the Greek yesus, which comes from the Hebrew Aramaic Yeshua. Now just to dispel any conspiracy theories, the word yesus in Greek is not a conflation of two Greek words that are pagan in origin, coming from the name Zeus.
Now that’s totally false, and if you go look it up, even the word Zeus is spelled completely different. So it doesn’t conform to Greek grammar for names and stuff like that, that’s completely false. It’s simply a matter of transliteration from the Hebrew to the Greek to probably Latin and then to Old English and then to Modern English, a whole series of steps, and that’s how we got the name Jesus today. But when he walked the earth, no one ever called him Jesus, they called him Yeshua.
That’s what the apostles called him, that’s what his earthly mother and father called him, he was Yeshua. So when we say the name Yeshua, we’re referring to our one and only Messiah, better known as Jesus Christ. If you would like a further teaching on that, again we have a teaching just on Yeshua as well, which can be found in our YouTube channel, Rumble channel, BitChute channel, Odyssey channel or any of the audio podcasting platforms that you can find us on.
Now it wouldn’t have been very long ago that we would not have had to do this next section and for most of you out there watching this, this is going to be absolutely redundant for most of you because most of you know what a husband and a wife is, but living in the times that we are living in, we’re going to cover this. Just to clear it up for those of you who may be a little bit confused.
Anyways, a husband is defined as the man to whom a woman is married, a married man. That’s what a husband is. This comes from the Strong’s word H376, which is commonly found as the word husband and that’s the Hebrew word ish. Now rarely we also find the Hebrew word, I’m sorry, it comes from Strong’s H1166, the Hebrew word baal and that’s not the name of a pagan god, it’s actually a word that just means lord, master, something like that and it’s rarely translated as husband in most translations and it also comes from the Greek word Strong’s G435, anair.
Now remember this Greek word because this is going to come into play here in just a moment in a future term that we define for you. Likewise, a wife is defined as the woman to whom a man is married, a married woman. Again, a few years ago, we wouldn’t have to go over this, but we are. Woman, I’m sorry, wife comes from Strong’s H802, ishah, that’s the Hebrew word for wife. Also woman unmarried, but Hebrew is like a lot of other languages, it really depends on the context as to whether it’s meaning just a woman or a wife.
It also comes from the Greek word Strong’s G1135, gune, gune. Now again, remember this Greek word like with anair for husband, gune, wife, is going to come into play here in just a moment when we go over some other terms also. So now to get into some more stuff that’s more on point with the main subject matter that we’re going to be discussing during this video series and this is going to be the word polygamy. Now polygamy is a word that means someone who is married to multiple other people of the opposite sex or gender because there’s only two genders, right, male and female.
So this could be anyone. This term polygamy could describe a man that’s married to more than one woman or a woman that’s married to more than one man. It’s just an all-encompassing word to define both of those situations. Now here it comes from Merriam-Webster, it says marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time. The etymology of polygamy, this is where these words will come in that I told you to remember, right? It says polygamy before 1591 borrowed perhaps from Middle English, French polygamy and directly from late Greek polygamia, from polygamos often married, from late Greek polygamos often married.
Often married means multiply married, married multiple times in other words. That comes from the Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. Now from Etymonline, if I’m saying that correctly, Etymonline, it states that polygamy is marriage with more than one spouse. Again that whole encompassing term to describe either a man married to more than one woman or a woman married to more than one man, general all-encompassing. But it goes on to state that 1590s from the late Latin polygamia, from late Greek polygamia, polygamy from polygamos often married, from polys many, gamos meaning marriage.
That is the all-encompassing word polygamy in a nutshell. Now I know a lot of times nowadays we define in modern speech, we define the word polygamy as a man married to more than one woman. But getting technical, no, polygamy references someone who is married to multiple people of the opposite sex gender. That’s all it means, general. And now we’re going to start getting a little bit more specific. Our next word is going to be the word polygyny, or is it polygyny? Polygyny.
Polygyny. Polygyny. Polygyny. Polygyny. Polygyny. Polygyny. Correctly, I guess, pronounced it would be polygyny with a soft G. But polygyny means a man who is married to more than one woman. This is rather specific, to one man with many women. Merriam-Webster defines it as the state or practice of having more than one wife or female mate at a time. Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology says that polygyny, 1780, formed from Greek polygynous, having many wives, and this comes from the Greek word meaning many, and also the Greek word gyne, remember that word, meaning wife.
So many wives, polygyny. The Etym Online entry states that 1780, condition of having many wives, marriage, or cohabitation of one man with more than one woman at the same time. From Greek polygynous, having many wives, from polis, many, and gyne, meaning wife or woman. So having many women, many wives, and that is the term polygyny, or polygyny, however you want to pronounce it. Our next term in this video is going to be the word polyandry. This is going to be the exact opposite of our previous word, polygyny.
