As happened with all peoples where descent in male replaced descent in
female line, woman among the Jews stood wholly bereft of rights. Wedlock
was marriage by purchase. On woman the obligation was laid of the
strictest chastity; on the other hand, man was not bound by the same
ordinance; he, moreover, was privileged to possess several wives. Did
the husband, after the bridal night, believe to have found that his wife
had, before marriage, lost her maidenhood, not only had he the right to
cast her off, she was stoned to death. The same punishment fell upon the
adultress; upon the husband, however, only in case he committed adultery
with a married Jewish woman. According to V Moses 24, 1-4, the husband
had also the right to cast off his newly-married wife, if she found no
favor in his eyes, even if only out of dislike. He was then to write her
a bill of divorcement, give it in her hand, and let her out of the
house. An expression of the low position that woman took later among the
Jews is furthermore found in the circumstances that, even to this day,
woman attends divine service in the synagogue, in a space strictly
separated from the men, and they are not included in the prayers.[5]
The relations of the sexes in the punaluan family consisted, according
to Morgan, in one or more sisters, belonging to one family group,
marrying jointly one or more brothers of another group. The consanguine
sisters, or the first, second and more remote cousins were wives in
common with their husbands in common, who could not be their brothers.
These consanguine brothers, or cousins of several degrees, were the
husbands in common of their wives in common, who could not be their
sisters. With the stopping of in-breeding, the new family-form
undoubtedly contributed towards the rapid and vigorous development of
the tribes, and imparted to the tribes, that had turned to this form of
family connection, an advantage over those that still retained the old
form of connections.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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