Join us as we explore the fascinating evolution of marriage traditions from polygamy to monogamy within biblical, Roman, and early Christian contexts. This discussion delves into Old Testament laws, New Testament teachings, and Roman cultural norms, shedding light on how figures like Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon navigated polygamous practices. We also examine the impact of Roman culture on Christianity and Judaism, the role of marriage norms in societal stability, and the modern implications of these historical traditions. Reflecting on both ancient and contemporary perspectives, we dissect the complex interplay between monogamy, polygamy, and cultural evolution, offering a thought-provoking take on the roots and consequences of marital practices.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Understanding, the meta narrative of the evolution of monogamy was in the church as a norm. Tells a deeper story that is missed if you attempt to misinterpret them to make your modern sexual mores.
Look like they were the mores that were had at the time of various parts of the bible being written which which hides from you I think a deeper and more interesting truth it is kind of weird that the Bible isn't that explicit about one husband, one wife, but seems to assume it in the New Testament, where in the Old Testament, it seems to assume that wealthy men have multiple wives.
Yes, yes, actually in Roman cultural norms, it was one wife. , Rome definitely represented a, The core of of civilizing force
And I think what we see here is civilization crashing into religion, creating something that is a merger of both of them. [00:01:00]
Speaker: It's law.
Speaker 2: Roman law. Is there some other form of law, you wretched woman?
One thousand apologies.
Malcolm Collins: One, In the form of Christianity, but also in the form of post second temple Judaism. And this is where things get really, spicy
Speaker 3: You must guarantee, of course, to keep your Jews in line. They will do as I say, or they will suffer the consequences. Congratulations, then, Herod, you have the full backing of Rome.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Be talking with you today. Today we are going to be talking about an issue that I think just doesn't get a lot of good and honest coverage, which is What does the Bible actually say about taking multiple wives? And the reason why you're not going to get good coverage of this is [00:02:00] Christians generally sweep under the rug that there's a lot of people of the Bible with multiple wives because now it is normal within modern Christianity to only have one wife.
And it's the same with modern Judaism. Modern Judaism is mostly a monogamous religious system. So they just, you know, the, the people who are like super pro Christian or super pro Jew generally don't dwell on this point too much. So when you go and you're reading about 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, you know, early, whatever.
Right. And I think. Because of that, people miss interesting things we can learn about the development of Christianity and Judaism by studying both one, what does, what are the actual rules laid out in the Bible around this? And two, how and why did they develop and change over time?
Simone Collins: Okay. I'm excited for this.
Any thoughts? I, I, I'm, I'm kind of afraid of what we're going to [00:03:00] learn. Is it, is it more in the end biblical to just I'll give you a
Malcolm Collins: summary of what you're going to learn, because this is really interesting. So it is kind of weird that the Bible isn't that explicit about one husband, one wife, but seems to assume it in the New Testament, where in the Old Testament, it seems to assume that wealthy men have multiple wives.
Yes, yes, yes. And I thought it was really weird. I was like, it's almost like, the cultural norms changed before the New Testament was written. And so I started to study the issue more. And what I learned is actually in Roman cultural norms, it was one wife. And so, The area of Israel being a Roman colony at the time, it would have been culturally normative for them at that period, at least within like the, the power structure of society to default to monogamous [00:04:00] marriages.
And so Jesus was, when he was preaching to people assumed that they all knew we had already made the switch to one one.
Simone Collins: So it's almost as if, like, if the new Testament were written, when the Macarena was the dance of the season. Then everyone would be doing the Macarena in the Bible, and we would just assume that it's biblically correct.
To do the Macarena.
Malcolm Collins: Kind of, I actually would word it a bit differently, and I'll go into this conception more in a second. But I think that you can see Christianity as a marriage of Roman culture, or the first true civilization. In terms of, from my perspective, like the, the descendant of modern civilization.
When I look at something like Egypt, it wasn't like a modern civilization. The real precursor to the modern state. So you may have Greece or something like that, but I think that Rome is a successor state to the Greek culture. And what Christianity is, is that what we call the Western cultural canons, marriage with the Jewish cultural canon to [00:05:00] create Christianity.
And I think that once you understand through the story of how it relates to monogamy, that it is this marriage, then you can better understand the role in the Western tradition That pre that marriage, the Jewish branch of the system should play and the Roman slash Greek branch of that system should play
Simone Collins: that actually really resonates.
And I've never thought about that before that. In the end, there's a ton of Roman culture in both. the New Testament, but also the Catholic Church in general.
Malcolm Collins: Catholics more than anyone else have adopted the Greek slash Roman side of this cultural marriage in their elevation of great thinkers of Greek among their own great thinkers.
Yeah. We did a very good job of pulling in and marrying that canon and creating something which is. fairly unique to Christianity as a religious system, which is a presumptive assumption of a separation of church and state. Which is to say that, you know, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. This is what, you know, the famous Jesus line, which, which [00:06:00] assumes that, Church and state will be separate, which I think was one of Christianity's greatest strengths in terms of its growth, and very unique.