Polyandry is referring to a woman who is married to more than one man at a time. Merriam-Webster defines it as the state or practice of having more than one husband or male mate at one time. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology states that polyandry, coming from 1780, borrowed from late Greek polyandria, populousness, from polyandros, having many men or mates. It’s combined using the Greek word for poly, meaning many, and andre, meaning man or husband. Remember the word I told you to remember earlier, anere? This means many anere, polyanere, polyandry, meaning more than one husband.
The Etym Online entry states, state of having more husbands than one at the same time, 1767, nativized form of polyandria, from Greek, but taken in senses not found in Greek, having many husbands, or in botany, having many stamens. Obviously getting the reference there. Now you may wonder why would we bring up a term such as this? Well, number one, it’s just for your education so that you know more than you did previously. And number two, to show the contrast with polygyny and then compare it to what we find in scriptures as we go on through this video series.
And believe it or not, there are actually cultures in the world who have practiced polyandry. It’s not nearly as common as polygyny, but there are cultures that have practiced this. But that is polyandry, meaning a woman who is married to more than one husband at a time. And our next word that we’re going to explore and define for you is going to be polyamory. Now again, this is not something that we’re promoting or teaching, but you can almost kind of find it in scripture, but definitely not in a good way.
Anyways, polyamory refers to pretty much the state of like free love. Not necessarily including marriage. It could just be an all out fest, like back in the 60s, if any of you guys remember that. But anyways, Merriam-Webster states that polyamory is the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time. So it’s a free for all in the romantic department, if you kind of get my drift. Anyways, the Wiktionary states that the etymology of polyamory comes from poly, the Greek meaning many, and amor, meaning love.
So many loves, as it was. But suffice it to say, spoiler alert, scripture does not condone or promote or accept polyamory in any way whatsoever. Many many times we see scripture speaking out against these Gentile pagan customs of wild orgies and temple prostitutes and stuff like that. So polyamory is definitely something that is against God’s word. Next up is going to be the word sin. Now most of you have probably most definitely heard the word sin and think that you know what sin is.
And this is going to be important going forward because with everything, we need to decide if something that we believe in is sinful or not. So we need to have a firm understanding of what sin is in order to go forward with these videos. Now to define sin in a modern sense, you look at something like Merriam-Webster and it would define sin as an offense against religious or moral law, an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible, an often serious shortcoming, transgression of the law of God.
Now we’re getting closer. A vitiated state of human nature in which the self is estranged from God. Now that is a modern dictionary defining it more in the modern sense. But what is the scriptural or biblical definition of sin? That’s what we want to get to, right? So according to GotQuestions.org, they say that sin is described in the Bible as transgression of the law of God and rebellion against God. Now this is an article from my website, so it’s a writing of a man.
So is this really true? They cite a verse there, 1 John 3, 4. And when we look at 1 John 3, 4, it reads, everyone doing sin also does lawlessness and sin is lawlessness. We get the definition of sin from scripture to mean that sin is the breaking of the Torah, the breaking of the commandments of Yahweh, that sin is violating the law, as it were. So if scripture says don’t do this and you do it, that is sin.
If scripture says do this and you don’t do that, then that is sin. Sin is breaking of the commandments of Yahweh. So definitely keep that in mind as we go forward to decide for yourself if what we’re talking about is sin or not. The next term that we’re going to discuss, and again another one that is very, very important going forward in this discussion and in this series on plural marriage, is the word adultery, knowing what adultery is.
Okay, we read in Exodus chapter 20 verse 14, you do not commit adultery. Or as King James would put it, thou shalt not commit adultery. So we’re told not to do it. Going back to our definition of sin, if we do commit adultery, then we have broken the Torah of Yahweh and we have committed sin. So we need to know what adultery is. Merriam-Webster defines adultery as voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and someone other than that person’s current spouse or partner.
Britannica.com defines adultery as sexual relations between a married person and someone other than the spouse. So according to these definitions, someone who is married having sex with someone that they are not married to would be adultery. But is this really true? And again, we need to go back to the scriptures to define our terminology for us and see what scripture defines adultery as. We look in Ezekiel chapter 16 verse 32. The wife who commits adultery, who takes strangers instead of her husband.
So here we can see it’s more focused on the woman here, and that’s important. Remember that as we go forward. Proverbs chapter 6 verses 27 through 29. Would a man take fire to his bosom, and his garments not be burned? Would a man walk on hot coals, and his feet not be scorched? So is he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife. None who touches her goes unpunished. So again, it’s kind of revolving around the woman, but here it’s bringing in a man who is not her husband.
Starting to get a bigger picture of this, or a better picture rather. Leviticus chapter 20 verse 10. And a man who commits adultery with the wife of another man, who commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, the adulterer and the adulteress shall certainly be put to death. So here it’s making it a little bit more clear to understand what scripture is defining adultery as. Adultery is when a married woman sleeps with a man who is not her husband.
