Notre Dame professor Dr. Candida Moss says Jesus “wasn’t down with marriage.”

r. Can­di­da Moss—who is still per­mit­ted to teach at Notre Dame, to no one’s great sur­prise, least of all mine—is all wrought up over the LDS “half-heart­ed shuf­fle toward LGBT equal­i­ty.” (I think she left out Q and A.) Dr. Moss prefers the mad dash over the cliff: When she says “LGBT equal­i­ty,” what she means is “mar­riage equal­i­ty,” in spite of the fact that no one, not even Dr. Moss, believes in any such thing. Would she advo­cate mar­ry­ing your dog? a three-year-old child? the exhumed body of King Tut? So let us get this myth of “mar­riage equal­i­ty” out of our heads from the start. To define mar­riage is to lim­it it, and the real goal is not mar­riage “equal­i­ty” but mar­riage plas­tic­i­ty. I have said all this before.

So why does Dr. Moss think that the Mor­mon church has tak­en only a “half-heart­ed shuf­fle”? Let’s take a look. All this is out of her arti­cle yes­ter­day in the Dai­ly Screech:

In a rare press con­fer­ence in Salt Lake City on Tues­day, LDS lead­ers announced that they would endorse [“equal­i­ty”] leg­is­la­tion on the con­di­tion that it also pro­tect­ed the rights of reli­gious groups.

Oh, I see. So want­i­ng reli­gious groups to be pro­tect­ed counts as “half-heart­ed”; I think I see where Dr. Moss is com­ing from in all this. She cites three bills still pend­ing before the Okla­homa leg­is­la­ture, which in her view show that “the cul­ture wars are not over.” (Because those who are opposed to the destruc­tion of mar­riage via plas­tic def­i­n­i­tion should just shut up and go away. Rights for reli­gious groups? foh!) But, says Dr. Moss, there is hope:

[T]his last gasp of the reli­gious right’s cam­paign against same-sex mar­riage depends on an under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes “tra­di­tion” that is, in fact—[Here’s her key point.]—not par­tic­u­lar­ly tra­di­tion­al.

The Yale-edu­cat­ed Dr. Moss seems not to have a very orig­i­nal, his­tor­i­cal, or care­ful mind. Such claims—that the so-called “reli­gious right” is tak­ing its “last gasp”—have been around for some time. Every gasp it has ever took, it seems, has been its last one; it nev­er took a first one. “Last gasp” is a par­tic­u­lar­ly crude and reflex­ive cliché, used by those who want to dis­miss an idea with­out actu­al­ly engag­ing or refut­ing it. And for Dr. Moss to lump all oppo­nents of same-sex “mar­riage” into the “reli­gious right” only shows that she has­n’t giv­en much thought to the wide vari­ety of peo­ple who oppose same-sex “mar­riage.” They are not all from the “reli­gious right.” Dr. Moss uses that expres­sion only as a label and a cud­gel, with­out ref­er­ence to any actu­al mean­ing it might have.

But her real point, in all this, is to chal­lenge oppo­nents of same-sex “mar­riage” by claim­ing, once more, that the tra­di­tion­al def­i­n­i­tion is not bib­li­cal. Now, that is not at all orig­i­nal on the part of the Notre Dame pro­fes­sor with the Yale degree—it is part of the com­mon coin of anti-Chris­t­ian propaganda—but let us go through what she says nonethe­less. It is well to show why the claim is false.

•••

Dr. Moss writes: “In the Old Tes­ta­ment, mar­riage is quite clear­ly defined as a rela­tion­ship between a man and a woman, a man and sev­er­al women, a man and his fer­tile slave girl, and a man and his rape vic­tim.”

So see! you can define mar­riage how­ev­er you want to. One man and one woman is just not bib­li­cal! That is what we are meant to con­clude. Well, you would think that Dr. Moss—remember, her degree is from Yale; she teach­es at Notre Dame: remem­ber that—would be able to cite some schol­ar­ly source, some work of crit­i­cal exe­ge­sis, some inter­ac­tion with the rel­e­vant bib­li­cal texts, to back this up. Right?

But no. She cites this arti­cle, also in the Dai­ly Screech! The arti­cle was writ­ten by Dr. Joel Baden; he is a pro­fes­sor of Old Tes­ta­ment at Yale Divin­i­ty School. Dr. Baden, cas­ti­gat­ing “the prophet San­to­rum” (is that not just how we would expect a Yale pro­fes­sor to write?), claims that polygamy is the Bible’s “ulti­mate fam­i­ly val­ue.” Oh. Well, sure­ly he cites a bib­li­cal text, right? The arti­cle is cat­e­go­rized under “exe­ge­sis”; sure­ly there’s some exe­ge­sis in the arti­cle, right? Right?

