"Biblical" Marriage

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Dan McClellan (1:01)

It starts in Deuteronomy 22.13. Suppose a man marries a woman, but after going into her, and this is a euphemism for consummation, which is a self, a euphemism for sexual intercourse.

Dan Beecher (1:13)

It's not much of a euphemism.

Dan McClellan (1:14)

It's pretty, it's pretty, It's pretty graphic.

Dan Beecher (1:17)

Nails it pretty hard, is what I'm saying.

Dan McClellan (1:20)

That's another euphemism. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher (1:27)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan (1:29)

And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we're increasing public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we are combating the spread of misinformation about the same. How go things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher (1:43)

Ah, things are going, rocking and rolling, having a good time. I'm looking forward to today's show, because we're going to be talking about something that is becoming, oddly, a hot button issue in these United States, and elsewhere, I suppose.

But it doesn't feel like it should be cropping up right now, but it kind of is. It's love and marriage today, and we're going to be talking about marriage. And then also, in the latter half of the show, we'll do a chapter and verse about divorce. So, in and out of marriage.

Dan McClellan (2:27)

It could be a quickie.

Dan Beecher (2:30)

But let's start with our first segment, which is Taking Issue. And today, Dan, we're taking issue with biblical marriage.

Dan McClellan (2:43)

Well, I understand that I have a biblical marriage. Don't you have a biblical marriage, Dan?

Dan Beecher (2:48)

I mean, I know my lady wife in the biblical sense. Is that what you're talking about?

Dan McClellan (2:55)

She is known to you. Yeah. Okay, well, the adjective biblical gets slapped on to so many things these days by folks who want to insist there's a right way and a wrong way to go about everything. And so there's a lot of talk of biblical marriage. And in short, you don't want a biblical marriage.

But there are also many different kinds of biblical marriages, and you don't want any of them.

Dan Beecher (3:24)

Okay, all right, we'll get to that. We'll get to that. One of the things that I did when I was sort of researching this for the show was I I remembered that there's this thing that's happening in the US. Several states have already adopted this thing, and other states are trying to push for what they're calling covenant marriages. And what this is is a different type of like extra special marriage when you file for your marriage license or whatever, you know, you check the box for covenant marriage. And the idea is that it's a lot harder to get a divorce, and you have to enter into the marriage. You have to have done counseling with a priest or like with some sort of religious person. It's not with a marriage counselor, but that's neither here nor there.

Dan McClellan (4:19)

But it's got to be someone who's entirely unqualified to say anything at all about marriage, especially if it's a Catholic priest, someone who's not even allowed to participate themselves. I've heard tell that this is how it goes.

Dan Beecher (4:36)

And then it's like you really can't get divorced unless, it kind of eliminates the idea of no-fault divorce, which I think a lot of very right-wing religious people have been hitting hard that divorces this great tragedy or whatever. And so what we do is we enter into this Covenant marriage where it's much, it's, and they really are trying to make sort of, the end goal is to make some form of biblical Christian marriage the legal standard.