Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions (2 page)

I. Browning, Don S. II. M. Green, M. Christian (Martha Christian), 1968— .

III. Witte, John, 1959–.

BL65.S4S48 2006

201Ј.7282—dc22

2005051799

Casebound editions of Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

c o n t e n t s

Preface and Acknowledgments
xi
About the Contributors
xv
Introduction
xvii

Michael S. Berger 1

Introduction
1

The Hebrew Bible
12

The Elephantine Marriage Contract
21

Hellenistic Jewish Philosophy in the Wisdom of Ben Sirach
(Ecclesiasticus)
22

The Damascus Document of the Dead Sea Scrolls
24

Josephus on Marriage Law
26

Mishnah on Procreation, Marriage, and Divorce
28

The Babylonian Talmud
31

Aggadic Midrash on Marriage and Family
35

The Babylonian Talmud on Marital Sex
38

vi contents

The Babylonian Ordinance from the Academy on Divorce
39

The Ordinances of Rabbi Gershom (The Light of the Exile)
40

Medieval Marriage Contracts from the Cairo Geniza
42

Love Poetry from the Golden Age of Spain
43

The Order of the
Get
45

Maimonides on Sex
49

Jewish Mysticism on Marriage and Sex
52

The Book of the Pious
of Medieval Germany
56

“The Epistle on Holiness” (“Iggeret Ha-qodesh”)
59

Exchange Between Napoleon and the Jewish “Sanhedrin” on Issues of
Marriage
62

Contemporary Developments in Jewish Marriage Contracts
66

Reform Opinion on Patrilineal and Matrilineal Descent
73

Luke Timothy Johnson and Mark D. Jordan 77

Introduction
77

Creation and the Fall in the Book of Genesis
89

The Greco-Roman Context
89

Hellenistic Jewish Moral Instruction
91

Gospels of Matthew and Luke
92

Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians and Ephesians
94

Apocryphal Christian Texts
98

Augustine of Hippo
100

John Chrysostom
105

Peter Lombard
110

The Fourth Lateran Council
114

Thomas Aquinas
115

Mechthild of Magdeburg
119

Martin Luther
120

Anglican
Book of Common Prayer (1549)
125

John Calvin
128

The Council of Trent
133

c o n t e n t s

vii

George Fox
137

A Contemporary Critique of Sexual Ethics
138

A Womanist Critique of Family Theology
142

A Contemporary Liturgy for Same-Sex Unions
146

Azizah al-Hibri and Raja’ M. El Habti 150

Introduction
150

Creation and the Identity of Origin of Women and Men
156

The Fall from the Garden and Gender Equality
162

The Marriage Contract
166

Consent to Marriage
168

Mahr
: The Obligatory Marital Gift
171

Other Stipulations in the Marriage Contract
174

Marital Relations
177

Polygamy
185

Marital Conflict
190

Divorce
200

Sexual Ethics
206

Rights Within the Family
211

Paul B. Courtright 226

Introduction
226

Rig Veda 10.85: The Marriage Hymn
232

The
Gr
.
hya-Sutra
s: The Wedding Ceremony
236

Laws of Manu
240

The
Ka¯masu¯tra
250

Divine Marriage: Síva and Pa¯rvatı¯
255

The Karma of Marriage: The King’s Wife, the Brahmin’s Wife, and the
Ogre
261

A Contemporary Hindu Marriage Ceremony
270

“Counting the Flowers,” a Short Story by Chudamani Raghavan,
Translated from the Tamil by the Author
291

viii contents

Introduction
299

The Beginning of the World
309

The Joys of Ascetism
313

Married Life Versus the Life of the Ascetic
316

Songs by Buddhist Women
318

The Conversion of the Nun, Pat
.
a¯ca¯ra¯
322

The Buddha Accepts His Aunt, Gotamı¯, as a Nun
325

The Buddha’s Renunciation of His Family
329

Confusion Over the Buddha as a Fertility God
338

Buddhism as a Threat to the Indian Family
341

The Buddha’s Advice for Laity
343

An Early Buddha Lineage
346

East Asian Buddhism: An Overview
351

The Sutra on the Filial Son
353

The Ghost Festival Sutra
356

The Sutra on the Profound Kindness of Parents
359

The Blood Bowl Sutra
363

Introduction
367

The
Book of Poetry (Shi jing)
372

The
Analects (Lunyu)
of Confucius
375

Mencius on Filial Piety
377

Historical Incidents from the
Zuo zhuan
378

Record of Ritual
381

The
Record of Ritual of the Elder Dai
393

The
Classic of Filial Piety
394

Lives of Model Women
400

Admonitions for Women
402

Filial Sons
404

Mr. Yan’s Family Instructions
405

The
Classic of Filial Piety for Women
408

c o n t e n t s

ix

Yuan Cai on Concubines
414

Zhu Xi on Family and Marriage
416

Sexual Offenses in the Code of the Qing Dynasty
423

Advice to Local Officials on Handling Sexual Offenses
427

Qing Legal Cases Concerning Sexual Offenses
436

Chen Duxiu on the Way of Confucius and Modern Life
438

Feng Youlan on the Philosophy at the Basis of
Traditional Chinese Society
441

Index
451

p r e f a c e a n d a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s This volume is one of a series of new volumes to emerge from the project on Sex, Marriage, and Family and the Religions of the Book, undertaken by the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. The project seeks to take stock of the dramatic transformation of marriage and family life in the world today and to craft enduring solutions to the many new problems that transformation has occasioned. The project is interdisciplinary in methodology: It seeks to bring the ancient wisdom of religious traditions and the modern sciences of law, health, public policy, the social sciences, and the humanities into greater conversation and common purpose. The project is interreligious in inspiration: it seeks to understand the lore, law, and life of marriage and family of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in their genesis and in their exodus, in their origins and in their diasporas. The project is international in orientation: it seeks to place current American debates over sex, marriage, and family within an emerging global conversation. This combination of interdisciplinary, interreligious, and international inquiry featured in our project as a whole is at the heart of the methodology of this volume, but we have deliberately decided to address not only Judaism, Christianity, and Islam but reach further and include the axial religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