That's not true of Judaism. That's not true of Islam. That's not true of Confucianism. That's not true of most other religious systems, but let's get into this. Okay, so arguments for monogamy that could be made. The best argument for monogamy in the Old Testament is going to be Genesis 2 24.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh. And you, you generally see the Adam and Eve narrative is played out here. They're like, Oh, Genesis. But unfortunately if you take the interpretation we take of this line, which I think is the correct interpretation, a husband and wife do not become one flesh when they have sex.
That's insane. They become one flesh when they make a baby. That is when a husband and wife become one flesh. And so If you take that assumption, there's no reason that a man couldn't also become one flesh with other women. This is not a line laying out that he [00:07:00] should only have one wife. Nor is the Adam and Eve story laying that out.
And I think that in the original interpretations of both of these stories, we have that laid out as very obviously not the mainstream interpretation, given that Like pretty much every powerful Jewish person in the early Bible has multiple wives. So I don't think that that's a strong interpretation.
The next here you have Jesus reaffirmed this view of marriage stating, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast with his wife and the two shall become one flesh. But again, I don't really see this as necessarily exclusively being Monogamy, if you take one flesh to mean make babies.
Well, also when you,
Simone Collins: yeah, when you think about how things are described in a nature video, for example, like, and the male manatee will mate with the female manatee. And it doesn't imply that the manatees are monogamous. It just implies that this is how the reproductive process works. Yeah, it's,
Malcolm Collins: it's, it's not an implication of that at all.
Then here you have [00:08:00] Corinthians 7, 2, where Paul states. Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Now, this is, in the New Testament, I think the strongest place where it is just like really obvious there is an assumption of monogamy. However I don't know, like to me, because these are in, you know, the letters, right?
This is more to me like, well, when you're talking to your people, we know because we're Romans, we're Romans. That it's a monogamous relationship, right? Like that's the assumption there. And then the next line here, you know, if you look at like Timothy three, two or Titus one, six they also seem to assume monogamy, especially among the wealthy people, which is when you see polygyny more commonly specifically with lines where Paul states, when talking about the qualifications for church leaders being quote the husband of one wife in quote now Here's the interesting thing Simone. You might have just heard that quote and thought something in in [00:09:00] in in in in in in Timothy and Titus when they're when they're laying out What the qualifications for church leaders are.
It says, I'm just wondering, what question is brought to mind for you? The qualification for having leadership was in the church, being quote, Each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Who is that a problem for? Grace. Catholics. Yeah. It's a problem for Catholics. Do you know how they get around it?
It's actually pretty interesting. I was, I was
Simone Collins: sorry, she's teething and really sharp teeth. Wear a wedding ring and they, they marry Jesus essentially. So,
Malcolm Collins: The way the Catholics get around this is, is I've read too. They go, it's meant to be taken metaphorically. That's my favorite where I'm like, what, what? Like you believe the craziest stuff. Like you're literally eating Christ's body and blood.
And that's not
Simone Collins: metaphorical. No.
Malcolm Collins: You're like, ah, that was probably metaphorical. [00:10:00] But then to they'll say, well, it doesn't explicitly demand that they, that they must be married. It's meant to be read as they can't have more than one wife. It's saying that church leadership shouldn't be polygynous.
And I guess it can technically be read that way, but that's quite a squirrelly reading of this and seems not to be what's intended. The husband of one wife. So what they mean is that what they say is it means that not more than one wife, but, but even then it's clearly saying that church leadership should like broadly speaking, be married.
Like,
Simone Collins: yeah, that's, I didn't, I haven't, it's been a while since I've read Corinthians. So I guess That's what this is from, right? I guess I missed that part. Wasn't paying attention as much as I should be because that's pretty striking
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, now Here's the thing with jesus. So if you remember the quote earlier I mentioned, [00:11:00] where Jesus says have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and he said Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast with his wife and the two shall become one flesh What he's actually doing what jesus You you know, and in context, when I think about Jesus, I think about Jesus as a Jewish preacher in the early days, preaching to Jews, he is in two parts of Genesis and trying to use them to make an argument that changes.
I think it is possible that he was trying to argue for monogamy there. And if he was, he was doing it in the way I classically, like a Jewish rabbi would have done it. I don't
Simone Collins: know. I feel like he's Jordan Peterson hanging, which, you know, he's like, get out of your family's house. Get a job, make your bed.
Instead of specifically get married and be monogamous. When I, when I hear, when I read, when I hear that statement is. You need to leave your parents house, start your family, and become independent. Yeah, well, I can
Malcolm Collins: see what this was said in response to.
Simone Collins: Yeah, because the [00:12:00] context of it does make a really big difference. If he's saying this specifically with regard to the type of composition of a marriage or adult life, then I can get that maybe it's an argument for monogamy, but I don't know. This sounds more to me like you got to grow up and start your family.
