Polygamy!

Dan McClellan Thus you should say to them, "My little finger is thicker than my father's loins."

Dan Beecher I'm going to assume that means what I think it means.

Dan McClellan It does. He's holding up his pinky and going, "This is bigger than my dad's johnson." Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat that pernicious spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. Yeah, we've got a fascinating one. I'm looking forward to this because the comments are about to get unhinged- ...

Dan McClellan up in here.

Dan Beecher Yeah. If you don't watch our show on YouTube, which is totally great, most of the people who partake of our wares don't, you might want to head over there and just see what the people are saying, because- ... people might get riled up, because we're going to talk polygamy, and- Yes ... Dan's a Mormon, so- ... ipso facto problems or something. Historically speaking.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And so yeah, we're going to talk about that in the first half of the show, and then in the second half of the show, we're going to get to one of the great practitioners of polygamy, but we're going to be talking about that.

Dan McClellan Probably one of the most famous, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We're going to do some Solomon stuff. We're not going to talk about his polygamy in the second half. We might talk about it in the first half, probably.

Dan McClellan Probably will. Definitely will.

Dan Beecher But yeah, we're going to talk about the end of his reign and the beginning of his son, and all kinds of other historical stuff surrounding that, or ahistorical or whatever. So, it'll actually be a lot of fun, and it's very interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But first, let's dive in with Taking Issue. And the issue we're taking, as we said, is polygamy, but more specifically, I think polygyny.

Dan McClellan Polygyny, yes.

Dan Beecher Because polygamy is, as the Google has told me- ... is the practice of marriage with either multiple men, multiple husbands, or multiple wives.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher And I don't think that that first thing is what the Bible has anything to say on.

Dan McClellan No, not so much.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan So yeah, we're talking about polygyny or plural marriage is another, more English term I don't know of.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But is also unclear, but generally is referring to a man taking multiple wives. And this is in the news right now because, well, as of recording- Right ...

Dan Beecher anyway.

Dan McClellan Who knows what the news cycle will be like.

Dan Beecher We may have been scooped by a couple of weeks on this one.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But that's okay.

Dan McClellan There's a pastor in Missouri, named Rich Tidwell, who posted back in June on his blog about basically coming out as polygamous.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan He has two wives and eight children between the two of them. Some of them have been adopted. But this, for whatever reason, people have only become aware of it recently- Mm ... the beginning of November.

Dan Beecher And it has really- Somebody went, "Oh, wait a minute. Wait, what?"

Dan McClellan And so, it has caused a bit of a firestorm on social media as evangelicals are swooping in to condemn- Mm ... this pastor who posted a biblical defense of polygamy on his blog, and I want to talk about the argument that he makes, and then talk about whether or not I think it's supported by the data.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah. And certainly, hijinks will ensue. There's plenty of opportunity for- ... all kinds of comedy and other things.

Dan Beecher I'm just going to put a marker down now. Me being the ignorant guy on the podcast, I am definitely putting a marker down for, the Bible supports polygamy quite a bit.

Dan McClellan Quite a bit.

Dan Beecher Yes. It may not be across the board. It may not be a total support every which where.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But there's a lot of polygamy in the Bible- Yes ... and sanctioned polygamy at that.

Dan McClellan Exactly, yeah. And that's one of the things that he starts off with. There are three passages that he points to from the Hebrew Bible that he suggests indicates God's sanctioning of polygamy, God's approval- Okay ...

Dan Beecher of polygamy.

Dan McClellan Sure. And I think a couple of them, at least, make good sense. One of them I'm not so convinced by. And that would be the earliest one chronologically, canonically. Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Genesis 30:18.

Dan McClellan And this is where we have Jacob, and Jacob gets tricked into marrying the wrong woman and has to- Oh, no ... work for another seven years, and we've done- Oh, right ... an episode where we talk about this.

Dan Beecher That was a fun trick.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What a great trick that was. Sorry, you said this was Genesis what?

Dan McClellan Chapter 30, verse 18.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so the woman he was tricked into marrying, Leah, said, "God has given..." Obviously, this is NRSVUE, but I'm going to talk a little bit about the translation. "God has given me my hire, because I gave my maid to my husband. So she named him Issachar." And, hire here is a word that means like recompense, wages, payment.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, God has given me my wages because I gave my maid to my husband. And maid there, I'm pretty sure is the word for, yeah, maidservant or a female enslaved person.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So Leah's like, "Here, hubby, have this other wife."

