A friend in another church wrote me recently, saying, “A church member posed me the following question: Can a man marry his niece? (The man’s sister’s daughter to be specific.) This member has a friend who wants to do just that. I told the church member such a marriage would be forbidden by Scripture. Would you have any article or books you can recommend that explains the biblical basis for forbidden marriages between close relatives?”
Below is my response to him, which I thought might be of interest to others. It has been fleshed up a little to make things clearer.
John Murray in ‘Principles of Conduct’ pp. 49-55, deals with the principles regarding prohibitions in marriage.
- From the bottom of p. 52 to the top of p. 54, he covers very briefly the degrees of consanguinity (relations by blood) and affinity (relations by marriage) prohibited in marriage. Footnote 8 on p. 53 should be noted, that there is no biblical prohibition for first cousins to get married although not advisable from genetical and cultural consideration.
- Appendix B (pp. 250-256) deals with broad principles on the subject again. P. 255 uses Leviticus 18:12 as an illustration, from which we can conclude that marriage between an uncle and a niece, or an aunt and a nephew, is prohibited. This is regardless of the father’s side or the mother’s side.
- We may summarise visually as follows:
- In the Chinese culture, first cousins on the side of the mother are allowed to get married because they are of different surnames. Chinese culture allows for people of the same surnames to marry from five generations apart. In the Indian culture, an uncle/aunt is allowed to marry a niece/nephew. For us, we want to follow the Bible, while taking into consideration the expectations of culture. Civil law in some countries are stricter than the Bible, as pointed out by John Murray.
(Note: Note: The churches in Peninsula Malaysia are made up largely of ethnic Chinese and Indians while those in the states of Sabah and Sarawak are mostly ethnic Chinese and Natives. It is against the law to evangelise the ethnic Malays who are Muslims by law.)
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