When did Christians & Jews Become Monogamous？
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Summary
What does the Bible actually say about monogamy, and why did it become a cultural norm in the New Testament? Is monogamy the root of Christianity and Judaism, and what is the role of monogamy in the development of Christianity?
Transcript
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understanding of the metanarrative of the evolution of monogamy was in the church as a norm
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tells a deeper story that is missed if you attempt to misinterpret them to make your modern sexual
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mores look like they were the mores that were had at the time of various parts of the bible being
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written which which hides from you i think a deeper and more interesting truth it is kind of weird
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the bible isn't that explicit about one husband one wife but seems to assume it in the new testament
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where in the old testament it seems to assume that wealthy men have multiple wives yes yes actually in
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roman cultural norms it was one wife rome definitely represented the core of of civilizing force and i
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think what we see here is civilization crashing into religion creating something that is a merger
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of both of them that is not just it's law roman law is there some other form of law you wretched woman
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one thousand apologies one in the form of christianity but also in the form of post-second
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temple judaism and this is where the jews get really spicy you must guarantee of course to keep your
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jews in line they will do as i say or they will suffer the consequences congratulations then herod you
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have the full backing of rome would you like to know more hello simone i'm excited to be talking with
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you today today we are going to be talking about an issue that i think just doesn't get a lot of good
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and honest coverage which is what does the bible actually say about taking multiple wives and the
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reason why you're not going to get good coverage of this is christians generally sweep under the rug that
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there's a lot of people of the bible with multiple wives because now it is normal within modern christianity
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uh to only have one wife and it's the same with modern judaism modern judaism is mostly a
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monogamous religious system so they just you know the the people who are like super pro christian or
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super pro jew generally don't dwell on this point too much um so when you go and you're reading about
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this it's usually people who want to dunk on the bible or who want to dunk on jews or who want to dunk on
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you know early whatever right and i think because of that people miss interesting things we can learn
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about the development of christianity and judaism by studying both one what does what are the actual
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rules laid out in the bible around this and two how and why did they develop and change over time okay
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i'm excited for this any thoughts i i'm kind of afraid of what we're going to learn
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is it is it more in the end biblical to just not what what well god yeah no let's i'll give you a
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summary of what you're going to learn because this is really interesting so it is kind of weird that
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the bible isn't that explicit about one husband one wife but seems to assume it in the new testament
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where in the old testament it seems to assume that wealthy men have multiple wives yes and and i thought it
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was really weird i was like it's almost like the cultural norms changed before the new testament was
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written and so i started to study the issue more and what i learned is actually in roman cultural norms
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it was one wife and so the area of israel being a roman colony at the time it would have been culturally
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normative for them at that period at least within like the the power structure of society
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to default to monogamous marriages and so jesus was when he was preaching to people assumed that they
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all knew we had already made the switch to one one so it's almost as if like if the new testament were
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written when the macarena was the dance of the season then everyone would be doing the macarena in
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the bible and we would just assume that it's biblically correct to do the macarena kind of
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i actually would word it a bit differently and i'll go into this conception more in a second
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but i think that you can see christianity as a marriage of roman culture or the first true
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civilization in terms of from my perspective like the the descendant of modern civilization when i look at
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something like egypt it wasn't like a modern the real precursor to the modern states you may have
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greece or something like that but i think that grome is a successor state to the greek culture
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and what christianity is is that what we call the western cultural canons marriage with the jewish
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cultural canon to create christianity and i think that once you understand through the story of how it
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relates to monogamy that it is this marriage then you can better understand the role in the western
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tradition that pre that marriage the jewish branch of the system should play and the roman slash greek branch of
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that system should play that actually really resonates and i've never thought about that before
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that in the end there's a ton of roman culture in both the new testament but also the catholic church
