How many of the fore-fathers had more than one wife?

Answer 1

Which fore-fathers are you talking about? In the bible it was common place to have multiple wives, to marry your brother's widow, and even to marry your own brother/sister. The bible also introduced the quicky divorce - say three times to your wife "I divorce thee". There were no pre-nups or divorce settlements, because wome were simply property.

Women remained property in the US right into the 20th century. Marriages were arranged for geo-political reasons, nothing to do with love; it was either about political power or money.

It's interesting that fundamentalists skip over this when saying that marriage is our strongest, longest lasting institution. In fact the institution has changed dramatically over the last century, making it illegal to have multiple wives, making divorce harder, giving women their own property rights, providing divorce settlements and so on. It's also interesting that now those laws have been established, and people can easily get out of a marriage, 50% do just that.

It's sad then that this fluid, ever changing and rather delicate arrangement is held up as the shining truth by fundamentalists when denying gay men and lesbians the civil protections afforded to married couples.

Answer 2

you are talking about jewish fore-fathers right?

ok assuming you are
there were 3
abraham isaac and jacob

the scoop:
abraham had 2- namely sara and hagar
sara didnt have any kids for a long time so encouraged abraham to marry hagar the daughter of a egyptian pharo
hagar had a child named yishmael 13 years after this, sara had a child isaac and a couple years later, abraham sent hagar and yishmael away. abraham and isaac did keep in contact with yishmael after sara died, hagar (we think) came back to abraham

isaac married rebecca they had twin boys esav and jacob

jacob married his cousins (rebecca's brothers daughters) leah and rachel he also had 2 concubines of sorts bilah and zilpa
jacob had 13 kids 12 boys 1 girl

Answer 3

Many, but that didn't make it right in the sight of God because He only made one man and one woman and said that we should leave mother and father when we get married and be as one.

Answer 4

The only patriarch who did was Jacob, and that is because he was cheated into marrying Leah first.

Later on, David had three or four, and then Solomon went hog-wild and had thousands.

Answer 5

I thought there was the controversy with jefferson and his slaves. But since they were all christians sort of , I dont think they were allowed to.