These four verses have long been the primary Scriptural proof for the notion of monogyny to the exclusion of polygyny in Christendom for many generations:

Please note that there is no definite article used before words »husband« (anêr), »man« (anêr) or »wife« (gunê) in in the Greek text for any of these verses. Although some translations insert them, we should also note that the Greek words for »but«, »only«, »true« and »faithful« are not found in these »husband of one wife« phrases. This may have some bearing on how we understand them. So let's look at them again without the »the« before these words:

»HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE« = »mias gunaikos andra« [UBSGNT]

»HUSBANDS OF ONE WIFE« = »mias gunaikos andres« [UBSGNT]

»HUSBAND OF ONE WIFE« = »mias gunaikos anêr« [UBSGNT]

»WIFE OF ONE MAN« = »henos andros gunê« [UBSGNT]

Why would Paul have specified 'one wife' if there weren't believers in the churches who had more than one wife? It seems to me that his instructions point in this direction. Moreover, if Paul was fundamentally opposed to polygyny, why didn't he forbid polygyny? I would think, given the direct and straightforward character of his writings, that he would have specifically forbidden it if he had anything in his spirit against it. What about the implications involved in taking the verses in the letter of the word? (2C 3:6) The problem is, if they are 'law', that is, taken in the letter, then no one who is still single can enter the work of the ministry, nor can the man who has 2 or more wives. If mia meant 'first', then we would also have to disqualify people who were divorced (no matter what the cause was). That could even be extended toward a disqualification of men who had only one wife (since 'first' implies the existence of a second). Who am I to judge the will of God for another? The Scriptures present Paul and Jesus both as single and celibate, so Paul would have to be contradicting himself if he meant these qualifications to be taken in the letter of the word, as 'law'. Ultimately, my question became: What translation of mia would make these verses fit with the rest of the Scriptures' teaching about having more than one wife without overstretching the primary meaning of mia?

Some have mistakenly assumed, based on the definitons given in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, that heis and mia, while being related words, have different usage in the Scriptures. This is not so. In looking at the words in Greek text, what you are actually seeing is gender and case agreement. Old Greek had three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter (as does Latin and German). Because the word for man/husband anêr is masculine in gender, any adjective modifying the word must be in the masculine gender as is the word heis. Likewise, the same is true for the word for wife/woman gunê; it must take the feminine gender and cannot take the masculine in order to be grammatically correct. The only real difference between heis and mia is gender, not emphasis or usage. Note that the neuter gender form is hen and must follow the same grammatical rule.

With regard to mia, I don't know how Greek developed this albeit unusual feminine form, but I can say that it is not because mia meant 'first' rather than 'one' (heis and hen can also mean 'first'). Paul could have the used the more specific word prôtos which specifically means 'first' if that is what he wanted to emphasize. Thus, the usage of heis and mia in the 'one wife' and 'one husband' verses does not necessarily prove anything with regard to polygyny.

Mia, as meaning 'first', does not really work here, for heis would also mean 'first' when Paul mentions the widow »having been the wife of one man« (1Ti 5:9, KJV), and that would create a problem. We would then have these literal renderings following the Greek word order:

In each of these four examples, the syntax is exactly the same:

Thus, to interpret the verses in which the wife is in the genetive case (gunaikos) as the first wife in a polygynous marriage, we would be compelled by the grammar to interpret the husband (andros) in 1Ti 5:9 as the first husband in a polyandrous marriage. Thus, the 'first wife' scenario collapses because while polygyny is consistent with the Old Testament (Paul's Bible) testimony, polyandry is not.

As I have been saying, heis/mia/hen mean exactly the same thing. Other than spelling and pronunciation, the only difference is grammatical gender. When this numeral is used with nouns, to denote '1' thing or 'a' thing, the gender of the numeral must agree with the gender of the noun with which it used. We can see an excellent example of this, which also demonstrates well that heis/mia/hen all mean exactly the same thing, in Ephesians 4:4-6:

»one body« = hen sôma, neuter gender.

»one Spirit« = hen pneuma, neuter gender.

»one hope« = mia elpidi, feminine gender.

»one lord« = heis kurios, masculine gender.

»one faith« = mia pistis, feminine gender.

»one baptism« = hen baptisma, neuter gender.

»one God and Father of all« = heis theos kai patêr pantôn, masculine gender.

