Another book which I was led by the Spirit of God to pick up in a book shop and open at a particular passage, was "Curious Customs of Sex and Marriage" by George Ryley Scott.

Page vii:

Fifteen centuries of Christian civilization had to go into the limbo of the past before the Church made any serious and determined attempt to gain control over marriage, by making an ecclesiastical ceremony a necessary prologue.

Church and State concentrated on making the union, as far as possible, and in the vast majority of cases, an indissoluble one. Hence the evolution of marriage ceremonies calculated to stress the " till death doth us part " aspect; hence the appeal to superstition; hence the formulation of laws designed to put every conceivable bar in the way of dissolution.

Inevitably difficulties were encountered. Always has there been a risk that in the attempt to make the marital alliance permanent, in combination with the responsibilities inherent in the contract, society might conceivably drive man into promiscuity as an alternative means of satisfying a biological urge. This risk, from time to time, has been underlined by the steps which it was sometimes considered necessary to take, even in civilized communities, to make men marry. Thus in seventeenth century New England the life of a bachelor was made most ignominious by his subjection to many forms of persecution.[1] In Hartford, for instance, the penalty for remaining unmarried was the payment of twenty shillings a week to the town.[2] In other towns, single men were compelled to live in houses assigned to them; they were continually spied upon; and their lives generally made miserable. " In those days," said Alice Morse Earle, " a man gained instead of losing his freedom by marrying .[3]

[1] Even to-day in some parts of the world indirect coercion is not unknown.

In the Daily Mail (March 24, 1951 appears the following paragraph : " Tirana, Albania - A tax on bachelors between 20 and 50, and unmarried` and childless women between 20 and 40 has been imposed by the Albanian Government. Reuter."

[2] Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England, 1893, P. 36.

[3] Ibid., p. 37. 1

Pages 81 to 83:

However unpalatable, from the standpoint of modern ethical ideals, the statement may be, it is a fact that man, biologically and inherently, is polygynous. The promiscuity which is so prominent and so characteristic a feature of savagery provides unmistakable evidence of the truth of this. No feature of mankind has provided religion and morality with so many difficulties, not in connexion with its prohibition, which is plainly an impossibility, but in its curbing. In modem civilization, the monogamic concept in combination with the laws relating to marriage, have succeeded only to the extent that economic conditions have been able to fortify them.

It should be noted that in these remarks I am referring to the polygynous nature of the male rather than to the polygamous feature of the human race as a whole. The distinction is important. Polygamy, contrary to popular opinion, involves more than the marrying of a number of women by one male; it includes the analogous appetite displayed by the female for a number of husbands. Polyandry, as this latter phenomenon is termed, is nothing like so pronounced or so widespread a characteristic in the female as polygyny is in the male. In fact it may be looked upon as abnormal or exceptional, for whatever may be its incidence in those early days when promiscuity was the order of the day, polyandry has proved to be capable of regulation or prohibition in a manner which is impossible with polygyny. Moreover, even in primitive society, it is a much rarer phenomenon than polygyny, being virtually restricted to societies where the number of females is much fewer than that of males, or where poverty of an extreme nature is widespread. In some North American tribes it was customary for a woman

to have several husbands; as also in Tibet and Bantan. According to Father Tanchard, in Calicat, he came across women with as many as ten husbands, all of whom were looked upon as so many slaves.

In the Old Testament we have plenty of evidence of the existence of polygyny. Esau undoubtedly was a polygynist; so too, Adam's son, Lamech; King Solomon, also, had a g number of wives. Indeed, there can be little doubt that polygyny was widely practised in the time of Moses, and his supposed prohibition of multiple marriages, as instanced in the passage : `Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, besides the other in her lifetime," has been the cause of considerable controversy, as in the case of so many other Biblical commands and prohibitions. Apropos of this passage, Dr. Gardner says: " Michaelis, following the Talmud, alleges that the Mosaic law does not prohibit more than one wife, although he admits that it does not sanction a man having as many wives as he pleased. Selden, in his learned work De Uxore Hebraica (On Me Hebrew Wife), informs us, that the Jewish Rabbis held the prohibition of Moses to extend only beyond four wives. And Mohammed, following as he did in many cases the Rabbinical interpretations, fixed upon four as the number of wives to be allowed to the faithful, and commands that that number should not be exceeded."[I]

For centuries the ancient Romans prohibited polygyny, the Justinian Code proclaiming it to be a punishable offence. Later Mark Antony caused the rule to be altered: he took two wives himself.

In ancient Egypt all men other than those of the poorer classes, who could not afford a plurality of wives, and the priests, who were prohibited from having them, were accustomed to practise polygyny; although, according to Kenrick, one of the wives, under the title of Lady of the House, " enjoyed a superiority in honour and authority over the rest."[2] A similar custom prevailed among the Turkish princes, says Burder, where it was usual " to have one among their many wives superior to all the rest in dignity."[3]

According to Huc, polygyny is a legal institution in China. [4]

[1] James Gardner, Faiths of the World. Vol. II, p. 679.

[2] John Kenrick, Ancient Egypt under the Pharoahs 1850 Vol. II, p. 58.

[3] Samuel Burder, Oriental Customs 1840, P. 277.

[4] M. Huc, The Chinese Empire, 1855.

At one time the practice was restricted to Mandarins and childless forty-year-olds, but more recently the taking of secondary wives has become general. Here, as in Egypt and some other countries, the first wife is the mistress of the house, all others holding subordinate positions.

In many of the tribes of North American Indians polygyny was practised. Catlin said it was " no uncommon thing to find a chief with six, eight, or ten, and some with twelve or fourteen wives in his lodge."[1] Among the Indians of Guiana, the more wives a man possesses the more is he esteemed by his fellow-men.[2]

A form of polygyny practised by many primitive races is the custom of marrying sisters, known as sororate. However many daughters there are in a family, the man who marries one marries the lot. It is found among the North American Indians, the Australian Blacks, and the Kaffirs of Africa.