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in general catholics more than anyone else have adopted the greek slash roman side of this cultural
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marriage in their elevation of great thinkers of greek among their own great thinkers yeah they did a very
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good job of pulling in and marrying that canon and creating something which is uh fairly unique to
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christianity of the religious system which is a presumptive assumption of a separation of church and
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state which is to say that you know render unto caesar what is caesar's this is what you know famous
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jesus line which which assumes church and state will be separate which i think was one of christianity's
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greatest strengths in terms of its growth and very unique that's not true of judaism that's not true of
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islam that's not true of confucianism that's not true of most other religious systems but let's get
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into this okay so arguments for monogamy that could be made the best argument for monogamy in the old
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testament is going to be genesis 224 therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast
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to his wife and they shall become one flesh and you you generally see the adam and eve narrative is played
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out here they're like oh genesis but unfortunately if you take the interpretation we take of this
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which i think is the correct interpretation a husband and wife do not become one flesh when
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they have sex that's insane they become one flesh when they make a baby that is when a husband and
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wife become one flesh and so uh if you take that assumption there's no reason that a man couldn't
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also become one flesh with other women this is not a line laying out that he should only have one wife
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nor is the adam and eve story laying that out and i think that in the original interpretations of both
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these stories we have that laid out as very obviously not the mainstream interpretation
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given that like pretty much every powerful jewish person in the early bible has multiple wives
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so i don't think that that's a strong interpretation the next here you have jesus reaffirmed this view of
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marriage stating have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and
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female and said therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast with his wife
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and the two shall become one flesh but again i don't really see this necessarily exclusively being
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monogamy if you take one flesh to mean make babies well also when you yeah when you think about how
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things are described in a nature video for example like and the male manatee will made with the female
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manatee it doesn't imply that the manatees are monogamous it just implies that this is how the
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reproductive yeah it's it's not an implication of that at all uh then here you have corinthians 7 2
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where paul states each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband now this is
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in the new testament i think the strongest place where it is just like really obvious there is an
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assumption of monogamy however i don't know like to me because these are in you know the letters
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right this is more to me like well when you're talking to your people we know because we're romans
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that it's a monogamous relationship right like that's the assumption there and then the next
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line here you know if you look at like timothy 3 2 or titus 1 6 they also seem to assume monogamy
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especially among the wealthy people which is when you see polygyny more commonly specifically with
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lines where paul states when talking about the qualifications for church leaders being quote the
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husband of one wife end quote now here's the interesting thing simone you might have just
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heard that quote and thought something in in in in in in in in in timothy and titus when they're when
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they're laying out what the qualifications for church leaders are it says i'm just wondering what
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what question is brought to mind for you the qualification for having leadership was in the church
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being quote each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband who is that a problem
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for priests catholics yeah it's a problem for catholics do you know how they get around it
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it's actually pretty interesting i was i was sorry she's teething really sharp teeth wear a wedding
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ring and they they marry jesus essentially so so the way that catholics get around this is is i've read
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two they go it's meant to be taken metaphorically that's my favorite where i'm like what what like
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you believe the craziest stuff like you're literally eating christ's body and blood and that's not
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metaphorical no you're like ah that was probably metaphorical but then two they'll say well it doesn't
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explicitly demand that they that they must be married it's meant to be read as they can't have
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more than one wife it's saying that church leadership shouldn't be polygynous and i guess
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it can technically be read that way but that's quite a squirrely reading of this and seems not to be
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what's intended the husband of one wife so what they mean is that what they say is it means that not
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more than one wife but but even then it's clearly saying that church leadership should like broadly
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speaking be married like yeah that's i i didn't i haven't it's been a while since i've read corinthians
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so i guess that's what this is from right i guess i missed that part wasn't paying attention as much
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as i should be because that's pretty striking yeah now here's the thing with jesus though if you remember
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the quote earlier i mentioned where jesus says have you not read that he who created them from the
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beginning made them male and female and he said therefore a man shall leave his father and mother
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and hold fast with his wife and the two shall become one flesh what he's actually doing what jesus
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you know and in context when i think about jesus i think about jesus as a jewish preacher in the early
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days preaching to jews he is quoting two parts of genesis and trying to use them to make an argument
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that changes i think it is possible that he was trying to argue for monogamy there and if he was
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he was doing it in the way a classically like a jewish rabbi would have done it i don't know i feel
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like he's jordan peterson hanging which you know he's like get out of your family's house get a job
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make your bed instead of specifically get married and be monogamous what i'm what i hear when i read
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when i hear that statement is you need to leave your parents house start your family and become
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independent i can see what this was said in response to yeah because the context of it does make a really
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big difference if he's saying this specifically with regard to the type of composition of a marriage
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or adult life then i can get that maybe it's an argument for monogamy but this sounds more to me
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like you gotta grow up and start your family and and that could be
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you know he's using the most common form of pairing for your average person and of course the average
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person who's not super high wealth or high status is going to not have more than one wife
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getting an answer here so this is specifically about divorce apparently
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yeah he's using against he's arguing against an easy pass to divorce
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okay which i can see now could be a stronger case for this being about monogamy specifically so
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because because this is being said in response to divorce have you not read that he who what created
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them from the beginning made them male and female and said therefore therefore a man shall leave his
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father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh that it could be
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taken to also argue for monogamy with the implication of well then why not just take another wife here
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i don't see it as being that strong an argument for it but i definitely see it as being an argument for
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it and and no the reason why it needs to be a strong argument is because what this is evolving
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is the old jewish traditions which now let's start to talk about these because oh actually
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but before i go further there is actually another change in marriage tradition that happened during
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this period is pushing away leverite marriages or marrying brothers dead spouses yeah because there
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was there were a bunch of rules in the bible and there's a bunch of rules in the talmud about this
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generous thing you would do historically you know if you're in one of these cultures where women
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wouldn't have had a way to support themselves they might have had other kids with a man it's
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your genetic closest relative it's actually almost like a perfect system like if my estate was going
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to a wife and she was still genetically fit evolutionarily i would want the kids that she
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bared to if they can't be 50 percent me because they can't be literally my kids they can be 25 percent
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me but then that for every two kids it's like one kid that i had with her or more you know given
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that you know the the amount of genetic similarity siblings have that is a really easy system and a
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really good system but because the culture in rome was beginning to move away from that you had
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things like paul further developing the this teaching by reversing the old testament command for
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a man to marry his dead brother's wife instead paul said that widows can marry whomever they wanted
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this is corinthians 7 39 in the old testament there is only one section that could be used to argue
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against polygyny one man having many wives specifically deuteronomy 17 17 which again
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this one is not great for catholics he should and this is speaking of the king right he should not
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acquire many wives for himself lest his heart turn away nor shall he acquire for himself an excess of
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silver and gold so it's that just sounds like moderation i'm hearing too many not many i mean like
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too many and this you many is more than a few i think he's just saying like relevant when you consider
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the the the context of this which is solomon being punished for 700 wives that is in my mind
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too many wives well especially when you compare it to wealth i think this is about again not having
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too much and and many is more than a few though of course we don't know the original um this is a
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translation i'll tell you 700 is more than was intended by this line hundred wives 300 concubines