And that could be, you know, he's using the most common form of pairing for your average person. And of course the average person who's not super high wealth or high status is going to not have more than one wife.,
Malcolm Collins: Just getting a answer here.
So this is specifically about divorce, apparently. Huh?
Yeah, he's using against, he's arguing against an easy path to divorce. Okay. Which I can see now could be a stronger case for this being about monogamy specifically. So, Because, [00:13:00] because this is being said in response to divorce have you not read that he who what created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, therefore, therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh that it could be taken to also argue for monogamy with the implication of, well, then why not just take another wife here?
I don't see it as being that strong an argument for it, but I definitely see it as being an argument for it. And, and no, the reason why it needs to be a strong argument is because what this is evolving is the old Jewish traditions. Which, now let's start to talk about these, because Oh, actually, before I go further There is actually another change in marriage tradition that happened during this period is pushing away lever, right?
Marriages are marrying brothers, dead spouses. Yeah. Cause there was,
Simone Collins: there were a bunch of rules in the Bible and there's a bit of rules in the tablet about this, right?
Malcolm Collins: Generous thing you would do historically, you know, if you're in one of these cultures where women wouldn't have [00:14:00] had a way to support themselves, they might've had other kids with a man.
It's your genetic closest relative. It's actually almost. Like a perfect system. Like in my estate was going to a wife and she was still genetically fit. Evolutionarily. I would want the kids that she bared to, if they can't be 50 percent me, because they can't be literally my kids, they can be 25 percent me.
And then that for every two kids, it's like one kid that I had with her or more, you know, given that, you know, the, the, the amount of genetic similarities siblings have that is. a really easy system and a really good system. But because the culture in Rome was beginning to move away from that you had things like Paul further developing the, this teaching by reversing the Old Testament command for a man to marry his dead brother's wife.
Instead, Paul said that widows can marry whomever they wanted. This is Corinthians 739. In the Old Testament, there is only one section that could be used to argue against polygyny. One man having many wives. Specifically, Deuteronomy 17, 17 which again, this one is not great for Catholics. He [00:15:00] should, and this is speaking of the king, right?
He should not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself an excess of silver and gold. So it's saying That just sounds like
Simone Collins: moderation. I'm hearing too many, not I mean, like, many is more than a few. I think he's just
Malcolm Collins: relevant when you consider the, the, the context of this, which is Solomon being punished for 700 wives.
That is in my mind, too many wives,
Simone Collins: especially when you compare it to wealth. I think this is about, again, not having too much and many is more than a few though. Of course we don't know the original.
Malcolm Collins: I'll tell you, 700 is more than was intended by this line. 700 wives, 300 concubines. So,
Simone Collins: but
Malcolm Collins: I, but wait, oh,
Simone Collins: whoa, wait.
Okay. So a total of a thousand.
Malcolm Collins: A thousand. Yeah, this guy wasn't even sleeping with all his wives at this point. This is just wasteful. This is just wasteful at this point. You can't possibly have a cycle [00:16:00] that would work for impregnation with a thousand women. Some of these women must have grown old without you.
There's only 365 days in a year. I know, you like
Simone Collins: marry her at 23 and then finally you consummate the marriage when she's 30 or something.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this is, this is, no, this is ridiculous. But I, I, I'd also say here that what's really important here is the immorality of having too many wives in Deuteronomy is said to be the same type of immorality as having too much gold.
Wives? And gold similar forms of immorality here. Okay. Well, no, I mean it's just you often get people like Oh, the bible doesn't say having lots of wealth is the bad thing especially not like religious institutions or leadership having lots of wealth and i'm like it says it like everywhere it says it.
Um, but anyway, and for people who want to go to the tabernacle and be like, yeah But the tabernacle had gold in it. You got to watch our track series. Specifically track eight. We go into that a lot Now arguments for polygamy. All right, so, several prominent old [00:17:00] testament figures practice polygamy without explicit condemnation including abraham jacob David and solomon.
And potentially also moses, but I I didn't get that one confirmed some old testament laws seem to regulate rather than prohibit polygamy such as exodus 21 10 Which states if he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her from marriage food, her closing or her marital rights, which by the way, I love the line.
There is saying, when you take your second wife, you can't sleep with your first wife less. She's gonna she's gonna get a say in that. Okay. And then deuteronomy 21 15 17 Provides inheritance rules for children of multiple wives implying acceptance of the practice and then samuels 12 8 Could be interpreted as God giving David multiple wives quote and I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your arms
there is no explicit blanket condemnation of polygamy in the bible Yeah, so [00:18:00] basically nowhere in the bible does it say polygamy polygyny bad and if god had really really felt this I think that would be there however have quotes like, quote, Have you allowed all the women to live? He, Moses, asked them. Quote,
now kill all the boys and kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. So this is Moses. Saying like okay when you're conquering a region You've got to kill the men. You've got to kill the wives. You've got to kill the boys but The young girls who haven't slept with a guy yet.
