Jewish Marriage in Antiquity

Abstract

Marriage in Antiquity, by Michael L. Satlow. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. Pp. xxvi + 429. $65. With this book, the title of which is succinct and to the point, Michael Satlow offers a comprehensive study of marriage in antiquity, ranging from biblical texts to texts and intermittently even post-talmudic texts. Rabbinic and especially talmudic texts are treated most thoroughly in this book, while second Temple literature is mostly referred to rather than being discussed in its own right. As the author himself is quick to point out in his preface, the first two critical terms in the title-Jewish and marriage-are fluid and context-dependent, and this is exactly what Satlow sets out to explore. That is, one of the central questions of the book is the question how Jewish marriage really is. Hence, antiquity here is to be understood in the broadest cultural sense and not merely as a chronological term. Indeed, one of the great merits of the book is that in trying to answer this question Satlow not only analyzes texts and epigraphic material from what is generally recognized as material from the ancient world but also draws amply on Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman literature as well as occasionally on Zoroastrian material to provide a context for what authors thought and wrote. By doing so, Satlow demonstrates the two central arguments of his book: first, that there is nothing essentially about Jewish marriage in antiquity and that often enough authors merely Judaize (pp. 59, 66) prevalent notions or ideologies of marriage; second, that the various groups in antiquity had fundamentally different understandings of the goals and functions of marriage, depending on chronological and cultural context. This, according to Satlow, holds true not only for authors of differently located texts, whether Philo, Josephus, Paul, or the people at Qumran, but also and especially for accounts of inner-rabbinic differences, namely, between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbis. The latter point seems to be most important for Satlow, partially because of the dominant focus of the book on texts. Further, the point is important, even though Satlow is not the first to make it, because often enough rabbinic Judaism is still represented as a homogeneous culture. Accordingly, Satlow emphasizes the differences between various subcultures much more than pointing out similarities and continuities. Indeed, he can at times go so far as to state that the respective subcultures were much more similar to their respective cultural environments than to their respective colleagues. To overstate the point, Palestinian rabbis appear to be Stoics and Babylonian rabbis Zoroastrians, respectively. Let me backtrack, however, and briefly provide a description of the book before I critically engage those points. In order to provide a comprehensive study of the particular topic of marriage, Satlow provides a clear structure by dividing the book into three parts, each of which throws light on different aspects of the institution. In the first part he analyzes the ideology of marriage, its underlying theology, and legal framework. In the second part he presents material about the actual process of marrying, beginning with marriage contracts from Egypt and the Judean desert (what he calls sherds of real marriage) and going through the various stages of tying the knot (including age at the time of marriage, issues of intermarriage, customs and rituals of marriage, and biblical/ peculiarities such as levirate marriage and polygyny). The third part focuses on the nature of the relationship between the spouses, both in economic and qualitative terms. Each of the chapters walks the reader through a number of texts relevant to the argument presented with the goal of providing what Satlow calls a thick description of the contours of marriage in antiquity. …