9.
Why is incest wrong?
An
extremely common criticism leveled at the Bible is the rhetorical
question, “Where did Cain get his wife?” The point being that if
only Adam & Eve were created, and they only had Cain and Able,
then how could Cain have found the wife mentioned in Genesis 4:17?
This
question has always stumped me. Not in the sense that I can't answer
it but rather why do people even ask it. I've sometimes answered
this with a short analogy: I've heard various statistics but one
source says that if you start with a single pair of rabbits, you
could end up with over 50,000 rabbits at the end of three years! Do
you understand how that works? The first pair has babies, then the
babies have babies, and so on. It's not rocket science. Well, that
same principle works with people – albeit not quite as fast.
The
Bible names three children of Adam & Eve. They are Cain, Able,
and Seth. However, the Bible is clear that Adam had other, “sons
and daughters” (Genesis 5:4). So, in case you still
haven't figured it out, Adam & Eve had babies, then their babies
had babies with each other. That's how it worked and it was
how God intended it.
As
people start to think about this, a queasy feeling of taboo starts to
set in. If their babies had babies with each other, isn't that
incest? If it occurred today, that's how we'd describe it but
obviously it wasn't seen the same way then. In his article, Francke
describes incest as, “weird
and disturbing and more than a little icky.” I
believe his view (which I share, by the way) is the product of our
Western culture. What we might consider gross, other cultures have
embraced. Marrying close relatives –
such as sisters, cousins, and nieces – has been practiced around
the world for millenia.
Why,
then, is incest wrong? It's wrong precisely because the Bible has
declared it to be wrong. When God gave the Law to Moses, this thing
which had been practiced for thousands of years was commanded to
cease. Next you might ask why a practice that God intended, He now
would say to stop? I won't pretend that I know exactly why but I do
know that God is not arbitrary. I suspect it probably is a matter of
health.
In the
first few generations after Adam and Eve, marrying a close relative
was unavoidable. Many generations later, by the time of Moses, there
were enough people in the world that it was no longer necessary to
marry anyone closely related to you. Furthermore, the genetic burden
each successive generation inherited became worse and worse and
marrying a close relative now carried a greater risk of defects in
the offspring of incestuous couples. When God gave the Law to Moses,
He commanded the practice to cease.
Something
similar has happened concerning our diets. When God created Adam and
Eve, He told them they could eat any green thing. After the Flood,
God told Noah he could also eat meat (likely because the world was
not as lush as before the Flood). But when God gave the Law to
Moses, it included strict prohibitions against eating certain foods.
We have, then, another example of something originally allowed but
later commanded to end. So what point is proved by Francke asking
this question? Absolutely nothing.
10.
And finally, if it is so vitally important that Christians take
Genesis literally, why did Jesus never once instruct us to take
Genesis literally?
I've
always thought it a weak argument to build upon points Jesus didn't
make. If it's important that we wash our hands after we sneeze, why
didn't Jesus ever tell us to do that?! If it's so important to eat
vegetables, why didn't Jesus ever tell us to do that?! It should be
obvious that these things are important so the fact that Jesus didn't
instruct us about them doesn't prove they're not important. I guess
I shouldn't say I've never used a “negative argument” but I still
say it's the weaker route.
Now, I
don't know everything Jesus said – I only know what is recorded in
the Bible. I do know we have no record of Jesus ever having said,
“Truly I say to you, you shall read Genesis literally.” Such a
statement makes little sense, anyway. I generally do not take things
“literally” but I take them in the sense they are intended. Can
you imagine having conversations where every word is meant to be
literal? How would we interpret expressions like, “scared to
death” or “my wife's going to kill me”? So Jesus instructing
us to take Genesis “literally” would have probably created more
problems than it would solve. Taking the Bible “literally” is a
straw man caricature made by critics of conservative Christians.
Instead
of looking at what Jesus didn't do, let's look at what He did
do. We know that time after time, when confronted by His critics
(chiefly, the Pharisees), He often responded with, “Haven't you
read...” and would then cite some Old Testament passage applicable
to the situation. In those situations, rather than offering some
“figurative meaning” of the text, He always relied on the obvious
meaning of the passage to make His point.
At the
end of the day, though, Jesus did often quote from Genesis. Perhaps
His most relevant comment on the subject is found in Mark 10:6-8
where Jesus refers to both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 in the same
comment. He certainly seemed to be referring to Adam & Eve as
real people. In Matthew 23:35, Jesus refers to a history of
martyrdom beginning with Abel and ending with Zacharias (the latter
apparently recently murdered by the Pharisees). In Luke 17:27, He
compared the suddenness of His next coming to the Flood of Noah. In
all of these cases, and others I could cite, He names these people as
though they are real characters in History. How ridiculous would it
be to talk about Abel (a fictional character) in the same context as
Zacharias (a real person known to the Pharisees) or to compare the
Flood of Noah (a fictional event) to the Second Coming (a literal
event)?
