7. Incest (Remastered)

Incest

R.J. Rushdoony

Our Scripture is Leviticus 18:7-17 And our subject, ‘Incest.’

Leviticus 18:7-17 

“The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. The nakedness of thy father’s wife shalt thou not uncover: it is thy father’s nakedness. The nakedness of thy sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover. The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness. The nakedness of thy father’s wife’s daughter, begotten of thy father, she is thy sister, thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s sister: she is thy father’s near kinswoman. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister: for she is thy mother’s near kinswoman. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy father’s brother, thou shalt not approach to his wife: she is thine aunt. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy daughter in law: she is thy son’s wife; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife: it is thy brother’s nakedness. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.”

The Biblical Laws concerning incest, and it requires death penalty in most cases. Leviticus 20:11, 12-14, 17, 20, 21 and also in Deuteronomy 22:30 and Deuteronomy 27:20, 22 and 23 prohibits marriage or sexual relations with a mother, father, stepmother, stepfather, sister or a brother, a granddaughter or grandson, a son in law or daughter in law, an aunt or an uncle, a brothers wife, or with both mother and daughter. The penalty is death, except for marriage with the wife of an uncle, or with a blood aunt, a brothers wife, and similar cases where the punishment was to bear their iniquity and die childless.

Childless in this case does not mean that no children were born, the family gives us help in understanding of this, this meant that such children were barred from regular marriage within the community. Such people were childless in that they had no legal heir in their progeny, so that even those children were born they were not heirs. They were childless before the Law.

Why such some years ago, while I was at Berkeley, I recall a professor a description of the prohibitive of marriage which began, “Thou shalt not marry thy grandmother.” And this was a big joke that he told every semester to every new class. And his point was, “This was an instance of how ridiculous Biblical Law is, who would want to marry their grandmother?” Well, of course what he revealed was his ignorance. Because more marriages have been contracted in history for property than for sex. And throughout history one of the chronic problems is the fact that where there has been a sizeable estate, a sizeable inheritance, there has been forced marriages with close relatives to prevent alienation of the property.

As a result, in every country whether in Asia or in Europe, and of course among the Aztecs and the pagan tribes, the evidences are abundant of such marriages. Forced marriages where, for example, an elderly widow was compelled to marry some very young relative in order to prevent the estate from being alienated.

As a result, such laws have been a necessity. As a matter of fact, we do know that in Tibet the whole purpose of marriage was to prevent the alienation of property, to maintain generation after generation the inheritance of land intact, and this is the reason for polyandry.

Thus, such forbidden marriages and sexless marriages have also been contracted for purposes of maintaining an inheritance. This especially has been true in nobility and royalty. In Egypt, of course, the marriages were always, in the days of the Pharaohs, within the family, a half-sister, generally. And such marriages are common in ancient history. During the Medieval period it was very common for nobility and royalty. 

Arthur C. Custanceⁱ has called attention to the present situation with respect to inbreeding:

“From a mathematical point of view, the situation may be put in this way: that matings among first cousins (as in Darwin’s case, for example, or his sister Caroline’s case) result in the offspring having identical genes in a ratio of 1 to 7. Many of these genes will be recessive mutants and therefore detrimental to the possessor when inherited homosygously. Mating of uncle to niece or nephew to aunt raises this ratio to 1 to 3. Matings among brothers and sisters raises this ratio, often disastrously, to 1 to 1.” ⁱⁱ

Now the records indicate that in ancient times these marriages produced no genetic damage. Now, the genetic damage is usually very, very great. When we read the early chapters of Genesis, we find that from the beginning there was an awareness of the fact that murder, adultery, theft, false witness, and a variety of other things were known to be sin, but not that incest was. Incest is a biological offense which, before its damage began to appear, long before was prohibited by God at a particular point in history. Its damage today, as I have indicated, is very great. To give you an example of one study which indicates its damage, let me quote a summary of a study: Risks to Offspring in Incest in the an English medical periodical, The Lancet, published in London, February 25, 1957: 

“Medical practitioners are sometimes asked about the advisability of the adoption of a child born as the result of incest. Such children will have an increased risk of being affected by recessive conditions. In order to get an estimate of the extent of this risk, in 1958 I invited Children’s Officers to let me know prospectively of pregnancies or of new births in which it was known that the pregnancy or birth was the result of incest between first degree relatives.