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so but i but wait oh whoa wait okay so a total of a thousand a thousand yeah this guy wasn't even
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sleeping with all his wives at this point like this is just wasteful not wasteful at this point
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yeah you can't possibly have a cycle that would work for impregnation with a thousand women some of
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these women must have grown old without you there's only 365 days in a year you'd like marry her at 23 and
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then finally you consummate the marriage when she's 30 or something yeah this is this is no this is
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ridiculous but i i'd also say here that what's really important here is the immorality of having
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too many wives in deuteronomy is said to be the same type of immorality as having too much gold
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wives and gold similar forms of immorality here okay well no i mean it's just you often get people
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like oh the bible doesn't say having lots of wealth is the bad thing especially not like
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religious institutions or leadership having lots of wealth and i'm like it says it like everywhere
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it says it um but anyway and for people who want to go to the tabernacle and be like yeah but the
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tabernacle had gold in it you got to watch our track series specifically track eight we go into that
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a lot now arguments for polygamy all right so several prominent old testament figures practice
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polygamy without explicit condemnation including abraham jacob david and solomon and potentially
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also moses but i i didn't get that one confirmed some old testament laws seem to regulate rather than
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prohibit polygamy such as exodus 21 10 which states if he takes another wife to himself he shall not
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diminish her food her closing or her marital rights which by the way i love the line there it's saying
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when you take your second wife you can't sleep with your first wife less she's gonna she's gonna get a
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say in that okay and then deuteronomy 21 15 17 uh provides inheritance rules for children of
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multiple wives implying acceptance of the practice and then samuels 12 8 could be interpreted as god
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giving david multiple wives quote and i gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms
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there is no explicit blanket condemnation of polygamy in the bible yeah so basically
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nowhere in the bible does it say polygamy polygyny bad and if god had really really felt this i think
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that would be there however have quotes like quote have you allowed all the women to live he moses asked
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them quote now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man but save for yourselves
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every girl who has never slept with a man so this is moses saying like okay when you're conquering a
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region you've got to kill the men you've got to kill the wives you've got to kill the boys but
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the young girls who haven't slept with a guy yet those are those are for the taking and then there are
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lines which give rules about taking what are essentially
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what's the word that i can use for this mex slaves captured women could be taken as wives after a period of
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mourning but had to be set free of the man no longer wanted them as a wife so it's deuteronomy 21 10 14
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um here is the full quote here from a different section if a man has sex with a slave girl who is
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engaged to another man but has not yet been ransomed or given freedom there must be an investigation
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but they aren't to be put to death because she wasn't free the man must bring a compensation
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offering to god at the entrance of the tent of meeting a ram of compensation the priest will perform
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the ritual of atonement for him before god with the ram of compensation for the sin he has committed
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then he will stand forgiven of the sin he committed so what this implies here just for people who aren't
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quite putting all this together when you are conquering a territory in the ancient jewish days
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you know we may think of these people as wives but it doesn't say like they're allowed to say no
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it says yeah you take them gives them a a period of mourning but after that yeah you take them as a wife
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and it's clear here that take them as a wife is not the same kind of wife as a jewish voluntary wife
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why do we know that because different rules apply to them specifically the rule that they can be
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divorced and that if you divorce them you set them free or they can be divorced more easily it seems
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here and with this other one it's saying oh if somebody else has sex with them in the meantime
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i mean don't kill them but you know they should like apologize and tomorrow or tomorrow i don't know
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when the next episode of this series is going to go live because i want to make it like a series of this
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we're going to go into what the bible actually says about slavery and what the real rules are
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around slavery in the bible now let's talk about extramarital relations in rome because this gets
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interesting while marriage was monogamous roman men often engaged in other sexual relationships
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sexual activity with slaves prostitutes and women of lower status was socially acceptable for married men
