Birth control on Safehold?

AirTech wrote:Hormonal birth control isn't exactly new, the Romans used a herbal preparation (Silphium) so enthusiastically that it went extinct.

This, while commonly stated, is probably rather sensationalized.

Silphium had a huge list of other medical uses, and was also a highly valued spice.

And it's not clear that it is extinct either. Asafoetida seems to be included as a kind of silphium/laserpicium. What is supposedly extinct is the higher-quality stuff found only in Cyrenaica... and it's not clear that even that is extinct, as there's at least one much later mention that is specifically relevant to Cyrene, and some people think it's the non-extinct plant Ferula tingitana.

thanatos wrote:I take issue with the term "traditional Judeo Christian view" in the context of sex and marriages since there are some very serious difference between the two religions where this is concerned.

There are some very significant differences between them... NOW. (And for that matter during the middle ages, or even the second century AD.)

In the first century, Christianity was considered a sect of Judaism, at least by the pagan Greco-Romans around them. Sure there were already differences, but not nearly as many as you imply. And most of those differences came from disagreements about which prophecies had or had not yet been fulfilled, or from the Talmud (the commentaries, for those who don't know their Jewish history) which Christ spent quite a bit of His time debunking. Outside of differences in interpretation and application, the Torah (the Law) was shared by both.

Things changed quite quickly even in the first century, and even more so afterwards. But they started much more similar than you seem to be aware of.

And not ONCE in the Torah does it ever give outright permission for a second wife or a concubine. Obviously some of the patriarchs had them. But it was certainly not encouraged or explicitly permitted. Now it did allow for divorce and remarriage (which the Talmudic Rabbis twisted into an outright pretzel), but Christ also rather strongly condemned their blatant abuse of that provision. (And just as an aside, Paul spent much of his writings debunking early Gnosticism, in both its ascetic and libertine forms. So your comment about Christianity considering sex "inherently sinful" doesn't hold water either. Nor does this correctly apply solely to the Catholics, as those mistaken beliefs predated their formal founding by a rather long time.)

At any rate, I don't think pointing out the differences between modern mainstream Christianity and modern mainstream Judaism -- neither of which remotely resembles the original of either -- does you much good here.

FriarBob wrote:And not ONCE in the Torah does it ever give outright permission for a second wife or a concubine. Obviously some of the patriarchs had them. But it was certainly not encouraged or explicitly permitted. Now it did allow for divorce and remarriage (which the Talmudic Rabbis twisted into an outright pretzel), but Christ also rather strongly condemned their blatant abuse of that provision. (And just as an aside, Paul spent much of his writings debunking early Gnosticism, in both its ascetic and libertine forms. So your comment about Christianity considering sex "inherently sinful" doesn't hold water either. Nor does this correctly apply solely to the Catholics, as those mistaken beliefs predated their formal founding by a rather long time.)

As my father once said, "Polygyny, if done right, is a good way to go bankrupt". Only the wealthy could afford to have more than one wife, as seen by the biblical patriarch Jacob, while concubines were high maintenance (in the sense that you had to keep them happy if you didn't want them to walk away). However, while the bible does discourage polygyny to some extent - in the form of moral tales concerning the difficulties of having more than one wife (such Jacob and the sisters he married and Samuel's father Elkanah) and legal injunctions that make it clear that you cannot deprive your firstborn of his inheritance even if his mother is your least favored wife - It was not made illegal by divine decree. The rabbis might later make statements like "he who increases in wives increases in lust" and Ashkenazi rabbis would later ban polygyny all together in the middle ages, but it was never explicitly discouraged.

I am well aware that the early Christians were Jewish in all but a few issues and that the greatest changes began to occur in the time of St. Peter. But here is my question: What is original sin according to Christianity versus Judaism? If you can say that both Judaism and Christianity thought original sin was the same thing then you are right.

thanatos wrote:

FriarBob wrote:And not ONCE in the Torah does it ever give outright permission for a second wife or a concubine. Obviously some of the patriarchs had them. But it was certainly not encouraged or explicitly permitted. Now it did allow for divorce and remarriage (which the Talmudic Rabbis twisted into an outright pretzel), but Christ also rather strongly condemned their blatant abuse of that provision. (And just as an aside, Paul spent much of his writings debunking early Gnosticism, in both its ascetic and libertine forms. So your comment about Christianity considering sex "inherently sinful" doesn't hold water either. Nor does this correctly apply solely to the Catholics, as those mistaken beliefs predated their formal founding by a rather long time.)

As my father once said, "Polygyny, if done right, is a good way to go bankrupt". Only the wealthy could afford to have more than one wife, as seen by the biblical patriarch Jacob, while concubines were high maintenance (in the sense that you had to keep them happy if you didn't want them to walk away). However, while the bible does discourage polygyny to some extent - in the form of moral tales concerning the difficulties of having more than one wife (such Jacob and the sisters he married and Samuel's father Elkanah) and legal injunctions that make it clear that you cannot deprive your firstborn of his inheritance even if his mother is your least favored wife - It was not made illegal by divine decree. The rabbis might later make statements like "he who increases in wives increases in lust" and Ashkenazi rabbis would later ban polygyny all together in the middle ages, but it was never explicitly discouraged.

I am well aware that the early Christians were Jewish in all but a few issues and that the greatest changes began to occur in the time of St. Peter. But here is my question: What is original sin according to Christianity versus Judaism? If you can say that both Judaism and Christianity thought original sin was the same thing then you are right.

I did point out that it was not explicitly allowed. My phrasing was deliberate. I'm also aware it's not explicitly disallowed. Some figure if it's not explicitly forbidden it's OK. I'm not much of a fan of that mentality. That leads to the millions of human-written laws that we now have -- many of which contradict each other -- which nobody can possibly know all of, and leads to utter chaos.

Actually "original sin" is not in the original doctrines of EITHER group. It was added by the Catholics (and/or their immediate predecessors) long after the first century AD. I'm not sure exactly when it crept into Judaism, but it was at least 1000 and almost certainly 2000+ years after Sinai.

Um, the "greatest changes" happened under Peter? Utter rubbish! There were some minor changes under Peter, yes, but they were MICROSCOPIC compared to what came after John's death of old age multiple decades later. (No, Paul didn't change half of what people credit to him either.) Peter's primary change was showing that Gentiles were to be accepted, which again was really a condemnation of the Talmud, since again there was never any injuction against bringing in foreigners **who converted** in the Torah. Marrying a pagan, yeah, that was strictly forbidden. They converted? No problem. One of the ancestors of King David was Ruth, after all, and she even got a book named after her. And where was she from? Moab, one of the more disgustingly perverted pagan cultures in the nearby area. She renounced that and converted, and was honored greatly for it. So Peter merely reminded people that Gentiles are people too and should not be looked down on for a lack of Jewish blood, which unfortunately most of the Jews of his day had sadly forgotten.

And in an attempt to somewhat return to topic, you missed one of my key points. You tried to pretend that "traditional Judeo-Christian values" was an incorrect phrase to use. This is simply not true. Both religions -- no matter how much they were changed after the fact -- have the same root values. Both derive those same root values from the same Torah/Law. Both decry premarital and extramarital sex. Both celebrate children within the context of marriage, but neither go remotely to the Dark-Age Catholic extreme of pretending that sex was ONLY for the purpose of procreation.

Those values have been twisted into a pretzel at times by various subgroups claiming to be part of said religions, but the root values are unchanged and unchangeable.