Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all married their cousins

[4gold]

The setup and the question are pretty straightforward. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all married their cousins. Is first-cousin incest immoral?

If yes, why did God bless their marriages? If no, then why does the church oppose them?

[Goat]

The setup and the question are pretty straightforward. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all married their cousins. Is first-cousin incest immoral?

If yes, why did God bless their marriages? If no, then why does the church oppose them?

No, first cousin marriage is not immoral. Unless it is repeated quite often in a very close knit group, it isn't as much of a risk factor than is generally viewed.

The U.S. is unique with it's prohibition against first cousin marriages.

[OnceConvinced]

I think you'll find the general argument from Christians is that it wasn't immoral back then. Because somehow they needed to multiply, so they had to inbreed. If you go back even further to Cain and Abel you have even bigger problems. For them to procreate, they would have had to mate with their sisters! That's if you believe Adam and Eve were the only female and male created by God.

One argument I used to go along with as a Christian was that Adam and Eve were created flawless. So therefore if their offspring mated then their children were still pretty much flawless themselves. There was no risk of deformities and that sort of stuff like we have now. But as incest continued, the DNA pool started to get dirtier, so God decided that incest was no longer acceptable, so as to decrease the chances of deformities and what not.

Of course one of the problems that Christians who believe this are still faced with is how there can be such a variety of DNA in the world today. Because if Adam and Eve were the only humans to start the chain and existed 7000 years ago, then we would not see the variety of DNA we see now.

[Ayah5768]

The setup and the question are pretty straightforward. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all married their cousins. Is first-cousin incest immoral?

If yes, why did God bless their marriages? If no, then why does the church oppose them?

So did Ashley Wilkes. I'm not meaning to joke, that was just my first thought upon reading your OP. I have Gone With the Wind on the brain.

To answer your question, I have to break it down into parts.

We must first ask if sex with cousins is actually incest. To answer that, I looked it up in the dictionary and on about.com, which both have the definition of the word "incest" as sexual relations between two people who are too closely related to legally marry. So, is a first-cousin relationship incestual? In 26 U.S. states it is incest. In the rest of the world it isn't.

Now, is it immoral? I would say that in 26 U.S. states it is because I personally believe that breaking the law instead of fighting to change the law is immoral. (there are times when that is not the case, but that is for another thread.) Other than in those 26 states, it is not immoral, IMHO.

Another reason that it might be immoral is based on the known health problems of subsequent children. *Cousins are about twice as likely to deal with birth defects, which sounds like a lot, but given the fact that "twice as likely" means a 4-6% chance it is really not that big of a deal. Furthermore, it takes many generations of consistent cousin marriage to really effect the gene pool. Based on that, it is not immoral.

Moving on, God blessed those marriages because it was neither incest nor immoral, as I have already shown. In that time in history and in that part of the world first-cousins were not considered closely enough related for it to be incest. The Bible is pretty clear on that fact by showing so many first-cousin marriages and by first-cousin marriage being notably absent from Leviticus 18. In the JPS version of the Tanakh Leviticus 18:6 says not to "come near anyone of [your] own flesh to uncover nakedness" in the JPS. In other versions the word "kin" is often used. Leviticus does go on to list various and very specific "you and your kin" relationships and goes so far as to point out that we shouldn't have sex with sheep but fails to even elude to cousins. In fact, if Jesus did exist it is well within the realm of possibility that his parents were first-cousins (the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia mentions this possibility).

Now, why does the church oppose it? I don't know which church you are referencing with the term "the church" so I will take on the Catholic Church because that is the one most commonly called "the church." In 691 CE the Catholic Church had to decide who should be considered your "kin" with regards to Leviticus 18:6 and made cousins part of that list despite the previously noted fact that the Bible is pretty clear on the issue. It is worth mentioning that 2nd-cousins were also on the Catholic Church's list until the early 80's. (sidenote: That is how Giuliani got out of his first marriage which was to his second-cousin, twice removed. The Catholic Church gave him an annulment even though their relationship was known at the time of their wedding and the ceremony took place in a Catholic Church.)

All that said, if you are Catholic and want to marry your first-cousin you can get a special dispensation to do so. If you live in a place where first-cousin marriage is legal, getting that dispensation is not necessarily a difficult thing.

Also, the Catholic Church never seemed to have a problem with royals marrying cousins so the appearance is that the opposition is there in name only and only seems to matter when 1) you can't legally marry anyway or 2) you are already married to your cousin and want out.

As for other churches, I don't know. I would say that perhaps it is the "yuck factor." I mean, if my daughter told me she was going to marry my nephew... well... it would take some getting used to for me, so it doesn't shock me that other people who grew up in this society would be opposed to the idea. Over time it has become something that is simply uncouth in the U.S. Of course, it wasn't always that way... after all, Ashley Wilkes did it.





*For the sake of this post, the word "cousin" means "first-cousin." More complicated cousin relationships, such as a 3rd cousin twice removed, will be referred to with a precise term.

[Ilias Ahmad]

Actually, according to Bible Abraham married Sarah, his half-sister, not his cousin:

Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife. (Genesis 20:12)