Those are those are For the taking and then there are lines which give rules about taking what are essentially Mmm, what's a word that I can use for this? Mex slaves. Captured women could be taken as wives after a period of mourning, but had to be set free if the man no longer [00:19:00] wanted them as a wife.
So it's Deuteronomy 21, 10, 14. Um,
Here is the full quote here from a different section. If a man has sex with a slave girl who is engaged to another man, but has not yet been ransomed or given freedom, there must be an investigation. But, they aren't to be put to death because she wasn't free. The man must bring a compensation offering to God at the entrance of the tent meeting.
of meeting a ram of compensation. The priest will perform the ritual of atonement for him before God with the ram of compensation for the sin he has committed. Then he will stand forgiven of the sin he committed. So, what this implies here, just for people who aren't quite putting all this together when you are conquering a territory in the ancient Jewish days you know, we may think of these people as wives but it doesn't say like, They're allowed to say no.
It says, yeah, yeah, you take them. Gives them a, a period of mourning. But after that yeah, you [00:20:00] take them as a wife and it's clear here that take them as a wife is not the same kind of wife as a Jewish voluntary wife. Why do we know that? Because different rules apply to them, specifically the rule that they can be divorced and that if you divorce them, you set them free.
Or they can be divorced more easily. It seems here. And with this other one, it's saying, oh, if somebody else has sex with him in the meantime, I mean, don't kill them, but you know, they should like. Apologize. And tomorrow or tomorrow, I don't know when the next episode of this series is going to go live because I want to make it like a series of this.
We're going to go into what the Bible actually says about slavery and what the real rules are around slavery in the Bible. Now let's talk about. Extramarital relations in Rome, because this gets interesting. While marriage was monogamous, Roman men often engaged in other sexual relationships.
Sexual activity with slaves, prostitutes, and women of lower status was socially acceptable for married men, and not considered adultery under the law. Powerful men frequently had [00:21:00] multiple sexual partners in addition to their wife, a practice sometimes called male resource polygyny. Concubinage, a man having a long term unmarried female partner existed, Though its prevalence and legal status in different periods is debated.
So I, I should note here that in Rome it wasn't like fully modern in its understanding of monogamy. It was a monogamous system where you had one real wife that produced errors, but you know, you would have sex with other women if you were a powerful man. In many ways, I might think that the Roman system is actually morally superior to our existing system in the West.
Because In what way?
Simone Collins: Just that it's less uptight, less brittle?
Malcolm Collins: It's less brittle because it's more honest. As I've pointed out when people are like, Whoa, Christianity, we need to go back to the old ways and be monogamous. And I'm like, okay, like, what do you consider like old ways, monogamous Christianity?
And they're like Catholicism. [00:22:00] And I'm like, you mean like Louis the 15th? What was Louis the 14th? Louis XIV. The height of the Catholic Empire in terms of its culture, in terms of its wealth, in terms of its technology, and the most powerful man had tons of concubines. It's still
Simone Collins: seen as a classically French thing, where any married couple, there will be dalliances, of course you have your mistress, of course you're seeing someone on the side, that's still a French trope.
I don't know, it, it's one of those, Awkward things because catholicism being pervasive in the country. And this is also an issue with the way the 14th is the the church was constantly like Threatening to not give him communion, you know threatening of this in in in in france still there's this constant thing of well It's not okay to do this, but at the same time everyone knows but it's like a very catholic Yeah, so it's like if you
Malcolm Collins: can't if you can't when you guys control like literally the the this is like the height of your cultural influence on Humanity and [00:23:00] this is still happening.
Like i'm not like, okay. Well clearly the system's not working and you you as I point out there's no such thing as a non polygynous society The question is just where is the slider on how wealthy and powerful a man has to be To be allowed multiple wives without anyone blinking an eye.
As you've all seen on the news, our country is facing a major crisis why? Why are rich, successful men suddenly going out and trying to have sex with lots of women? Why would a man who's famous Use that to try and have sex with lots of different women! And these rich celebrities have perfectly good wives at home! Why would they even think of sex with others? Dammit! I want answers! . Of course, we all know the normal healthy male thinks only of sex occasionally and has no desire for sex with multiple partners. Yeah, that's right, of course. Definitely true. Yes, we all know that.
Go on.
Simone Collins: What you see I think pervasively in You Non French like [00:24:00] societies are non Roman style societies today.
Even is now just serial monogamy where and in the end men appear to have multiple wives, just not exactly at the same time, just one after another. So I don't even, I feel like yes, the Roman system is better. It's less brutal. It's more honest. And I think a lot of relationships would be better off if men could just.