Dan Beecher And- And then God rewarded her for that.

Dan McClellan That is what Leah is saying, that God has rewarded her for making that sacrifice of giving her husband another wife. So, Jacob is just racking up wives.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And the 12 sons of Israel/Jacob come from a variety of different women. So, that's a suggestion that, at least according to Leah, God was happy with this, rewarded her for that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Another one that I think is a little better argument, has a little better case to make, is in 2 Samuel.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this is 2 Samuel 12, and verse seven and eight are the important ones. And this is where Nathan is chewing David out.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So you remember the you are the man speech, and here he says, "You are the man." Oh, hey, there it is. "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul.'" And then verse eight says, "I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah, and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more." So here we have God, ostensibly, through the prophet Nathan, declaring that God gave David many, many wives.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Basically, he said, "Saul's wives, they're now your wives."

Dan Beecher Right. And- Among other various cash and prizes.

Dan McClellan Yes. There are other prizes as well. And the argument that I've seen made is that when it says, "Gave them into your bosom," the idea here is, "I transitioned them to your protection."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan In other words, they were living in Saul's household, and now you're responsible for them, which is nonsense because one, it's like, "I gave you all this cool stuff, oh, and also this burden."

Dan Beecher This responsibility.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is very clearly not what God is saying here. God is saying- Right ... "I gave you all these women to have sex with."

Dan Beecher You're welcome.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And so very clearly, that represents God prophetically as not only endorsing but facilitating plural marriage- Yeah ... including women who had been with another man, which is a little peculiar.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then there's another one that I think might even be a little stronger. 2 Chronicles 24.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And we can start at verse one, but we're going to go to verse three. Verse one says, "Joash was seven years old when he began to reign. He reigned 40 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Zibiah of Beersheba. Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of the priest Jehoiada."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then verse three says, "Jehoiada got two wives for him, and he became the father of sons and daughters."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Pretty clearly, the author is suggesting that if Jehoiada got two wives for Joash, and Joash did everything that was right in the sight of the Lord all the days of the priest Jehoiada, that- And Jehoiada is the priest- Is the priest ...

Dan Beecher is God's representative or whatever Yep.

Dan McClellan That that is sanctioned, endorsed by God.

Dan Beecher So- Right. And that's some New Testament stuff because I think when we talk about this, it tapers off towards the support for polygamy, I thought- Yes ...

Dan McClellan tapers off. It does taper off.

Dan Beecher So I'm actually surprised to hear that, yeah, there's certainly no full-throated condemnation happening of polygamy.

Dan McClellan No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Although there is a passage that some people will point to as an indicator that polygamy was not what God wanted.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And this is a weird one. Again, it's an interpretation that is forced and is nonsensical. But Leviticus 18:18 from the NRSVUE, "And you shall not take a woman as a rival to her sister, uncovering her nakedness while her sister is still alive." So the idea here is obviously, hey, if you've already got a wife, don't marry her sister also.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan That's a problem.

Dan Beecher So- Again, that casts a weird light on the Jacob story.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And some folks think Leviticus 18 and 20, these laws are actually following the narrative of Genesis. And so the idea is that they're making laws basically to address all of the circumstances and situations that are happening in Genesis. And so this could be precisely Saying, "Hey, what happened with Jacob and Leah and Rachel?" Yeah, maybe don't do that.

Dan Beecher That's not for you. That was for him, not you.

Dan McClellan But the argument is that this is not only limited to a biological sister, but just don't take any woman who could become a rival to a first wife, meaning polygamy, no good. And that reading isn't supported by anything.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That's silly.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But probably the most common objection, and you know what? I don't even know if Tidwell actually brings this objection up in his blog post. Seems like he should, but I don't think he does. I don't think he engages the argument. Genesis 2:24, which we've talked about many times in the past. "Thus a man shall leave his father and his mother's house and cleave unto his woman, and the two of them shall be one flesh."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is taken as a prescription of what God's pattern, plan, ideal for marriage is. In other words, it's supposed to be one man, one woman, one vote. But as we've discussed before, it's clearly not a prescription of proper marriage. It's just a descriptive ideology of pair bonding and independent kinship units.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's not saying it must be one man and only one woman, because obviously the rest of Genesis is chock-full of Israel's heroes, and even precursors, marrying multiple women. And so the authors are very clearly okay with polygyny, and so are obviously not condemning that. So, there are a bunch of passages in the Hebrew Bible that just outright endorse, if not just condone polygamy.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Things start to change when we get to Greco-Roman period Judaism, and not because of the Bible, but in spite of the Bible. It's because of Greek philosophy and Greco-Roman social conventions and mores. Because while the Greeks and the Romans were pretty socially loose, maybe.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Fidelity within marriage might not have been at the top of their list of priorities.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But they did find polygyny to be a practice of weirdos. They didn't really like it.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then there were Greek philosophical treatises that talk about the structure of society and things like that, and the household, and how it's all supposed to work. And that endorsed monogamy as well. Although, slaves were entirely permitted and everything like that.

