Ki Tetse (Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19)
LA JOLLA, California — From Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19, I have chosen four passages for comparison, from the internet, with ancient Israel’s neighbors regarding female captives, death penalties, found objects, and mixing prohibitions.
I. Deuteronomy 21:10-13 “When you take the field against your enemies…and you take some…captive…you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her…bring her into your house…she shall trim her hair…nails, and discard her captive’s garb. She shall spend a month’s time…lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and…she shall be your wife.”
With regard to this, the example I found of pagan behavior is that of Roman warriors at the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
Whether true or not, the rabbis reported widespread rape in Lamentations Rabbah 22:3. Titus is pictured as brandishing his sword, slashing the curtain of the Holy of Holies, and raping two women on a spread-out Torah scroll. In these images, imperial conquest is bound up with sexual assault!
In halakhic and aggadic texts, the rabbis address the situation of Hebrew women taken captive. They are assumed to have been violated. Their husbands were required to ransom them.
In the case of a priest’s wife, he must also ransom her, but since she now was sexually experienced outside their marriage, he can’t take her back. He returns her to her family! [1]
There is a Greek example of this situation in Sophocles’ play Trachiniae. Iole, a royal family woman, is taken captive into slavery and is mandated into marriage to Hyllus, a victor. There is no mention of a month’s adjustment period for her grief. Furthermore Iole had been committed to someone else.
Greek legend here is more complicated, in that this marriage results in the founding of the ‘Dorian race.’ Dorians were one of the four ancient Greek ethnic groups. [2]
II. Deuteronomy 21:22-23 “If a man is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale him on a stake, you must not let his corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury him the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to God…”
In ancient Rome, there was no such punishment as life in prison. The required attentions for that were considered a waste of public money. Rome had a population of over 1,000,000 in 100 CE, and only one prison. It was very small, thus reserved only for important prisoners, such as leaders or kings defeated by the Roman army. The building was dark, damp, smelly, and full of rats. After an emperor tired of displaying them in public festivals, they were executed.
The Romans had no police force (sound familiar?). People were expected to police themselves. Soldiers only were stationed outside the city to keep order and prevent riots.
There were no crime detectives. If a man was murdered, it was the responsibility of the eldest male in his family to extract vengeance, possibly by demand of blood money if not outright killing the murderer.
This is what is reported to have happened when Julius Caesar was killed in 44 BCE. When he entered the theatre with his entourage, 60 co-conspirators cut him off from his retinue, and gang-stabbed him.
Death penalties included being buried alive, impaling, and crucifixion.
The Romans often tortured before putting someone to death. [3]
As an aside, Pope Stephan VI had the corpse of Pope Formosus disinterred and put on trial during what is called the Cadaver Synod. Found guilty, the corpse had three of its fingers cut and was later thrown into the Tiber. [4]
III.Deuteronomy 22:1-3 “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray…take it back to your fellow. If (too far), bring it home and it shall remain with you until your fellow claims it…do the same with his ass…his garment…and…anything…your fellow loses…”
In Roman law, under the provision of occupatio, ownerless things that were susceptible to private ownership became the property of the first person to take possession of them.
According to thesauri inventio, or treasure trove, if something was found by a man on his own land, it went to him; if found on the land of another, half went to the finder, half to the landowner. [5]
IV. Deuteronomy22:9-11 “You shall not sow your vineyards with a second kind of seed…shall not plow with an ox and an ass (yoked) together. You shall not wear cloth combining wool and linen.”
In our modern world, we observe the first of these provisions when it is biologically practical. We observe the second of these, i.e. yoking unequally-strengthed animals because it makes sense. We observe the third sentiment as applied to creation of religious objects such as a tallit, Torah, or mezuzah.
I found a tangential application, by a ‘modern’ minister of a fundamentalist Protestant denomination, perhaps a bit humorous. He applies symbolically the concept of ‘unequal yoking’ to believers partnering with unbelievers. He quotes Paul: “Do not be unequally yoked with nonbelievers.” (Corinthians 6:14) His rationale is that any intimate or spiritual partnership between them will only result in dissonance and difficulty. Quote: “To partner them together and expect them to plow in the same direction is ludicrous, and will only end in spiritual disaster.”
He then backtracks somewhat to allow for occupying the same space as unbelievers in the marketplace, and even dining with an unbeliever! [6]
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NOTES
[1] Sex in the Shadow of Rome: Sexual Violence and Theological Lament in Talmudic Disaster Tales, Julia Watts Belser, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Vol. 30, No. 1, (Spring 2014), pp.5-24, Indiana University Press
[2] Bride or Concubine? Iole and Heracles’ Motives in the “Trachiniae”, Charles Segal, Illinois Classical Studies, 1994, Vol 19 (1994), pp. 59-64, University of Illinois Press
[3] https://www.wycoreport.com ancient-roman-punishment-was-swift-cruel-and unusual/article_a2046211-e8b5-518a-9fe7-8a65cf30014c.html
[4] Michael Kronenwetter, Capital Punishment: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 1993),71. Posthumous execution, from Wikipedia
[5] Roman law, The law of property and possession, by Maurice Alfred Millner, Emeritus Professor of Law, University College, University of London. Brittanica
[6] https://thecripplegate.com/unequally-yoked/