In Tibet, somewhat surprisingly, polygyny and polyandry are both widely practised. According to Henry Savage Landor, the arrangement is a somewhat complicated one.[3] A man who marries the eldest of a number of sisters acquires the lot as wives, that is, providing the younger ones are unmarried; but if he chooses to marry a younger sister in the family he has no claim to the elder sister or sisters, whether or not she or they be single. On the other hand, the girl who marries one of a number of brothers, becomes the wife of them all. In some parts of the country, owing to the extreme poverty of the inhabitants, the wife-sharing method is apparently the only form of married life possible. In addition to the question of economics, the dangers to which women who have to be left alone are inevitably exposed, make polyandry a matter of expediency. It is not likely, in such circumstances, that a wife will be without companionship and protection where there are two or more husbands in the household, a point which may well be brought forward "in defence of even so startling a social arrangement as this, at least among races of so phlegmatic a temperament as the Tibetans."[4] Moreover, apart from any need for protection, it would appear

[1] George Catlin, North American Indians, 1876, p. 118.

[2] W.H. Brett, The Indian Tribes of Guiana, 1868, p. 351.

[3] A. Henry Savage Landor, In the Forbidden Land; An Account of a journey in Tibet, Capture by the Tibetan Authorities, Imprisonment, Torture, and Ultimate Release, Heinemann, 1898. Vol. 11, pp. 61-63.

[4] Constance F. Gordon Cumming, From the Hebrides to the Himalayas : A Sketch of Eighteen Months' Wanderings in Western Isles and Eastern Highlands, Sampson Low, London, 1876. Vol. I, p. 204

that the women of this remote country are not without skill in handling a plurality of husbands. As a rule a wife displays considerable ingenuity in seeing that they are not all at home at the same time. Says Landor: " Only one remains and he is for the time being her husband; then when another returns he has to leave his place and become a bachelor, and so on, till all the brothers have, during the year, had an equal period of marital life with their single wife."'

Polygyny is inherently evil, and it can only produce evil results. So true is this, that in China many women will go to any lengths to avoid marriage with a man given to its practice. Some shut themselves up in nunneries; others take their own lives. Gray tells us that " during the reign of Taou-Kwang, fifteen virgins whom their parents had affianced, met together upon learning the fact, and resolved to commit suicide. They flung themselves into a tributary stream of the Canton river, in the vicinity of the village where they lived. The tomb in which the corpses were interred is near Fo-Chune, and is called the Tomb of the Virgins. The same authority mentions another multiple suicide for a similar reason. It occurred in the month of July, 1873. In this instance the affianced girls, numbering eight, had bound themselves together, before jumping into the river.

The closing paragraph of this extract illustrates a common phenomenon amongst many writers who oppose a man having more than one wife. The opening statement that "polygyny is inherently evil" argues for a specific instance where other information which presumably applies to the situations referred to is not presented. One must assume that if the situation was a generally evil as the example suggests then it is almost impossible to consider how it could have existed in the first place since it would appear that every woman faced with such a prospect would have taken such extreme measures to avoid such marriage. The fact that millions of people around the world live happily in such marriages is ignored.

One has to ask why, if the practice of a man having more than one wife is against scripture, it cannot be refuted without emotional rhetoric. Equally, one must surely recognize that the society in question was not a society in which Yahweh is Lord and in which the Love of God is shed abroad in the hearts of the people.

Another book found on being led by the Spirit into a second had bookshop was "Strange Customs of Courtship and Marriage", by William J Fielding, published by "The Blakiston Company", Philladelphia in 1942.

Pages 2 to 5:

A DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE - This great urge has had as it's impetus the bringing together of the couple in sexual union With it ultimately came the establishment of marriage, of vary. ing periods of duration, depending upon the conditions which determined the arrangement, the most important of which has been the raising of children.

The situation as gleaned by the anthropologists - those tireless students of the history of mankind-is of course too complex to be related in a few pages. In primitive life, precise and orderly forms of mating could scarcely be expected, nor did they exist. There have been countless sorts of variations and many contradictions.

According to the great authority on the subject, Professor Edward Westermarck, author of The History of Human Marriage, human beings have always lived in what may be broadly described as a state of marriage. Not in the definitely formulated sense that we now know this institution, but in a recognizable and definable form.

Westermarck thus defines marriage as a relation of one or more men to one or more women which is recognized by custom or law and involves certain rights and duties both in the case of the parties entering the union and in the case of the children born of it.

Continuing, Westermarck says that marriage always implies the right of sexual intercourse; society holds such intercourse allowable in the case of the husband and wife, and, generally speaking, even regards it as their duty to gratify in some measure the other partner's desire. But the right to sexual intercourse is not necessarily exclusive. He adds, as an alternative definition: a more or less durable association between male and female lasting beyond the mere act of propagation till after the birth of the offspring.

In support of this theory, it is argued that marriage has developed out of primordial habit-the habit of a man and a woman (or several women) to live together, to have sexual relations with one another, and to rear their offspring in common. The man became the protector and supporter of the family, the woman his helpmate and the nurse of their children. This habit in time became sanctioned by custom, and eventually by law, and thus was transformed into a social institution.

It is shown that many of the higher animals have a family life analogous to human marriage in its primitive form. Indeed, it has been observed that the highest form of paired mating - not excluding man-is to be found among many species of birds.

Among the great majority of birds, the male and female keep together even after the breeding season, and in a great many species the parental instinct has reached a high degree of intensity on the father's side as well as on the mother's. So true is this that Brehm, the naturalist, has remarked that "real marriage can be found only among birds."

So the terms "marriage" and "family" are used to describe a definite human and sub-human relationship, and our modern marriage and family are a development of this process which began at a very primitive level of life.

