Opinion by
Michael L. Satlow , Jewish matrimony inside the antiquity. Princeton: Princeton School Drive, 2001. xii, 431 pages ; twenty-five cm. ISBN 069100255X $.
Tawny Holm , Indiana University out-of Pennsylvania.
So it smoking cigarettes and you can total guide from the Satlow happens far to display you to definitely dialogue about ong Jews, and among their Christian, Roman, and you can Greek natives, as it is today into the progressive American and you can modern Jewish people. Satlow, which observes marriage since a great socially created, culturally depending place, provides good refreshingly historic direction into the alarmist discourse of today. “The very fact that commentary out-of public relationship ‘crisis’ is really so dated at least is always to alert us to the brand new opportunity we are referring to a point of rhetoric so much more than just truth. xvi-xvii). When it comes to contrasting hopeful belief you to modern wedding are rather an upgrade to the crappy past of patriarchal prior, Satlow means that ancient Judaism is more complicated than of many guess, and has “one or more rabbinic articulation of marital beliefs . . . to help you opponent our very own egalitarian impression” (p. xvii).
If the “that rabbinic articulation” out-of near-egalitarianism impresses most of the reader, Satlow’s case having great variety involving the additional Jewish groups try well-generated (new Palestinian rabbis constantly come in a far greater white compared to Babylonian), and his awesome publication often hence getting tempting not only mladenka Meksikanac to students away from Close Eastern antiquity and you will Judaism, but with the learned societal. The research requires a plastic method of Jewish matrimony regarding Mediterranean Levant (particularly Palestine) and you will Babylonia on the Persian period to your rabbinic several months (ca. 500 B.C.E.