Dan Beecher Totally fair game.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And a side piece here and there is obviously fine.

Dan McClellan Right. So this rubbed off on Greco-Roman period Judaism, and so they didn't come out and say, "We no longer accept polygamy."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But it was less and less common, so that you didn't really see it happening because it wouldn't have been acceptable within this Greco-Roman context. And so by the time of the New Testament, polygamy's not really, polygyny, excuse me. We agreed before filming that we were going to use polygyny and not polygamy.

Dan Beecher We could say polygamy. It's because most times when someone uses the word polygamy, they're talking about the practice of marrying multiple wives.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Because that's been the only thing that's been practiced for most of what is commonly known in human history.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher There may be some polyandrous societies, but I've never heard of them.

Dan McClellan Yes. I think they mostly exist in comic books.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan But yeah, I can't think of any off the top of my head, but if you do know of some, by all means, let us know.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so polygyny is not really that big a deal, but you do have some places where it seems to be poo-pooed- ... or if not condemned. So in the Dead Sea Scrolls, it seems to not approve of polygyny.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan New Testament has no outright condemnation of polygyny at all. It just seems to have been the norm that you only marry one wife at a time. The one exception would be 1 Timothy 3:2. Now, 1 Timothy, pastoral epistle, not Paul.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This is pseudo-Pauline. This is after Paul's death. This is somebody trying to appropriate Paul's authority by pretending to be Paul. But we have, in this passage, the author is explaining what is required to be an overseer or a bishop, and says that he must be a man of one woman, which is probably intended to address fidelity within marriage and then not remarrying after either divorce or the death of a spouse.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Because there was actually, and you see this in Matthew, that if a man divorces his wife for anything other than sexual infidelity, that he commits adultery by marrying another woman- Yeah ... and causes her to commit adultery if she marries another man. So, you weren't supposed to get remarried. You have one wife, and that's your wife, and that's it.

Dan Beecher You used yours.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You used your one. You're done.

Dan McClellan You ran out.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But it does seem to suggest that they would not approve of- Right ... a polygynous marriage for a leader. And a lot of people try to insist that when it says, "Overseer or bishop," that means pastor, but it doesn't. Pastor is only mentioned once in all of the New Testament, and that is in Ephesians 4.

Dan Beecher What's the difference?

Dan McClellan Well, they're different offices within- Okay ... the church, and they're entirely different words in Greek. But there are folks who try to make the case that there's a passage in Acts that talks about elders and overseers kind of being the same- Ah ... and talking about how they are to pasture or pastor the flock.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So it uses verbs associated with pastoring to refer to them. And so people will say, "See, that means a pastor is just the same thing." But the Gospel of John uses the verb pastoring to refer to an apostle as well as Jesus- Okay ... as well as Jesus's followers. So the use of that verb by itself doesn't mean this is a reference to the ecclesiastical office of a pastor, which again, is only known from Ephesians. Ephesians, also probably not Paul. That's not one of the outright spurious epistles, but one of the disputed epistles.

Dan Beecher So anyway- But also probably a later thing. It sounds to me like that's when the organization chart has started to appear- Yes ...

Dan McClellan in Christianity The org chart is showing up in emails and irritating everybody.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah, that's a more developed hierarchy, a more developed institution where they've got these offices. And Paul would not have been operating with those institutions anyway. But anyway, 1 Timothy 3:2, even though it probably is not directly addressing polygyny, it would preclude polygynous marriages.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Even though it is also just about the standards for someone who wants to hold that position. It's not necessarily saying any follower of Jesus cannot do this. But it probably would've been a standard that became pretty widespread. So we do have one passage that does seem to prohibit polygyny in the New Testament. And Rich Tidwell is not ignorant of that passage.

