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username: Communication

Communication

Communication

Member
Male
Hi, I looked at this website and really don't know what to think. The world just seems upside down right about now. A lot of people and institutions I had once held in such high regard that I put a lot of trust in them have not demonstrated the substance that I thought they would. I wondered about the roles which are not, in my opinion, being filled as much as they should be. I wondered at my own insignificance in this world of powerful politicians and scientists. The place I wanted to start personally was my role as a father and husband, since those are the two roles I can think of in this world where I am not insignificant.
I am confused by the ambiguity I find in scripture. I thought it would be useful to look at topics which seemed ambiguous to me, and one topic that seems to be ambiguous is polygamy (M=1, F>=1). I also asked my wife to interact with the group in some way, so I can talk about this with her in a way that she is prepared to say something I can value.
Another thing I think is ambiguous is, if we were able to create a pig-hybrid that tasted like pork, but chewed its cud, would it be following the OT dietary rules to kill this animal, take its raw meat and pickle it in such a way as to resemble proscuitto, and then consume it? So my real question is Why does there seem to be a divine quality that is analogous to "sense of humor"? Most of you seem like really good fellows, and I appreciate that you are earnest but also lighthearted when appropriate. I hope you think I'm funny.
 
Welcome. Ask away! I'm sure plenty of people exist here who can help you dissolve your sense of Scripture being ambiguous.
 
also, I am a little suspicious of sharing too much info online, but I am in the NorthEastern USA megopolis that has greatly benefitted from the extreme financialization of the economy
 
Keith Martin said:
Welcome. Ask away! I'm sure plenty of people exist here who can help you dissolve your sense of Scripture being ambiguous.
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was Miriam critical of Moses because he married a woman who was very racially different from him, or because he apparently was married to a daughter of a priest of Midian already? also maybe he wasn't married when he married the Cushite.
 
Miriam was an older sister who had saved his life when he was an infant.
Who can know what jealousies may have been working in her life?

Welcome to our little community, by the way.
 
Communication said:
was Miriam critical of Moses because he married a woman who was very racially different from him, or because he apparently was married to a daughter of a priest of Midian already? also maybe he wasn't married when he married the Cushite.
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According to Josephus, Moses led the Egyptian army in a war against Ethiopia, before he fled Egypt. The Ethiopian wife was a princess whom he married as part of a peace treaty that ended that war. Assuming Josephus is right, that means he married her before he married his Midianite wife - she may have been his first wife. We are not told what this Ethiopian wife was doing in the years Moses was in Midian. But it means Miriam's objection cannot have been polygamy, because if that was her problem she'd have complained about his Midianite wife.

I assume it was because Moses had delivered God's instructions about not taking foreign wives from the Canaanites, and Miriam misunderstood what God meant and thought Moses was being a hypocrite having an obviously foreign wife. Or she was just a racist, or had a personal issue with that woman. Either way it's not about polygamy because she's complaining about the wrong wife.
 
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steve said:
Miriam was an older sister who had saved his life when he was an infant.
Who can know what jealousies may have been working in her life?

Welcome to our little community, by the way.
Click to expand...
thank you.
My current thought is that based on God's sharp response to Miriam and Aaron, their criticism of Moses was more based on racism. I don't know, but I could see a sharper rebuke given to someone who was racist rather than someone who thought polygamy was wrong. But that might not even be the point, the point might just be that they were out of line to be critical of Moses at all. After all, we shouldn't be critical of our leaders!
 
FollowingHim said:
According to Josephus, Moses led the Egyptian army in a war against Ethiopia, before he fled Egypt. Either way it's not about polygamy because she's complaining about the wrong wife.
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I think I confused the order, then, I thought he married the priests daughter first, maybe even like 40 years before the princess.
 
In scripture we hear about the priest's daughter first, and only hear about the Ethiopian later on when Miriam complains. Scripture doesn't tell us when he married the Ethiopian. The only source for that is Josephus, and he is very clear that this was before Moses fled Egypt the first time.
 
Communication said:
was Miriam critical of Moses because he married a woman who was very racially different from him, or because he apparently was married to a daughter of a priest of Midian already? also maybe he wasn't married when he married the Cushite.
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How about a couple ground rules for this kind of discussion, unless you just want to start a separate thread on the ambiguity of the names and statuses of every wife of every patriarch.

