ABSTRACT
'Marriage', says Westermarck, 'is rooted in family rather than family in marriage.' This view would have been a truism in pre-Christian times, but since the advent of Christianity it has become an important proposition needing to be stated with emphasis. Christianity, and more particularly St Paul, introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed not primarily for the procreation of children, but to prevent the sin of fornication.