Comparatively early in its development marriage became an economic institution, affecting the proprietary rights of the parties.

Among certain peoples, as we shall see in later chapters plurality of wives is legally permissible; among others, more primitive, the marriage is a loose and temporary union, lasting little beyond the birth of the offspring. This situation account for Westermarck's qualifying definition.

On the other hand, higher in the social order, we find an established condition wherein marriage means something more than sexual congress. In this order man and wife main, tain a household together. They may have a community of goods. There is a common interest and responsibility in the care of the children. It is upon this basis that there has devel. oped the system of monogamous marriage now prevalent throughout most of the modem world.

ORIGIN OF THE WORD "WEDDING". - When we look into the origin of certain words we get an intimation of the develop. ment or transformation of the system described by the word in question. This is characteristically true of the word "wed. ding". It derives from the barbaric stage of wife purchase through which marriage passed. The wed was the purchase money or its equivalent, horses, cattle or other property, which the groom gave to the father to seal the transaction.

In the early days of the Anglo-Saxons children were often betrothed by the parents, the bridegroom's pledge of marriage being accompanied by a security, or wed, furnished by the father of the groom. Thus originated the term wedding, or pledging the troth of the bride to the man who secured her by purchase.

It is said that traces of the ancient legal procedure connected with wife purchase remained in England as late as the middle of the sixteenth century. In France, even until the time of Louis XVI, it was the custom to pay down thirteen deniers upon conclusion of a marriage contract. This latter practice was doubtless merely a symbolic relic of the time when marriage was an outright cash transaction.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MARRIAGE - As we have already seen, marriage appears to have had its origin at the very dawn of human society, perhaps being a continuation of an analogous relationship in subhuman life. There are, however, different schools of thought on this subject, as we shall presently see.

Among many species of the animal kingdom, the male and female remain together not only during the pairing season, but until after the birth of the offspring. It seems reasonable to assume that they were induced to do so by an instinct which had been acquired through the process of natural selection. This tendency preserved the next generation, and thereby perpetuated the species.

Confirmation of this theory is found in the fact that in such cases the male not only stays with the female and young, but also takes care of them. Prince Peter Kropotkin, the great Russian naturalist, cites numerous instances of devotion, loyalty and self-sacrifice among the denizens of the animal world in the wild stage that would be a credit to humanity at its best.

Among mammals the young are dependent for a considerable time upon the mother, who consequently is concerned for their welfare, attending to them with much affection. While in most cases the relations between the sexes are restricted to the pairing season, there are however certain species in which they are of a more permanent character, and the male acts as guardian of the family.

What is particularly apparent from the latter part of this text is the tendency to base the understanding of marriage on animals and therefore on the theory of evolution. In other words, the thesis is that since man evolved from animals we can better understand man from the study of animals. This is in stark contrast to the Christian and Jewish knowledge of creation by Yahweh as set out in Genesis 1.

Pages 27 to 30:

Modern Survivals of Ancient Customs

THE WEDDING RING.- While there is no exact history of the origin of the wedding ring, it is believed to have evolved from the older betrothal ring. The earliest record of the wedding ring appears in Egyptian literature. The idea fitted in with Egyptian thought, as in hieroglyphics the circle represents eternity. By applying the name to a plain band or circle for the finger, marriage was thus identified with a tie through eternity.

According to tradition, the early Hebrew wedding rings were usually plain gold, without setting They were permitted to be of silver, and even base metals were acceptable. It is apparent that the Jewish wedding ring was of ceremonial or symbolic meaning because it was often too large for wearing as a finger ornament.

The Christian form, on the other hand, has always been the true finger ring, usually of gold, and generally devoid of ornament. The use of the wedding ring among Christians been traced back to the year 86o. It is said that when a marriage settlement had been properly scaled, rings bearing the name: of the newly married couple were passed around for inspection among the guests.

There have been many variations of wedding or marriage rings-such as double rings joined by a pivot (gemmal rings), rings set more or less elaborately with gems, and even socalled puzzle rings, in which several individual loops were so shaped as to form together an apparently indivisible ring - but the single unadorned band has been the most common form of wedding ring.

Marriage rings have been made of a great variety of mate, rials. Besides the various metals, such as gold, silver, iron, steel and bronze, wood, rush and leather have also been used. The Romans used iron, which had an appropriate significance because of the traditional strength and durability of this metal. Medieval peasants used circlets of rush, wood or leather because they could afford no better, but they insisted upon some sort of a ring to seal the union. At the beginning, the use of gold bore the association of purity, and its value indicated it as a token of the wealth the husband brought to the consumamation of the marriage contract.

Platinum has come into extensive use in later years for wedding rings as in other jewelry, and the wedding ring set with a row, or forming a circle, of small diamonds has had considerable vogue. Among the novelties have been the. "Orange Blossom" ring, bringing the symbolism of one of nature's most prolific fruits into association with the marriage,. and the "Venus" ring, harking back to the goddess of Love.

Aside from the symbol of unity and eternity associated with the wedding ring, it has been maintained that the finger circlet of marriage developed from the circular fetters or bracelets placed upon the captive woman of primitive times, thus being a symbolic relic (although an unconscious one) of her ancient status of subjection and servitude to the master.

The exchanging of wedding rings has likewise symbolized loss of freedom-the "ball-and-chain" concept, in another form -bondage for the man and subjugation for the woman. These associations of servitude and inferiority undoubtedly sprang in part from the language of the Christian marriage ritual, when it took over the traditionally secular marriage contract. The sacramental view of marriage, with its emphasis on the permanent spiritual union, denotes the surrender of freedom. The use of the phrase "to obey" in the woman's vow, so long a feature of the Christian marriage rite, but now more and more omitted by mutual wish, was a further note of her subjugation to the husband's will.