Sleep with people on the side when they needed to, or maybe occasionally women to, you know, it gets kind of complicated with that. But like, if you're just open about it, instead of being like, no, it has to be in a marriage or 1 or after another, or the marriage ends once the man sleeps with someone else, because that's not practical.
It seems.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I will say that this reading the Bible this way and understanding, I think, what is intended by the meta narrative of the evolution of monogamy was in the church as a norm. That, I think, tells a deeper story about [00:25:00] sort of the soul of Christianity and the true nature of Christianity that is missed if you ignore these lines, or you attempt to misinterpret them to make your modern sexual mores.
Look like they were the mores that were had at the time of various parts of the bible being written which which hides from you I think a deeper and more interesting truth So in some of our videos here, I talk about how my ancestors were savages Until they were when I say savages You know, I'm talking about like the ancient Celtic people of, of, of Britain you know, killing children, Sacrificially and burying them under bridges to ensure the bridge's stability, like, Savages, savages, you know, evidence of human sacrifice at Stonehenge, like, Genuinely savage, monstrous, backwards people who didn't produce anything but mud huts and I think, We, as a world, are going to become more mature and get better able to deal with our differences and [00:26:00] our histories when we can admit that most of us come from traditions.
When I, one of my favorite things is, is and I often mention this when I'm bringing this up. Somebody's like, we can tell he's a white nationalist because he named his kids Roman names. I'm like, the Romans! Colonized and conquered my people. That's like saying we can tell this person's a black nationalist because they gave their kids victorian names.
It's like what that makes no sense. But what they are showing which is what is true is that I look upon rome The seat of civilization at the time and Rome did not invent civilization. Modern civilization evolved out of the Greek city states. I think that is the birthplace of civilization, which spread from there.
It spread to the Romans. The Romans helped spread it around the world. The Britons then helped spread it around the world faster. And it was one of these things where it was a meme. I saw once, it was women looking towards their ancestors. And it was you know, you know, women [00:27:00] looking at like of different ethnicities, looking to ancestors of their, their ethnicity.
And then it was men looking at their cultural ancestors. It was one of those superimposed things was men of all the different ethnicities sort of overlapped, staring back at
like, Caesar. And it's like, it's so true. You know, there's the famous quote, like, men think about Rome X many times per day or whatever.
But I don't think that that's wrong. I think that Rome And it was one of the baton holders of civilization
Speaker: It's law.
Speaker 2: Roman law. Is there some other form of law, you wretched woman?
One thousand apologies.
Malcolm Collins: And I don't think that, like, I don't glorify, for example, Rome over its successor states whether that is Charlemagne, or the Holy Roman Empire, or the Victorian British Empire but I, I do, I, I will say that, for a time, it definitely represented a, [00:28:00] The core of of civilizing force and what Christianity represents is when Rome contacted the Jewish people, if you go to our track eight, you know, we go into a lot of the genuinely savage stuff that was happening in the temple, like ripping off doves heads then ripping them apart by their wings.
Sacrificing goats, you know blood would have been running from it every day. That's I mean when Jesus was flipping stuff over It was the the money sacrifices for buying like animal sacrifices to sacrifice at the temple And we argue in that track that I think that that's actually a form of ball light worship And this is made very clear and it wasn't ever meant to be done.
Within The, the true religion. And I think what we see here is civilization crashing into a truly divinely inspired religion, creating something that is a merger of both of them. One, In the form of Christianity, but also in the form of post second temple Judaism. And this is where things get [00:29:00] really, spicy here, which is to say that like Everyone when they're first colonized the jewish people and this was the people who you know The king would have 700 wives.
This was a people who you know ripped apart animals and did all these animal sacrifices This was the people who otherwise was fairly You They may have been more civilized than my ancestors when my ancestors first contacted civilization, but Rome was doing them a favor. It was bringing them into the era of civilization, and the Jewish people resisted, and the Jewish people resisted,
Speaker 3: You must guarantee, of course, to keep your Jews in line. They will do as I say, or they will suffer the consequences. Congratulations, then, Herod, you have the full backing of Rome.
Malcolm Collins: And eventually, I believe that God used the [00:30:00] Roman Empire to Smash the temple for their incalcitrance. The other forms of really, I, I, I'd almost say sort of tribal polytheistic worship. That doesn't. You'll like part of like the one true religion helped them get out of this cycle of, you know, polygynous tribal culture and move into the civilized culture.
And this is where I you know, just kind
Simone Collins: of by normatively rubbing off on them.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, because Jews did move out of and we'll get into a second how they moved out of. Polygyny is a cultural norm that is obviously no longer a cultural norm in most forms of modern judaism and many many roman things are no longer cultural norms in Modern judaism and this is one of the areas where people see our show as being like overly philosomatic That means like overly pro jew.
And we are very pro jew like I have respect for The the modern jewish people and the ancient jewish people but I would say [00:31:00] that you know when I am reading You Literature do I believe that time equivalent stories in the Old Testament versus ancient Greece who was culturally more sophisticated?
