The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American

by Andrew L. Seidel

The biblical prohibition on adultery is narrow; it is certainly not as broad as most read it today. Biblically speaking, the prohibition did not pertain to all believers: it applied only to married women. The married woman and her sexual partner were both considered adulterers. But if her husband slept around, or even took another wife, as Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, David, Gideon, and Moses all did, he was not an adulterer. According to The Jewish Encyclopedia, adultery is “sexual intercourse of a married woman with any man other than her husband. The crime can be committed only by and with a married woman; for the unlawful intercourse of a married man with an unmarried woman is not technically Adultery in the Jewish law.”8 The encyclopedia clarifies that a husband can have sex with women other than his wife without breaking god’s commands: “The ancient Jewish law, as well as other systems of law which grew out of a patriarchal state of society, does not recognize the husband’s infidelity to his marriage vows as a crime.”9 A man was an adulterer when he slept with another man’s wife.10 Essentially, adultery was a crime against a husband. Because husbands owned their wives.11 This raises the question of why a god that passed a prohibition on adultery designed to prevent married women from straying would have chosen a married woman to bear his son, but that is not for me to answer. It may even be fair to say that Christianity is founded on adultery. Joseph and Mary were “betro...