Dan Beecher So- Okay ...

Dan McClellan he makes an argument for why 1 Timothy 3:2 does not prohibit polygyny. He says, "In 1 Timothy 3:2, Paul utilizes the Greek word mia, which we translated as one in English." And he talks a little bit about this in another passage. "Although mia may translate as an indefinite one or a, as in the indefinite article- Mm-hmm ... in the context of marriage in 1 Timothy 3:2, mia means ordinal, first. If Paul intended to communicate a man must have numeral one wife to be in ministry, he would've employed the word heis, as he did in 1 Timothy 5:9, the same epistle, because heis explicitly means numeral one. Mia must be used in 1 Timothy 3:2 as a grammatical rule. Read my response titled "The Mia and Heis Saga." Therefore, 1 Timothy 3:2 ought to be translated, 'The husband of his first wife.'"

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan As Paul, like Jesus, is preventing hypergamy and divorce. In other words, he still has to be married to his first wife.

Dan Beecher Should I make a guess as to your response to this?

Dan McClellan Let's see.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Because I don't know anything about the grammar or words of Greek, but I'm going to guess that you're going to object to his explanation of how these words are used.

Dan McClellan Yes. It's nonsensical. He says, "A man who divorces his first wife to marry another, as Jesus prohibits in Matthew 19:19, see also Malachi 2:15 through 16, is not fit for eldership in the church. Paul is not addressing polygyny, nor disqualifying the patriarchs from ministry. He is prohibiting hypergamy and serial monogamy among the elders of the church." And then he goes on to say something interesting. "Moreover, do we truly believe that if Abraham, Jacob, or David resurrected, a possibility according to Matthew 27:52 to 53, they would not be permitted to hold office or preach in the church?" "These polygamous men wrote or are featured in many of our holy scriptures, but we wouldn't give them a microphone today? What utter nonsense. I believe the answer to these questions lies in Romans 11:23. These polygamous men of the Bible were called by God and retained their offices despite their having several wives." And I saw somebody who responded to that particular argument by barking that, "Yes, absolutely, they would be prohibited from being pastors." And they went on to say, "Even God prohibited David from building the temple because he was a man of war. And so God can withhold certain offices and responsibilities from people." He didn't address Jacob or Abraham. But I think that's an interesting argument. And yeah, the 1 Timothy 3:2, the notion that mia and heis really carry these significant differences that must be maintained context independent, doesn't really work.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan It can be used that way, but it doesn't mean we have to use it that way.

Dan Beecher Well, if it can be used that way, then there's some legitimacy maybe to his argument.

Dan McClellan Well, it's basically the you can't prove it's false- Right ...

Dan Beecher argument.

Dan McClellan It's possible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan We're ginning up that tiny little sliver of not impossible.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But yeah, there are no scholars who read it that way.

Dan Beecher But it is- He does seem like he has a motivation, a specific motivation to find- Little bit of a motivation ...

Dan McClellan that reading.

Dan Beecher I feel like the most interesting part of this whole thing is that, if you want to use the Bible to justify polygamy, polygyny, whatever, that seems easy. He's not wrong.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Not as easy as defending slavery- ... but certainly, easier than defending same-sex intercourse or something like that.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There is ample evidence that it was considered okay by God. And this is another thing that he talks about. According to the Bible, God does not change.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So if God is okay with polygamy in the Hebrew Bible, God is okay with polygamy in the New Testament. And this is something that is a bit of a problem for the folks who want to understand the Bible to be condemning polygamy. Why would God allow it in one part of the Bible and then prohibit it in another if God does not change?

Dan Beecher Allow it in the most important figures in the Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Condone and even endorse it, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so it does raise the question of, we have other... Well, not we as in me, but a lot of these folks assert certain dogmas about God's unchanging nature and about the universality of the moral principles on which the gospel is founded.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Yeah. How do you get around that? And that is- Right ... why I think you have a lot of folks who try to argue that God actually prohibited or didn't like polygyny, just tolerated it. Like, "Ah, I'm not sure about this, but I'll see where this is going." And so people will bring up the argument that throughout the Hebrew Bible, polygynous marriages are characterized by conflict and problems.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's like every relationship in the Hebrew Bible is characterized by tension and conflict.

Dan Beecher Every relationship in humanity- Yeah.

