DANIEL SCHIFF

sleeps with his fellow’s wife; none who touches her will go unpunished.” Thus, in biblical Israel , mandatory punishment for adultery served to weaken the“property rights” claim the husband had over his wife by denying him an autonomous decision over what would be her fate or that of her lover. Rather, it affirmed the place of adultery as a violation of God ’s will, a transgression of a divine ethic that human beings had no right to forgive.

The fact that the transgression against God demanded accountability did not, however, imply that the stated punishment remained immutable. Whereas the legal language of the tradition expressed an unrelenting demand for the death of both the adulterer and the adulteress that broached no exceptions, in practice this ulti­mate penalty was almost always ameliorated. In all likelihood it was rare in biblical times for the death penalty actually to be carried out

for the crime of adultery,” and the Bible itself records no specific cases. Some biblical references clearly suggest that although capital punishment was demanded for the adulterer, the punishment for the adulteress—already in those days—was divorce.”

In the rabbinic period the status of adultery as a trans­gression against God cemented an unyielding attitude to the crime a a sin of fundamental seriousness. Not only did the two versions of the Ten Commandments explicitly prohibit it for Jews , but the rabbis declared its proscription to be one of the seven fundamental Noahide laws, applicable to all humanity.* The rabbis affirmed the Universality of the principle with their statement that any man

clings to his wife, but not to his neighbor’s wife.” They regarded adultery as so heinous that they included it in one of the three kinds of odious acts for which—if given the choice between committing them or being killed—one should prefer death rather than engaging

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