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5 The Harmony of the Home in Late Antiquity Jewish, Roman, and Christian Perspectives on Intermarriage In the community ofthe Garden of Eden, at least according to Gen. 2: 20, the harmony of nature and the first human (male) was guaranteed only with the advent of the first woman.1 Boredom, too, was dispelled. With Eve came understanding and learning capabilities, conferred on the human couple through the intervention of a serpent. But her appearance on the idyllic scene also heralded morality, mortality, and exile. As a result of her eagerness to acquire sagacity, Eve the wisdom-bearer to humanity, had to be demoted to the status of a wife and child-bearer. Her successors had to be put under a marriage yoke lest they display similar rebelliousness and recalcitrance .What, however, if Eve ate alone? The prospect had to be monitored through the invention of marriage, or of organized coupling. Stricdy speaking, to perpetuate itself the human race needs men for a split of a second. Other than the act of dissemination, the early and crucial stages of human conception and development have nothing to do with men and everything to do with women. By creating marriage and family, Judaism, as other societies in antiquity, mediated between men and women and shaped their social relations.2 One critical stage in the institutionalization of women through marriage is reflected in the words that Li'mech, son of Methusha-el, son of Mehujael, son of Irad, son of Enoch, son of Cain, addressed to his two wives: Ada and Zila, listen to my voice; wives of La'mech, lend your ears to my words: I killed a man who had wounded me, and a boy who had beaten me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold. La'mech's revenge is seventy-seven-fold. (Gen. 4:23-24) This domestic conversation to which we hear no reply aspires to inform wives about the psyche oftheir spouses. It also conveys a threat, for it im- Harmony of the Home in Late Antiquity 133 plies that wives are potentially rivals, rather than lovers, and that, like enemies , they can be squashed for slight reasons. Between the tender expression ofAdam in Gen. 2:23 as he beholds the nascent Eve that had just been fashioned out of his rib, and the threatening declaration of La'mech to Ada and Zila, delivered after they had given birth to two sons and one daughter, stands a genealogy of a human race that gradually dispensed with female agents. If in Gen. 4:1-2, as in 4:17, births are recorded in a correct biological manner, with intercourse, conception , and the acknowledgment of the role of woman in the process, in Gen. 4: r8 men, rather than women, are bearers of exclusive parentage. When La.'mech takes two women in the first reported polygyny, the text still refers to them by name and as mothers of specifically named children. Even the longest and most detailed genealogy of the early generations of humanity (Gen. 5) is punctuated by listing the birth of "sons and daughters " to each ofAdam and Eve's successors. Basically, men bear men and all is well until only daughters are born (Gen. 6 :r) and then a series of "mixed marriages" takes place between "daughters ofmen" and "sons ofgods" and the whole scheme of tracing the history of the human race is confused beyond repair. When Noah and his sons leave the ark, the history ofancient Israel begins with a long list ofproductive men who somehow manage to generate more men (Gen. ro) and to restore the balance of reproduction with the birth of more "sons and daughters" (Gen. rr). At the dawn of the fateful encounter between God and Abraham endogamy is officially born with a series ofalliances between half-brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces (Gen. rr: 29-30). And until the birth oftwelve sons and one daughter, the survival of the fledgling founding family of Judaism depends solely on procuring the right brides, all members of the close-kin family. Throughout the history of Judaism marriage has been designated as the epicenter of the making of a Jewess. Whatever moments in the life of Jewesses were deemed worthy of recording, childhood and adolescence were singularly absent from their biographies. From the moment of birth, the female course of existence inexorably led to a union with the male half. In the ideal land of women that ancient Jewish writings delineate the bond that attaches...

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