Or conversely, when a man sleeps with a married woman that he is not married to. That is the scriptural definition of adultery. Now notice here in scripture that the penalty prescribed for adultery is death. So how do we compare this concept of what adultery is with our other conceptions of what we might nowadays think of as adultery? We can find examples in scripture. For example, in Deuteronomy chapter 22 verses 23 through 29. Here in the first example, it describes a man and an engaged woman sleeping together in the city.
In other words, being known and consenting. Scripture considers an engaged woman the same as a married woman. So here when the man and the engaged woman, who is engaged to another man, have this intercourse together, consensually, they are put to death. They are given the death penalty, both the man and the woman. That’s considered adultery. The next example it gives in this passage is when a man rapes a woman. And here there is a death penalty prescribed, but it’s only for the man, it’s not for the woman.
Understand the difference here? And then the last example in this passage is when a man and a single or unmarried non-engaged woman have intercourse together. There is no death penalty prescribed for this type of interaction, but it goes on to state that they shall get married at that point. So that situation is not considered to be adultery, but it would fall more into the line of maybe fornication. Main point is that adultery is the situation where a married woman sleeps with a man who is not her husband, or conversely, when a man sleeps with a woman that is married to a different man.
Romans chapter 7, verse 2-3, for the married woman has been bound by Torah to the living husband, but if the husband dies, she is released from the Torah concerning her husband. So then, while her husband lives, she shall be called an adulteress if she becomes another man’s. But if her husband dies, she is free from that part of the Torah, so that she is not an adulteress, having become another man’s. So here, even the Apostle Paul is writing, stating that once a woman is married, if she goes to another man, while her husband is living, she is committing adultery.
But you never in Scripture find a verse like this regarding a man, stating that if a man is bound to his one wife as long as she lives, otherwise he’s called an adulterer. No, it never states anything like that, but it does state it for the woman, because adultery is intercourse between a married woman and a man who is not her husband. I don’t want to get too in the weeds on this, just want to give you the definition of it.
If you would like a more in-depth study on adultery, then go check out our video that we did on this subject of adultery. You can find it, again, on our YouTube channel, Bitshoot channel, Odyssey channel, Rumble channel, any of our audio podcasting channels on any of the audio podcasting platforms, or the best way, again, it’s going to be on our website at www.GodHonestTruth.com. Our next word that we’re going to be discussing and defining for the purposes of going forward in this series is the word concubine.
This is something that gets misunderstood a lot in mainstream modern churches. They don’t really know what a concubine really is. This comes from the Hebrew word pelegesh, which is Strong’s H6370, pelegesh. Strong’s definition defines it as simply a concubine. Browndriver Briggs, again, states it simply as a concubine. Jastrow’s Dictionary of the Targums states that the wife has a marriage contract securing a settlement for her, but the concubine does not have the marriage contract. This is not always true.
Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. As we look in the Catholic Encyclopedia, it states in the Old Testament, for instance, a legitimate spouse, if of an inferior social grade or a bondwoman, is often given the appellation of concubine, not to call in question the validity of her marriage, but to indicate that she did not share in her husband’s rank or property. Again, that’s from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Looking at the Encyclopedia Britannica, it states, in early historical times, when marriage laws had scarcely advanced beyond the purely customary stage, the concubine was definitely recognized as a sort of inferior wife, differing from those of the first rank, mainly by the absence of permanent guarantees.
In a nutshell, pelagish or concubine is a woman who comes from a rather inferior social status, maybe a slave, maybe from spoils of war, something like that. But generally, a concubine would not come into the marriage with a dowry like an average woman would, because back then, the marriages involved both a dowry and a bride price. The dowry is what the woman brought in with her, and a concubine would be a woman who came into the marriage without a dowry and sometimes may not have gotten that marriage contract like the average wife would.
However, in today’s terminology, we would define a concubine as simply a wife. There would be no distinction for us nowadays. So, that would be the way to think about it. There are no concubines nowadays, because the vast majority of the time, we do not engage in things like bride price and dowries, at least not here in America, for the most part. But one thing you’ll notice if you look throughout scripture, and in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, especially Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, where they’re laying out rules and regulations and all those thou shalt do and thou shalt not do kind of verses, you never find the word pelagish or concubine one time.
When it’s laying out the laws for marriage between a husband and a wife, it simply uses the word wife, because even then, the way you would treat your wife, whether it be an average wife or a concubine, would be the same. You don’t treat them any differently. Same rules and regulations apply to both wife and what would otherwise be considered concubine. So in these five books, the word wife is used and never concubine, because a concubine is still a wife.