These children were followed prospectively and anonymously through the Children’s Officers. The children were known to me by number only and all correspondence referred only to the child’s number. Thirteen cases of incest (6 father-daughter and 7 brother-sister) were reported to me in 1958 and 59, and the latest information on them was in mid year 1965 when the children were all 4 to 6 years old. I summarize there the information on these 13 children.

Three children are dead: one at 15 months of cystic fibrosis of the pancreas, confirmed at necropsy; one at 2^1/2 months of progressive cerebral degeneration with blindness; and one at 7 years, 11 months of Fallot’s Tetrology (this child had an IQ of 70). One child is severely sub-normal, with much delayed-milestones, and was considered non-testable at age 4 years, 9 months, when she had a vocabulary of only a few words. Four children are educatively subnormal: the known IQ of 3 are 59, 65, and 76. The remaining children are normal.

The risk of parents sharing a recessive gene will be four times greater in cases of incest between first degree relatives than it would be between first cousins.” ⁱⁱⁱ

It is obvious, then, that the genetic damage in such cases is very, very severe. Now, Dr. Custance, a Canadian scientist, draws some very important inferences from such data. Incest today is very clearly detrimental genetically, in a very, very large percentage of cases. With each generation, the number of damaged genes increases rather than decreases. This means, and this is a very significant fact, that the long history of man posited by evolutionists is impossible in that, if the long ages for man’s history which they posit, if this were true, then the genetic deterioration would be very far gone. Let me quote from Custance here. 

“The Biblical record actually shows only 77 generations from Adam to Christ, and if we add to this the 2000 years since, we have something like 100 to 120 generations covering the whole of human history. Since the accumulation of defective genes is only meaningful in terms of their effect on the basis of successive generations, it is not altogether unlikely that the first human beings (namely, Adam and Eve) were indeed perfect, and that the damage started to be done following the Fall has accumulated until we reach the present situation in which there are still some possibilities of successful brother-sister matings, though the odds are against it. At the rate at which these mutations occur in each generation, according to the current genetical theory, one would not expect to find any undamaged segments of the individual’s inherited stock of genes if the human race had been multiplying for thousands upon thousands of generations. We would all be so badly damaged by now that no brother-sister marriage could possibly succeed any longer.

On the other hand, taking the Biblical story as it stands, Adam’s sons and daughters (Gen. 5:4), of whom Cain was one and his wife another, need not have been carriers of any more than a mere token of the damaged genetic stock and such a marriage need not have endangered the offspring.

There is, surprisingly enough, direct evidence in Scripture that this interpretation of the events is strictly true, for we are first of all presented with a list of immediate descendants for some ten generations from Adam to Noah who enjoyed what must be described as magnificent viability. Consider for a moment what was happening during this period of time. Previous to the Flood, man may well have been shielded against at least one source of danger to the genes, cosmic radiation, by the existence of some kind of barrier in the upper atmosphere. There are many who believe that this barrier disappeared at the time of the Flood and could indeed have been related to that event. The pre-Flood population (both men and animals, be it noted) may therefore have suffered little damage to their genes throughout each succeeding generation while these environmental conditions existed.” ^iv

As we see, history has thus witnessed genetic deterioration. On the other hand there has been, on a limited scale, some genetic improvements as a result of the Biblical inheritance, that is, Biblical Law. We do know that in those peoples who strictly abided by the Biblical Law, the damage was reduced and there was improvement. 

Among many Christian peoples, for example, until World War I, when the old Biblical standards began to go by the board, not only was there a strict standard against mixed marriages, that is, with unbelievers, but a strict standard for marriage with believers. So that in some countries, marriage being arranged was not approved by either family unless the other family could produce a record of seven generations without any physical defect. As a result, such standards did lead, in the very strict Christian circles, to an improvement. And we can assume that as the progressive redemption of man continues, history will see, here as elsewhere, the glorious restoration Scripture speaks of.

On the other hand, however, evolutionists can logically only expect progressive deterioration. Their answer to this is to have rigid, totalitarian controls on man. This is their only answer. Controls are required by humanistic man’s logic, but they are impossible for humanistic man, because man the sinner is by nature a law breaker, and he deliberately breaks the laws on which his survival depends. In age after age, as a result, he deliberately breaks the laws which are the strictest as a matter of principle. 