But no. Dr. Baden does allude to some bib­li­cal texts, in the most casu­al and off­hand way (he does­n’t quote the exact text or give an actu­al cita­tion), but not once does he engage in any actu­al exe­ge­sis, or even the most super­fi­cial inter­ac­tion with the text.

So I am going to do what Dr. Moss and Dr. Baden fail to do: go to the actu­al text and see whether, any­where in the Old Tes­ta­ment, mar­riage is defined or lim­it­ed. I am going to look at those texts that peo­ple often cite to try to back up claims such as the ones these two very emi­nent the­olo­gians and bib­li­cal schol­ars make.

• Incest. Sarah was Abra­ham’s half-sis­ter (Gen. 20:12). Rebekah was Jacob’s first cousin (Gen. 29:12–14). Amram (Moses’ father) mar­ried his aunt Jochebed (Exod. 6:20).

Now, incest, accord­ing to Black­’s, is: “sex­u­al inter­course or cohab­i­ta­tion between a man and woman who are relat­ed to each oth­er with­in the degrees where­in mar­riage is pro­hib­it­ed by law.”

So what we find in these kind of exam­ples is not that mar­riage is some­how defined dif­fer­ent­ly, but that incest is defined dif­fer­ent­ly. These texts do not tell us what mar­riage is or is not, but what incest is or is not. Mar­riage is still a man and a woman, the only ques­tion is: may I mar­ry this woman?

But no one who brings any of this up ever cites Leviti­cus 18:6–18. In that text, the Mosa­ic law for­bids sex­u­al rela­tions with “any that is near of kin.” “Near of kin” here includes a par­ent, a sis­ter, a half-sis­ter (sor­ry, Abra­ham), a grand­child, an aunt or uncle, a daugh­ter-in-law or son-in-law, a sis­ter-in-law or broth­er-in-law, or a step-rela­tion.

Leviti­cus does not men­tion first cousins, sug­gest­ing an addi­tion to the def­i­n­i­tion of incest (not mar­riage) that came lat­er, although some states today do per­mit it.

So the Mosa­ic law con­strained what the patri­archs had done. What this tells us is that we should nev­er pick out an exam­ple of some­thing some­one did and claim there­by that God allows it.

• Polygamy. Lamech mar­ried both Adah and Zil­lah (Gen. 4:19). Jacob also had two wives, Leah and Rachel (Gen. 29). King David had mul­ti­ple wives (1 Sam. 25:43).

Now here again, we still find mar­riage between men and women, the only ques­tion being, in this case, how many? And once again, we find that the Mosa­ic law express­ly pro­hibits polygamy (Leviti­cus 18:18). Some trans­la­tions ren­der the text as though it were sim­ply a pro­hi­bi­tion against mar­ry­ing your wife’s sis­ter while your wife is still liv­ing. But the Hebrew word in ques­tion is אֲחֹתָ֖הּ, achotah, which sim­ply means “anoth­er,” so that the cor­rect trans­la­tion would be some­thing like: “Nei­ther shalt thou take anoth­er wife, to uncov­er her naked­ness, while your wife is still liv­ing.”

So if Jacob and Moses and David had mul­ti­ple wives (and Solomon too—see 1 Kings 11), we can hard­ly con­clude that God approved of such a prac­tice.

• Slave girls. The text that usu­al­ly gets cit­ed as a Mosa­ic sanc­tion of this is Exo­dus 21:7–11.

And if a man sell his daugh­ter to be a maid­ser­vant, she shall not go out as the menser­vants do. If she please not her mas­ter, who hath betrothed her to him­self, then shall he let her be redeemed: to sell her unto a strange nation he shall have no pow­er, see­ing he hath dealt deceit­ful­ly with her. And if he have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with her after the man­ner of daugh­ters. If he take him anoth­er wife; her food, her rai­ment, and her duty of mar­riage, shall he not dimin­ish. And if he do not these three unto her, then shall she go out free with­out mon­ey.

Now, this is a dif­fi­cult pas­sage, but the first impor­tant thing to remem­ber here is that, once more, this is not some dif­fer­ent under­stand­ing of mar­riage than one man and one woman. So for Dr. Moss to present in that con­text is mis­lead­ing. Where there is dif­fer­ence with the nor­mal prac­tice of mar­riage today, it involves dif­fer­ent cus­toms about (1) slav­ery; (2) how mar­riage is con­tract­ed. With that in mind, what is strik­ing about this pas­sage is not that “slave mar­riage” occurred, but instead how the prac­tice was reg­u­lat­ed by Mosa­ic law in order to pro­tect the woman:

• If his betrothed did not please her mas­ter, he was to return her to her father. He could not sell her off to some­one in a for­eign land and prof­it by it.
• If the mas­ter decid­ed she should be giv­en to his son instead, he was to not to take her simul­ta­ne­ous­ly for him­self. He must treat her as his own daugh­ter, not as his wife.
• If he mar­ries anoth­er wife, she (the “slave”) is not to lose any­thing that is right­ly hers under a mar­riage con­tract.
• If he does not pro­vide her with what she should have by right, she is to go free and return to her father.

