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of many more; viz. 1, 2. The grandmother, on the father's and the mother's side, and all their mothers in ascent before them; 3, 4. the mothers of the paternal and maternal grandfathers; 5. the wife of the paternal grandfather, and all ancestors in perperpetual ascent, so that no Hebrew could marry the wife of the patriarch Jacob; 6. the wife of the maternal grandfather; 7. the wife of the father's brother by the same mother; 8. the wife of the mother's brother; 9. the son's daughter-in-law, and all descended from her; 10. the daughter's daughterin-law; 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. the granddaughters by a son's or daughter's son, or daughter, or son or daughter-in-law; 17, 18, 19, 20. the two grandmothers of the father-in-law, and the two grandmothers of the mother-in-law".

The Karaites adopted a different rule, and interpreting the general interdiction of any that is near of kin as a root or principle from which the prohibitory law of incest is to be collected, and considering the specified instances rather as examples than comprising the whole body of the law, they proceeded to form a complicated law of prohibitions of incest. From the alleged unity of the man and the wife they inferred, that the kindred of the husband are the kindred of the wife, and therefore if a woman should be divorced by three husbands in succession, and married to a fourth, they interdicted the marriage of any of these husbands with the kindred of any of the other husbands, restricting however the notion of kindred to the six principal relations, of

"Ux. Ebr. 1. i. c. 2.

father and mother, brother and sister, son and daughter. Thus they restricted the husband of Sarah from marrying the mother-in-law, the mother, the wife of a brother, the sister, the daughter, and the daughterin-law, of any second, third, or fourth husband, whom Sarah might have after her divorce from her husband".

The modern Karaites, rejecting the arbitrary inference from the conjugal unity, but still interpreting the interdiction of kindred as a genus of the widest sense, introduced under five principal rules a copious code of matrimonial restrictions, which they derived by remote inference from the Levitical law, prohibiting a man to marry, 1. his kindred; 2. the kindred of his kin; 3. two persons akin to each other, as a mother and daughter; 4. the kindred of a wife's kindred, as her brother's daughter; 5. two persons that are akin may not marry two others that are akin, as a father and a son may not marry a woman and her daughter".

To these five rules has been added a sixth, yet more complex, interdicting the marriage of two kinsmen with any person, and the kin of the kin of that person. Thus a mother and daughter being akin to each other may not marry Reuben and Reuben's son's son".

Although these rules were generally received, they were not received without exception; and an exception was especially made to the extension of the impediment from the wife to the husband, and a new system was exhibited in five rules, in which

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both sexes are distinctly specified. 1. a man may not marry his own kin, mother, sister, daughter; nor a woman her kin, father, son, brother: 2. a man may not marry the kin of his kin, grandmother, aunt, granddaughter, niece; nor a woman in the same manner: 3. a man may not marry two relations, as mother and daughter; nor a woman, father and son: 4. a man may not marry a woman and the kin of the kin of that woman, as Mary, and her grandmother, or aunt, or niece, &c. 5. two relations may not marry two persons related collaterally or by descent, as John and John's son may not marry Mary and Mary's daughter or sister. In case of descent the rule is to be observed without any limitation from generation to generation.

These different opinions, which are detailed at considerable length by Selden, were fiercely debated between the Talmudists and the Karaites, and the contention was increased by the penal consequences which each imputed to the violation of the prohibitory law which he maintained, viz. excision, with exclusion from the right of entering the congregation of the Lord'. Other and more severe penalties were originally annexed to the violation of the Levitical prohibitions. Incest with the mother-in-law or daughter-in-law was to be punished in both parties with death, as it is interpreted, by stoning. If a man married a woman and her mother, the several parties, if they consented to the offence, were condemned to be burned. If a man married his sister, both parties were to be put to death, publicly and

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in the presence of the congregation. If a nephew married an aunt, both were to bear their iniquity. The penalty of marrying an uncle's or a brother's wife was, that the parties should be childless, that they should have no issue; or that they should be grieved by the untimely death of their children; or that the children should be reckoned illegitimate, and incapable of succeeding to the inheritance of their fathert. In all violations of the Levitical prohibitions, where the offence was not followed by immediate and capital punishment, it was a received rule, that no marriage could be contracted, or that, if it was contracted, it was utterly void and of no effect".

While the Jews restricted the notion of incest to marriage, they extended it beyond the prohibited cases which depended on consanguinity and affinity; and marriage with the heathen generally, and with the seven nations of Canaan in particular, was expressly forbidden and reputed incestuous; and the issue of these marriages has been demonstratively shewn to be the bastard, who should not enter into the congregation of the Lord. Marriage out of the chosen people was always criminal; it was an offence before the flood; it was avoided, discountenanced, and condemned, in the patriarchal age; it was expressly forbidden in the law of Moses; the history of Solomon exhibits the effects of its violation; the marriage of the strange wives, during the

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Gerhard, s. 269. " Ux. Ebr. 1. i. c. 12. Spencer de Leg. Hebr. 1. i. c. 6. s. 3.

* Deut. xxiii. 2.

captivity at Babylon, was, in the judgment of their great reformers, a sin which the people could not expiate without divorcing them: and it was a state which was scrupulously avoided by the piety of Tobit. Such marriages were forbidden; they were punished by the separation of the issue from the congregation of the Lord; and were in themselves null and liable to be dissolved. The rule was however strictly confined to native Jews: proselytes from among the Gentiles were permitted to marry proselytes of their own or any other nation, without any discrimination upon the account of birth, of which the condition was destroyed upon their regeneration and admission into the Jewish covenant, so that they might marry even their nearest relations without any imputation of incest, even although they were admitted together into Judaism, and although they were children of the same parents, but born the one before and the other after regeneration. From the offence which this promiscuous

y Ezra x.3. “That which was done contrary to the law of God was looked upon as null, and therefore these were accounted no marriages, and their children were no better than those we call bastards, and were not to be a part of the family, but to be put away with their mothers. . . it was unlawful to marry with the children of these women, for they were reputed unclean, though their fathers were Israelites. Thus Maimonides reports the sense of the law to be; A son begot of a Gentile by an Israelite is not to be accounted for a son. If a son indeed were begot by a Gentile of an Israelitish woman the child was an Israelite for partus sequitur ventrem." Patrick in loc. See also Leslie and Dodwell on Marriages in different Communions; where the case of marriages with the heathen, or out of the peculium, is discussed at length.

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