The Language of the Bible and the Language of the Rabbis: A Linguistic Look at Kiddushin, Part 1

Introduction

So far as current scholarship is aware, the term kiddushin and the use of the root kof-dalet-shin (henceforth: k-d-sh) to describe betrothal in rabbinic literature are not attested in any source prior to their appearance in tannaitic literature.¹ Despite the fact that a legal institution similar to rabbinic kiddushin is briefly mentioned in biblical legislation, there the root used is alef-resh-sin (as, for example, in Deuteronomy 20:7 or 22:23, 25,27). Moreover, the historical evidence currently available supports the likelihood that the use of k-d-sh for this purpose is distinctively rabbinic terminology, even a rabbinic innovation.²

Development and change in language usage and vocabulary (often referred to as “lexis” by linguists) is in fact a topic of great interest in linguistic studies. As linguist Cate Poynton has observed, “What lexis does is to name activities or processes, people and things associated with those processes, and characteristics or attributes of those activities or processes, people, and things, in ways that are culturally salient.”³ Thus, it would follow that the development of new words and phrases would correspond to a particular concept or idea becoming newly “culturally salient”; similarly, lexical change around a particular topic would correspond to changes and developments in cultural conceptions in that area.⁴ In the context of gender and women’s history, linguist Sally McConnell-Ginet has written: “When we have clear-cut evidence about a semantic shift, we can make plausible conjectures about the lives of our foremothers and, in some cases, about the past cultural conceptions of femaleness and maleness.”⁵ While I would, contra McConnell-Ginet, privilege what we can learn about historical “cultural conceptions” through such examples over what we can learn about people’s actual lives, the underlying assumption—that semantic shift is (at least potentially) culturally significant—is an essential insight that must be addressed. Is the development of this new terminology in the rabbinic vocabulary of marriage in and of itself evidence that a change in cultural understandings of marriage was taking place as well? In this article and its forthcoming companion piece, I will examine the use and development of this terminology in rabbinic vocabulary and legal reasoning around marriage, its relationship to other biblical and rabbinic terminology for discussing marriage, and the insight that language can shed on the socio-cultural assumptions that undergird rabbinic—and our own—models of marriage.

This is an important area of investigation, because a number of scholars have argued that the introduction of this usage of k-d-sh is not only a innovation in language, but also that it signals a turn away from the conceptualization and even legalities of marriage as a form of purchase (see below) that is found in pre-rabbinic or early rabbinic literature and culture. A good example of this approach is Yehiel M. Gutman’s claim:

In more ancient times the purchase of a woman was an actual purchase in all its details, like the purchase of a field and a vineyard. . . . Yet the Talmudic sources already stand at no small distance from the primitive and vulgar view of actively purchasing a woman.⁶

A corollary assumption—already hinted at in the citation from Gutman— posits that this linguistic and legal shift signals not only a change but a positive change in rabbinic conceptions of marriage and women’s roles therein. Similarly, the fact that the range of uses of the root k-d-sh encompasses meanings of holiness and sanctification becomes significant (a point I will also return to in my second article); since the root k-d-sh carries connotations of “to be and/or make holy” and “to sanctify” among its many meanings, kiddushin is also frequently translated as “sanctification.” The following from Judith Hauptman neatly (and more moderately than most) epitomizes this line of argument:

The move away from marriage as a purchase is borne out by the Mishnah’s terminology. The term kinyan (purchase) in relationship to marriage appears...