Dan McClellan ...

Dan Beecher is characterized by... I don't know if you've had a spouse or a relationship, but you're going to have conflict.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher That's a guarantee.

Dan McClellan And they're like, "Bad things always happen." It's like Adam and Eve are a monogamous marriage, the worst thing happened.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And you've got all kinds of circumstances. Everybody who has a brother in the Hebrew Bible runs into all kinds of problems.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan It's like, does that mean that having a brother is frowned upon? God's like, "Hmm, I don't know about this one."

Dan Beecher "Let's get him."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think it's so interesting that the Bible is so obviously explicit about this and so overwhelmingly loaded with it, example after example. And I suppose we should bring up Solomon, who he's putting up Wilt Chamberlain numbers with- Yeah.

Dan McClellan And that works on two different levels.

Dan Beecher Well, we might get to the rest of that. But yeah, what does he have? 700 wives and- Yeah ... 300 concubines or something like- Yeah ... according to the thing.

Dan McClellan Oof.

Dan Beecher And there's no part of that that's condemned. There are things that like- Yeah ... the Bible's like, "Oh, Solomon wasn't good about this," or whatever, but it's not that. Well- Except that they're foreign wives and that becomes a problem.

Dan McClellan Yes, they're foreign wives and they influence him towards... And people will bring that up as well. "Well, look what happened to Solomon with all them foreign wives." It's like, well- Right ... he still had more than one local wife- Right ... and that didn't cause any problems. God wasn't like, "I'm not too hot on that other thing either."

Dan Beecher And his dad was loaded up, too.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher David had multiple wives as well.

Dan McClellan Yep. So, I don't know.

Dan Beecher The thing that's weird to me is that you can look at this book, you can read all of those stories of all of these men who have all of those wives, and then because your culture obviously is not okay with that... My parents were both LDS historians. They were both historians of Mormonism, and so I'm fairly familiar with Mormon history. And of course, famously- Infamously.

Dan McClellan Infamously.

Dan Beecher In-famously. The early Mormons, and then later fundamentalist break off offshoots of Mormonism- Mm-hmm ... practiced polygyny.

Dan McClellan Yes. And the way that the world- I live in a city where one of them ran for mayor.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's still around.

Dan McClellan I can see their compounds from my front yard.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Well, there you go. So, it's still around, but the way, historically, that American culture came crashing down on these people- Mm-hmm ... for this thing. And on one hand, I get it in the sense that I think that the polygyny of Mormonism creates a wild power imbalance. It is something that is entered into often unwillingly by the women.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it is often forced upon women, and the way it is practiced is not consensual and therefore there's no way to excuse it. But how did this country come down so incredibly hard? Literally people were saying the dual barbarism, I don't remember the exact quote, but they were equating slavery and- polygamy as being the two barbaric practices of the United States of America.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Reynolds versus the United States from 1879.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan There we go.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And a lot of people have been like, "They didn't really have that good of an argument." Because it was mainly just like, this is characteristic of barbaric people.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I think, also said it always leads to abuse or something like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Which, I think it's plain to see.

Dan Beecher If you watch any reality TV, you know that it doesn't necessarily lead to abuse. I never actually watched a single episode of "Sister Wives," but it seems like he probably wasn't abusive.

Dan McClellan I don't know.

Dan Beecher He wouldn't get to keep his reality show if he was abusive.

Dan McClellan I didn't watch any of it either.

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan But yeah.

Dan Beecher I couldn't get past his hairstyle, to be perfectly honest. And I'm not one to talk, I know that. I just think- I wasn't going to say anything. I just think that it's really weird that Bible-believing people, people purporting to be Bible believers, are so vehement against this. I get why you're vehement against slavery. That makes sense to me. And I get why you'd be vehement against a practice that was entered into against a woman's will. That I understand as well.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But presuming that adults enter into an arrangement of their own free will and with their consent, full consent and approval, I don't know how biblically-minded people condemn that. I don't get it.

Dan McClellan Well, we've already seen that folks who would identify as biblically-minded people have a way of massaging what the Bible is minding them about.

Dan Beecher Well, yeah.