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and not considered adultery under the law powerful men frequently had multiple sexual partners in addition
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to their wife a practice sometimes called male resource polygyny a man having a long-term unmarried
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female partner existed though its prevalence and legal status in different periods is debated so
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i i i should note here that in rome it wasn't like fully modern in its understanding of monogamy
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it was a monogamous system where you had one real wife that produced errors but you know you would
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have sex with other women if you were a powerful man in many ways i might think that the roman system
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is actually morally superior to our existing system in the west because in what way and just that
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it's less uptight less brittle it's less brittle because it's more honest as i've pointed out when
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people are like christianity we need to go back to the old ways and be monogamous and i'm like okay
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like what do you consider like old ways monogamous christianity and they're like catholicism and i'm
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like you mean like louis the 15th like what was louis the who is louis the 14th louis the 14th the
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height of the catholic empire in terms of its culture in terms of its wealth in terms of its
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technology and the most powerful man had tons of concubines uh but it's still seen as a classically
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french thing where any married couple there will be dalliances of course you have your mistress of
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course you're seeing someone on the side that's still a french trope i don't know it it's one of those
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awkward things because catholicism being pervasive in the country and this is also an issue with louis
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the 14th is the the church was constantly like threatening to not give him communion you know
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threatening of this and in in in france still there's this constant thing of well it's not okay
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to do this but at the same time everyone knows but at the same time yeah so it's like if you can't if
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you can't when you guys control like literally the the this is like the height of your cultural
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influence on humanity and this is still happening like i'm not like okay well clearly the system's
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not working and you you as i point out there's no such thing as a non-politious society the question
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is just where is the slider on how wealthy and powerful a man has to be to be allowed multiple
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wives without anyone blinking an eye as you've all seen on the news our country is facing a major crisis
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why why are rich successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women
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why would a man who's famous and makes tons of money use that to try and have sex with lots of
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different women and these rich celebrities have perfectly good wives at home why would they even
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think of sex with others damn it i want answers of course we all know the normal healthy male thinks
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only of sex occasionally and has no desire for sex with multiple partners definitely true yes we all
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know that go on but you see i think pervasively in um non-french like societies or non-roman style
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societies today even is now just serial monogamy where and in the end men appear to have multiple
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wives just not exactly at the same time just one after another so i don't even i feel like yes the
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roman system is better it's less brutal it's more honest and i think a lot of relationships would be
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better off if men could just sleep with people on the side when they needed to or maybe occasionally
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women too you know it gets kind of complicated with that but like if we were just open about it instead
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of being like no it has to be in a marriage or one after another or the marriage ends once the man
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sleeps with someone else because that's not practical it seems yeah well i will say that this reading the
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the the bible this way and understanding i think what is intended by the meta-narrative of the evolution
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of monogamy was in the church as a norm um that i think tells a deeper story about sort of the soul
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of christianity and the true nature of christianity that is missed if you ignore these lines or you attempt
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to misinterpret them to make your modern sexual mores look like they were the mores that were had
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at the time of various parts of the bible being written which which hides from you i think a deeper
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and more interesting truth so in some of our videos here i talk about how my ancestors were savages until
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they were when i say savages you know i'm talking about like the ancient celtic people of of britain
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you know killing children sacrificially and burying them under bridges to ensure that bridges stability
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like savages savages you know evidence of human sacrifice at stonehenge like genuinely savage monstrous
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backwards people who didn't produce anything but mud huts and i think we as a world are going to become
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more mature and get better able to deal with our differences and our histories when we can admit
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that most of us come from traditions when i one of my favorite things is is and i often mention this
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when i'm bringing this up somebody's like we can tell he's a white nationalist because he named his
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kids roman names i'm like the romans colonized and conquered my people that's like saying we can tell
