# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S22
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 22 —

In which words polygamia simultanea [simultaneous polygamy] is explicitly forbidden, and successive polygamy implicitly permitted. For that is what the Hebrew formula אִשָּׁה אֶל־אֲחתָהּ = uxor ad sororem ejus i. e. una ad aliam [a wife to her sister, that is, one to another] means. As may be seen from Exod. 26:5, 6; Ezek. 1:9; 3:13. According to which this text cannot be drawn into the present case at all." (Auserleſ. Bedenken [Select Opinions], p. 900 f.)

Anonymus: "It would not be quite fitting to say of a man who took two sisters to wife: He has the wife to her sister; the expression would rather have to be reversed and one would have to say: He has taken the sister as his wife, or he has taken the sister to her sister." (Unterſchiedliche Streitſchr. [Various Controversial Writings], p. 312.)

If one holds to Chemnitz's saying that theology is nothing other than a grammar of Holy Scripture, so that we must stay with the grammar in order to have the right theology, and now the combination of words ischa el achotah, according to the constant usage from Genesis to Malachi, means nothing other than: one to another, then one has no right to go back to the original meaning of each individual word taken by itself and, instead of translating: thou shalt not take one to another, to translate: thou shalt not take a wife to her sister. If one stays with this idiotism of the Hebrew language, as it was first demonstrated by Hafenreffer, and according to which a prohibition of polygamy lies in it, then the difficulties also fall away which are created for the other interpretation by the additions "to vex her," "while she is yet alive"; then everything is clear and simple. It is true that some of our older theologians already believed they had to contest this interpretation, especially Johann Gerhard. The objection which they raise against it is put together briefly, for example in Pfaff's Bible commentary, as follows: "Others translate the words here thus: thou shalt not take one wife to another, to vex her, while she is yet alive. And accordingly bigamy and consequently also polygamy would be forbidden here. The Hebrew idiom would allow this, if here, in the prohibition of too-close marriages, the words were not to be taken in their literal sense." Now it can easily be shown that this objection is unfounded; for it presupposes as proved that also in v. 18 a prohibition of a too-close marriage is still contained, as in the preceding verses 6-17; that v. 18 therefore belongs with the preceding prohibitions of too-close marriages. But this presupposition is not proved by reasons, and yet it is precisely this, as the foundation of the objection, that should have been proved. For that is just the question on which it turns, whether v. 18 is to be taken together with the preceding prohibitions of too-close marriage unions or with the following prohibitions of other sexual abominations. The objection therefore rests on a petitio principii [begging the question].