I doubt very much that anyone would assume that mia meant 'first' in this passage, nor do we have any reason to render it here as 'a', because it is quite obvious that each occurence of heis/mia/hen in this Scripture passage really does mean literally 'one'.

echâd and heis/mia/hen

It is worthy of note that heis/mia/hen is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew word 'echâd in Genesis 2:24 »they shall be one (mia) flesh« and in the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4 »Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one (heis) Lord«. In both instances, 'echâd denotes unity, the unity of the man and the woman in sexual intercourse, and the unity of Elohim. 'echâd is also used in some instances to denote the numeral 1 as in Genesis 2:21 where it reads »he took one (mia) of his ribs«. According to Gesenius, in addition to its other meanings such as 'one', 'first', 'some one', 'once', 'suddenly', 'the same', 'united', etc., 'echâd also "acts the part of an indefinite article". Since Paul and the other New Testament authors were Hebrews, we might expect them to carry this usage into their writing in the Greek language.

In Old Greek (Classical or Koine), there are no indefinite articles like 'a' or 'an' in English. However, the general pattern in Indoeuropean languages is that the words for 'one' over time also do duty as the indefinite article, e.g. Lat. 'unus' becomes 'un' in French and Spanish, 'ein' is used as both the number 1 and the indefinite article in German. Since Greek is an Indoeuropean language, the usage in Paul's writings (one husband, one wife) may in fact be moving in this direction. It is true that the Greek numeral one did in fact come to be used as the indefinite in modern Greek as henas, mia and hena (with heis being replaced by the form henas). This would change our modified KJV text further:

If heis/mia/hen is being used as an indefinite article in these verses, then there is absolutely no possibility of these verses being usable for any argument in favor of monogyny to the exclusion or banning of polygyny. It would also then mean that Paul was essentially requiring that bishops, deacons and elders be married men with no further qualification (as it pertains to marital status) being necessary. It would like mean that bishops, deacons and elders could be men having more than one wife. Thus, the essential question is this: Was heis/mia/hen being used as an indefinite article in these verses? Are there other instances in the Scriptures where heis/mia/hen was used as an indefinite article?

On page 25 of Grammar Of Septuagint Greek by F.C.Conybeare and St. George Stock, we find a discussion called Heis as Article. (Please note that I have transliterated all of the Greek words.) I will quote this in its entirety.

Given that Conybeare and Stock's entry shows that heis/mia/hen was used as an indefinite article in Septuagint and NT Greek, it is therefore very possible, maybe even probable, that Paul's usage of it is following that of Matthew and John. Paul's education would suit this possibility, for they also point out that heis/mia/hen was used this way in 'good' or Classical Greek apart from any Hebrew influence. Being that Paul was a well educated and traveled man, we can probably safely assume that he would have been aware of this usage. Conybeare and Stock's evidence verifies without any doubt that heis/mia/hen was indeed being used as an indefinite article at the time the NT books were being written.

Some have taken the fact that mia is translated as 'first' (in reference to the first day of the week) and then sought to apply its usage there as its definition in the »one wife« verses assuming that »one« was a mistranslation and assumed Paul meant 'first' while using the cardinal numeral 1 instead of the ordinal numeral. Paul's usage of the ordinal prôtos suggests otherwise. Prôtos is overwhelmingly Paul's word of choice for expressing the ordinal notion of 'first' or 'foremost'. Throughout his letters, whenever he wants to say 'first', he uses the word prôtos [#4413G] or its adverbial form prôton [#4412G]. In the list below, I have listed every occurrence of prôtos/prôton in Paul's writings which is translated as »first« in the King James text. Note that the list below assumes that Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews.

These examples of Paul's usage of prôtos/prôton demonstrate well that Paul would have not used mia to mean 'first' if he wanted to say first. If Paul had wanted to emphasize 'first wife', our paradigm would look like this:

It is true that Paul used mia referring to the first day of the week as do other New Testament writers. But, even so, mia in those verses did not mean 'first' to them in the context of the Greek language. We translate the construction tê mia tôn sabbatôn in John 20:1 et al as the 'first day of the week' because that's more like commonly used English. However, the literal meaning is »(regarding) the one of the sabbaths«. In fact, he was using it much like the way 'echâd is used in the Old Testament to denote the first day or year of a span of time. Thus the English translation »first« here is idiomatic, and not literal. It is important to remember that heis/mia/hen is used in the Septuagint to translate 'echâd. However, Hebrew, like Greek and English, has a separate word to mean 'first' - ri'shôwn - which is used considerably more often than 'echâd in this capacity. There is also the word ben which is so translated in the KJV. In Hosea, when he speaks regarding »her first husband« (Ho 2:7), he uses ri'shôwn to denote 'first'. So we might expect ri'shôwn to be used if the Old Testament contained the phrase 'first wife' (which is does not appear to contain). All taken together, there is not much here to support the rendering of mias gunaikos as 'of first wife'.

