![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm currently attempting to read through the Bible, something I've been meaning to do for years. I do a half-hour stint every morning while perched in front of my lightbox, using my lovely New Oxford Annotated Bible which people here recommended. (For certain values of "every".) At the moment I'm half-way through Deuteronomy, and something has just struck me.
There's a passage in Deuteronomy 22 when penalties for rape and illicit sex are imposed. If a man marries a woman and goes off her when he sleeps with her, all is dependent on whether or not there's a stain on the sheet to prove her virginity (a myth for which there is no medical evidence, as the NOAB tartly points out). If there is, he gets a fine and a bad reputation, but has to stay married to her; if there isn't, she gets stoned. If a couple are caught in adultery, both get stoned. If a man rapes an engaged woman in the town, they both get stoned (she because she didn't scream for help, "and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you"); if it's in the country (i.e. no one could hear her scream) then only he dies. If a man rapes an unengaged woman, he must marry her and pay her father a fine. Many of these end with "you must purge the evil from among you", or however it's translated (NIV was the best I could find online at my usual site). From Deuteronomy 20, if a man fancies a captive woman, he must give her a month to mourn her parents then marry her, he can't enslave her.
I read this without thinking about it much because I'm up to my eyes in early modern lit at the moment and quite used to women being seen in this way, forced marriages, insane paranoia about cuckoldry, and rape being viewed as a property crime. On thinking about it further, what has really struck me is the sense of extreme pollution concerning that delicate and peculiar construct, female chastity. It's something which continues to echo through literature - look at Fletcher's The Tragedy of Valentinian, for instance, when a woman who's clearly protesting strongly is raped by the Emperor, and as soon as her husband realises he immediately assumes she'll kill herself, which she promptly does - but I've never seen it so strongly expressed in this way. There was a footnote somewhere earlier in Deuteronomy commenting that adultery is seen as not only a crime against the husband but a crime against God, which is why it incurs the death penalty and causes ritual pollution, so maybe it's just that. But it does seem extreme. If there's the slightest hint that a woman may have indulged in pre-marital sex, the entire community is polluted by "evil" and she has to be stoned to death? It's all the stranger because Deuteronomy 19:15 declares that, "One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offence he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses", and ancient Jewish law is generally very careful about such matters. Thoughts, anyone?
cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
bible_as_lit and might put it somewhere else if I can think of an appropriate comm
There's a passage in Deuteronomy 22 when penalties for rape and illicit sex are imposed. If a man marries a woman and goes off her when he sleeps with her, all is dependent on whether or not there's a stain on the sheet to prove her virginity (a myth for which there is no medical evidence, as the NOAB tartly points out). If there is, he gets a fine and a bad reputation, but has to stay married to her; if there isn't, she gets stoned. If a couple are caught in adultery, both get stoned. If a man rapes an engaged woman in the town, they both get stoned (she because she didn't scream for help, "and the man because he violated another man's wife. You must purge the evil from among you"); if it's in the country (i.e. no one could hear her scream) then only he dies. If a man rapes an unengaged woman, he must marry her and pay her father a fine. Many of these end with "you must purge the evil from among you", or however it's translated (NIV was the best I could find online at my usual site). From Deuteronomy 20, if a man fancies a captive woman, he must give her a month to mourn her parents then marry her, he can't enslave her.
I read this without thinking about it much because I'm up to my eyes in early modern lit at the moment and quite used to women being seen in this way, forced marriages, insane paranoia about cuckoldry, and rape being viewed as a property crime. On thinking about it further, what has really struck me is the sense of extreme pollution concerning that delicate and peculiar construct, female chastity. It's something which continues to echo through literature - look at Fletcher's The Tragedy of Valentinian, for instance, when a woman who's clearly protesting strongly is raped by the Emperor, and as soon as her husband realises he immediately assumes she'll kill herself, which she promptly does - but I've never seen it so strongly expressed in this way. There was a footnote somewhere earlier in Deuteronomy commenting that adultery is seen as not only a crime against the husband but a crime against God, which is why it incurs the death penalty and causes ritual pollution, so maybe it's just that. But it does seem extreme. If there's the slightest hint that a woman may have indulged in pre-marital sex, the entire community is polluted by "evil" and she has to be stoned to death? It's all the stranger because Deuteronomy 19:15 declares that, "One witness is not enough to convict a man accused of any crime or offence he may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses", and ancient Jewish law is generally very careful about such matters. Thoughts, anyone?
cross-posted to
bible_as_lit and might put it somewhere else if I can think of an appropriate comm
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Thursday, 29 December 2005 07:16 pm (UTC)From:that's sort of the way around the two witnesses, although most authorities say that you need two witnesses to warn the transgressors and then two witnesses to see them do it. So if there's only one witness it's invalid. The Sota Waters sort of act as the second witness (with the adultering male dying as well - no matter where he might be)
Although some of the more vital characters in the Bible are non-virgins, including the hooker in Jericho that marries Joshua (although I think that might be in midrash)
I personally would recommend either the JPS or Jerusalem Bible for translations of the "old testament" material since there's no agenda to tie it all into NT writings.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 29 December 2005 07:34 pm (UTC)From:What turns up in the Bible and what ends up in Jewish law are not the same things. At the moment I'm interested in the biblical society it's actually discussing, not what turns up later in Jewish law. Apart from anything else, I'm thinking about this in terms of Western European culture, and that will have been filtered through Christian law, if anything.
When is the Sota ritual from, do you hav a reference? It's interesting that the Sota ritual sounds like it's presuming innocence on the woman's part (well, it depends on exactly what they're feeding her), whereas the passages I'm citing appear to be erring on the side of caution the other way around. The discussion of rape appears to be about situations where there may be no witness, since otherwise why would they distinguish between assuming guilt if a woman is somewhere where people may be in earshot, and innocence if not?
Sota
Date: Thursday, 29 December 2005 07:58 pm (UTC)From:I think that's pretty much it with rape. If the woman can scream and bring people to stop the rape everyone knows that it's a rape. If a woman is caught out in the open then she's just believed that it's rape.
I had problems getting through the prophets when I tried reading the Bible all the way through. Especially Jeremiah who seems to be like Isaiah on repeat.
no subject
Date: Friday, 30 December 2005 12:08 am (UTC)From:I got through both Leviticus and Numbers very recently and I don't remember this, but then I've been doing half my reading when half-asleep.
I'm more interested in the way that a woman's sexuality seems to be seen as a potential source of extreme pollution, that any lapse in her chastity can pollute the entire community.