THE RING FINGER - Further evidence of the concept of servitude, symbolized in the use of the wedding ring, is indicated by the wearing of the ring on the left hand. From earliest times, the right hand has symbolized power and authority; the left hand, subjection.

The particular digit upon which the ring is worn-the fourth finger-once had special significance. It was thought in ancient times that a certain vein or nerve in the fourth finger of the left hand ran directly to that time-honored seat of the affectionsthe heart. This significance is no longer known by the great majority of women who wear the ring, and it is known to be an anatomical fallacy. Nevertheless the old custom continues. Many women would consider themselves something less than properly married if they wore the wedding ring on any other finger.

The utilitarian argument has been presented that the fourth finger is a logical choice because it is guarded by the fingers on either side, that of all the fingers it is the least used, and, furthermore, that the left hand, as the hand less used, is the place of least wear. As in most cases of trying to prove a point, where tradition, sentiment and superstition are involved, this seems like a choice bit of rationalization.

As a matter of fact most fingers of both hands, including the thumbs, have been used for wearing rings. During the Elizabethan period in England, the wedding ring was worn on the thumb, as is shown in portraits of ladies of that time.

Here we clearly see the pagan, superstitious background to the wedding ring in terms of which Satan has deluded the church into believing that the metal ring has some covenant significance which appears nowhere in scripture.

The book "Sex, Life and Faith; A Modern Philosophy of Sex" by Rom Landau, published by Faber and Faber Limited, 24 Russel Square, London in 1946 provides further insight into the intellectual thinking behind the doctrine of enforced monogamy.

Pages 136 to 138:

In an imperfect world, such as we live in, polygamy must be considered both natural and legitimate. In an ideal world monogamy would undoubtedly be sufficient. To eliminate polygamy completely, we should first have to change the entire character of our civilization, then the nature of man, and, finally, Nature herself.

It is both revealing and somewhat disturbing to find that only among the least civilized tribes is divorce unknown and marriage considered indissoluble.* We find an overwhelming prevalence of lifelong monogamous unions only among some of the lowest hunters and agriculturists of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, and Ceylon. It would seem that the more civilized and individualized man becomes, the more strongly does he develop polygamous tendencies.

Whether polygamy can be equally justified on moral grounds is a different question. But, as we have seen already, civilizations and religions exist which recognize that polygamy is as natural to man as monogamy, and which, in consequence, sanction it openly. To-day Islam is the most obvious

* Among civilized peoples I can find records of a similar situation only in the State of South Carolina in the U.S.A. which represents the sole community in the Christian world which still holds marriage indissoluble and grants no divorce whatsoever. The Roman Catholic Church, while asserting the indissolubility of Christian marriage, admits a 'separation from bed and board', and, under certain circumstances is not opposed to dissolving such marriage. As Lord Bryce observed, 'the rules regarding impediments were so numerous and so intricate that it was easy, given a sufficient motive, whether political or pecuniary, to discover some ground for declaring almost any marriage invalid.'

example, and it implies that some 350 million people (adherents of this religion alone) are officially at liberty to lead either monogamous or polygamous lives.

Not only in ancient or primitive societies is it accepted that polygamy is rather more natural to man than monogamy. We know already what Dr. Johnson had to say on the subject of marriage when surveying the civilization of eighteenth-century England. The French - those supreme realists and exponents of a particularly refined civilization - gave tacit approval to polygamy by sanctioning the custom of a man's having a mistress as well as a wife. This custom was adhered to quite openly and not in secret and shamefacedly as though it were something reprehensible. French history is rich in examples of mistresses who enjoyed greater respect than the legitimate wives. In this France followed the lead of Athens, where the hetaera was afforded a higher social position than the wife. No Athenian woman was more honoured than Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, 'the Olympian'. Muhammad would hardly have sanctioned the simultaneous possession of four wives by one man if polygamy had not been natural and necessary to the Arabs.

Yet in spite of the acceptance of polygamy by so many different civilizations, the fact remains that in most societies (at least so far as the Western world is concerned) moral, social, and legal codes prescribe monogamy, and do everything in their power to enforce it. This is partly because an officially sanctioned polygamy easily leads to innumerable social, legal, and personal complications. But though in the West the law prohibits polygamy 'in space', it finds itself forced to condone it 'in time', namely by granting divorce. A man may not have two wives simultaneously, but no-one can prevent him from having ten wives over a period of years. Such a state of affairs reveals our unwillingness to face sexual realities squarely.

All the evidence provided by history and science makes it imperative that polygamy should be recognized more honestly. This, however, must not blind us to the fact that a religious sanctioning of polygamy such as we find in Islam, denotes a weakness in the particular creed. The weakness is not necessarily of a moral character. (Most moralities are man-made, relative to. the circumstances of a given time and place, and thus not absolute.) The weakness, rather, is of a spiritual nature.

The desire for a permanent monogamous partnership originates in a deeper stratum of man's spirit than does that for polygamous attachments. To satisfy that desire calls for greater effort at a higher price than that demanded by polygamous tendencies. Had Muhammad accepted polygamy merely on grounds of local usage and expediency, little spiritual significance would need to be attached to his decisions, but we know from his private life that the determining motive was his own inability to master his sexual impulses. On personal and purely spiritual grounds his sanction of polygamy suggests a weakness. Spiritually - though not necessarily morally - this sanction strikes us as less valuable than the opposite principle as seen in the Christian gospel.

Yet does even such a verdict give us a right to shut our eyes to the legitimacy of polygamous practices in Christian countries or elsewhere? When we study a living society we obviously deal with imperfect realities and not with Utopian ideals. We cannot possibly dismiss the existing imperfections - whether of nature, customs, or conditions - as though they had no effect upon our lives. And to cling to laws and conventions that ignore those imperfections is, to say the least, neither helpful nor morally justifiable.