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this person's a black nationalist because they gave their kids victorian names it's like what that makes
00:26:25.000
no sense but what they are showing which is what is true is that i look upon rome the seat of
00:26:33.960
civilization at the time and rome did not invent civilization modern civilization evolved out of the
00:26:39.880
greek city-states i think that is the birthplace of civilization which spread from there it spread to
00:26:45.720
the romans the romans helped spread it around the world the britons then helped spread it around the
00:26:50.360
world faster and it was one of these things where it was a meme i saw once it was women looking towards
00:26:56.120
their ancestors and it was that you know you know women looking at like of different ethnicities
00:27:01.160
looking to ancestors of their their ethnicity and then it was men looking at their cultural ancestors
00:27:06.280
it was one of those superimposed things was men of all the different ethnicities sort of overlapped
00:27:10.520
staring back at like caesar and it's like it's so true you know there's the famous quote like men think
00:27:16.120
about rome x many times per day or whatever but i don't think that that's wrong i think that rome
00:27:21.960
and it was one of the baton holders of civilization that is not just it's law roman law is there some
00:27:36.920
one thousand apologies and i don't think that like i don't glorify for example rome over its successor
00:27:46.600
states whether that is charlemagne or the holy roman empire or the victorian british empire but i i do i i
00:27:56.520
will say that for a time it definitely represented the core of of civilizing force and what christianity
00:28:04.280
represents is when rome contacted the jewish people if you go to our tract eight you know we go into a
00:28:12.600
lot of the genuinely savage stuff that was happening in the temple like ripping off doves heads then
00:28:18.360
ripping them apart by their wings sacrificing goats you know blood would have been running from it every
00:28:23.720
day that's i mean when jesus was flipping stuff over it was with the the money sacrifices for buying like
00:28:28.040
animal sacrifices to sacrifice at the temple and we argue in that track that i think that that's
00:28:31.960
actually a form of volite worship and this is made very clear and it wasn't ever meant to be done
00:28:36.040
within the the true religion and i think what we see here is civilization crashing into
00:28:43.960
a truly divinely inspired religion creating something that is a merger of both of them
00:28:52.680
one in the form of christianity but also in the form of post second temple judaism and this is where
00:28:58.680
we're going to get really spicy here which is to say that like everyone when they're first colonized
00:29:06.280
the jewish people and this was the people who you know the king would have 700 wives
00:29:10.360
this was a people who you know ripped apart animals and did all these animal sacrifices this
00:29:15.080
was the people who otherwise was fairly they they may have been more civilized than my ancestors when
00:29:24.120
my ancestors first contacted civilization uh but rome was doing them a favor it was bringing them into
00:29:30.520
the era of civilization and the jewish people resisted and the jewish people resisted
00:29:38.840
you must guarantee of course to keep your jews in line they will do as i say or they will suffer the
00:29:47.400
consequences congratulations then herod you have the full backing of rome um and eventually i believe
00:29:57.640
that god used the roman empire to smash the temple for their incalcitrance the other forms of really i i
00:30:07.320
i'd almost say sort of tribal polytheistic worship that doesn't feel like part of like the one true
00:30:13.480
religion helped them get out of this cycle of you know polygynous tribal culture and move into the
00:30:23.480
civilized culture and this is where i you know just kind of by normatively rubbing off on them
00:30:31.000
yes because jews did move out of and we'll get into a second how they moved out of polygyny as a
00:30:35.880
cultural norm um that is obviously no longer a cultural norm in most forms of modern judaism and
00:30:42.200
many many roman things are no longer cultural norms in modern judaism and this is one of the
00:30:47.480
areas where people see our show as being like overly filio-semitic uh that means like overly pro-jew
00:30:52.440
and we are very pro-jew like i have respect for the the modern jewish people and the ancient jewish
00:30:58.040
people but i would say that you know when i am reading literature do i believe that time equivalent
00:31:06.360
stories in the old testament versus ancient greece who was culturally more sophisticated
00:31:12.200
it was the ancient greeks i'm just like civilization was more sophisticated and that i think what
00:31:18.200
allowed for the modern jew to become what they are in this absolute powerhouse of a cultural tradition
00:31:25.240
was the sort of smashing of the old temple which freed the jewish people from all of these these
00:31:32.120
ancient polytheistic like traditions and allowed them to evolve into the modern form of judaism but
00:31:39.080
people could be like oh that's so anti-semitic to say that point they're like how could you say
00:31:42.360
that judaism now is fundamentally different than what it is and i think that people who argue that
00:31:46.280
post-second temple judaism isn't fundamentally a different religion from pre-second temple judaism
00:31:52.680
i think that that belief is mostly driven by a theological motivation and not a practical or
00:32:00.680
fact-based motivation where i would argue that they're probably about as different from each other
00:32:06.600
as christianity is to pre-second temple judaism maybe maybe a degree maybe like half as much
00:32:12.680
more different i mean but keep in mind like you didn't have books like the kabbalah during that
00:32:15.880
period and stuff like that like that they added a book we added a book like things change things
00:32:20.600
evolve that doesn't mean that you don't have the right to say we still have a connection to these
00:32:26.040
ancient people but i think that the the structure of the religion is quite different now but simone
00:32:32.840
thoughts before i go further here no that makes sense but what you're saying though is that biblically
00:32:39.640
speaking there's nothing saying that polygamy is a bad thing and it was more of a normative and
00:32:49.480
the civilizational stability development where monogamy came in which is to say that monogamy is more
00:32:57.240
normative now within religious cultures not because morally or biblically it is superior but
00:33:05.240
from a civilizational stability standpoint it is correlated with more flourishing that is to say
00:33:12.440
you're going to have a more stable culture if monogamy is pervasive because you have fewer
00:33:17.320
free radical uncoupled men who are likely to cause violence in society research that we talk about
00:33:22.440
is monogamous cultures generally outcompete non-monogamous cultures in a historic context
00:33:26.600
you have fewer unattached men which cause civilizational instability because they're
00:33:31.160
basically genetic free radicals that have no reason not to become terrorists or do something else crazy
00:33:36.680
and you see this there's been a big study that correlated monogamous versus non-monogamous cultural
00:33:41.720
groups that are otherwise equal and you saw lots higher rates of lower trust and business transactions
