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4 Keeping Adultery at Bay The Wayward Wife in Late Antiquity Theologies and Theories of Sexuality: Roman and Rabbinic Perspectives In the Decalogue no less than two commandments deal, apparently, with adultery. One forbids it, sweepingly stating "thou shalt not commit adultery " (Exod. 20:15).1 The foundational chart of Judaism also makes it clear that the burden ofcontemplating adultery lies squarely on male shoulders: "Thou shall not covet the wife ofyour friend" (Exod. 20: 17), together with his other possessions? The Hebrew Bible provides a major deterrent to potential adultery by subjecting suspected adulteresses to a public ordeal (Num. 5, and below). Paradoxically, perhaps, it is a married woman, and not a man, who is cast in the act of covertly craving a body outside the marriage bed.3 When Jewish men lust, it is after God and not after mortal women.4 When did this shift of blame and responsibility occur? Had husbands failed to take care of their belongings? These are not idle questions. They touch at the heart of Jewish perceptions of female-male relations, of the image of the married woman and, above all, of the biblical, postbiblical, and rabbinic concretization of the sacred bond between Israel and God in heterosexual terms.5 Within this framework the emphasis on wifely fidelity reflects the centrality of the conviction that the issuing from a single seed, be it all Jews out ofAbraham's, or Jewish males (and females) out of legitimate paternal seeds, is a primary tenet of belonging.6 The sacred bond of marriage and ofthe conjugal act are, therefore, fragments ofa larger canvas that excludes unfaithful women. "The body is the multiplier of the divine image as long as the child's mother is the child's father's wife, as long as he can be recognized as the child of a man who was his mother's husband."7 106 Visions of Rabbinic Order Considerable effort was invested in the Hebrew Bible in preventing extramarital liaisons by prescribing an ordeal that women suspected of adultery had to undergo (Num. s:n-31). At its conclusion the suspicious husband who had initiated the procedure and witnessed it was "cleansed ofsin" (Num. 5: 31), as though his wife's trial and tribulations had acted as an exonerating agent.8 A woman who had failed the test led subsequendy a life apart from the community, branded forever with infamy; the one who passed it was ready to fall pregnant. Ordeals ofthis sort, in which the body of a woman was subjected to a test of purity and impurity, enabled a body of men to enact in a specific way based on specific beliefs, and permitted communities to impose settlements on disputes that threatened to lead to dissension.9 Notable is the absence ofa third party from the biblical ordeal-there is no lover, actual or putative. The biblical ordeal revolves on the application of (bitter) water as an instrument that facilitates the recognition and identification of genuine adulteresses.I0 The centrality of water in determining the quality of malefemale sexual relations is echoed in the Mishnaic tractate dealing with marital obligations (ketubbot). According to the rabbis the basis ofa valid marital contract is the husbandly assumption that the woman with whom one is contracting matrimony is approaching the marriage bed in an intact state ofvirginity. Yet, the possibility ofdiscovering the opposite had not eluded the rabbis. Thus a situation in which a husband seeks arbitration as soon as he realizes that he had been "cheated" is envisaged. But the issue is not as simple as a broken hymen, for the fresh wife can state that "No sooner you betrothed me I was raped. Your field had been flooded" (M Ket. 1.6). To which her affronted spouse may reply: "This is not the case at all. Rather, it happened before I betrothed you (and not after) and hence I got a bad bargain" (ibid.).U With such contrasting and unprovable testimonies the rabbis pondered not on the prescription of an appropriate ordeal for the wife with compromised virginity but on the question of trust. In the recorded rabbinic debate two authorities believed the woman; one, however, claimed that her word had no validity unless she furnished proofof her assertion . The nature of this evidence is left out of the discussion, as is the existence of a presumed lover. Suspicions of illicit sex or adultery and unreported rape, then, exposed a husband to the same perils that threatened...

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