Jewish Views On Incest - Among The Scribes and Pharisees (and Rabbinic Judaism)

Among The Scribes and Pharisees (and Rabbinic Judaism)

In the 4th century BC, the Soferim (scribes) declared that there were relationships within which marriage constituted incest, in addition to those mentioned by the Bible. These additional relationships were termed seconds (Hebrew: sheniyyot), and included the wives of a man's:

• father's half-brother on their mother's side
• mother's half-brother on their father's side
• grandfather
• grandson

The classical rabbis prohibited marriage between a man and any of these seconds of his, on the basis that doing so would act as a safeguard against infringing the Biblical incest rules; one Talmudic opinion even argues that the inclusion of the grandfather's wife and of the grandson's wife, among the seconds, is based on the Biblical rule against a wife's granddaughter. There was however some debate as to which relationships, other than the four listed above, counted as seconds; the Talmudic scholars and Rabbinic scholars of the middle age, the Rishonim, variously included or excluded the following relationships from the seconds of a man:

• grandmother's sister
• paternal grandfather's sister
• paternal grandfather's brother's wife
• grandfather's mother
• wife's great-grandmother
• wife's great-granddaughter (including great-granddaughter)
• an uncle's grandson's wife

The extent to which the forbidden relationships extend beyond the seconds is a matter of dispute, but all the Talmudic scholars agree that marriage to the wife of any male descendant, in the direct male line, was forbidden; some classical rabbis also included the wife of any male ancestor, in the direct male line, in this prohibition, as did all of the Jewish scholars of the Middle Ages. In the Jerusalem Talmud, some of the opinions even include all blood descendants and ancestors of the seconds in the prohibition.

In relation to seconds related only by marriage, some proposed the general principle that it would be acceptable to marry anyone only related to a "second" by a further marriage; for example, a wife of a father-in-law (apart from the mother-in-law), or the stepson's daughter-in-law. However, Israel Lipschitz interpreted this as forbidding even marriage to a wife's former husband's wife.

At least all Talmudic opinions agree that it was theoretically permitted to marry a stepfather's wife (excepting the mother), and to marry a stepsibling (a man marrying his stepsister, etc.). Nevertheless, some of the opinions expressed in the Jerusalem Talmud argue that, to avoid observers jumping to the wrong conclusions, marriage between stepsiblings, or between a man and his wife's stepmother, should be forbidden, or at least carried out somewhere that observers wouldn't already know that the participants are step-relations.

What is clear, is that no opinion in the Talmud forbids marriage to a cousin or a sister's daughter (a class of niece), and it even commends marriage to the latter - the closer relation of the two. The implied support for marriage between cousins appears to have historically been taken to heart; in 19th century England, the proportion of Jewish marriages occurring between cousins was 3.5 times higher than for the marriages of other religions; in 19th century Lorraine the proportion was twice as high as that for Roman Catholics, and 12 times higher than that for Protestants.