The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in Genesis has been a bit of a stumbling block for me since I started rethinking the Hebrew Bible in terms the realization that, first, it was compiled, revised and edited and, to a significant extent, written, during the period just prior to, during, and immediately subsequent to, the Babylonian exile; and, second, that much if not all of it, involves appropriating and reversing the mythology and literature of ancient Israel’s imperial neighbors. I knew something of all this when I wrote
Do you think your argument also entails an usurpation of polygamous, “kingly” marriage by monogamy? Can we imagine Eve as, say, third wife? I’m not sure; on first vague thoughts, i can see it both ways… Of course it is long after the Bible before the Jews ended polygamy, but is the seed there?
BTW nice typo where the desire for immortality becomes immorality.
Yes, the Bible seems to be resolutely monogamous, all the way through. Adam couldn't have given up his second rib, after all. It follows from equality before God. But I don't know anything about the history of marriage in ancient Israel and Judea. Does anyone?
I'm pretty sure the Bible has some interesting typos as well.
Well, I don't know anything about ancient Israelite marriage, just that there must have been at least occasional polygamy, as suggested by certain figures in the Bible. As I read it, polygamy is not absolutely banned in Talmudic law. It was not until medieval times that an Ashkenazi rabbinical court proscribed it.
Anyway, this isn't exactly the issue on my mind. I have long assumed that polygamy was quite normal among early humans, that if a people don't actively proscribe it, it will be something of a default since women will always be attracted to the stronger and more successful men. I'm curious if the Bible was a particular turning point in this regard. I assume that the railing against homosexuality in the Bible is part of an attack on polygamy (and its side-effects) and an attempt to normalize heterosexual monogamy.
I haven't gone deeply into ethnographical literature but have seen it summarized as showing much evidence for both polygamy and monogamy, not that the ethnographers were ever looking at early human societies. Yet I find it noteworthy for GA that Eric Gans, who occasionally hedges on the question, nonetheless seems to want to believe that monogamy was "almost certainly" the early norm for humans:
"In contrast to the need for food, the sex drive, the other major source of human desire, is not suited to the public scene. If alimentary appetite must be deferred in the critical circumstance of collective feasts, in the sexual realm, one would speculate that by the dawn of language/culture, monogamy had already become the norm. The prehuman young, as a result of their larger brains and the narrowing of the birth canal resulting from erect posture, were becoming increasingly neotenic and consequently required more and longer maternal care. And we can easily enough imagine that sexual loyalty played an important role in undermining the Alpha-Beta pecking-order system. Terrence Deacon (see Chronicle 168 and passim) even speculated in The Symbolic Species that the first use of language may have been in a “marriage” ceremony for the purpose of insuring the hunters against their partners’ potential unfaithfulness during their absence." (Chronicle 670)
And:
"...before the usurpation of the sacred center by a “big-man” or equivalent, given what we can assume to have been the progress of neoteny occasioned by the evolutionary pressure toward larger brains, monogamy was almost certainly the norm. In any case, sexual shame can best be understood as reflecting the woman’s, and by extension, albeit less viscerally, the man’s self-consciousness as an object not merely of appetite but of desire. This self-consciousness would reflect the woman’s awareness of language, even if its actual use remained confined to masculine ritual activities." (Chronicle 647)
I don't find this convincing. After all, there is evidence that children can be raised by nomadic bands practising polygamy where some men dominate and some unsuccessful young men are essentially cast out. (An example in mind is the nomadic band that accompanied Samuel Hearne on his explorations in northwest Canada. I always remember the one young woman he noted competing for attention in the dead of winter by hiking her skirts on a long hike and succumbing to frostbite for the effort....) What matters is that the successful men are good hunters and that they can maintain the numbers to compete with other bands in any small scale warfare. The less able men don't seem to be able to band together in any kind of threat to the more successful hunters. The need to incorporate as many men as possible would only evolve, perhaps, when war and associated technologies happened on a larger scale; arguably this could lead to pressure for monogamy.
Anyway, even as the originary scene is about the sharing of meat among aggressive men, Gans' desire to see this as the model for fundamentally equalitarian orders would be challenged, no, by any assumption that early marriage was polygamous? So when you say the Bible is resolutely monogamous, do you have the intuition that this is because this is how it had been for the people of Israel since time immemorial, or was polygamy perhaps a very present concern either within or without the fold? And is this part of the war against kings?
I would only take Biblical law and narrative as indicative of the kind of order those in charge of re-establishing a community in Judea after the Persian empire granted the right to return wished to create/impose (or claim to create/impose)--even if some of it might draw upon previous materials. I see that the Torah does allow for polygamy (or, maybe, just takes it for granted), but aside from the patriarchs and kings, it seems to me that monogamy is the norm. I do think this is tied to the anti-monarchical project of ancient Judaism. But I would also think that marriage arrangements among archaic humans would have been a lot more diverse than Gans allows for in that Chronicle.
