he Bible views marriage as a natural human relationship
and so it devoted little time or attention to its details.
Adam found a helpmate; the patriarch took wives from a close circle of relatives and added concubines. Various kinds of relationships were prohibited in the legal books, but the total material on the subject is limited.
The rabbinic period made up for this paucity of material as it discussed marriage at length and in an eminently practical manner with entire tractates of the Talmud devoted to the nature of the marriage bond(kidushin), the economics of marriage(ketubot), the discipline of sexual relations(niddah). This mass of the material rather than solving every conceivable problem, broadened the discussion and led to a whole range of subjects which the earlier Biblical writers had not even dreamed of. Many areas of this precious human relationship had only been partially covered and the widened discussions brought new matters into the discussion.
Neither the Bible nor the Talmud took monogamy for granted, we do and state that it has been a norm of Jewish life for more than a thousand years The story is not so simple or uncomplicated and the road has been long and difficult. Various impediments to marriage such as an adulterous relationships or remarriage with those of dubious descent played a major role in the rabbinic discussions. For centuries in the early rabbinic period efforts to maintain genealogies were made by leading families. Economic decline, persecution, and the vagaries of human life led to the abandonment of this effort. Our
Xi