One of the other things I can say is that most of Greek dictionaries which I used in reading about heis/mia/hen make absolutely NO semantic distinction between the three forms. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and Vines' Dictionary seem to make this distinction, but Gemoll, Bullinger, Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich, Menge-Güthling, Liddell & Scott, Wigram and Thayer do not. In the study I did, using several Greek dictionaries, I discovered these meanings for heis/mia/hen: "one, a/an, other, first, sole/alone, unity, simularity". Obviously, we could look at Paul's instructions to Timothy and Titus using any or all of these definitions and consider how they affect the meaning.

On the basis of used vocabulary, I do not think we can prove anything about polygyny or monogyny using these verses. In any case, the provisions in the Law of Moses for first wives (Ex 21:10-11) and the firstborn son (Dt 21:15-17) should be enough to discourage any condemnation of polygyny as being a sinful practice. Another important consideration is that the Levirate Law in its application would have created some situations where a married man, being the brother of the deceased, would have had to become a bigamist or polygamist in order to raise up seed unto his brother (Dt 25:5-10). Indeed, Judah's son Onan was killed by Yahweh because he failed to fulfill this principle (Gn 38:6-10). When Paul defended himself before Agrippa, he said this:

Indeed, if we read through Paul's writings, he quotes extensively from the Law of Moses in teaching and presenting the New Covenant. It is highly doubtful that Paul would have written anything contrary to the Law. If anything, whatever he wrote should be understood drawing from the teachings of Moses and the prophets. My conclusion is that Paul had no objection to polygamy. Given the evidence which I have presented in this writing, I suggest that the best translation of the »husband(s) of one wife« verses is HUSBAND(S) OF A WIFE.

If we take the "husband of one wife" verses as though they were absolute law, then we have to exclude not only polygamous men, but also unmarried man, and when we render mia as 'first', divorced men, and widowed men from participation in these ministries. Would you say this is what Paul intended? He himself was celibate, as was also Jesus. Would we exclude them from these ministries? What if an elder had an unruly son given to drug abuse or criminality? Would we demand that that man be removed from his ministry?

Even if we believe that these passages, 1. Timothy 3:2, 1. Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:5-7, recommend or mandate monogyny, Paul only specified it for bishops, deacons, and elders, but not for apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors or teachers. Logically, if we are to take these recommendations as law or righteous requirement, and then claim that they forbid polygamy, then these also have the effect of rejecting anyone who is unmarried (whether celibate, single or a widower) from being or becoming a bishop, deacon, or elder. That would have disqualified both Paul and Jesus. In the context of the verse surrounding these passages, it is clear that Paul wanted Timothy and Titus to appoint to these offices only those who were holy and walked in the ways of Yahweh. What he was really saying was, in effect, 'look for men who are married and holy'. This would have extended to those who had more than one wife as well.

If anything, I think the emphasis of these verses is not on monogyny, but on being married in general, especially since neither Moses, nor any of the other Old Testament saints who came after him, seemed to see any contradiction between »they shall be one flesh« and a man having several wives. I suspect that Paul wanted bishops, elders, and deacons who were married because they would understand the concept and experience of being in covenant relationship, whereas the unmarried person might not. And he may well have been drawing on this from the Law of Moses:

The principle is not the number of wives, but the preference for these leaders to be married and to be holy, having handled those relationships according to the will of God. This is very much the focus of Paul's recommendations for bishops, elders, and deacons. The commandment here only applied to the high priest. And it is a positive commandment, commanding the high priest to take a wife, and specifying the kind of wife he was to take. The indefinite article 'a' (according to the CVOT) is not present in the Hebrew, so that the verse can read "he shall take wife in her virginity". In any case, there is no limitation on the number of wives in this regulation.