Ground Rule 1: assume that Scripture, at least in its original manuscripts, is the inerrant Word of God.

Ground Rule 2: when asking about an ambiguity, establish first the specific potential importance of the ambiguous matter.

Ground Rule 3: when asking about an ambiguity, articulate what pressing issue removing the ambiguity will clarify.

Ground Rule 4: when attempting to make something less ambiguous, it is counterproductive to add hypotheticals to Scripture.

For example, in re: Mose's wives: what difference does it make what the answers to your questions are. If we just start speculating, then why don't we start asking which wife liked oatmeal more than manna?
 
Communication said:
was Miriam critical of Moses because he married a woman who was very racially different from him, or because he apparently was married to a daughter of a priest of Midian already? also maybe he wasn't married when he married the Cushite.
Click to expand...

I think the issue for Miriam was racial/cultural, not the polygamy aspect.

It does seem fairly certain that Moses had two wives at the same time. The human author of God's Law seemed to understand that polygyny is lawful (as did Abraham, Jacob, Gideon, Josiah, David, Solomon, Jehoida, and many other key Biblical leaders, including the apostle Paul).:eek:
 
Keith Martin said:
Ground Rule 1: assume that Scripture, at least in its original manuscripts, is the inerrant Word of God.
Click to expand...
you lost me at "original manuscripts" but I'll try to be game:
R1: God does not err. To err is human, and we err in perception, reason, and even sometimes the perception of a revelation. RULE 1 APPROVED.
R2: The ambiguity that bothers me the most is that when Jesus gives his teaching about marriage, he glorifies the Adam/Eve archetype, and seems to specifically repudiate the variations Moses introduces to address hard-heartedness. RULE 2 APPROVED
R3: This is not a pressing issue for me, and I would not claim it is a pressing issue for the church. RULE 3... DISAPPROVED
R4: hypotheticals can restrict a concept to a certain domain, and if the ambiguity is due to a concept being overgeneralized, the ambiguity can at least be resolved for a subset of the domain. RULE 4 ALSO DISAPPROVED
 
Shalom and welcome, @Communication, we'll gladly entertain some probing questions...

@FollowingHim , great angle considering Miriam may have been upset due to Moshe's instruction not to marry Cannanite women. I had never thought about that as a possible solution. I'll have to ponder.

@Communication , can said hybrid pig bear after it's own kind? If it can't, as is common for hybrids, I suspect it may not qualify as food on other grounds.
 
FollowingHim said:
and thought Moses was being a hypocrite having an obviously foreign wife.
Click to expand...
Thanks for your consideration. I agree with PeteR that this is an interesting angle. Aaron and Miriam seem to be in agreement in their criticism of Moses. It does seem strange that if we assume Moses wrote the words against doing something, and then he did that thing, and then Aaron & Miriam point that out.
What then follows with God is very different from God saying "excellent points, Aaron and Miriam, I now explicitly note that Moses himself was not subject to these rules."
And is the punishment which is specifically given to Miriam a metaphor for some sort of spiritual uncleanness or rotting?
 
Communication said:
What then follows with God is very different from God saying "excellent points, Aaron and Miriam, I now explicitly note that Moses himself was not subject to these rules."
Click to expand...
One major point is that Miriam and Aaron are violating Gid's authority structure in a brazen way... they are questioning God by questioning His Representative. This may be the greater underlying offense. And, it may explain why Miriam received the harsher judgment where Aaron, in respectful private conversation may have been able to say the same, she crossed multiple boundaries to criticize Moshe.

Also, odd justice, IF (big 'if' since I don't subscribe to this line of explanation) Miriam's issue was racial, she went from brown to lily white!
 