That’s what concubine means. Think about it in today’s terminology, we would just consider concubine to be wife. So now let’s go over and dispel a few myths about polygyny. This is, again, going to be an overview, and we’re probably going to get into dispelling a lot of these more in depth as the series goes on, but here is sort of like a pre-game look at what is probably going to be covered coming up. Anyways, polygyny is not about polyamory or swinging.
It’s about commitment of a man to multiple women, and there’s multiple women committed to that man for life. Number two, polygyny is not adultery. This will be further fleshed out as we go on, but you can kind of see how this is coming together now, where adultery, biblically speaking, in other words, the definition that comes from scripture, adultery is when a married woman sleeps with a man that she is not married to. And we can also see that polygyny is not the practice or the act of a woman having more than one husband.
Hopefully that was sufficiently defined for you earlier, but that’s not what polygyny is. Next, polygyny does not involve homosexuality. Get that out of the way right now, it should be obvious from the get-go. It’s about a marriage between a man and multiple women, so it’s not about homosexuality. Polygyny is not about underage marriage either. This is a set-in-stone thing that you don’t mess around with those who are underage. That varies from culture to culture and from periods of time to periods of time, yes, but as it’s defined nowadays in general here in America, the age is going to be about 18.
However, personally, I don’t believe that a person, male or female, nowadays, is mentally and emotionally mature until at least about 21. We still see a lot of people who are 18, 19, 20, even 21, they may be physically that age, but mentally and emotionally, they’re still children. Underage marriage is something that is separate from the issue of polygyny. It does not go hand in hand. You can separate those two from the get-go. We can all agree that underage marriage is wrong, bad, detrimental, any other phrase you can use with that, but polygyny is not about underage marriage.
Polygyny is not just a Mormon or a Muslim practice, as we will see coming up, and it’s also been a practice of Protestants and Christians throughout history, as we’ll see when we get into the episode on the history of polygyny after the times of the Brit Hadashah, or a.k.a. New Testament. Another myth is that polygyny is illegal. Now, this is both true and not true at the same time. What do I mean? Well, number one, in most areas, like I live in the state of North Carolina in the United States of America.
Here in North Carolina, it is illegal to have more than, to be married to more than one person, but how is that defined? Well, according to the state and the law, a marriage is a marriage license between two people. Notice how that’s defined, marriage license between two people. So in essence, what it boils down to is that it’s illegal to have more than one marriage license at one time. That’s the illegal part. So in reality, being married, for a man to be married to more than one woman is not illegal.
It’s only the multiple marriage licenses that are illegal. See the distinction there? Now some states, some areas, still uphold something called common law marriage. North Carolina does not. So if I get married to a woman, go through the standard, average, everyday kind of marriage where a marriage license is obtained, then I can go and actually marry additional women on top of that and it still be legal, technically speaking, as long as I don’t get additional marriage licenses.
So this is something that’s going to depend on the specific person and the specific case and the specific area where you live as to whether it’s illegal or not. Some places have outright banned the practice of polygyny and have broadly defined it to not just be marriage licenses but anything that could be considered polygyny or plural marriage. So again, if you want to find out whether it’s illegal where you’re at, by all means hire a lawyer or go and do the research on your own.
Generally it’s fairly easy to kind of find this kind of thing out. So in summary, just to wrap up this first episode in our series on plural marriage or otherwise here on after referred to as polygyny, the name of our heavenly father is Yahweh and the name of his son, our Messiah, is Yeshua. Those are the names that we’ll be using from here on out. Now you know what we’re speaking of when we use those names.
A husband is defined as a man who a woman is married to. A wife, likewise, is a woman to whom a man is married to. Polygamy is a general term meaning a person that is married to multiple spouses, to people of the opposite gender sex. Polygamy is a term which means one man married to multiple women, so more specific. Polyandry is a term which means one woman married to multiple men. Polyamory is a term meaning something like free love, swinging, open relationships, that kind of thing.
And that’s for everyone involved and it could involve marriage or not married, free for all. Sin is defined by scripture as breaking the law or the Torah of Yahweh. Adultery is scripturally defined as a married woman who has sexual relations with a man that is not her husband and a concubine is a wife and someone who may or may not have a contract, a marriage contract, and who may or may not come from a lower social standing.
But again, in today’s terminology, the way we would think of things, we would not make the distinction between wife and concubine, it would just be wife, understand? So we hope this has been helpful for you today. We know, like we said earlier, it’s not going to be all that exciting, it’s not really going to be that boring either, it may just be on the dry side, but still we hope that you did learn something from that and are more educated already.
So definitely stay tuned for the next upcoming episodes in this series to learn more about what the Bible, the scriptures, state about plural marriage instead of what tradition states about plural marriage. Now if you’ve enjoyed this episode and you have learned something, then go ahead and hit that like button down below or if you disliked it, go ahead and hit that dislike button either way. Whichever one you choose, make sure to leave us a comment down below telling us what you think, maybe what you learned, or just saying hi because we always love to hear from you guys.
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