5. Polyandry and Women

If polygamy be natural and legitimate for men and, if as nowadays even intelligent women are wont to claim, there is absolutely no difference between the two sexes, we must conclude that women are similarly entitled to polyandry. The subject is important, and even if it cannot be treated here in all its aspects, at least some outstanding features must be mentioned.

Legalized polyandry has been known to many different nations and civilizations. According to Strabo polyandry was common in Arabia Felix; and AI Bukhari reports that it was a custom among the pagan (pre-Islamic) Arabs for several men to cohabit with one wife, who herself nominated the father of any child to which she gave birth. Cases of polyandry have been noticed among South American Indians, the Eskimo, and various tribes of the Alaskan coast. As late as in the fifteenth century most of the women of the Canary Island, Lancerote had three husbands 'who wait upon them alternately by months'. In the Marshall Islands polyandry has been practised on a large scale, and all the brothers of a newly betrothed man automatically became the secondary husbands of his wife. In Tibet polyandry is common to the present day; and it can also be found among various communities of the North Indian plains.

In this passage it is apparent that there is a disparaging, perhaps even sarcastic condemnation of polygyny, again seemingly based on prejudice and by extension of an argument which fails to address scripture we see that it is suggested that polyandry, clearly fornication in scriptural terms, is ranked on the same terms as polygyny. Surely any person of integrity must question why, if monogamy is the will of God, it is necessary to resort to such contrived and offensive argument to defend it?

In one of the most dramatic instances whereby material for this book was acquired, I was led several miles through the centre of London to a book store where I was led to purchase the book "The Christian Centuries" by Frances Gumley and Brian Redhead, published by BBC Books in 1989. On opening it I found the following passage on page 62:

"Benedict had not been the only one laying down the law. While he

was sitting in the monastic eyrie of Monte Cassino putting the final touches

on the rule of life for generations of monks and nuns to come, across the

Christian world in Constantinople a very different operation was in full

swing. Justinian, the emperor, who had great difficulty in sitting still, was

codifying Roman law from all the centuries past. He seems to quote from

Benedict's Rule on at least three occasions. He was a reserved, cerebral

man responsible for the building of Hagia Sophia, acclaimed as the most

beautiful church in the whole of Christendom, but he and his empress

Theodora had their enemies. Justinian was a strange character. His official

biographer, Procopius, says that he considers that Justinian was nothing

less than a demon in a human body. The Reverend Michael Smith says he

has rather more sympathy with Theodora than he has with Justinian.

Justinian was a very inward-turned man. When you look at some of the

mosaic portraits of him you can see a weak man, whereas Theodora,

whatever her faults, was strong and consistent. Justinian was rigidly

Orthodox. Theodora was an ex-prostitute from Alexandria who had been

converted by Monophysite monks and so she was ardently Monophysite

herself. She was quite ready, when Justinian was turning against the Monophysites, to hide the Monophysite monks in her part of the palace.

When the football hooligans of the day, the chariot race supporters, turned against Justinian, burned down Constantinople and had him besieged in the palace, he did not know what to do. He was all for abdicating. Theodora turned and said, in effect, 'Get up you wretched wimp - you might as well stand up and fight: for my part, I believe the imperial purple is the best shroud of all.' And she set General Belisarius on the mob and sent out somebody to bribe some of them to break ranks. She was a great power behind the throne. They called her 'Despoina':the lady, the mistress - a title she fully deserved.

Given that Justinian is credited by various sources as being the person who first officially promulgated the doctrine of enforced monogamy as official Christian doctrine, surely we must conclude that this passage clearly demonstrates the influence of Roman feminism and demonic influence in the false doctrine of enforced monogamy?

Another unusual book that came into my possession is entitled "Love in the South Seas" by Bengt Danielsson, and translated from the original Swedish by F H Lyon, published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London 1956.

Pages 129 to 139:

The Polynesian marriage custom which has attracted most attention in Europe is, curiously enough, polygamy. This exaggerated interest can ultimately be traced back to the American lawyer Lewis Morgan, one of the most controversial figures in the short but eventful history of anthropology. In the middle of the nineteenth century Morgan happened to undertake the defence for an Indian tribe in a legal dispute with some settlers eager to acquire land. As he was a skilful counsel, he gradually obtained more and more briefs of this kind, and, fascinated by the strange customs and ideas he met with among his Indian clients, he began to devote all his spare time to anthropological studies.

Another event of decisive importance for Morgan's career was the publication of Darwin's famous work The Origin of Species. Convinced of the correctness of the theory of biological evolution, Morgan at once conceived it to be his duty to undertake a corresponding description of the origin and evolution of human culture. He thought that here and there among the primitive peoples it should be possible to find the remains of customs and implements which in past times existed among our own ancestors, and that by arranging these in a series, from the simplest to the most perfected, a picture could be obtained of the different stages through which humanity had passed.

In his work, which appeared in 1877 under the title Ancient Society Morgan deals at length with marriage conditions a endeavours to show that the human race has passed through various stages of development, from general promiscuity strict monogamy of the Western type. After the quite unregulated original state, during which everyone in the same horde had sexual intercourse without difference or distinction, there was a second stage called by Morgan the punalua stage. His most important evidence came from Hawaii where 'at the time the American missions were established upon these Islands (1820), a state of society was found which appalled the missionaries. The relations of the sexes and their marriage customs excited their chief astonishment. They were suddenly introduced to a phase of ancient society where the monogamian family was unknown, where the syndyasmian family was unknown; but in place of these . . . they found the punaluan family, with own brothers and sisters not entirely excluded, in which the males were living in polygyny and the females in polyandry. It seemed to them that they, had discovered the lowest level of human degradation, not to say of depravity' (77, P. 414). Morgan's book was immediately noticed by Marx and Engels, who had quite recently worked out a corresponding scheme of economic evolution, and the fact that Morgan even happened to use the tern communistic' of the earliest family groupings further strengthened their confidence in his theories. Engels popularized them in his book Origin of the Family, and Polynesian and Indian family organization were soon being discussed among workers all over Europe as eagerly as Socialism and the class war.