We wish to express our deep gratitude to our friends at the Pew Charitable Trusts in Philadelphia for their generous support of our Center for the Study xii preface and acknowledgments

of Law and Religion (and its predecessor organizations, the Law and Religion Program and the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Religion at Emory University). We are particularly grateful to Pew’s president, Rebecca Rimel, and program officers Luis Lugo, Susan Billington Harper, and Diane Winston for masterminding the creation of this center, along with sister centers at ten other American research universities—a bold and visionary act of philanthropy that is helping to transform the study of religion in the American academy.

We also wish to express our deep gratitude to our Emory center colleagues, April Bogle, Eliza Ellison, Anita Mann, Amy Wheeler, and Janice Wiggins, for their extraordinary work. Over the past four years these five colleagues have helped to create a dozen major public forums, an international conference with 80 speakers and 750 participants, and scores of new journal, electronic, and video publications. They are now overseeing the production of 30 new books to come out of this project on Sex, Marriage, and the Family, along with ad-ministering a new center project, commenced in the autumn of 2003, on the Child in Law, Religion, and Society. For their editorial and production work on this volume we also wish to express our appreciation to three Emory Law students, Timothy Rybacki, Jonathan Setzer, and Matthew Titus.

We wish to thank Wendy Lochner and her colleagues at Columbia University Press for taking on this volume and working so assiduously to see to its timely publication.

We would also like to thank our friends at Columbia University Press for their permission to reprint excerpts from various of their imprints herein, as well as the authors, editors, and publishers for their permission to reprint herein excerpts from the following texts: Augsburg Fortress Press for permission to reprint Docs. 2-10, 2-17; Baker Books for permission to reprint Docs. 1-17, 2-19; Barnes & Noble Books for permission to reprint Doc. 4-6; Beth Din of America for permission to reprint Doc. 1-58; Broadview Press for permission to reprint Doc. 2-13; Catholic University of America for permission to reprint Doc. 2-11; Central Conference of American Rabbis for permission to reprint Docs. 1-60, 1-61; Clarendon Press for permission to reprint Doc. 6-20; Eastern Book Linkers for permission to reprint Doc. 4-2; Free Press for permission to reprint Doc. 6-11; Harvard University Press for permission to reprint Docs. 2-2, 6-22; Jewish Publication Society for permission to reprint Docs. 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 1-5, 1-6, 1-7, 1-8, 1-9, 1-10, 1-11, 1-12, 1-13, 1-39, 1-40, 1-41, 1-42; Judaica Press (Davka Corp.) for permission to reprint Docs. 1-27, 1-28, 1-29, 1-30, 1-31, 1-32, 1-33, 1-34, 1-35, 1-36; KTAV for permission to reprint Doc. 1-37; Littman Library of Jewish Civiliza-tion for permission to reprint Docs. 1-48, 1-49, 1-50, 1-51; Orbis Books for permission to reprint Doc. 2-23; Oxford University Press for permission to reprint Docs. 1-57, 4-4; Pali Text Society for permission to reprint Docs. 5-2, 5-3, 5-4; Paulist Press for permission to reprint Doc. 2-16; Penguin Press UK for permission to reprint Docs. 1-16, 4-1, 4-3; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends for permission to reprint Doc. 2-21; B. Porten for permission p r e f a c e a n d a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s xiii

to reprint Doc. 1-14; Rabbinical Assembly, International Association of Conser-vative/Masorti Rabbis for permission to reprint Doc. 1-59; Chudamani Raghavan for permission to use “Counting the Flowers,” Doc. 4-8, which appeared in the original Tamil as “The Nagalinga Tree”; Random House for permission to reprint Doc. 2-3; St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press for permission to reprint Doc.

2-12; Stanford University Press for permission to reprint Doc. 6-13; TAN Books and Publishers for permission to reprint Doc. 2-20; Temple University Press for permission to reprint Doc. 4-5; University of Arizona Press for permission to reprint Doc. 6-21; University of California Press for permission to reprint Docs.

6-10, 6-15; University of Chicago Press for permission to reprint Doc. 1-47; University of Hawaii Press for permission to reprint Docs. 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, 6-4; University of Notre Dame Press for permission to reprint Doc. 2-15; Wadsworth/

Thomas Learning for permission to reprint Docs. 5-1, 5-5, 5-6, 5-7, 5-8, 5-9; Westminster John Knox Press for permission to reprint Docs. 2-1, 2-9, 2-22, 2-24; Wheeler Publishing for permission to reprint Doc. 4-7; Wisdom Publications for permission to reprint Doc. 5-10, 5-11; Yale University Press for permission to reprint Doc. 6-24.

a b o u t t h e c o n t r i b u t o r s

Michael S. Berger
is associate professor of religion, fellow in the Institute of Jewish Studies, and senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

Don S. Browning
is Alexander Campbell Professor of Ethics and the Social Sciences, Emeritus, University of Chicago Divinity School, and Robert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Religious Studies at Emory University.

Azizah Y. al-Hibri
is professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law.

Alan Cole
is associate professor of religious studies and director of East Asian studies at Lewis and Clark College.

Paul B. Courtright
is professor of religion and Asian studies and senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey
is professor of history at the University of Washington.

Raja M. El-Habti
is director of research at KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights.

M. Christian Green
is visiting lecturer on ethics at Harvard Divinity School and senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.