Marriage in the Bible: What Do the Texts Say? is an honest engagement with the relevant passages in the two primary Testaments of the Christian Bible. Rather than making the Bible confirm a specific stance on marriage, the author invites her readers to be honest about what these biblical stories, laws, commands, and sayings meant in their original contexts. In doing this, the author engages the conflicting messages about biblical marriage from such figures as Jesus, St. Paul, and St. Augustine. The first part of the book addresses four passages that many people believe defines "biblical marriage" as being intended for procreation, only between a man and a woman, anti-divorce, and holy or sacred. While these passages quoted out of context may be read to mean these things, when read in context the first two are not even talking about marriage, and the latter two assert that wives should be fearfully submissive to their husbands and show Jesus affirming a non-binary gender and non-hetero sex, among other things. The reader then gets a crash course on what marriages in the Bible actually look like, including additional content from Jesus and Paul that is anything but positive about marriage. The final section of the book highlights several of the themes in the Bible that are still alive and well, today, themes that have an impact on relational and social expectations of men and women, though most detrimentally for women. What might be most surprising are the insights in the final chapter, inviting people to take a fresh look at select moments for Jesus and Paul. Marriage in the Bible invites its reader to take these passages and their messages seriously, to consider the ways they influence beliefs and behaviors, and to decide if marriage as it is presented in the Bible is helpful and healthful for people today.

What does the Bible really say about marriage? A biblical scholar helps couples understand essential passages.

About the Author

Jennifer Bird has been writing, teaching, speaking, leading workshops, and creating videos for faith communities on what the Bible does and does not say about marriage since 2012, when North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Her upbringing in the United Methodist Church, Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary, doctoral studies in New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University, and thirty-plus years of teaching come together in this book, which is her effort to help people know how to handle the Bible in this conversation. She is the author of Permission Granted: Take the Bible into Your Own Hands and Abuse, Power, and Fearful Obedience: Reconsidering 1 Peter's Commands to Wives.

Reviews

Marriage in the Bible meets readers where they are to present them with researched perspectives, thoughtful prompts, and an honest invitation for dialogue on complex matters. And it's a conversation piece that illustrates why Bird is among the premier public educators of the Bible.

-- Richard Newton, University of Alabama, author of Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures

With refreshing candor and directness, Dr. Jennifer Bird confronts head-on the patriarchal, heteronormative, and often abusive assumptions undergirding the concept of "biblical marriage." Bird walks with her readers through a re-reading of key couples and passages in both testaments of Christian Scripture, offering linguistic, literary, and historical insight along the way to uncovering the vast chasm between the biblical world and today. She does not seek to impose her values upon her readers-though it is clear what her values are-but, rather, commends an honest interrogation of what modeling contemporary relationships after biblical precedent would really entail. Her work stands alongside Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, a History as mandatory reading in understanding and reframing contemporary conversations around love and marriage in light of the cultural influences of the past.

-- Amy Lindeman Allen, Indiana Christian Church Associate Professor of New Testament, Christian Theological Seminary



Book Information
ISBN 9781538121054
Author Jennifer Bird
Format Hardback
Page Count 260
Imprint Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Rowman & Littlefield
Weight(grams) 553g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 157mm * 22mm