During the last twenty or thirty years this unexpected Communist admiration for Morgan, a 'bourgeois' and a man with religious beliefs, has reached its zenith; his works have been translated into Russian (an honour which has been done' to few anthropologists), and it is as dangerous to doubt Morgan's infallibility as that of the other Communist saints. What is truth in Moscow is only a bad joke in New York, and American anthropologists have been the first to point out Morgan's serious mistakes. The basic error of his imposing, architechtonically perfect scheme of development is, of course, that there is no logical reason whatever for supposing that all the peoples on earth have undergone the same social development. And as we have no material comparable with the fossils and archaeological finds which have made historical reconstruction possible in other sciences, only a little common sense is needed to see that we cannot possibly know anything at all about marriage relationships in prehistoric times.

Morgan is wrong not only in his basic assumptions and conclusions, but also, very often, in the facts on which he founded his theory. Particularly grotesque is his description of the so-called punalua family as a kind of group marriage of several men and women, who all had sexual intercourse with one another. As early as Morgan's time there were many accounts of Polynesian life which showed as clearly as could be desired that the punalua family was not a communistic group at all, but ordinary polygamy such as exists among most of the peoples of the earth.

The statement that group marriage existed in Hawaii when the first missionaries arrived is a complete mistake; and to be quite precise the word punalua was not used of the family as a whole, but only of and between two wives of the same husband. Puna means source, origin (an easily understood symbolic term for a woman) and lua simply means two.

If we try to make an accurate survey of the extent and form of polygamy in Polynesia, we find that sexual democracy was on as low a level as the political. Polygamy occurred, with few exceptions, only among the nobility. Another and equally typical Polynesian limitation was that on practically all the islands polygamy was a privilege of the male sex. Marriage between one man and several - women (polygyny) was the most usual form, and only in the Marquesas was marriage between one woman and several men (polyandry) preferred.

The word polygamy is certain immediately to call up visions of Eastern harems with innumerable veiled wives, or to awaken recollections of a newsreel showing the deposed Sultan of Morocco about to go on board an aeroplane with the twenty-three favourite wives he had obtained permission to take with him into exile. Large harems like this are found only exceptionally in the Arab countries, and even in Polynesia the number of wives in most polygynous marriages was extremely modest, for the simple reason that the number of men and women was roughly the same, and if one man had a wife more, it meant that another had none.

Thanks to the care with which the Polynesians have preserved their genealogies, it is possible to determine in a fairly satisfactory manner the extent to which polygamy occurred among the nobility. On Raroia, for example, the different chiefs who had ruled over the island in turn during past centuries had the following number of wives:

Varoa: 2

Varoa Tapu: 1

Tapuhoe: 1

Varoa Kaipani: 2

Teuruotiki: 1

Varoa Nui: 3

Tefau: 1

Varoa Tikaroa: 5

Kaoko: 3

This gives an average of 2.1 wives per chief, and it was exceptional for the commoners who occur in the genealogies to have more than one wife.

The table on page 133, showing the number of wives in 134 marriages during five generations in the Vara descent group on the island of Mangaia in the Cook group, proves that by no means all nobles and chiefs had more than one wife.

Thus only 20 per cent of the marriages were polygynous. Similar computations from other islands show about the same percentage.

Generations Number of Number of wives

marriages 1 2 3 4 5 6

6 1 1 - - - - -

7 6 4 1 - - - 1

8 17 11 2 4 - - -

9 53 43 9 1 - - -

10 57 48 5 3 1 - -

___________________________________________________________

Total 134 107 17 8 1 - 1

___________________________________________________________

Percentage - 80 12.7 5.9 0.7 - 0.7

There are certainly few customs which have been so fundamentally misunderstood and misjudged in the Western countries as polygamy. This is not surprising, for the polygamous marriages which have attracted most notice in the West (alongside Morgan's Polynesian fantasies) are those of the Mormons and the Oriental despots, and these are exceptional cases. I have therefore divided the following survey of conditions in Polynesia - which in all essentials correspond to those existing among most primitive peoples - into three sections, each of which endeavours to refute a widespread misconception.

Mistake number one: a man keeps several wives to satisfy

his desires.

In the first place, if this had been the case, all chiefs' wives would always have been fresh young beauties, which seldom was the case. Nor would a chief have kept his old wives, as he often did. In other words, a frequent change of wives would have been the rule, and not polygamy. Another weighty argument is that a chief interested in change and sensual distractions could have satisfied these needs by the many extramarital liaisons to which he was entitled, or entitled himself, than by polygamy.

Finally, the Polynesians themselves have stated with perfect clarity the reasons for their system of polygamy.

These reasons are:

1. Family considerations. All men, but especially the chiefs, wanted a male heir to continue the family. Further, all rulers wanted as many children as possible so that their own family might be strong and be able to maintain itself against other families which were competing with it for power. If the first wife was barren or produced only girls, the husband regarded it as his duty to the family and the community to take another wife. As he rightly considered it an injustice to turn away the first wife on this ground only, polygamy was the result.

2. Economic reasons. A chief had a much higher standard of living than his subjects, and he was, moreover, compelled to put up and entertain guests of all kinds. A European business man or captain of industry gets through his comprehensive duties as a host pretty easily without any harem by frequently taking his customers to a restaurant, but of course this was impossible in Polynesia. Not only were dinners and entertainments held in the home, but even all clothes and household articles had to be manufactured by members of the family. It was therefore necessary for chiefs to have more than one wife for economic and practical reasons.

