# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1878_S29
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

— 29 —

wish and will, answered. This learned jurisconsult had to defend himself afterward, and his students let themselves be won over by the prejudice of authority all the more gladly, the more agreeable it was to combine this with the former Praejudicio [prejudice] of the flesh. Meanwhile one and another example seemed not yet to do so great harm, and the newly cast-up explanation of these Jurisconsultorum [jurisconsults] was regarded as private opinion, . . . until finally in our times the wickedness of Hobbianism wants to be set upon the throne." (Unſchuld. Nachrr. [Unschuldige Nachrichten] Year 1725. pp. 863-65.)

In now entering upon the proof of the inadmissibility of marriage with the sister of a deceased wife, we cite as the first ground of proof the circumstance that this marriage is forbidden by the general rule placed first in Leviticus 18:6.

The words of this general rule are: None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him [literally, according to the Hebrew original text: None shall approach to the "flesh of his flesh"] (שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ). Here we have a prohibition of marriage which does not state a person, but a relationship of kinship; afterward follow further prohibitions of marriage in which, however, definite persons are named, while as the ground of the prohibition circumstances are given which refer back to the first prohibition, v. 6, as though the Lord would say: This and this person is forbidden you in particular, for she is already forbidden you in general. Our Fathers also regarded the matter so. Thus, for example, Löscher writes: "That we are not to look merely at the persons who are named here, but at the distantiam gradus [distance of degree], is proved by 1. the mind of the lawgiver, which here, as in other laws, is properly to be attended to and well inquired into, since everyone is the best interpreter of his own words. But before he yet specialiter [in particular] reports the forbidden degrees, he says in Lev. 18:6: None of you shall approach to any that is near of kin to him, etc. Which law is the ground of all the following ordinances concerning forbidden marriage; so that, even if nothing special had been reported, this law alone would have been sufficient to decide all forbidden marriages by it." (Unſchuld. Nachrr. Year 1724. p. 320 f.)

Spener says in his "Bedenken" [Opinions] in the year 1681: "I have hitherto always held versum 6. pro fundamento prohibitionis [verse 6 to be the foundation of the prohibition], and do not yet find sufficiently convincing reasons to depart from it." (Bedenken of the year 1681. II, 534.)

That our Fathers regarded Leviticus 18:6 in fact as a general rule and not merely as an explanation of the special prohibition is also evident from this, that they based the judgment of individual cases on this sixth verse, taken even alone and by itself. Thus Spener, when the question was whether, if a stepfather wanted to marry his stepson's widow, dispensation could take place, gave the following opinion: