The Law of Sexual Relations

Abstract

This chapter evaluates how Noahide law forbids several types of sexual relations, including incest, homosexuality, and bestiality. Regarding attitudes towards incest, few differences can be found between Jews and non-Jews, although the rabbis recognized a significant dissimilarity toward relations between brother and sister. Noahide law was more permissive in this instance because it was also more general, whereas Jewish law knew of the specific prohibition of brother–sister relations. The rabbis were not the only Jews to reflect on prohibited relations: Philo held that sexual closeness between parents and children, or between siblings, breached the prior relationship of father and daughter, mother and son, or brother and sister. The chapter then looks at how the rabbis and later medieval thinkers addressed homosexuality, which was pervasive in the Greco-Roman world, and the nature of gentile family ties.