3. Social and political advantages. As new and important political alliances had continually to be concluded and social connections established, and these objects were best attained by marriage, the chiefs found it only natural to remarry now and again. In order not to lose the advantages secured by a previous marriage they all kept their previous wives. This coldly calculating attitude of mind may seem to us unattractive, but it implied nothing specially derogatory to the additional wives, for the first wife was generally chosen on the same principle.

As sex was subordinated to practical considerations the chiefs often chose sisters or relatives of their first wife as additional wives, and this testifies to their psychological insight, for there were considerably greater chances of all parties pulling together evenly if the new wife had the same outlook and habits as the first. Further, a man had generally had sexual intercourse, with his wife's sister even before marriage, so that it made no difference worth mentioning if she moved into her brother-in-law's household.

But it was even commoner for a chief to marry two sisters at the same time, and Aginsky has explained why. 'When the woman marries into another group, she very often takes with her a younger sister so that if she becomes ill, sterile, or dies, the sister will be with her to take her place. Her sister, having lived with her and the children, is familiar with the conditions and takes over the rights and duties with little friction.... Thus, a satisfactory condition prevails where the family of the female perpetuates its rights, as does the family of the male, and the male is not bothered with looking for another female to take care of him and his children' (2, P. 2o8).

Nor, when analysing the causes of polygamy, must we forget that a chief was often compelled to increase his family by adding to it a new wife, since, as I pointed out earlier, a man was as a rule considered to be bound to marry the wife of a deceased brother. It sometimes happened, too, that a chief was presented with a slave woman by a neighbouring chief; in such cases she was regarded as an additional wife, but had an infinitely lower position than the other wives (supposing that they consented to receive her into the household).

A most unusual and grossly materialistic method of forcing new wives on a chief existed in Samoa, according to Turner. 'The marriage ceremony,' he writes, 'being such a prolific source of festivities and profit to the chief and his friends, the latter, whether he was disposed to do it or not, often urged on another and another repetition.... They took the thing almost entirely into their own hands, looked for a match in a rich family, and if that family was agreeable to it, the affair was pushed on, whether or not the daughter was disposed to it'. In this way a chief could be forced to remarry a dozen times in the course of his life. Luckily for him the wives disappeared as rapidly as they had appeared.

Mistake number two: in a polygamous marriage the women are the husband's slaves.

Polynesian chiefs' wives undeniably occupied quite a subordinate position, but this was not because they lived in polygamy, but because Polynesian society as a whole was a man's society. This is clearly shown by the fact that the other chiefs' wives, who did not share their husbands with any other woman, also occupied a subordinate position. For that matter, we need only draw a comparison with conditions in Europe, where in a number of countries the women are treated like children, while in others they have almost complete equality with men, although there is monogamy everywhere - to see that there is not necessarily any connection between the form of marriage and women's rights.

Instead of their freedom being reduced, it seems that the wives in a polygynous marriage were rather better placed than the women who had sole rights to their husbands. One obvious advantage was that the burden of work was divided and was therefore lighter for each wife; but their number was of use to them in another way also. By giving each other mutual support the wives could often get their way, and one may be sure that even the most powerful chiefs sometimes had to acquiesce in the decisions of the family majority.

Most wives, too, were glad to have a substitute within the family during a pregnancy - when sexual intercourse was avoided - as the risk of the husband being thus unfaithful with other women was thus considerably diminished. Moreover, there is every reason to suppose that a chief tried to behave himself when he knew that after every false step he had to pacify not only one, but perhaps as many as half a dozen angry wives with rolling pins, or rather stone mortars, raised to strike.

Again, for a woman who was really attached to her husband it must have been pleasant to feel that she need not be abandoned in her critical middle-age, if her husband should have a relapse into youthful sentiment and want to marry again with some little teenager. Instead of making scenes and getting a divorce she could propose to the husband that he should marry his latest flame as well. Although we have only scanty informationn as to the result of such experiments, I am convinced that they must have been excellent correctives for the husband.

A feature which may not seem so attractive from the Western point of view, but which was important to the Polynesians, was that polygamy made it possible for several women to be married to an especially high-born sought-after chief. All the indications are that most women of noble birth preferred to marry a chief of high position, even if he had several wives already, than a nobleman of lower rank who was a bachelor.

The many stories of wives who themselves, for one reason or another, proposed to their husbands that they should take another wife, afford another eloquent proof that a Polynesian woman saw nothing humiliating and irrational in living in polygamy. Handy says of conditions in Hawaii: 'A wife might say to her husband, "I love my cousin so much that I do not want her to go away, so you take her for your wife", and to the cousin she might say, "Eia no ka kaua kane", or "Let him be our husband". The children of one were the children of the others' (4.8, P. 276).

Mistake number three: Jealousy and quarrels were the order of the day in all polygamous marriages.

'There was once a chief who admired a famous beauty and decided to pay court to her. When his wives heard this they advised him to make a careful toilet, as he had many rivals, and worked a new girdle and plaited a sweet-scented wreath of flowers for him. . . .' So begins an old Tongan story, and as might be expected the chief finally won the fair lady's hand. A magnificent wedding took place, after which he and all the other wives lived happily and cheerfully together, till death parted them.

Even if the old stories, as their way is, exaggerate a little, there is no doubt that jealousy among the different wives in the polygynous marriages was very rare. The prevalence of jealousy among us is obviously due to the exclusive sexual monopoly owned by two married persons. There was no such exclusiveness in Polynesia, as all married people had connections with certain definite persons such as brothersin-law, sisters-in-law, sworn brothers, sworn brothers' wives, etc. A woman, therefore, was already accustomed to her husband having sexual intercourse with other women, and as she did not demand of her husband absolute fidelity outside the home, there was no reason for her to demand it in the home. The absence of sexual jealousy in the Polynesian polygamous marriages is thus only a logical consequence of the general view of sex life.