Thus, let us turn back to the Renaissance. All we have to do is to examine the history of the times, for example the records as kept of the royal and noble families of France and Italy and Spain by The Seigneur Pierre de Bourdeilles Brantome whose dates are approximately 1530-1614. And we find that incest was regularly practiced as a matter of challenge. Here was the law, they were Renaissance men, law could not bind them, and so there was an extremely prevalent law breaking at this point both in high places and low.

The Reformation reintroduced law, but with the rise of romanticism, the interest in breaking the law, in particular the law of incest was revived. At first it was academic. But let me call to your attention a work that perhaps you studied when you were taking English at the university. Shelley’s drama The Cenci. What is the story of The Cenci? Well, it’s the story of a particularly wealthy, very powerful and very degenerate Roman family; the family of Francesco Cenci. Every member of it was a particularly depraved character. Cenci committed incest with his daughter, Beatrice, whose dates were in the 1500’s, the sixteenth century.  And later there was a falling out in the family, and Beatrice, her step mother and her brother, Giacomo, united to hire an assassin to murder their father by driving a nail in his brain.

Now, Beatrice was anything but beautiful, she was in fact a rather ugly character, and an ugly girl. She was not moral; she had an illegitimate child, and the family, every member of it, was thoroughly depraved. And yet in Shelley’s drama she is portrayed as a noble and pure girl. And the whole situation is made highly romantic and idealized, and the real villain in the whole drama is the church, which is an ironic situation. The Papacy comes out as the villain, the only element in the entire situation that was defending in the historical situation, law and order.

This interest in the perverse and the idealization of the perverted was a feature of romanticism. But what was for the romantics a subject of literary interest had become for existentialist man a matter of practice. ^v

Recently, a very popular book on the Continent, published in Britain by a British sociologist, defends incest. On top of that, now an M.D. has written a book on “the normalcy of incest,” and he speaks of the supposed problems resulting from quote: “Suppressing incestuous desires.”

Not only is this the situation, but we have the interesting comment of Dr Blake, when he speaks about the drive for legalized abortion: 

“Legalized abortion laws are being seriously sought by many respected physicians because of completely legitimate problems facing some of their patients. But the Free-Lovers are also the champions of new legislation in this regard simply because unwanted pregnancies are the inevitable result of their irresponsible conduct. Daughters are sometimes impregnated by their own brothers or fathers. Children from 9 to 15 often find themselves with child in these environments, and the “intellectual” advocates of this way of life offer no practical solution save the quick abortion, cheaply and competently performed.” ^vi

The free love advocates, in short, begin by offering new life to their followers, and end by demanding murder, legalized murder of unborn babies. This is not surprising. Death in any life, any law system is an inescapable fact. You cannot have a world of law without having death. The question in any law system is, “Death for whom?” Death for whom.

The humanist demands death for God's law-order, death for unborn babies, death for virtue and godliness, whereas God's Law requires death for evildoers, and for rebellion against God's law-order. In Biblical Law, the guilty, not the innocent die. And the penalty for incest is specified as death.

Nowadays another answer is also being proposed by some of these advocates of a humanistic world-order. Their remedy for the penalties of inbreeding is massive out-breeding in the form of interracial relations. This is of course compounding the problem. New strains can add nothing to a bloodline except what they already have, and so if the new strain is an inferior strain, it can only add more problems to the already existing one. There is no substitute for law, God’s Law, and therefore we need more than ever, in these difficult and troubled days to realize that:

“Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.”

No social order can be established, nor can any survive, apart from God's Law.

Let us pray. 

* * *

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we give thanks unto thee that thy Word is truth, that thy Law-Word is given unto us for our welfare and happiness, for the prosperity of mankind. Give us grace not only to abide by thy law, but to make it basic not only in our lives, but in the lives of our nation to the end that again we may be a people under God, rejoicing in thy blessing and prospering hand. In Jesus' name. Amen.

* * *

Are there any questions now, first of all with respect to our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience Member] If the law is written on man’s heart, why wasn’t this law concerning incest written on man’s heart prior to the giving of the law to Moses? ^vii

[Rushdoony] A very good question. The law is written in man’s heart, but at this point the law was not written in man’s heart prior to Moses. And the reason is, as I indicated, a biological sin. A serious one, but none the less, a biological sin rather than a part of a transcendental law-order. And as a biological sin at a particular time in history God said: “No more of this, this is the law.”

Yes?