Dan McClellan But it's interesting within Judaism, because I've mentioned before, one of the reasons that Christianity and Judaism deviated so significantly from each other is because Christianity really leaned into Greek philosophy and the Greco-Roman world, whereas Judaism tried to distinguish itself from it and rejected Greek philosophy- Right ... to some degree. It was still quite influential. But they were like, "Septuagint, not for us. We're going back to the Hebrew. We're going back to Halakhic legislation," all this stuff. And so for centuries after the split from Christianity, while Christianity is rejecting polygamy, Judaism was kind of like, "We're a little uncomfortable with this. We can't really find a reason to object in the Hebrew Bible, but we just don't like it." So you have Josephus referring to it as an ancestral custom in one of his texts. And it's around 1000 CE when Greek philosophy and just philosophy in general becomes a lot more influential within Judaism that you finally have some Jewish philosophers who are like, "Yeah, no polygamy. We're just outlawing it. It's just not cool."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So they had a longer time coming down as firmly as they ultimately did against polygamy. But yeah, it does seem like something that people appeal to all the time. People appeal to the Hebrew Bible and God's design for marriage as what should be governing how marriage works, except when it comes to that part, when they're like- Right ...

Dan Beecher "Eh."

Dan McClellan Right. And then they'll go to Genesis 2:24. And I just want to be clear, because people are going to accuse me of being a dirty Mormon who is just trying to defend polygamy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan You could not be more mistaken about my position on marriage. So as frequently as I have to remind people that I'm doing my darndest to just represent the data and the scholarly consensus, that's what I'm doing here.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this should in no way, shape, or form whatsoever be misconstrued as me defending polygamy because I like it. I have already been accused of that countless times just because I posted a video a few days ago about this.

Dan Beecher Of the two of us, I'm the one who's more likely to come to the defense of- Yes ... of a non-traditional marriage/love practices.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher I suppose. I don't support polygyny, religiously mandated polygyny.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I certainly don't support that.

Dan McClellan Certainly not, yeah. And I think that's one of the big issues is if it is something that is religiously sanctioned, then I think it does pressure folks, particularly young folks growing up in that kind of society that- Right ... conditions them to think, "This is my role. This is what I have to do." You already have women on Twitter saying, "We need to repeal the 19th Amendment" only because the men around them in their lives and kind of in control of their worldview are conditioning them and convincing them that they- Right ... need to defend that particular limit to their agency. And I think the last thing we need is a bunch of folks raising up young girls to believe that their only goal in life ought to be Becoming a polygamist wife of another Tidwell or whomever.

Dan Beecher Well, yeah. And too often in those situations, as we see with fundamentalist Mormons currently, and historical Mormons back in the 1800s and early 1900s, especially when it's shrouded in cultural shame, and becomes this insular thing, really bad practices crop up. So, like 14-year-old women being forcibly married off to 50-something-year-old men, that sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Because God said so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's Epstein level not okay.

Dan McClellan So, yes. And as of recording As of...

Dan Beecher We're okay.

Dan McClellan There's been a bunch of emails that have dropped and, well, I'm sure that the dust will have settled to some degree.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. Unless more emails are dropping in the future.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's raining Epstein letters at this point.

Dan McClellan Good grief.

Dan Beecher Okay. Let's erase our brains from that for a little bit, and let's actually move on to our chapter and verse. And the chapter, I guess what we're going to do is we're going to get to I Kings 11.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And this is the thing, it starts out with talking about the marriages of Solomon.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And the fact that he loved many women, many foreign women.

Dan McClellan Mm.

Dan Beecher That was the problem. It wasn't the many women, it was the fact that they were Moabite, and Ammonite, and Edomite, and Sidonian, and Hittite women.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And not only was he in love with these women, but he was building shrines to their gods on the hills. So that's sort of the, yeah, 700 princesses and 300 concubines.

Dan McClellan Princesses?

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Oh, yeah?

Dan Beecher I have seen wives in translations, but I- What does it say?

Dan McClellan It says "nashim," which would mean women or wives in Hebrew. Why does it say princesses?

Dan Beecher Oh, NRSVUE, are you getting sassy?

Dan McClellan Oh, "sharoth." No, it says wives and then it says "saroth"- Okay ... which would be the feminine plural of "sar," which would be a prince or a noble.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan A nobleman.

Dan Beecher So, yeah. Princesses and 300 concubines. So wait, it says among his wives were 700 princesses.

Dan McClellan 700 princesses, yeah.

Dan Beecher The non-princesses, probably there's a couple of hundred more of those.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Who knows? Again, it's those Chamberlain numbers.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway.