So the most we can con­clude from this text is that the Mosa­ic law tol­er­at­ed a par­tic­u­lar prac­tice, but reg­u­lat­ed it so as to ensure the rights and just treat­ment of the woman in ques­tion. The entire text is about what her mas­ter must do for her, what rights he must assure her, and his duty to not “deal deceit­ful­ly with her.” The woman is to be pro­tect­ed, not mis­used. She has rights; he may not treat her as he wish­es.

• Rape mar­riage. In this case, the text most often cit­ed is Deut. 22:28–29.

If a man find a damsel that is a vir­gin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel’s father fifty shekels of sil­ver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath hum­bled her, he may not put her away all his days.

Of course, one can hard­ly find an approval of rape in this. It might be shock­ing to our sen­si­bil­i­ty to think that a woman would be mar­ried by her rapist. But there are three key points to be made here. The first is that the text clear­ly affirms that rape is vio­la­tion. The Hebrew word that the KJV trans­lates “hum­bled” is עִנָּ֔הּ, innah. It is best trans­lat­ed “vio­lat­ed.”

The sec­ond is that, since she is unbe­trothed, the woman remains under her father’s author­i­ty. Those who cite Deuteron­o­my must not fail to men­tion Exo­dus 22:16–17:

And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall sure­ly endow her to be his wife If her father utter­ly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay mon­ey accord­ing to the dowry of vir­gins.

The right par­al­lel to our own cul­ture, in which women make their own choice who to mar­ry, is that the woman is free not to mar­ry her rapist. Imag­ine if our courts, in addi­tion to what­ev­er oth­er pun­ish­ment they met­ed out to a rapist, required him to pay her a dowry, mar­riage or no mar­riage. That would be the par­al­lel Dr. Moss is look­ing for.

In fact—third point—the Mosa­ic law was designed to remove any incen­tive to rape by mak­ing a rapist finan­cial­ly oblig­at­ed to the woman. He is to pro­vide for her as he would a wife.

So once more, this text has noth­ing at all to do with a def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, but instead with a code gov­ern­ing the legal oblig­a­tions of a rapist toward his vic­tim.

Now, I can only guess that Dr. Moss has pas­sages like these in mind when she attempts to refer to the Old Tes­ta­ment def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage: for she does not cite a sin­gle text. If she has oth­er texts in mind, and they con­tra­dict what I have said, I hope she would men­tion them in some future arti­cle for the Screech. I had thought that that was the kind of thing that bib­li­cal schol­ars do, as a mat­ter of course. I don’t think there’s any­thing in her pub­lished works about this; her vita lists a lot of books and arti­cles about mar­tyr­dom and dis­abil­i­ty, but noth­ing about mar­riage in the Bible. Per­haps I’ve over­looked it. As for Dr. Baden, he has pub­lished a num­ber of works on the Doc­u­men­tary Hypoth­e­sis. But there is noth­ing about mar­riage from him either, unless you count his per­func­to­ry arti­cle in the Screech. Per­haps Yale needs to update its fac­ul­ty Web site, if that is not so.

•••

Next, Dr. Moss says that Jesus nev­er once spoke in favor of mar­riage. The claim is just aston­ish­ing. There is no oth­er way to put it. Dr. Moss does not men­tion Matt. 19:3–9, so there is no telling what she would make of it:

The Phar­isees also came unto him, tempt­ing him, and say­ing unto him, Is it law­ful for a man to put away his wife for every cause? And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the begin­ning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and moth­er, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Where­fore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What there­fore God hath joined togeth­er, let not man put asun­der. They say unto him, Why did Moses then com­mand to give a writ­ing of divorce­ment, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hard­ness of your hearts suf­fered you to put away your wives: but from the begin­ning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whoso­ev­er shall put away his wife, except it be for for­ni­ca­tion, and shall mar­ry anoth­er, com­mit­teth adul­tery: and whoso mar­ri­eth her which is put away doth com­mit adul­tery.

Here we have a clear twofold def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage: (1) It is between one man and one woman; (2) it is per­ma­nent. Can Christ, who said those things, and who told us that the join­ing togeth­er in mar­riage is the work of God, have been “not down” with it? He could have said, if he had want­ed, “I say there will be no more mar­riage.” But he did not say that; Dr. Moss seems to be con­fus­ing Christ with Ham­let.

