Read the document
Damascus Document · CD-A 4:20–5:2
The passage condemns taking two wives in their lifetimes, appeals to “male and female he created them,” the animals entering the ark two by two, and Deuteronomy 17:17, then explains David through the sealed book of the Law. English renderings differ in how they construe the key lifetime phrase.
“He shall not take in addition to her another wife, for she alone shall be with him all the days of her life; and if she dies, he shall take for himself another from his father's house.”
Temple Scroll · 11Q19 57:17–19
A standard English rendering of the scroll's expansion of the law for the king.
Put it in context
These Jewish readings come from before or around the emergence of Christianity. So creation-based one-wife reasoning did not begin with later Roman or church rules.
The evidence is mixed. Josephus describes plural marriage as ancestral custom, while Qumran preserves a restrictive interpretation. You need both to understand the period.
What is disputed
The Damascus phrase has been read as a ban on concurrent wives, remarriage after divorce, or both. The Temple Scroll's express rule is directed to the king. Qumran was sectarian, so neither text can be treated as the settled view of every Jew in the period.
How I read this record
This is my conclusion from the source, not part of the quotation.
I see these texts as one of the earliest surviving Jewish arguments for the restrictive reading. They do not prove that Qumran was correct or that every Jew agreed. They do show that the argument existed before Christianity.
Open the sources
- Timothy H. Lim, “A New Solution to an Exegetical Crux (CD IV 20–21)” ↗ · Peer-reviewed discussion of the key Damascus phrase and its connection with Leviticus 18:18.
- Joseph Baumgarten, “The Qumran-Essene Restraints on Marriage” ↗ · Discussion of both the Damascus Document and the Temple Scroll, with the king's rule printed in English.