Do you think your argument also entails an usurpation of polygamous, “kingly” marriage by monogamy? Can we imagine Eve as, say, third wife? I’m not sure; on first vague thoughts, i can see it both ways… Of course it is long after the Bible before the Jews ended polygamy, but is the seed there?
BTW nice typo where the desire for immortality becomes immorality.
Yes, the Bible seems to be resolutely monogamous, all the way through. Adam couldn't have given up his second rib, after all. It follows from equality before God. But I don't know anything about the history of marriage in ancient Israel and Judea. Does anyone?
I'm pretty sure the Bible has some interesting typos as well.
Well, I don't know anything about ancient Israelite marriage, just that there must have been at least occasional polygamy, as suggested by certain figures in the Bible. As I read it, polygamy is not absolutely banned in Talmudic law. It was not until medieval times that an Ashkenazi rabbinical court proscribed it.
Anyway, this isn't exactly the issue on my mind. I have long assumed that polygamy was quite normal among early humans, that if a people don't actively proscribe it, it will be something of a default since women will always be attracted to the stronger and more successful men. I'm curious if the Bible was a particular turning point in this regard. I assume that the railing against homosexuality in the Bible is part of an attack on polygamy (and its side-effects) and an attempt to normalize heterosexual monogamy.
I haven't gone deeply into ethnographical literature but have seen it summarized as showing much evidence for both polygamy and monogamy, not that the ethnographers were ever looking at early human societies. Yet I find it noteworthy for GA that Eric Gans, who occasionally hedges on the question, nonetheless seems to want to believe that monogamy was "almost certainly" the early norm for humans:
"In contrast to the need for food, the sex drive, the other major source of human desire, is not suited to the public scene. If alimentary appetite must be deferred in the critical circumstance of collective feasts, in the sexual realm, one would speculate that by the dawn of language/culture, monogamy had already become the norm. The prehuman young, as a result of their larger brains and the narrowing of the birth canal resulting from erect posture, were becoming increasingly neotenic and consequently required more and longer maternal care. And we can easily enough imagine that sexual loyalty played an important role in undermining the Alpha-Beta pecking-order system. Terrence Deacon (see Chronicle 168 and passim) even speculated in The Symbolic Species that the first use of language may have been in a “marriage” ceremony for the purpose of insuring the hunters against their partners’ potential unfaithfulness during their absence." (Chronicle 670)
And:
"...before the usurpation of the sacred center by a “big-man” or equivalent, given what we can assume to have been the progress of neoteny occasioned by the evolutionary pressure toward larger brains, monogamy was almost certainly the norm. In any case, sexual shame can best be understood as reflecting the woman’s, and by extension, albeit less viscerally, the man’s self-consciousness as an object not merely of appetite but of desire. This self-consciousness would reflect the woman’s awareness of language, even if its actual use remained confined to masculine ritual activities." (Chronicle 647)
I don't find this convincing. After all, there is evidence that children can be raised by nomadic bands practising polygamy where some men dominate and some unsuccessful young men are essentially cast out. (An example in mind is the nomadic band that accompanied Samuel Hearne on his explorations in northwest Canada. I always remember the one young woman he noted competing for attention in the dead of winter by hiking her skirts on a long hike and succumbing to frostbite for the effort....) What matters is that the successful men are good hunters and that they can maintain the numbers to compete with other bands in any small scale warfare. The less able men don't seem to be able to band together in any kind of threat to the more successful hunters. The need to incorporate as many men as possible would only evolve, perhaps, when war and associated technologies happened on a larger scale; arguably this could lead to pressure for monogamy.
Anyway, even as the originary scene is about the sharing of meat among aggressive men, Gans' desire to see this as the model for fundamentally equalitarian orders would be challenged, no, by any assumption that early marriage was polygamous? So when you say the Bible is resolutely monogamous, do you have the intuition that this is because this is how it had been for the people of Israel since time immemorial, or was polygamy perhaps a very present concern either within or without the fold? And is this part of the war against kings?
I would only take Biblical law and narrative as indicative of the kind of order those in charge of re-establishing a community in Judea after the Persian empire granted the right to return wished to create/impose (or claim to create/impose)--even if some of it might draw upon previous materials. I see that the Torah does allow for polygamy (or, maybe, just takes it for granted), but aside from the patriarchs and kings, it seems to me that monogamy is the norm. I do think this is tied to the anti-monarchical project of ancient Judaism. But I would also think that marriage arrangements among archaic humans would have been a lot more diverse than Gans allows for in that Chronicle.