Hmm, I would have assumed that gentile Christians just never followed the practice (just like they didn’t keep kosher or follow other Old Testament laws), and (fairly naturally) saw it as conflicting with monogamy.
Am I mistaken—was levirate marriage actually ever widely practiced in the Western Christian church?
I don’t have any evidence directly answering that, but levirate marriage seems to have been encouraged among a wide variety of pre-industrial cultures.
Hmm, I would have assumed that gentile Christians just never followed the practice (just like they didn’t keep kosher or follow other Old Testament laws), and (fairly naturally) saw it as conflicting with monogamy.
Am I mistaken—was levirate marriage actually ever widely practiced in the Western Christian church?
I don’t have any evidence directly answering that, but levirate marriage seems to have been encouraged among a wide variety of pre-industrial cultures.