Dan McClellan And, yeah, who knows how many trombones and the camels. Yes, June, love the camels.

Dan Beecher I have no idea.

Dan McClellan See how I was able to bring in not just "The Music Man," but also "Aladdin"?

Dan Beecher Yeah. Man, you went all over the map with that. You encircled the globe twice on that one.

Dan McClellan But it says, "When Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not true to the Lord his God as was the heart of his father David."

Dan Beecher Kind of.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Kind of.

Dan McClellan David kind of got the raw end of the heart deal.

Dan Beecher David fudged the rules a little bit- Yeah, yeah ... here and there, but sure.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But I think the main thing is, and this is something that we've talked about, one of the things that we need to remember here is that, and one of the things that was never talked about in my religious upbringing- Mm-hmm ... was the fact that these other gods that Solomon was kind of falling prey to were real gods by this standard. They believed them to be, yes.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher They believed them to be real gods, so this is really treading on Adonai's turf here.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And you have, I Kings 11 is interesting for so many reasons. Verse five refers to Solomon following Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Milcom, the abomination of the Ammonites.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So Milcom was a patron deity of the Ammonites, but then you, excuse me, you go down to verse seven, and it says, "Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab," we've talked about Chemosh before- Yes ... "and for Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites." So we've just seen it was Milcom who's the abomination of the Ammonites, and now we have- Oh, yeah.

Dan Beecher That's right ...

Dan McClellan Molech, the abomination of the Ammonites. This is a scribal corruption.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan There has been a change where Milcom and Molech, the only difference in written Hebrew anciently, is one letter, the M on the end- Oh ... of the word, the name.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And so obviously the mem has just fallen out from, excuse me, from the word Milcom.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so a lot of people use this to argue that Molech was recognized as a deity, and Molech was not a deity. Molech was just a type of sacrifice. And then later Greek translators and later folks confused it for the name of a deity that never existed.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay. So we're saying that Milcom is the actual deity- Yeah ... and Molech was an incorrect- A corruption, yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. A textual oopsie.

Dan Beecher So- I do think that Milcom would be a good name for a software company.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It just sounds right.

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Milcom and Molech would be an interesting name for a law firm.

Dan McClellan A buddy comedy?

Dan Beecher Oh, a buddy comedy, I love it. The two abominations of the Ammonites.

Dan McClellan I like it.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher So- One of- Okay So, yeah, let's go on with the story here.

Dan McClellan We're moving on. I'm going to get down to verse 23.

Dan Beecher Okay, sounds good.

Dan McClellan "We have some adversaries raised against Solomon. Rezan, son of Eliada, who had fled from his master King Hadadezer of Zobah."

Dan Beecher You just wanted to say that.

Dan McClellan Whenever on The Simpsons, they always have Ned Flanders saying some kind of nonsensical name from- Uh-huh ... from the Bible. This is one that if I didn't know this passage, I would've been like, "They made that up. That's not in the Bible."

Dan Beecher King Hadadezer.

Dan McClellan Of Zobah.

Dan Beecher Hadadezer.

Dan McClellan Yeah, okay.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan It's just Hadadezer. Hadad was the name of a deity, ezer just means help of.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, help of Hadad.

Dan Beecher Hadad's helper.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And while we're talking about names- Names ... because it's going to come up, what does the suffix boam mean? Because we're going to get a Jeroboam and a, what's the son's name?

Dan McClellan Jeroboam and Rehoboam.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yes. So, the am on the end is not clear. It could mean people. Am means people. It could mean uncle. There's a form of this word that has reference to a male ancestor. Could mean an Uncle God. It could be a deformation of Jerubbaal.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan So Jeroboam, Jerubbaal, they're spelled the same except for the mem on the end instead of a lamed. So, at least when it comes to Jeroboam, it's not clear what exactly is- Okay ... going on with the am on the end of the name. Now, when it comes to Rehoboam, this is more likely to be, the rachav means to be wide, and this is a word that can mean street in Hebrew. So, it might be this Uncle God has made wide, or maybe it's the people have become extensive. They've spread out.

Dan Beecher Okay. So- Uncle God on the street is what I'm going with.

Dan McClellan Uncle God on the street, yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Sorry, I took us off down a rabbit trail.