So rather than deal with Matt. 19:3–9, or Mark 10:2–12, Dr. Moss decides to make the fol­low­ing bizarre claims:

• The Wed­ding Feast at Cana does not show that Jesus sup­port­ed mar­riage, only drunk­en­ness and par­ty­ing.

Well, I guess that makes a kind of sense, if you are inclined toward reduc­tio ad absur­dum. The Phar­isees also accused Jesus of being a glut­ton and a drunk. A less jad­ed way to read the pas­sage would be to say that, in Christ’s view, mar­riage is such a high good that a wed­ding is an occa­sion of cel­e­bra­tion and joy.

• Mar­riage no longer exists in heav­en (Matt. 22:30), so Jesus could not have thought all that much of it.

Dr. Moss does not seem to con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that mar­riage does not exist in heav­en because the rea­sons God made it do not apply there. God made it for the pro­cre­ation and care of chil­dren, and also for the union between man and woman. These are only fig­ures of the ulti­mate union between redeemed human­i­ty and God.

But Dr. Moss also does not men­tion that Christ will return for His bride the Church. His Sec­ond Com­ing cul­mi­nates in the wed­ding feast of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7–10). It hard­ly seems accu­rate to say that Christ is “not down with mar­riage” if sal­va­tion his­to­ry ends with a wed­ding feast in which Christ him­self is the bride­groom.

• In Mark 10:29–30, Jesus promis­es hun­dred­fold rewards to those who have left fam­i­ly “for my sake and the gospel’s.”

It is a dubi­ous pas­sage to cite, since the point Jesus is mak­ing here is that God (He is God) and the gospel are pre-emi­nent above all oth­er things and all oth­er bonds of oblig­a­tion. That is not a rejec­tion of mar­riage, only a state­ment that Christ’s claims on us are high­er than any oth­er.

• Jesus was a “home-wreck­er” because some of his dis­ci­ples were mar­ried and yet left their wives for a “three-year fish­ing trip.”

Well, this was­n’t a “fish­ing trip,” Dr. Moss; that’s just an absurd and igno­rant and patron­iz­ing thing to say. But is the U.S gov­ern­ment a home-wreck­er because it can call men away from their fam­i­lies for mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion? Per­haps you might say that a mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion is an extra­or­di­nary event. Just so. It’s also an extra­or­di­nary event when God comes to earth to redeem us from our sins. I’d say that’s an even more extra­or­di­nary event than a mil­i­tary con­scrip­tion, since con­scrip­tions hap­pen many times but the Incar­na­tion hap­pened once. Jesus is not a home-wreck­er, Dr. Moss; He’s God.

• St. Paul says that he prefers celiba­cy, but that it is bet­ter to mar­ry than suf­fer the flames of Hell due to an inabil­i­ty to remain celi­bate (1 Cor. 7:8–9).

What Dr. Moss fails to men­tion here is that St. Paul—by his own admission—is only telling us his pref­er­ence. This is not (1 Cor. 7:6) a com­mand­ment. In oth­er words, Paul admits to a flaw in his own think­ing on the point. It is indeed bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn, but it is not bet­ter to remain celi­bate than to mar­ry. Dr. Moss does not con­sid­er the full text, which says no such thing as she tries to make it say.

Dr. Moss ends with a few words about “the Chris­t­ian ten­den­cy to reject mar­riage.” In the ear­ly cen­turies of the Church, that was no doubt true. But she does not men­tion a key point of his­tor­i­cal con­text here, which is that many of the first Chris­tians were con­vinced that end of the world would come in their life­time. They dis­cerned that weight­i­er ends than mar­riage need­ed to be looked to.

•••

Dr. Moss leaves sev­er­al points unex­plained, even assum­ing her read­ing of the Bible to be accu­rate.

First, if we see exam­ples of incest and polygamy, slave-mar­riage, and rape-mar­riage in the Old Tes­ta­ment, not once do we find mar­riage between two men or two women. So to use the one as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the oth­er makes lit­tle sense. It’s one big non sequitur. The Old Tes­ta­ment nowhere sug­gests that two women or two men may mar­ry. The only ques­tion is over who, among women, a man is free to mar­ry. The Mosa­ic law makes clear that incest and polygamy are unlaw­ful.

Sec­ond, even if, in the New Tes­ta­ment, we find Jesus and Paul being “not down” with mar­riage, that hard­ly pro­vides a war­rant to sug­gest that one may mar­ry any­one he likes. Would it not rather, sug­gest just the oppo­site?

So even if the bib­li­cal evi­dence were to sug­gest that the one man-one woman def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage is wrong (and it does not), in no way does that lend sup­port to the def­i­n­i­tion that Dr. Moss wants us to embrace.

But when the bib­li­cal text is looked at, and with care, one finds that it upholds the very def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage, and the high doc­trine of mar­riage, that same-sex pro­po­nents seek to under­mine.