It was the ancient Greeks. I'm just like civilization was more sophisticated. And that I think what allowed for the modern Jew to become what they are in this absolute powerhouse of a cultural tradition was the sort of smashing of the old temple, which freed the Jewish people from all of these, these ancient Policyistic like traditions and allowed them to evolve into the modern form of Judaism.
But people could be like, oh, that's so anti Semitic to say that point there. They're like, how could you say that Judaism now is fundamentally different than what it is? And I think that people who argue that post Temple Judaism isn't fundamentally a different religion for pre Second Temple Judaism.
I think that that belief is mostly driven by a, The theological motivation and not a [00:32:00] practical or fact based motivation where I would argue that they're probably about as different from each other as Christianity is to pre second temple judaism.
Maybe maybe a degree maybe like half as much more different I mean but keep in mind like you didn't have books like the kabbalah during that period and stuff like that like They added a book.
We added a book like things change things evolve. That doesn't mean that you don't have You The right to say we still have a connection to these ancient people. But I think that the, the structure of the religion is quite different now. But Simone, thoughts before I go further here.
Simone Collins: No, that makes sense.
But what you're saying though, is that biblically speaking, there's nothing saying that polygamy is a bad thing. And it was more of a normative and civilizational stability development where monogamy came in, which is to say that monogamy is more normative now within religious [00:33:00] cultures, not because morally or biblically, it is superior, but from a civilizational stability standpoint, it is correlated with more flourishing.
That is to say, you're going to have a more stable culture if monogamy is pervasive because you have fewer free radical uncoupled men who are likely to cause violence in society.
Malcolm Collins: Research that we talk about is monogamous cultures generally outcompete non monogamous cultures in a historic context you have fewer unattached men which caused civilizational instability because they're basically genetic free radicals that have no reason not to become terrorists or do something else crazy.
And you see this, there's been a big study that correlated monogamous versus non monogamous cultural groups that are otherwise equal. And you saw lots higher rates of lower trust and business transactions in the non monogamous group. You saw Lots of cheating in, in more murder. You saw more terrorism.
You saw more prostitution. It's just generally not super healthy from a cultural environment. I actually think the Roman system is [00:34:00] probably the best, but before we get to that, because then you can have Well, okay, before we get to that, I want to go here with what it actually means that this is in the Bible this way.
What it means is, if in the future, for some technological development reason I can't imagine now, we moved into a world where polygyny was the norm, that would not be outright counter biblical as a way to live. However, The Bible, especially the New Testament, is leaning towards a stronger monogamist interpretation.
And here, I would note how this began to change. Several early church fathers spoke against polygyny, including Justin the Martyr, 160 A. D., who rebuked Jews for allowing polygyny Irenaeus, 180 A. D., who condemned Gnostics for practicing polygyny Tertullian, 207 A.
D., who explicitly forbade polygamy, and Methodius, 290 A. D., who argued [00:35:00] polygamy had ended by the time of the prophets. And then at the Council of Neocrestria in 315 AD there is reference to a purification period for polygamous, indicating that it was considered sinful at that time. Now, you might wonder, okay, so you have some prophets here, but you don't actually have like any of the Catholic councils, them outright banding polygyny.
Do you know why they never outright banded, even though it became a cultural norm? Why monogamy?
Simone Collins: I imagine it would be hard to find the specific grounds, so you would just be presumptuously doing it.
Malcolm Collins: Super hard.
Simone Collins: Oh, because you'd have to give up your wife, your extra wife. No, not
Malcolm Collins: give up your wife, you have to make a number of women homeless.
You, you no longer look like a woman. A good guy. If you are coming into a tribe somewhere and you're like, Oh, well, the chief has to choose one of his 10 wives and the rest get to be homeless.
Simone Collins: Like
Malcolm Collins: that's [00:36:00] not a super awesome thing to do. And so the way that they would typically do it, if they took this softer line interpretation and then they'd say, well, intergenerationally, like, just, you know, like the Bible doesn't explicitly ban it, but like, it's not super cool with it.
Okay. So
Simone Collins: like, maybe just don't do that anymore.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, so now let's talk about the decline of polygyny among the Jews. In the Talmud, 4th 5th century CE, treated monogamous marriage as the norm, though it is still discussed polygamy theoretically. And here I would note that while by the time of Jesus, many Jews had come to agree with the Roman view against polygyny, it wasn't officially outlawed, and we only have one Jewish family history from this period, it was found in a cave and we know from it that there is on part of it, one additional wife.
Where one person had two wives. So, like, the only sample we have shows two wives. Now, what's very interesting about this incident is the wife came into the marriage with property in an estate. So, she wasn't doing it for economic reasons. [00:37:00] It might have been for love. It might have been for any number of reasons.
It might have been a Levite marriage. We don't know. Okay.