Communication said:
Hi, I looked at this website and really don't know what to think. The world just seems upside down right about now. A lot of people and institutions I had once held in such high regard that I put a lot of trust in them have not demonstrated the substance that I thought they would. I wondered about the roles which are not, in my opinion, being filled as much as they should be. I wondered at my own insignificance in this world of powerful politicians and scientists. The place I wanted to start personally was my role as a father and husband, since those are the two roles I can think of in this world where I am not insignificant.
I am confused by the ambiguity I find in scripture. I thought it would be useful to look at topics which seemed ambiguous to me, and one topic that seems to be ambiguous is polygamy (M=1, F>=1). I also asked my wife to interact with the group in some way, so I can talk about this with her in a way that she is prepared to say something I can value.
Another thing I think is ambiguous is, if we were able to create a pig-hybrid that tasted like pork, but chewed its cud, would it be following the OT dietary rules to kill this animal, take its raw meat and pickle it in such a way as to resemble proscuitto, and then consume it? So my real question is Why does there seem to be a divine quality that is analogous to "sense of humor"? Most of you seem like really good fellows, and I appreciate that you are earnest but also lighthearted when appropriate. I hope you think I'm funny.
Click to expand...
Greetings and welcome to this little corner of the internet where we are free to raise questions and discuss issues that got many of us kicked out of church groups for these very same things. Hope you find lots to discuss with your wife/wives and all grow together in your relationships with one another and with Almighty God. Shalom
 
Communication said:
It does seem strange that if we assume Moses wrote the words against doing something, and then he did that thing, and then Aaron & Miriam point that out.
What then follows with God is very different from God saying "excellent points, Aaron and Miriam, I now explicitly note that Moses himself was not subject to these rules."
Click to expand...
God's instructions never say not to marry Ethiopians. They are only told not to marry Canaanites whom they have been specifically instructed to kill instead. God was not telling them not to marry any foreigners, and was not making any exception for Moses - whether future or in retrospect. His marriages, both of the ones we know of (neither of which were to Israelites) were completely out of scope.
 
FollowingHim said:
God's instructions never say not to marry Ethiopians. They are only told not to marry Canaanites whom they have been specifically instructed to kill instead. God was not telling them not to marry any foreigners, and was not making any exception for Moses - whether future or in retrospect. His marriages, both of the ones we know of (neither of which were to Israelites) were completely out of scope.
Click to expand...
Thank you for that gentle correction. It reminds me of how Adam was instructed to not eat of a specific fruit, but somehow in the interpretation and repetition of that rule, the prohibition on eating becomes: [Eve to the serpent] ...and you must not touch it..."
In the same way, I expanded Gen 34 from a list of foreigners (who you point out may be additionally described as hostile foreigners) to the category of all foreigners. But if God prohibits something for our holiness, maybe we can be even more holy when we prohibit even more? I wonder if the answer to that question is Always Yes, Always No, or Sometimes Yes/Sometimes No.

also, @frederick, thanks for the welcome. Before posting here, I was just reading and found many of your comments to be laid out in such a way that the thought processes seemed thorough, but succinct enough to be readily digested.
 
Communication said:
you lost me at "original manuscripts" but I'll try to be game:
R1: God does not err. To err is human, and we err in perception, reason, and even sometimes the perception of a revelation. RULE 1 APPROVED.
R2: The ambiguity that bothers me the most is that when Jesus gives his teaching about marriage, he glorifies the Adam/Eve archetype, and seems to specifically repudiate the variations Moses introduces to address hard-heartedness. RULE 2 APPROVED
R3: This is not a pressing issue for me, and I would not claim it is a pressing issue for the church. RULE 3... DISAPPROVED
R4: hypotheticals can restrict a concept to a certain domain, and if the ambiguity is due to a concept being overgeneralized, the ambiguity can at least be resolved for a subset of the domain. RULE 4 ALSO DISAPPROVED
Click to expand...

Attempt two at replying to this: actually, my first reaction was to laugh along with what I assume was your own lighthearted response.

I see you didn't like my suggestions, so I just have two questions: when you refer to Moses introducing variations to address hard-heartedness,
  1. Do you make a distinction between The Word of God and the words recorded therein written by Moses?
  2. Could you please point me to the scriptures that demonstrate that Moses's purpose in addressing marital variations was done to address hard-heartedness. I hear this a lot in anti-polygamy arguments, but I'm unfamiliar with the location of the evidence that YHWH's Word asserts such a sentiment.
Thanks.
 
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