Male and Female He Created Them: Jewish Marriage in the Late Second Temple, Mishnah, and Talmud Periods, and: Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (review)

The intention of Adiel Schremer's recently published book is to describe marriage as it was actually practiced by Jews from the late Second Temple period through the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud. To accomplish this goal, Schremer enlists philological, historical, and sociological tools in his analysis of a vast array of literary and other evidence. The book contains eleven chapters; three concerning the conceptions, purposes, and functions of marriage, and eight concerning actual marriage practice. Schremer's focus is on rabbinic literature; however, he also demonstrates expertise in his analysis of the documentary evidence (primarily the few surviving ketubot [marriage contracts] from the period). In most chapters, he compares the patterns of marriage in rabbinic Jewish society with those found in neighboring Greek, Roman, and Persian cultures. Most innovative and extremely interesting are the frequent comparisons of Jewish practice with the traditions reflected in Syriac Patristic literature. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time such an approach has been extensively employed in a scholarly study of Jewish marriage and it greatly enhances our ability to compare the marital practices of Babylonian Jews with those of their neighbors.

Schremer's bibliographical knowledge of both Jewish and general sociological, anthropological, and historical literature is outstanding. His knowledge of rabbinic sources is quite thorough, as is his attention to detail. He should also be complimented on his exhaustive philological research, in both lexicography and manuscript traditions.

One of Schremer's positive contributions in terms of his methodology is that he has focused on the normative, dominant trends as opposed to unusual aberrations. While at times this produces conclusions that seem obvious (as for example that social standing was a critical factor in choosing a spouse; or that remarriage was common), these conclusions are well documented and representative of rabbinic society as a whole. Schremer brings abundant, concrete evidence for what were previously assumptions, thereby strengthening them with firm textual bases. In contrast, while some previous scholars who focused on the unusual (such as the infrequent ascetic trends, the few statements against polygyny) may have uncovered phenomena previously neglected, they may have unwittingly contributed to inaccurate portrayals of Jewish society as a whole.

The most convincing and innovative chapters in the book are those on the marital age of men and women in Palestine and Babylonia. Schremer tentatively estimates that men in Palestine did not typically get married until their late twenties, or even early thirties. Girls were married sometime after reaching sexual maturity (around twelve or thirteen), perhaps up until their late teens. In contrast, in Babylonia both boys and girls married much earlier, boys in their late teens and girls were frequently married before reaching puberty. As Schremer demonstrates, awareness of these differences in marital age informs our understanding of numerous other halakhot, as well as some of the differences between Babylonian and Palestinian practice. In his chapter on the choice of spouse he points out that the older a person marries, the more likely s/he will choose a partner with less aid from parents, and the more likely that that partner will be chosen based more on personal rather than societal or familial preferences. In his chapter on the financial arrangements of marriage, he suggests that the lower marital age in Babylonia may have contributed to a lowering of the ketubah value. To the extent that knowledge of the typical age of marriage is important for understanding any society, Schremer's hypothesis makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of Jewish society in antiquity.

Schremer also does important work on the question of polygyny. By demonstrating an array of literary sources that deals with the problems that might arise in a polygynous society, Schremer shows that polygyny was an accepted practice among Jews...