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If the expansion of the LDS faith continues at its current pace, within sixty years governing the United States will become “impossible without Mormon cooperation,” according to the eminent scholar Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities at Yale University – and an unabashed admirer of Joseph Smith and the Mormons. In 1992, in his influential book The American Religion, Bloom wrote:

Two aspects of the Saints’ vision seem starkly central to me; no other American religious movement is so ambitious and no rival even remotely approaches the spiritual audacity that drives endlessly toward accomplishing a titanic design.
The Mormons fully intend to convert the nation and the world, to go from some ten million souls to six billion.

Later in the same book, Bloom made a bold prediction about what the LDS leadership will do when it gains sufficient political leverage:

And who can believe that the Mormons ever would have turned away from the practice of Celestial Marriage, if it were not for federal pressure? . . . I cheerfully do prophesy that some day, not too far on in the twenty-first century, the Mormons will have enough political and financial power to sanction polygamy again. Without it, in some form or other, the complete vision of Joseph Smith never can be fulfilled.

– – Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer, pages 321-322.

This is likely not to be read, but I was wondering if this site is the one you were referring to for Gregory's Moralia:

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/gregory.html

The author indicates it is an unrevised translation. I found another site that does not have a complete translation (only up to v. 21 of Chapter 28.) Thanks for any assistance.

Regards

The comparatively greater focus on Queen Jezebel is likely an illustration of Dr. Fleming's point as the point of the extended discussion of her was to show the corruption of Israel by the foreign Baals. As well as reflecting her seemingly greater influence over her husband than that held by other wives of kings.

http://books.google.com/books?id=A42yVk8kj8kC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=ancient+israel+polygamy&source=web&ots=Fl9B71mnrV&sig=yguQf56fztkG3eTsOtGNPTClszk&hl=en#PPA25,M1

He contends that "It is clear that the most common form of marriage in Ancient Israel was monogamy"; although he notes both examples of polygamy in Israel and the Talmudic rule permitting four wives to a common man and up to eighteen to the king.

(I cannot speak to de Vaux's credentials. Perhaps Dr. Fleming or another knows.)

(Courtesy of Google Books)

On balance, I suppose the most we can answer is that monogamy is the Lord's intended ideal (and obviously the law in the Christian West for many centuries), but He has, for whatever reason, refrained from expressly condemning the practice (although as I've related I think one could draw inferences critical of the practice.)

Still we are left with the spectacle of secularists who in one breath would likely uphold the right of homosexuals to "marry", inveighing against polygamy as an affront to monogamy. Funny.

Of course, in addition to them there are some shadier polygamists, notably Lamech (apparently the first polygamist) and Esau. (Cain, however, seems to have been monogamous.)

I can't offhand think of any New Testament character who is explicitly said to be polygamous. I would be particularly curious, for example, about two characters at the top of the social heap who clearly could have had multiple wives if they had wanted to and whose marital status is mentioned: Herod Antipas (who displayed sexual immorality by stealing his brother's wife, but is never mentioned as having any other wives) and the high priest Caiaphas (who is said to have a close relationship with his father-in-law Annas. I confess I don't know the underlying Greek word; does this imply a sole father-in-law, or could Caiaphas have had other fathers-in-law for other wives?). If polygamy had become rarer, why would that have been? Was it Greco-Roman influence? Or was polygamy still routine but, for whatever reason, no clear record of this appears in the Gospel text?

At the other end of the chronological spectrum, when did polygamy become routine among the Jews? Mr. Wilder is right that most of the figures in Genesis and Exodus seem monogamous - Adam, Noah, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, Aaron. One could also include Job, who seems to date from remote antiquity. The two major exceptions, Abraham and Jacob, were naturally monogamous and forced into polygamy by adverse circumstances. Any thoughts?

Quite interesting. Thank you very much.

Thank you also for the reference to Gregory. I am slated to teach a bible class on Job this Summer and will doubtless find that an interesting and helpful reference.

To the extent I deviated the discussion from the central purpose of your writing, my apologies. The spectacle in Texas borders on the absurd with likely welfare cheats lusting after teenagers on one side and Marxists parading as the saviors of children (while confiscating them based on lies) on the other.

I suppose it fits their slogan, perhaps, "It's a whole other country."