Simone Collins: Maybe she was hot for the other wife.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, getting spicy there. Then we have the first outright ban on polygyny for Ashkenazi Jews came around 1000 CE. Rabbi Gershman ben Yoda issued the ban, Tanaka, on polygyny for Ashkenazi Jews in Germany and France.
This ban was initially for about 250 years and became an entrenched tradition afterwards. Reasons for the ban included Reducing friction with Christian groups. Preventing men from taking advantage of wives. Avoiding and fighting between rival wives. And concerns about properly providing for multiple wives during difficult times of exile.
Isn't that so interesting that they, Jews ended up banning it not for legalistic like God reasons, but just a And this is causing for kind of the same reason the Mormons did like this is causing unnecessary friction with surrounding Christians. Yeah It's kind of a [00:38:00] pain in the butt anyway
Simone Collins: yeah
Malcolm Collins: Then for sephardic jews polygyny was never officially banned but became increasingly uncommon over time It survived longest among the yemenite jews until their immigration to israel in the 20th century in 1949 the newly founded state of id Israel made polygyny unlawful.
Socio economic factors also contributed for the decline of polygyny. It was financially straining to support multiple households. Rabbis and religious leaders generally did not practice polygyny themselves. So yeah, it just basically fell out of fashion over time. So what is your wider thoughts on all this?
Simone Collins: That apparently it's totally biblically okay, and the only reason we don't do it now is that Kind of isn't seen as socially cool and there are some societal reasons why it's not in the best interest of any particular society or government. Yeah, but I mean, like, basically, if, if you want to do it and you can make it work, go ahead and do it.
Just know you're not going to be getting any [00:39:00] rewards socially for it in mainstream society.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I guess I just say it's not anti Abrahamic, and it may be anti Catholic, for example, like, different religious subsets have added new rules. You know what's funny here? Is the Christian group with the most explicit rules against polygyny biblically speaking or in their, in their actual like theological literature might be the Mormons.
Because they had to ban it. And so they have an explicit ban on it. Oh my gosh, how ironic. Whereas none of the other Christians do. Which is really interesting. So yeah. That is
Simone Collins: hilarious.
Malcolm Collins: And as to my thoughts on it, and I've talked about this before specifically as it's framed as polyamory, first, I don't think it ever makes sense to have a relationship where the woman can sleep with multiple partners. That's just stupid. There's no reason for it historically. There's no reason for it evolutionarily, genetically, family wise, like, no culture in history has ever done this.
And No, there's
Simone Collins: one. There's no reason. [00:40:00] There's the one
Malcolm Collins: that was in the mountains where they, a wife would sometimes marry two brothers. Yes. That wasn't a successful cultural group. Like it almost immediately died out. It's like a weird thing that we know about. But it's just not done because humans don't do it.
Whereas multiple wives is done many times. So why, what do I think about this in terms of, and I love so many poly people. They're like, Oh yeah, like we're truly poly. And yet like when they're rich, I know what they always mean is this one guy and a few girls. And maybe the girls will have some extra girls on the side, but very rarely do I see additional guys in these sorts of relationships.
But interestingly I've seen people try it and it just hasn't led to polyamory where i've seen it tried over long periods Hasn't been stable like i'm not intrinsically against it. I just haven't seen it stably work and I think that the Roman system is probably best where you have You have side
Simone Collins: chicks, the side chick system.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can have side chicks, but you have one [00:41:00] wife. I think that's probably the most stable system. But I don't hate Levite marriages either. Like I think what you're missing here though
Simone Collins: is that it wasn't
many of the side chicks in ancient Rome were married. And I think that there, there are actually advantages to this where there's kind of this black market thing going on when you have a mostly monogamous society and yet men have mistresses and women sometimes sleep outside of their marriage. I, I think that in some cases lead
Malcolm Collins: to faster evolution,
Simone Collins: it's going to lead to faster evolution.
It allows for women, for example, to sleep with more fit partners, for example, more desirable partners, and then have children with them that are raised in the end by other men who've been cucked, but you know, it still leads to theoretically more desirable traits being [00:42:00] passed on to future generations.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, a society with a lot of cucking is definitely going to evolve much faster than a society with a small amount of cucking.
Simone Collins: Yes. Well, and I was just reading some research on trait selection and sort of what we've seen actually play out through history. And it appears to be that. The most common form I'm going to butcher this I think is negative selection.
In other words, like bad traits get removed. That's how we evolve. It's not like multiple good traits are selected. It's more that people who have for some reason traits that just aren't very competitive are just less likely to see those genes passed on and in a society that's monogamous, that's only going to happen very efficiently.
If women are taking on side pieces as well,
Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, well, and I think that I mean, you could fix this with, with polygenic selection. And so I think that polygenic selection, you know, society wide [00:43:00] could be used to prevent a dysgenic spiral, but this is actually 1 of the things I've talked about is.