Dan McClellan No worries. But we have Jeroboam, and this is an interesting story. So anyway, a lot of people made trouble in Solomon's neighborhood.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan They were up to no good.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then Jeroboam shows up, and he's like a day laborer, and he's coming down to Jerusalem, and he's helping out with stuff, and verse 28 says, "When Solomon saw that the young man was industrious, he gave him charge over all the forced labor of the house of Joseph." And so forced labor, this would be corvée labor. This is the King of Judah requiring that the people from the northern kingdom, who would've been subjugated to Judah, require they send folks on a certain schedule to come do forced labor.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This is not really slavery. It's something a bit different. And then Jeroboam's leaving Jerusalem, work day's over, he's going home, and the prophet Ahijah, the Shilonite, found him on the road, and he had a new garment on, and he gives it to Jeroboam, but tears it into 12 pieces, which is kind of like, "Cool, thanks.

Dan Beecher What?" "Thanks for the shirt. I guess it's rags now?"

Dan McClellan Yeah. He says, "Take for yourself 10 pieces, for thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'See, I am about to tear the kingdom from the hand of Solomon and will give you 10 tribes. One tribe will remain his for the sake of my servant David and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city that I've chosen out of all the tribes of Israel. This is because he has forsaken me, worshiped Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,'" and so on and so forth.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, it's just symbolic. The prophet's always doing weird symbolic stuff. "Look at this jar. I'm going to break this jar. Look, I'm nude. Look, I'm tearing your coat into 12 pieces."

Dan Beecher "Can you put your clothes back on, please?

Dan McClellan No?

Dan Beecher Oh, you're tearing it up.

Dan McClellan Great."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Okay. So basically, the 10 pieces represent the 10 tribes of Israel, which would be- So- ... the northern kingdom.

Dan Beecher So basically- So what he's saying is Jeroboam is going to get to be king- Yes ... even though he's just this day laborer guy.

Dan McClellan Yeah, the prophet is like, "Hey, guess what? You're going to take over 10 of the 12 tribes of Israel." And Jeroboam is represented as rather humble. But Solomon finds out about this, and Solomon- You never want that.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's never any good.

Dan McClellan Solomon, not happy. So he tries to kill Jeroboam. Jeroboam promptly flees to Egypt, to King Shishak of Egypt, and he remains in Egypt until Solomon dies.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then Solomon's dead, reigned in Jerusalem 40 years, slept with his ancestors, was buried in the city of his father, David, and his son Rehoboam succeeded him. Now, Rehoboam, and here's the thing, there was never a single united kingdom. Scholars are pretty sure that Judah in the south and Israel in the north were originally separate kingdoms.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And there would've been a time maybe where Israel might have subjugated the southern kingdom, or maybe the southern kingdom subjugated the northern kingdom, which is how it's represented in this text, which is, by the way, being written from the perspective of somebody who lived in the southern kingdom.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so Rehoboam goes up to Shechem, which is the capital of the northern kingdom, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. And then Jeroboam heard about it, and he comes back from Egypt, or no, he stays in Egypt, and they call him, and they sent and called him and Jeroboam, and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam, "Your father made our yoke heavy." So, Jeroboam is a forced laborer. "Now therefore, lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke that he placed on us, and we will serve you." Basically saying, "Look, the northern kingdom, your dad was mean to us. If you will be nicer to us, we will happily be part of your kingdom."

Dan Beecher Right. "Chill out a little bit. Let's be kind, rewind- Yeah ... and maybe we can all get along."

Dan McClellan And King Rehoboam took counsel with the older men who had attended his father, Solomon, while he was still alive, saying, "How do you advise me to answer the people?" So he's basically going to the elders, who were his dad's advisors, and they said, "If you will be a servant to this people and serve them and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever." Then he went to the cool kids, the younger crowd- Right ... who grew up with him.

Dan Beecher So his- The Stephen Millers of the world.

Dan McClellan Yes. His friends. And he says, "What do you advise?" And they said, "Thus you should say to this people who spoke to you, 'Your father made our yoke heavy, but you must lighten it for us.' Thus you should say to them, 'My little finger is thicker than my father's loins.'"

Dan Beecher Which is- I'm going to assume that means what I think it means.

Dan McClellan It does. He's holding up his pinky and going, "This is bigger than my dad's johnson."

Dan Beecher Meaning, I suppose that my dad was a wimp- Yeah ... and because having a big schlong is- Yeah ... it makes you stronger as a human, as a person or something. Makes you more powerful as a man.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan The one with the bigger schnitzengruben is- ...