Perhaps
I should turn the question around on Francke. I believe Jesus
treated Genesis as real history. If Genesis were not meant to
literal, why didn't Jesus instruct us to interpret it figuratively?
That “what Jesus didn't do” argument works both ways. The
difference is that the Bible repeatedly shows Jesus treating people
and events from Genesis as “literal” and never as “figurative.”
By continuously referring to the
things as history, I believe Jesus was indeed instructing us on the
correct way to read Genesis.
Read the entire series:
Regarding point 10, I think the usual interpretation of "Abel to Zacharias" is that the latter refers either to the prophet from the eponymous Old Testament book (who was traditionally supposed to have been martyred, although the Bible doesn't tell his fate), or to the earlier Zachariah ben Jehoiada, who is actually described as being martyred in the reign of King Jehoash. In either case, the reference to "Abel" as an actual person supports your point. Likewise does the reference to Noah.
ReplyDeleteBut note that the references to "from the time of the beginning" strictly speaking only refers to how humans have been since their origin; it says nothing about who the earliest humans were or when they lived, or how much time passed between the beginning of the Earth and the beginning of humanity. And another passage, in which Jesus cites the words of God to Moses ("I am the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob"), his use of this to support the idea that Abraham still lived (the point of the passage, surely, is that the God Abraham worshiped still lived, not whether Abraham still did) shows a certain willingness to handle scripture in ways that aren't really the "historical-grammatical" or "literal" sense.
I suppose the point might be raised that an omniscient Holy Spirit, in inspiring the sacred text, would know what doubts and heterodox views would arise in the future, and make sure that the text dealt explicitly with these matters. Whether the Holy Spirit should have done that, I cannot say; I've complained before that theology is like a game of tennis played not only without a net, but with the existence of the ball taken purely on faith. Who can say whether a player has scored a point or not?
Regarding point 9, if incest became morally wrong when, and because, God forbade it when giving the Law to Moses, then why does the Code of Hammurabi (centuries older than the oldest date assigned to the Mosaic Law) contain prohibitions against incest? Indeed, when Paul notes to the Corinthians that even the pagans do not permit a man to marry his father's wife, how does Paul account for those ignorant of the Mosaic Law grasping that this is wrong? Or, indeed, while Abraham has no problem with marrying his half-sister, why does he expect Pharaoh to conclude he can't be married to Sarah if she is his full sister? His behavior (and later Isaac's with Abimelech about Rebecca) imply a widespread incest taboo long before the Law was given at Sinai, and independent of it. Also, while Genesis doesn't express any explicit judgment of Lot getting his daughters pregnant, I can't help but suspect that the story is a dig at the Ammonites and Moabites for having disgusting and debased origins (note that the daughters have to get Lot drunk to get him to agree to their plan, suggesting that it wasn't viewed as licit even centuries before the Law).
ReplyDeleteConversely, while Christians have traditionally viewed some aspects of the Mosaic law as temporary and culturally-specific (so that you don't go to Hell for eating bacon or mowing your lawn on Saturday), others are seen as eternal moral principles, like loving your neighbor as yourself and not making the two-backed beast with your sister. They'd be uncomfortable with, if not outright horrified at, e.g. legalizing brother-sister marriages in cases where one or both partners were incapable of procreation. I doubt that the special disgust that attaches to such matings goes beyond the likelihood of children who are homozygous for some deleterious allele (e.g. are you quite so horrified at the thought of two known cystic fibrosis carriers marrying? would other Christians be?).
For what it's worth, prohibitions against inbreeding may have purposes beyond preventing birth defects. Forbidding people to marry near kin forces them to form marital ties with other families, clans, and tribes (it has often been speculated that the Catholic Church's prohibition of cousin marriage in the Middle Ages was aimed, precisely, at breaking up the clan and tribal structures of Europe in favor by giving people family in other tribes). On the other hand, quite a few species with no organization beyond the nuclear family (if they even have that) have behaviors that tend to inhibit inbreeding. And hermaphroditic species whose individuals can, in principle, mate with themselves generally have features that prevent this, so the "prevent inbreeding" explanation has some merit -- except that it is widespread even in species that know nothing of the Law and could never learn it.
Anyway, this seems to raise an issue. Of course, given just the information in the story (and the assumption that Adam and Eve originally carried no deleterious recessive alleles), we could infer that Cain, Seth, and various other sons of Adam married their various sisters. But that implies that God originally created the human race with no option for "being fruitful and multiplying" except for behavior that virtually all human cultures (an exception was sometimes raised for the high nobility, who needed to keep their bloodlines "pure" and the royal lands and chattels in the royal family) abominated even before Sinai (and that we may have built-in revulsion for: see "Westermarck effect"). This seems clumsy and jerry-rigged for an omnipotent, omniscient Being, and that's the problem addressed in question nine.