00:33:47.080
in the non-monogamous group you saw lots of cheating in in more murder you saw more terrorism you saw
00:33:53.880
more prostitution it's just generally not super healthy from a cultural environment i actually
00:33:58.840
think the roman system is probably the best but before we get to that because then you can have well
00:34:02.840
okay before we get to that i want to go here with what it actually means that this is in the bible this
00:34:09.080
way what it means is if in the future for some technological development reason i can't imagine
00:34:17.320
now we moved into a world where polygyny was the norm that would not be outright counter-biblical
00:34:24.120
as a way to live however the bible especially the new testament is leaning towards a stronger monogamous
00:34:34.120
interpretation and here i would note how this began to change several early church fathers spoke
00:34:41.160
against polygyny including justin the martyr 160 a.d who rebuked jews for allowing polygyny
00:34:46.600
irenius 180 a.d who condemned gnostics for practicing polygyny tertullian 207 a.d who explicitly forbade
00:34:55.800
polygamy and methodius 290 a.d who argued polygamy had ended by the time of the prophets
00:35:02.680
and then at the council of neocrestria in 315 a.d there is reference to a purification period
00:35:10.280
for polygamous indicating that it was considered sinful at that time now you might wonder okay so
00:35:17.400
you have some prophets here but you don't actually have like any of the catholic councils them outright
00:35:22.280
banding polygyny do you know why they never outright banned it even though it became a cultural
00:35:27.480
norm why monogamy i imagine it would be hard to find the specific grounds so you would just be
00:35:36.200
no super hard oh because you'd have to give up your wife your extra no not give up your wives you have
00:35:44.040
to make a number of women homeless you you no longer look like a good guy if you are coming into
00:35:51.240
a tribe somewhere and you're like oh well the chief has to choose one of his 10 wives and the rest
00:35:57.560
get to be homeless like that's not a super awesome thing to do and so the way that they would typically
00:36:04.200
do it is they took this softer line interpretation and then they'd say well intergenerationally like
00:36:09.800
just you know like the bible doesn't explicitly ban it but like it's not super cool with it okay so like
00:36:15.480
maybe just don't do that anymore yes so now let's talk about the decline of polygyny among the jews
00:36:22.440
in the talmud fourth fifth century ce uh treated monogamous marriage as the norm though it still
00:36:28.920
discussed polygamy theoretically um and here i would note that while by the time of jesus many jews had
00:36:34.840
come to agree with the roman view against polygyny it wasn't officially outlawed and we only have one
00:36:39.880
jewish family history from this period it was found in a cave and we know from it that there is on part
00:36:45.240
of it one additional wife where one person had two wives so like the only sample we have shows two
00:36:50.360
wives now what's very interesting about this incident is the wife came into the marriage with
00:36:56.040
property in an estate so she wasn't doing it for economic reasons it might have been for love it
00:37:01.880
might have been for any number of reasons it might have been a levite marriage and we don't know
00:37:05.640
okay maybe she was hot for the other wife oh getting spicy there i mean uh then we have the first
00:37:14.120
outright ban on polygyny for ashkenazi jews came around 1000 ce rabbi gershman ben yoda issued the
00:37:21.160
ban tanaka on polygyny for ashkenazi jews in germany and france this ban was initially for about 250
00:37:29.080
years and became an entrenched tradition afterwards reasons for the ban included reducing friction with
00:37:34.040
christian groups preventing men from taking advantage of wives avoiding and fighting between rival wives and
00:37:39.480
concerns about properly providing for multiple wives during difficult times of exile isn't that so
00:37:44.200
interesting that they jews ended up banning it not for legalistic like god reasons but just a
00:37:51.800
this is causing for kind of the same reason the mormons did like this is causing unnecessary
00:37:56.120
friction with surrounding christians yeah let's just not push it it's kind of a pain in the butt anyway
00:38:01.320
yeah then for sephardic jews polygyny was never officially banned but became increasingly uncommon
00:38:07.480
over time it survived longest among the yemenite jews until their immigration to israel in the 20th
00:38:12.200
century in 1949 the newly founded state of israel made polygyny unlawful socioeconomic factors also
00:38:19.320
contributed for the decline of polygyny it was financially straining to support multiple
00:38:23.240
households rabbis and religious leaders generally did not practice polygyny themselves so yeah it just
00:38:28.840
basically fell out of fashion over time so what is your wider thoughts on all this
00:38:34.680
that apparently it's totally biblically okay and the only reason we don't do it now is it
00:38:40.920
kind of isn't seen as socially cool and there are some societal reasons why it's not in the best
00:38:46.200
interest of any particular society or government yeah but i mean like basically if if you want to do it
00:38:54.520
and you can make it work go ahead and do it just know you're not going to be getting any rewards
00:39:00.280
socially for it in mainstream society yeah well i mean yeah i guess i just say it's not anti
00:39:07.320
abrahamic and and and it may be anti-chatholic for example like different religious subsets have added
00:39:14.040
new rules uh you know what's funny here is the christian group with the most explicit rules against
00:39:20.600
polygyny biblically speaking or in their in their actual like theological literature might be the
00:39:25.720
mormons because they had to ban it and so they have an explicit ban on it oh my gosh however as
00:39:31.880
none of the other christians do which is really interesting that is hilarious and as to my thoughts
00:39:39.560
on it and i've talked about this before specifically as it's framed as polyamory first i don't think it
00:39:44.680
ever makes sense to have a relationship where the woman can sleep with multiple partners that's just
00:39:48.840
stupid there's no reason for it historically there's no reason for it evolutionarily genetically
00:39:53.720
family-wise like no culture in history has ever done this no there's one into that there's the one
00:40:01.560
that was in the mountains where they a wife would sometimes marry two brothers yes that wasn't a
00:40:07.400
successful cultural group like it almost immediately died out it's like a weird thing that we know about
00:40:12.680
but it's just not done because humans don't do it whereas multiple wives is done many times so why
00:40:18.920
what do i think about this in terms of and i love so many poly people they're like oh yeah like we're
00:40:23.560
truly poly and yet like when they're rich i know what they always mean is this one guy and a few girls
00:40:28.760
and maybe the girls will have some extra girls on the side but very rarely do i see additional guys in
00:40:34.120
these sorts of relationships but interestingly i've seen people try it and it just hasn't led
00:40:41.000
to polyamory where i've seen it tried over long periods hasn't been stable like i'm not intrinsically
00:40:47.240
