MARRIAGE
(83
MARRIAGE
ted, and who had to explain and administer the law in practical life, knew nothing about it. The Palestinian doctors regarded the proscribed degrees as a positire law, the cause of which cannot be divined by human reason (^Sifra Kedoshim, i.x, 12 ; Talmud, Sahhath, 130 a; Joma, 75 a). The only attempt to rationalize on the subject is on the apparent inconsistency of the Mosaic law in prohibiting marriage with the wife of the father's brother, in case she is divorced or left a widow, and not forbidding the wife of the mother's brother. Upon this the Talmud remarks that a man visits his father's rela- tions more than his mother's {Jehamoth, 21 a; and Ra- shi on this passage); and it is submitted, and we be- lieve with perfect reason, and based on Numb, i, 2, that it is the father's relations who constitute the famih^, and not the mother's. We thus see that up to the time of the Ptolemies, when the Greek loose barriers of con- sanguinity threatened to fall among the Jewish fami- lies, the ancient Hebrews were bound only by the spe- cific proscriptions in the Mosaic law, and that even after the prohibitions were extended by the scribes, the pro- scription of a male relative by blood did not imply the wife's relatives of the like degree, because of the strong distinction made by them between consanguinity and alhnity by marriage ; the former being permanent and sacred, and the latter luicertain and vague, as a man might any moment divorce his wife, or take as many as he pleased, and because the husband's family were regarded as the relations, while the wife's were not es- teemed beyond those who are especially mentioned.
The proscribed degrees were sacredly avoided hy the Jews during this period, and no dispensation could be obtained by anj^ one, no matter how high his position, as Judaism never invested any spiritual functionary with power to absolve, even in extraordinary cases, from the obligations of the law. Hence the outcry against Herod the Great, who married his half-sister (Josephus, Ant. xvii, 1, 3); against Archelaus, who took his de- ceased brother's widow when she was the mother of children (ibid, xvii, 18, 1); and against Herod Antipas, for which John the Baptist had to atone with his life (Josephus, Ant. xviii, 5, 1 ; Matt, xiv, 3). So long as foreign epigamy was of merely occasional occurrence no veto was placed upon it by public authority ; but when, after the return from the Babylonian captivity, the Jews contracted marriages with the heathen inhab- itants of Palestine in so wholesale a manner as to en- danger their national existence, t!ie practice was severe- ly condemned (Ezra ix, 2 ; x, 2), and the law of positive prohibition, originally pronounced only against the Ca- naanites, was extended to the IMoabites, Ammonites, and Philistines (Neh. xiii, 23-25). Public feehng was thenceforth strongly opposed to foreign marriages, and the union of jManasseh with a Cuth;ean led to such an- imosity as to produce the great national schism, which had its focus in the temple on Mount Gerizim (Josephus, Ant. xi, 8, 2) A no less signal instance of the same feeling is exhibited in the cases of Joseph {Ant. xii, 4, 6) and Anilteus {Ant. xviii. 9, 5), and is noticed by Taci- tus {If int. V, 5) as one of the characteristics of the Jew- ish nation in his day. In the N. T. no special direc- tions are given on this head, but the general precepts of separation between believers and unbelievers (2 Cor. vi, 14, 17) would apply with special force to the case of marriage; and the permission to dissolve mixed mar- riages, contracted previously to the conversion of one party, at the instance of the unconverted one, cannot but be regarded as implying the impropriety of such unions subsequently to conversion (1 Cor. vii,'l2).
I'x'sides the proscribed degrees, the rabbinic law also enacted — i. A man must not marry a divorced woman with whom he has committed adultery prior to her di- vorcement {Sota, 27), or even if he is only suspected of it (Jcbamof/i, 24; Maimonides, Sota, ii, 12). ii. A man who attested the death of the husband is not allowed to marry the widow, nor is the bearer of a divorce permit- ted to marry the divorced woman, to avoid suspicion
(Jebamnth, ii, 9, 10). iii. If a man's wife dies, he must not marrj' again till three festivals after his wife's death {Moed Katon, 23). iv. A man is not to marry a woman who has lost two husbands (Jebamoth, 64). v. A father is not to give a yomig daughter in marriage to an old man, nor is a young man to marry an old woman {Jeba- moth, 101 ; Maimonides, Isure Bia, xxi, 26). vi. A man is not to marry within thirty days of the death of a near relation {Moed Katon, 23). vii. Wdows are not to marry within ninety days of the loss of their husbands, nor are divorced women to marry within ninety days of their being divorced, in order that the paternity of the newly-born child might be distinguished {Jebamoth, 41 a), viii. If a widow or a divorced woman is nursing an infant, she must not marry withm twenty -four months of the birth of the baby {Jebamoth, 41 ; Kethu- both, 60; and Tossafoth, on these passages).