Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Pilegesh (Hebrew: פִּילֶגֶשׁ) is a Hebrew term for a concubine, a female, unmarried sexual slave [1] of social and legal status inferior to that of a wife. [2] [3] Among the Israelites, some men acknowledged their concubines, and such women enjoyed the same rights in the house as legitimate wives.
Although the Old Testament describes numerous examples of polygynous (one male, one wife with multiple concubines) instances of polygamy among devotees to God, most Christian groups have historically rejected the practice of polygamy and have upheld monogamy alone as normative. Nevertheless, some Christian groups in different periods have ...
In the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world, the term concubine has almost exclusively been applied to women, although a cohabiting male may also be called a concubine. [13] In the 21st century, concubinage is used in some Western countries as a gender-neutral legal term to refer to cohabitation (including cohabitation between same-sex partners). [14 ...
Genesis 35:22 expressly calls Bilhah Jacob's concubine, a pilegesh. When Leah saw that she had stopped having children, she took her servant Zilpah and gave her to Jacob like a wife to bear him children as well. The apocryphal Testament of Naftali says that Bilhah and Zilpah's father was named Rotheus. [4]
A Levite from the mountains of Ephraim had a concubine, who left him and returned to the house of her father in Bethlehem in Judah. [2] Heidi M. Szpek observes that this story serves to support the institution of monarchy, and the choice of the locations of Ephraim (the ancestral home of Samuel, who anointed the first king) and Bethlehem (the home of King David) are not accidental.
The history of Christianity and homosexuality has been much debated. [12] The Hebrew Bible and its traditional interpretations in Judaism and Christianity have historically affirmed and endorsed a patriarchal and heteronormative approach towards human sexuality, [13] [14] favouring exclusively penetrative vaginal intercourse between men and women within the boundaries of marriage over all ...
The text repeats that these people remain handmaids of their mistress though they are also the concubine of the mistress's husband. They are referred to interchangeably by the Hebrew terms אָמָה (’āmāh) and שִׁפְחָה (šip̄ḥāh). Other modern English bible translations use the word slave, slave-girl or servant. [7]
Sexual practices of these cultures were affected by the Christian concept of male, female equality. The sexual act, according to the Church, is sacred within the context of the marital relationship that reflects a complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.