The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy? — John Shaqi
The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?Newman, John Philip
Religion
The Bible and Polygamy: Does the Bible Sanction Polygamy?
Newman, John Philip
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Latter Day Saint churches -- Doctrines; Polygamy -- Religious aspects
Then he yields the point! I respectfully ask him, if this is his
position, why does he attempt, in all his writings, and to establish it
in that clever book the Seer? Why did he, in his controversy with me in
the New York Herald? Why has he from this stand attempted to prove that
the practice of polygamy was right from the Bible? Why not, like a man,
come out and say that we practise this system here, not because the
Jews did it; not because the Divine law sanctioned it years ago; but
because a certain man of the name of Smith received a revelation that
this form of marriage was to be practised? You, my friends, can see the
logical conclusion, or in other words the illogical bearing.
Now, I come to the assumptions by the gentleman. First, that there is
no law condemning or forbidding polygamy. Has he proved that? Second,
that the Hebrew nation, as it was in the wilderness, when the Mosaic
code was given, was polygamous. Has he proved that? Can he find in
the whole history of the Jewish nation, from the time they left Egypt
to the time they entered the land of Canaan, can he find more than
one instance of polygamy? Perhaps he may find two. I will be glad to
receive that information, for I am a man seeking light, and to-day
I throw down a challenge to your eminent defender of the faith, to
produce more than two instances of polygamy, from the time the Jews
left the land of Egypt to the time they entered Canaan. I will assist
him in his research and tell him one, and that was Caleb. Now supposing
that a murder should be committed in your city, would it be fair for
Eastern papers to say that the Mormons are a murderous people? No,
I would rise up in defence of you; I would say that that is a crime
and an injury to the people here! Yet, during a period of forty years
we find one man out of two millions and a half of people practising
polygamy, and my friend comes forward and assumes that the Israelites
were polygamists.
Third, that these laws were given to regulate among them an institution
already existing. Has he proved that? Supposing he could prove that
Moses attempted, or did legislate for the regulation of polygamy, as
it did exist in Egypt and elsewhere, would such legislation establish
a sanction? Why in Paris they have laws regulating the social evil;
is that an approval of the social evil? There are laws in most of the
States regulating and controling intemperance. Do excise laws sanction
intemperance? Nothing of the kind. For argument's sake I would be
willing to concede that Moses did legislate in regard to polygamy,
that is to regulate it, to confine its evils; and yet my friend is too
much of a legislator to stand here and assert that laws regulating and
defining were an approval of a system.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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