[Audience Member] Can you comment on the verse in Genesis 6 where it talks about,

“…the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” 

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is. The interpretation is a very simple one, of the verse, the Sons of God married the daughters of men. Although this verse has been an occasion for a great deal of fantasy and misinterpretation. We are sometimes told that supposedly angels came down and married with people, and so on and so forth, all kinds of fantasy has been woven around that verse. The meaning is a very plain and obvious one. It refers to the fact that, after a particular point, there was a breakdown of moral standards, and the sons of God, that is, the godly line of Seth, the people of God, began to disregard the laws against mixed marriages with unbelievers, and they began to marry the daughters of men. So that marriage was no longer principled. And as a result, very quickly, we are told there was a total deterioration, spiritually, of mankind. The old godly family broke down and the whole of the world was taken over by unbelief and anti-God people.

[Audience Member] Does this concern with incest apply to livestock too? ^viii

[Rushdoony] Well, as a matter of fact, animal breeding has only demonstrated the danger of inbreeding. Now, sometimes by a limited amount of careful breeding, they do bring certain aspects in a strain together, but this also leads to certain very serious weaknesses. So that there is a serious danger in too great an inbreeding. First of all, while certain desirable qualities are produced, certain weaknesses are also brought to the surface. So that domestic animals cannot survive the rigors of the wild as wild animals can; they paid a price for the development of certain aspects in their bloodline. This is why they have to have a stricter and more careful attention by their owners than less carefully-bred strains.

For example, a blooded horse is a far more delicate animal than an ordinary cow pony. This is why there are very severe limitations. These animals live in a welfare society, as it were. But moreover, while certain virtues are brought to the fore by this kind of thing, and they can be kept in the hot house environment, say, of a ranch where you look after your white faced Herefords or your Black Angus very carefully; they cannot carry that inbreeding beyond a certain level without destroying it. And this is why now, although you have your breeders who maintain the line, the average breeder prefers to cross because he can take an Angus and a Hereford, various strains, and bring about a far hardier animal. And financially he is better off then; he is not risking easy and quick death for his animals because of their frailty.

And of course, we have seen where with show animals, this kind of thing has been carried too far, the serious penalties that come about. For example, most German Shepherds in Southern California have been inbred heavily because there was a champion here a few generations back that was so highly regarded, every breeder tried to get that strain. The result is that you have hip dysplasia in that bloodline now so that it is difficult in Southern California to get a good German shepherd, one who doesn’t have this defect. And this has been a result of inbreeding.

So animal husbandry has very definitely indicated the serious liabilities in this kind of breeding.

Yes?

[Audience Member] What does the Bible have to say with regard to the mating of peoples where there are defects?

[Rushdoony] Nothing directly, except that the principle is established that the priest, of course, cannot marry anyone with a defect. This is the standard, he represents the ideal. So that the standard was set for all people; it wasn’t expected that all would follow it, but here was the standard. Defects were an impediment to marriage. And to marry defects does perpetuate sometimes a tragic inheritance. 

For example, the great house of Conde, a Bourbon line, the closest relatives of the Kings of France. At the time of Louis XIII, the Condes, because they were so close, were mistrusted; they were the next in line to the throne, and so they were walking a tightrope. And Richelieu compelled the prince of the Conde line to give his son in marriage to his niece, who was both a dwarf and a hunchback. There was a tremendous inheritance that went with it as a bribe. And because the prince of the house of Conde was afraid to seem independent lest he be suspected, and he was a weakling besides, morally a weakling, he gave in and married his son to this niece of Richelieu who was a dwarf and hunchback. And the result was destructive to the house of Conde because for generations the effects of that marriage were passed on to the destruction of one of the great and important families of France, a family that had been very important previously in Huguenot history.

Yes?

[Audience Member] What do the genetic scientists working in this area of test-tube babies hope to accomplish, Dr. Rushdoony? ^ix

[Rushdoony] Yes, this is one of their beliefs, that they will equalize the world. Also, of course, it is their theory now that they will break the genetic code so that before long they will not have to worry about any kind of mating; that they can, through their control of the genetic code, counteract any unhappy consequences.

Yes?

