Marriage in the Bible

What Do the Texts Say?

By Jennifer Bird

Marriage in the Bible is an honest and candid engagement with the Christian Bible. In clear and accessible language Jennifer Bird invites readers to be open about what these biblical stories, laws, commands, and sayings meant in their original contexts before trying to decide how to handle them in our current ones.

The first part of the book addresses four passages that many Christians believe define “biblical marriage”: being intended for procreation, only between a man and a woman, anti-divorce, and holy or sacred, rooted in the parallel drawn by Paul between the Christ-Church connection and marriage. In the second part of the book, Bird offers crash course on what marriages in the Bible actually look like, including additional content from Jesus and Paul that is anything but positive about marriage. The final section of the book highlights several of the themes in the Bible that are still alive and well, today, themes that have an impact on relational and social expectations of men and women, though most detrimentally for women.

Marriage in the Bible asks readers to take these passages and their messages seriously, to consider the ways they influence beliefs and behaviors, and to decide if marriage as it is described in the Bible is helpful and healthful for people today.

Jennifer Bird received her PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University. She has been writing, teaching, speaking, leading workshops, and creating videos for faith communities on what the Bible does and does not say about marriage since 2012, when North Carolina passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Explores the passages that many people turn to in order to defend “biblical marriage,” and illuminates what marriages actually look like in the Bible.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

November 2023

200 pages

Hardback 978 1 5381 2105 4 eBook 978 1 5381 2106 1

Religion • Biblical Commentary / General