against it i just haven't seen it stably work and i think that the roman system is probably best
00:40:53.320
where you have side checks the side check system yeah you can have side checks but you have one wife
00:40:59.960
i think that's probably the most stable system but i don't hate levite marriages either like i think
00:41:06.520
what you're missing here though is that it wasn't
00:41:13.640
many of the side chicks in ancient rome were married and i think that there there are actually
00:41:20.760
advantages to this where there's kind of this black market thing going on when you have a mostly
00:41:26.520
monogamous society and yet men have mistresses and women sometimes sleep outside of their marriage
00:41:35.720
i i think that in some cases faster evolution it's going to lead to faster evolution it allows
00:41:43.000
for women for example to sleep with more fit partners for example more desirable partners and then
00:41:49.560
have children with them that are raised in the end by other men who've been cocked but
00:41:53.400
you know it still leads to theoretically more desirable traits being passed on to future
00:42:00.520
generations yeah i mean a society with a lot of cucking is definitely going to evolve much
00:42:05.400
faster than a society with a small amount of cucking yes well and i was just reading some
00:42:12.520
research on trait selection and and sort of what we've seen actually play out through history and it
00:42:19.240
appears to be that the most common form i'm going to butcher this i think is is negative selection
00:42:26.440
in other words like bad traits get removed that's how we evolve it's not like multiple good traits are
00:42:33.080
selected it's more that people who have for some reason traits that just aren't very competitive
00:42:39.880
are just less likely to see those genes passed on and in a society that's monogamous that's only going to
00:42:44.920
happen very efficiently if women are taking on side pieces as well i yeah well and i think that i mean
00:42:54.280
you could fix this was with polygenic selection and so i think that polygenic selection you know
00:42:59.080
society-wide could be used to prevent a dysgenic spiral um but this is actually one of the things
00:43:03.560
i've talked about is we have created one of the first societies was almost was was very very low
00:43:09.400
cooking because of the really tight child support laws which mean that like me sleeping with somebody
00:43:15.800
else and risking getting them pregnant is really potentially dangerous to me and so a lot of high
00:43:22.200
value men aren't going to do that while low value men are still going to do that at a very high rate
00:43:27.560
and so you know that i want to argue too women in ancient rome weren't always sleeping around to get
00:43:34.680
pregnant by other men there was i don't know if it was a daughter or sister of octavian but
00:43:44.680
there was some letter or something where like she had signaled to someone that she knew what she was
00:43:50.600
doing that she was being careful and she knew like to never set sail unless her ship already had cargo
00:43:58.840
oh yeah spicy never set sail unless my ship has cargo that is a great form of a birth control
00:44:10.440
already being pregnant by your husband yeah so you know she wasn't gonna mess up or anything but she
00:44:16.840
could still have her fun so i i do you know so i'm just gonna push back a little bit on the
00:44:22.040
now obviously it will piss men off immensely for women to cock them you know have kids that aren't
00:44:31.640
genetically theirs or even sleep around but there do seem to be i would say genetic advantages to it
00:44:36.680
in some cases for like a population on the whole and it happens so you just have to admit that simone i
00:44:43.160
would i would push back on not selecting for good genes like for example i don't think that i like i think
00:44:49.480
i'm unusually maybe intelligent or have unusually good ability to read people which is a good gene
00:44:56.600
i don't think i have any like bad genes and yet you know i had such an easy time getting people to
00:45:01.000
sleep with me when i was younger but i had many people actively pursue me where were we in a society
00:45:06.600
like rome or something like that would i be getting lots of people pregnant yeah probably you you had
00:45:13.160
people who had boyfriends sleep with you like you benefited very from this female propensity
00:45:20.200
like what's your argument that's the exact argument i'm making that he's saying that it only removed
00:45:27.160
bad traits it didn't increase the rate of good traits oh i'm saying that my own background shows that
00:45:33.320
it does it potentially increase the rate of good traits okay but you're not wanting to pay child support
00:45:39.400
now if i had been in rome i probably would have had the exact opposite motivation because you know
00:45:45.240
it's frankly more fun when someone can get pregnant right and you know another guy's gonna care for it
00:45:50.200
so what's the problem that's i've mentioned this in another episode but i think that men are hard-coded
00:45:56.280
to find it more attractive when they are um sleeping with somebody when they know another guy's gonna have
00:46:02.120
the kid because as i noted on the girls when i would sleep with another guy's girlfriend uh my standards
00:46:07.320
were much much lower because i found it really hot and i've noted i'm not the only one trump has said
00:46:12.360
the same thing trump has said that he prefers to sleep with i don't know if that's a golden standard
00:46:17.800
for well i'm just saying if people like malcolm you can't admit to this horrible fetish you'll never
00:46:22.200
get far in republican politics admitting to that and i'm like trump did it and admitted it so you know
00:46:27.320
apparently that's not true he broke so many so many glass ceilings so many glass ceilings so many glass
00:46:32.360
ceilings anyway love you to death simone love you too gorgeous
00:46:39.560
i tilt your camera down a bit and we're gonna do slaves oh if you are watching this and wondering
00:46:44.360
where these clips that have to do with rome come from i pity you in the extreme it is from the tv
00:46:50.760
miniseries called rome probably one of the best shows ever put to film i strongly recommend if you
00:46:58.360
haven't watched it maybe because you're young and you weren't around when it came out it is
00:47:03.240
dramatically better than something like game of thrones and it is educational to boot so you really
00:47:09.240
have no excuse to not try at least to the first episode and then see if you can stop watching how
00:47:14.440
fitting that we welcome this new beginning by swearing in the youngest consul in the history of rome
00:47:22.280
gaius octavian caesar my father died on this floor butchered by men he called his friends
00:47:35.880
who will tell me that is not murder who will tell my legions who love caesar as i do that that is not
00:47:52.520
pumpkin pie yeah does it smell good oh i hear something
00:48:00.200
it smells so tasty yeah what does it smell like look look mommy mommy yeah oh the oven is preheated
00:48:10.920
so then we have to roll out the pie crust so you guys ready to do that next yeah
00:48:27.400
all right and did you put them all together did you dump them in
00:48:34.440
did we also put in pumpkin yeah did we put in cloves yeah and nutmeg yeah and cinnamon yeah
00:48:47.960
are you wi know excellent all right oh you're ready it's a mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix for mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it mix it Share