[Audience Member] Can you comment on the old standards of no genetic mutation from seven generations before marriage? ^x

[Rushdoony] Right. As I stated, this used to be routine. It was mandatory in fact. For example, my folks have told me that in the old country both families involved in the marriage, the bride’s and the groom’s, demanded a genealogy giving the physical facts about the family as well as of course that they had to be Christian. There could be no defects for so many generations back or the marriage was not permitted. And this as I say, was once routine. It has now been dropped, and I think the consequences are very serious. 

This is why, of course, the countries that have been Christian for hundreds and hundreds of years do have a superiority. Because, first of all, the Christians were the ones that had the large families. And second, because there was this care exercised with respect to marriage. And the fact that at the same time the monarchies and the nobility of the various countries were not exercising a similar care; marriages that were made in terms of property and money led to their rapid decline.

Those men who were kings became kings because of their superior intelligence and ability. But after not too many generations of this kind of inbreeding, they were weaklings and puppets. And of course, their regimes collapsed.

Yes?

[Audience Member] How do these scientists think they can overcome such evidently impossible problems?  ^xi

[Rushdoony] Because their belief is, as scientists, that they can cope with any and every problem as it arises.

For example, we are dumping atomic waste materials into the ocean. Now, every kind of precaution is taken to prevent any leakage of this, it is encased in concrete and lead and so on and so forth. But, there is the possibility of some damage. Sometime. What is the answer to that? When that eventuality arises, “We will think of an answer.” In other words, there is a sense of total capacity. 

For example one writer is currently dealing with a fact: “Will our ability to land on the moon change our belief about God?” Well, what in the world does it have to do with it? Except this: we feel omnipotent now. Therefore, why God? It is like one of the astronauts who landed recently, if you follow it on television. He stated: “There is now nothing impossible for man, man can do whatever he pleases.” In other words, man is his own God. It is this attitude that makes them so totally heedless of the consequences of what they do.

Our time is just about up, and I would like to call your attention to something; incidentally, I do have the May newsletter for those of you ask for it, extra copies are available. 

In our June Newsletter, you will recall Gary North discuss the matter of the student movement, the AP and ISI. An interesting footnote to that whole matter is in this semi-monthly newsletter, the Libertarian Forum, which is one of the most prominent of the anarchistic publications. And of course the leading article is a call for revolution. It speaks about equal approval of both YAFF, Young Americans For Freedom, and SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. Now, these are supposed to be the ultra-right wing and ultra-left wing organizations, but both are anarchistic to a very great degree, and so they are about equally in favor of both. They feel that there are some defects in both, but they are in favor of them. And this little box on page three I think is of interest: 

“Defense funds. As the oppressive reign of the white terror begins to roll over the land, defense of the elementary civil liberties centers becomes every more acutely necessary. Two new defense funds merit our interest and our contribution. One is for bail money and legal and medical expenses for the arrested and the wounded in the people’s park massacre. Contributions should be sent to the People’s Park Defense Fund… in Berkeley. The other is for the defense of the eight political dissenters in Chicago, who have been shamefully indicted by the Federal authorities for conspiracy to promote disorder and riots under the infamous anti-riot Title 18 of the Civil Rights act of 1968. The entire spectrum of laws against conspiracy along with indictment are methods of suppressing, not concrete action but political dissent and freedom of speech. Laws against conspiracy have no part in libertarian law which is only concerned with defending persons and their right against acts of invasion. Contributions towards the costly defense against this mass indictment may be made out to ‘Chicago Defense Fund’ and mailed to the Capitol Committee Defense to defend the conspiracy in Chicago and Illinois.”

The two writers in this issue are Murray Rothbard the economist, and Karl Hess, who was Goldwater’s speechwriter. And with that, we are adjourned.

i. This sentence was added from the book, Institutes of Biblical Law, due to a skip in the tape.

ii. Arthur C. Custance, Doorway Papers, no. 51: Cain’s Wife (Ottawa, Canada: 1967), p. 8.

iii. Arthur C. Custance, Doorway Papers, no. 51: Cain’s Wife (Ottawa, Canada: 1967), p. 10 f.

iv. Arthur C. Custance, Doorway Papers, no. 51: Cain’s Wife (Ottawa, Canada: 1967), p. 11 f.

v. Roger Blake, The Free-Love Groups, pp. 69 ff., 112–124.

vi. Arthur C. Custance, Doorway Papers, no. 51: Cain’s Wife (Ottawa, Canada: 1967), p. 188.

vii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

viii.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

ix.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

x.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.

xi.  Question added/modified for clarity and brevity.