This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.
Close Relations
The taboo against the marrying of close family relations is one of the most widespread taboos in the world, across all major cultural groups [1]. This is remarkable given the dramatic variance between cultures on a host of other taboos and norms. Our taboo, in the West, has for many hundreds of years been ingrained to the point where, in most places and for the vast majority of people, incestuous relationships are quite unthinkable. Our visceral reaction makes it all the more interesting that our reason stems from the Bible, Leviticus 18:6, specifically, because this is so long after Adam and Eve, up to 2500 years later. There are hints that incest taboo was well-established as cultural norm before it was codified [2]. We are given a moral problem, nevertheless, when it comes to Adam and Eve, and who their children married, since they lived before any cultural norms had time to rise.
No one is to approach any close relative to have sexual relations. I am the Lord. -Leviticus 18:6
We can logically derive that Adam and Eve’s children would have married each other and this is generally accepted by most who accept a plain reading of scripture [3]. The taboo, then, can not precisely be said to be a moral question except in the post-Levitical sense of Love God, that is, following God’s commands. But, put the other way around, since we are not under the Old Covenant Law, but the New Covenant law, we are not under the Levitical law and that means we are not under the law prohibiting close relations. Instead, we are given a far more demanding law. We don’t get a prescription, we get a description: Loving your neighbour as you love yourself.
So, we’re saying marriage of close relations is allowed? Well, it depends, doesn’t it? Clearly, Adam and Eve, and dozens of generations that followed, who married family, were not held to the Levitical moral standard. Just as the command in the Garden to ‘be fruitful and multiply’ gave Adam and Eve the mission to have children, they were given circumstances in which this could be fulfilled without sin. Over time, and taking the Fall and Curse into account, cultures may have begun to see the effects of sin on creation, including generational physical defects of children of close marriage, and begun to curtail close family marriages. There would have also been social, political, economic, and other incentives and pressures to avoid close family marriages. Marriages outside the family, for example, may have been preferable to receive dowries or to strengthen alliances. Common sense may have also played a role as male competition can rise to violence when only a few males hoard most females.
We have many ways to look at how we can best love our neighbour by following even laws that we are accountable for. That means that, just like with Adam and Eve, and the generations until Leviticus, there may be circumstances where the truly loving thing might be close family marriages. It must be understood that the exception is the exception for good reason and therefore is rightly kept to exceptional circumstances.
There is a tale by J.R.R. Tolkien, called The Children of Húrin [4], where, long story short, a long-estranged man comes back to certain village, falls in love with a woman, both eventually find out they were siblings many years prior, and both take their own lives in visceral horror of the realization. This story never landed, with me, with the weight and pathos that I suspect Tolkien wanted to evoke from his readers. The reason was because I had long been exposed to biblical questions, regarding who Adam and Eve’s children married, that have only recently gained a wider audience with Biblical Creation apologetics and the mass communication of the internet.
I bring up the anecdote of Tolkien’s story because it neatly demonstrates one particular circumstance in which the Levitical law stands at odds with the New Covenant law. In Tolkien’s world, adopting mid-20th century Judeo-Christian sentiments, the children of Húrin hold cultural norms and taboos which make their marriage repulsive and horrifying to them, once they become aware of the truth. If New Covenant law were the dominant cultural setting, however, an innocent situation like this would not be seen an an end-of-the-world situation and more grace and mercy would be shown, knowing that our ancestors did the same thing and were not in sin.
We know from the Bible, God’s command, and from Creation itself, that close family relations are, for good reason, not to be the norm. We also know, though, that we are not under the Old Covenant Law that creates devastating consequences even for exceptional needs or accidental circumstances people may find themselves in. Now we get nearer the truth that sets us free from Old Covenant Law:
But in fact the ministry Jesus has received is as superior to theirs as the covenant of which he is mediator is superior to the old one, since the new covenant is established on better promises.
For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people…
By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear.
-Hebrews 8:6-8a,13
The principles of the New Covenant that Jesus gave us, the Greatest Command, Love God and Neighbour. This is the Greatest Law that helps us reconcile the the chaos of the complexity of life. Without this grace in Christ, we would face soul-crushing choices, as illustrated in our stories and myths, but, more, we would remain in ignorance to the true nature of God’s plan for morality in the Garden. It was also supposed to be a Creation of Love God and Neighbour. On the cross, we see Christ redeeming moral Creation.
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. -John 8:31
Footnotes
- Incest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest
- Code of Hammurabi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
- Who was Cain’s wife: https://www.gotquestions.org/Cains-wife.html
- The Children of Húrin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_H%C3%BArin
- Biblical narrative timeline: https://biblehub.com/timeline/
This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.