Signs of Virginity: Testing Virgins and Making Men in Late Antiquity by Michael Rosenberg

Abstract

While these broad categories could be divided further, their contrast allows for an effective exploration of Rosenberg's key question: what do authors' views of female virginity and its signs imply about a male partner's role and ideal behaviors in first coitus? According to Rosenberg's framework, Deuteronomy 22.13–21—with its procedure involving a garment, perhaps a blood-stained one, for verifying brides' premarital virginity—established a dominant, body-based model that subsequent Jews and Christians would either affirm or subvert (30). Signs of Virginity deserves a wide readership, and its accessible discussions of primary material will prompt students, experts, and other interested readers to question presuppositions about sexuality and to reconsider which early Jewish and Christian ideas were traditional, and which were innovations.