There was often, however, a kind of socially determined jealousy. A woman might be bitterly envious if her husband took a wife of higher rank, as this diminished her own power and prestige in the household, and her children lost their privileges. On the other hand, it was a downright insult if the new wife was of too low birth. A New Zealand authority on the Maori tribes tells of a chief who one day married a slave girl despite the protests of the wife he already had. Next day wife number one, who was of noble birth, took wife number two on a fishing expedition, and when she returned she was alone. Her husband was not slow to understand the delicate hint, and took care in future not to bring home any more slave girls.

Although jealousy was rare, this did not mean that all the problems of co-existence were disposed of. Quarrels and disturbances were naturally bound to occur in families where there were so many possible causes of friction as in a big Polynesian family. To remove, or at least reduce, controversy between the different wives the Polynesians had made a number of cunning arrangements, of which the four following are worthy of mention:

1. The wives were placed in order of rank.

2. Work was divided between them.

3. They had separate houses or sleeping places.

4. The husband visited them in turn.

The benefits of this arrangement are easily seen. The wives being placed in order of rank, and this, according to Polynesian ideas, depending on birth, each wife's position was fixed once for all. The struggle for power which would certainly have raged if all the wives had been in a position of complete equality from the beginning was thus avoided. The wife of highest rank directed the work of the household and passed on the husband's orders, which were obeyed as a matter of course. But the custom which best shows how profoundly the Polynesians understood the special problems created by polygamy was that of giving each wife a house, or at least a sleeping place, of her own, where the husband regularly spent so many nights with her according to a programme drawn up in advance.

The chief reason for the failure of the Mormons' celebrated attempt at polygamy during the latter half of the nineteenth century appears to have been that they entirely overlooked the practical and psychological difficulties. A recently published study of the Mormon marriages in America shows that all four of the Polynesian precautionary measures enumerated above had been neglected. In the Mormon marriages the husbands crowded all their wives together in a dwelling which most often was too small, exhorted them to regard one another as sisters, did not allot each wife any special work, and finally committed the sin, unforgivable in polygamy, of having a special favourite. If the Mormons had studied beforehand the conditions in any of the many Indian tribes round about them which practised polygamy, their experiment would certainly have been a good deal more successful.

As in so many other respects, the Marquesas Islands occupied a special position in regard to family conditions. While everywhere else in Polynesia the preferred form of polygamy, was polygyny, the Marquesans were markedly addicted to polyandry. The exception is all the more remarkable seeing that polyandry is an extremely rare form of marriage in other continents also, whereas about 80 per cent of the peoples of the world allow polygynous marriage.

M. K. Opler, who has made a critical study of all alleged cases of polyandry, sums up by saying that polyandry has been reported to be the general form of marriage among two peoples only, the Toda tribe and the Marquesans. And as regards the Toras it is, according to Rivers, doubtful whether the cases in which the husbands were not brothers can be regarded as polyandry at all.

This account certainly presents a very different picture to the previous quotes and, while still lacking the vital component of recognition of the Creator God, Yahweh and His Son Jesus Christ and without the Holy Scriptures to guide them we see a form of life which is in many respects more readily recognizable as being scriptural than is the case in many instances of enforced monogamous marriages in Western Society.

1 Timothy 4:1-3 states:

1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons,

2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron,

3 forbidding to marry ..... (NKJ)

This book provides a comprehensive scriptural analysis of what the Word of God really says about marriage, divorce, adultery and related subjects. It takes particular account of 1 Corinthians 6:9 and other scriptures which clearly indicate that adulterers will not inherit the kingdom of God and offers a comprehensive scriptural analysis of the scriptural definition of fornication, adultery, marriage and divorce. The book clearly shows that the act of sexual intercourse with a virgin IS the ACT of marriage and that the marriage covenant is cut in the virgin flesh (hymen) of the woman.

In 1 Samuel 13:14, Samuel, speaking to Saul, declares David to be a man after The Lord's "own heart". In 1 Samuel 25:42-44 we see that subsequent to this David took two wives in addition to the wife that he already had. In 2 Samuel 5:13, we see that David took further wives. Yet in 2 Samuel 12:7-8, after God sent Nathan the prophet to David to rebuke David for his adultery with Bathsheba we see that God says that HE gave David Saul's wives. In 1 Kings 15:5 we read that AFTER David's death, scripture STILL say's that David had done right in the sight of God. In fact, we find at least fourteen (14) instances in the books of Kings and Chronicles where we are told subsequent to his death that David "did right in the eyes of The Lord all the days of his life".

Subsequently, about one thousand years after David's death, God, speaking through Paul, reported in Acts 13:21-23, confirms that David was a "man after The Lord's own heart" and from David's seed God raised up for Israel a Saviour (Jesus):

22 "... 'I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My own heart, who will do all My will.'

23 "From this man's seed, according to the promise, God raised up for Israel a Saviour-- Jesus-- (NKJ)

Here we see that despite his approximately eleven wives and ten concubines and despite a number of errors of which David was quick to repent, God referred to David as "a man after His own heart" about one thousand years after David's death! Surely it is utter foolishness to suggest that David was an adulterer for having more than one wife, as some have done? This book presents a comprehensive analysis of scripture to demonstrate that it is indeed GOD'S OWN HEART that a man should have more than one wife! It also demonstrates that Isaiah 4:1 indeed applies to this age:

1 And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, "We will eat our own food and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by your name, to take away our reproach." (NKJ)

Finally, from a variety of secular references the book provides some clues as to how the heresy of enforced monogamy came into existence in the Christian church and why this heresy is such an important part of Satan's plan to prevent the return of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

This is a challenging book which requires the reader to set aside all preconceived ideas and put THE WORD OF GOD FIRST.

If you are truly committed to serving The Lord your God with ALL your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength (Mark 12:30), this is a book you cannot afford not to read.

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