"Go Enjoy Your Acquisition": Virginity Claims in Rabbinic Literature Reexamined
This paper analyzes every rabbinic source concerning the topic of virginity claims and traces the development of these laws and the literature in which they are embedded from their earliest appearances in the Mishnah and Tosefta through the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. There are several trend...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
HUC
2007
|
| In: |
Hebrew Union College annual
Year: 2006, Volume: 77, Pages: 33-65 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
|
| Summary: | This paper analyzes every rabbinic source concerning the topic of virginity claims and traces the development of these laws and the literature in which they are embedded from their earliest appearances in the Mishnah and Tosefta through the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. There are several trends that emerge. In the earliest tannaitic stratum of the literature, one finds that virginity claims are already difficult for a husband to bring to court and even more difficult to successfully prove, thereby causing his wife to lose her ketubbah. We will demonstrate this through analysis of several tannaitic passages, passages which have been frequently misunderstood in scholarly literature. By the early amoraic stratum, one finds the beginnings of a response to the tannaitic trend to deny virginity claims. This response represents a pivotal moment in the legal development of virginity claims and has not been properly understood by scholars. Understanding this development is a key toward the deciphering of several talmudic passages. Towards the end of the amoraic period, two counterapproaches to virginity claims emerge, one which appears to preclude by legislation the very possibility of such claims, and another by which the husband's virginity claim is always accepted, presuming that he would never fabricate such a claim. This paper contributes several fresh understandings of previously misinterpreted passages and as such is important to the future study of rabbinic attitudes toward female virginity in particular and sexuality in general. |
|---|---|
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Hebrew Union College annual
|