Marital Relations in Ancient Judaism

This volume surveys the legal and literary references to gender, sexuality, and marital relations found in biblical sources and in Rabbinic texts until the end of the Tamudic era (c. 600 C. E.). Subject areas include Israel’s familial historiography, kinship and law in biblical Israel, gender and status, judicial review of law, divine covenant and marriage covenant, conditions mandating divorce, monogamous and polygamous marriage, levirate surrogate marriage, endogamy and exogamy, marital choice, marriage and reproduction as religious imperatives, the home as a ‘small temple’, the marital writ for ontological security, emotional fidelity, the validation of eroticism, love’s body: idealization and aesthetics, denial of sexual responsibility as Judaism’s original sin, sexuality and dignity, conjugal rights and responsibilities, fertility and infertility, contraception and abortion, erotic and reproductive techniques, menstruation: the time to refrain from embracing, the suspected adulteress, children and eternity.