SEPARATING THE ADULT FROM ADULTERY
adultery received much the same treatment. The provisions of the Torah itself make it clear that it was classic adultery that Judaism most particularly abhorred.'? While, then, the other types of adultery await contemporary Jewish evaluation to determine whether they ought to be addressed differently, this exploration will focus on potential modern Jewish legal proposals to deal with the foremost problem of classic adultery.
CLASSIC ADULTERY FROM A TRADITIONAL PERSPECTIVE
It is impossible, of course, to formulate an appropriate contemporary halakhic response to classic adultery without first appreciating and evaluating the thrust of the halakhic tradition on the subject. The Jewish legal tradition on the matter, rooted as it is in the practices, attitudes, and commandments of biblical Israel , provides an early, sharp differentiation between the Israelite approach to adultery and that of surrounding Near Eastern societies such as the Babylonian, Assyrian, and Hittite . In these other ancient communities adultery was perceived primarily as a wrong done to the husband by a wife, who was his property. The husband, consequently, had full rights to determine the fate of his adulterous wife and to wreak vengeance upon the adulterer. Thus, though Judicial process was involved, the injured husband whose“property rights” had been trampled could determine—and personally implement—the fate of the guilty; his options ranged from extending forgiveness to demanding death, with a number of horrible punishments in between."
Some of the thinking that set the stage for these adultery
laws of the neighboring peoples was also evident in Israelite society. Thus, in ancient Israel —as in the surrounding cultures—the wife at
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