We have created one of the first societies was, was, was very, very low cucking because of the really tight child support laws, which mean that like me sleeping with somebody else in, in risking getting them pregnant is really potentially dangerous to me.
And so a lot of high value men aren't going to do that while low value men are still going to do that at a very high rate. And so, you know, that I
Simone Collins: want to argue to women in ancient Rome weren't always sleeping around to get pregnant by other men. There was, I don't know if it was. A daughter or sister of Octavian, but there was some letter or something where, like, she had signaled to someone that she knew what she was doing, that she was being careful and she knew, like, to never set sail unless her ship already had cargo.[00:44:00]
Yeah. Spicy.
Malcolm Collins: Never set sail unless my ship has cargo.
Simone Collins: That is
Malcolm Collins: a great form of a birth control already being pregnant by your husband.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So, you know, she wasn't going to mess up or anything, but she could still have her fun. So I do, you know, I, so I'm just going to push back a little bit on the. Now, obviously it will piss men off immensely for women to cock them, you know, have kids that aren't genetically theirs or even sleep around.
But there do seem to be, I would say genetic advantages to it in some cases for like a population on the whole and it happens. So you just have to admit that.
Malcolm Collins: Simone, I would, I would push back on not selecting for good genes. Like, for example, I don't think that I, like, I think I'm unusually maybe intelligent or I have an unusually good ability to read people, which is a good gene.
I don't think I have any like bad genes and yet, you know, I had [00:45:00] such an easy time getting people to sleep with me when I was younger. And I had many people actively pursue me where were we in a society like Rome or something like that? Would I be getting lots of people pregnant? Yeah, probably.
Simone Collins: You, you had. Yeah. People who had boyfriends sleep with you. Like you benefited from this female propensity. Like what's your argument?
Malcolm Collins: That's the exact argument I'm making that he's saying that it only removed bad traits didn't increase the rate of good traits. I'm saying that my own background shows that it does potentially increase the rate of good traits.
Okay. But me not wanting to pay child support. Now if I had been in Rome, I probably would have had the exact opposite. Motivation because you know, it's frankly more fun when someone can get pregnant, right? And you know another guy's gonna care for it. So what's the problem? That's I've mentioned this in another episode, but I think that men are hard coded to find it more attractive when they are [00:46:00] sleeping with somebody when they know another guy's gonna have the kid because as I noted on the girls when I would sleep with another guy's girlfriend My standards were much much lower.
Because I found it Really hot. And I've noted I'm not the only one. Trump has said the same thing. Trump has said that he prefers to sleep with other men's wives. I don't know if that's
Simone Collins: considered the golden standard for Well,
Malcolm Collins: I'm just saying if people are like, Malcolm, you can't admit to this horrible fetish.
You'll never get far in Republican politics of admitting to that. And I'm like, Trump did it and admitted it. So, you know, apparently that's not true. He
Simone Collins: broke so many, so many glass ceilings. So many glass ceilings. So many
Malcolm Collins: glass ceilings. Anyway, love you to death, Simone.
Simone Collins: Love you too, gorgeous.
Malcolm Collins: Tilt your camera down a bit and we're gonna do slaves.
Microphone (2- ATR2100x-USB Microphone): If you were watching this and wondering where these clips that have to do with Rome, come from. , I pity you in the extreme. It is from the TB mini series called Rome, probably one of the best. Shows ever put to film. I strongly recommend if you haven't watched it, maybe because you're [00:47:00] young and you weren't around when it came out. It is dramatically better than something like game of Thrones. , and it is educational to boot.
So you really have no excuse to not try at least to the first episode and then see if you can stop watching.
Speaker 5: How fitting that we welcome this new beginning by swearing in the youngest consul in the history of Rome, Gaius Octavian Caesar.
Speaker 6: My father died on this floor, butchered. By men he called his friends. Who will tell me that is not murder? Who will tell my legions, who love Caesar as I do, that that is not murder?
Who will speak against the motion?
Speaker 8: Pumpkin pie! Yeah? Does it smell good? Oh! I hear something! I hear something! [00:48:00] It smells so tasty! Yeah? It's done! Something is done! What does it smell like? Look! Look! Mommy! Mommy! Yeah? Oh, the oven is preheated! So then we have to roll out the pie crust. Are you guys ready to do that next? Yeah! Um, look, it's almost done.
Speaker 7: Excellent! It's mixing all the, it's mixing eggs and starch, all the ingredients together to make pumpkin pie! Alright! And did you put them all together? Did you dump them in? Uh, yeah. What did we put in? We put in eggs and starch and all the ingredients. Yay! Yay! Did we also put in pumpkin? Yeah. Did we put in cloves?
Speaker 8: Yeah. And nutmeg? Yeah. And cinnamon? Yeah. Excellent. Alright. Oh, you're ready. It's mixing. It's mixing. It's mixing.
When did Christians & Jews Become Monogamous?