Israel and Humanity - Monogamy and polygamy
§ 2.
Monogamy and Polygamy.
The Noachism does not, to our knowledge, a special provision on polygamy. However there is no shortage of arguments sufficient to convince impartial criticism, that if there was no formal ban on the subject in Israel, at least that monogamy was the sympathy of the law and the most prominent figures.
Everything proves that he was not different for Noachism or Catholicism of that time. The most important texts in favor of monogamy and the most remarkable examples we do not they are indeed provided by the history prior to Moses, that is to say Noachide life in full bloom. The story of creation, among other passages, is certainly not indifferent to judge the ideas that were of marriage. In biblical standpoint, there is so much in the nature of man to have only one wife, he not only did that was created for Adam, but that the wife has only been drawn from his own flesh, so that we can say at most there was originally [1] a single human being, man and woman in Once, an Adam androgynous [2] as the Rabbis have written more faithful to the sacred text that we would be tempted to believe. In front of Lemek who had two wives, we have more conclusive example of Noah and his son who have each had one. Abraham would have shown that also, if Sara had not forced him to take his slave. Isaac in turn had only one wife and one sees the story of Jacob that he had four women through deception of Laban first, and then the desire expressed by Rachel and Leah. Moses' mother had no rival and as for Moses himself, even when the Ethiopian woman, on which Mary and Aaron murmured in Hazeroth would be other than Zippori, there is no evidence that the 'has had the lifetime of it. As for Aaron, we know him only one woman, Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab.
We thus arrive at the threshold of the Mosaic with an abundance of facts which show that before the advent of the great legislator monogamy was already in vogue. There was a change in this regard under the Mosaic law? We know that the Sadducees were interpreted as a formal prohibition of polygamy verse to defend at the same time a woman and her sister, though, for tradition, and you can even add a sound exegesis, it there is not anything other than the prohibition to marry at once both too, which not only does not exclude polygamy, but rather presupposes it. Without going too far, however, we will say that this doctrine of the Sadducees is not unimportant; exaggerated interpretation reflects at least the spirit which prevailed in Judaism. The Pharisees, for their part, did not tell the documents do they mean, they were content to take on more and more the value of monogamy, but did not expressly prohibit polygamy. We constantly find themselves in the distinction between law and morality they have always carefully followed and which is key for us exactly captures the sense of many of their institutions and their rules.
Each time such that the law requires someone to marry, not the state that polygamous tradition requires him to do the justification, which clearly proves that if polygamy is tolerated [3] as an effect of individual freedom, it is never imposed, probably because it is not considered the most perfect state. Thus a man was obliged to marry his sister when his late brother had left no child, but if by chance he had left two or three women, the survivor could not in any case of widows marry one of his brother.
Here is also something even more compelling. The law not only refuses to create itself the status of polygamy, but we find cases where it is forbidden and the circumstances in which it then imposes monogamy give special value to its prohibitive provisions. The high priest who officiated the Day of Atonement was to be married because the law says: "He shall make an atonement for himself and his house [4] ". But the word house in the singular, Tradition has not hesitated to force the text to infer that the pope at that time at least, could have only one wife. [5].
Everyone understands how eloquent meaning such a law, if still impressive for someone who studies it would take at that time for all minds. It is impossible for man to the highest in the priestly hierarchy, performing the most solemn duties of his ministry at the holiest day of the year, was forced to have only one wife, monogamy appeared without obviously as a higher state.
We will object if there was such a sense of this law, the true perfection at this point of view, the pontiff called for high office, would not be to have only one wife, but have none? We do not deny that Judaism same mosaic contains not only the germ of a similar asceticism, but a beginning of development and ideas of the Hassidim, the Essenes, Kabbalists in this regard are the application of a authentic Jewish principle, but detached in an exaggerated some others that temper and grind. However it would be wrong if we wanted to bring this kind of feelings the law which regulates the state marital high priest officiating the day of Atonement. As it is in this solemn act all heads of family, the whole Jewish nation, [6] it requires that he, too, his house , is to say he is married, and that of the most worthy and probably the most common. It is perhaps not without interest for the study of the tradition we are talking about self-righteous to point out that Diodorus say a law banning polygamy Egyptian priests.
