Israel and Humanity - Marriage and Divorce

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VII.

The marriage laws.

§ 1.

MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE.

It is God himself who, according to the rabbis, Sanhedrin has instituted marriage in the creation of woman and the sanctity of this union is sanctioned by them in respect Noachide, by this verse from Genesis: "Therefore a man leave his father and mother and cleaves to his wife: and they shall become one flesh ". "It is written, the doctors say: he cleaves to his wife , and not anything to his neighbor's wife.

What constitutes marriage in the universal religion called Noachide? Only the fact of belonging exclusively ( Ihud ), it is natural to assume that since the institution of the judiciary is one of the precepts imposed on children of Noah, this exclusive destination spouse must be established by public authority, even if only to make possible the prosecution of adultery and the devolution of the inheritance. A text of Maimonides from the Talmud shows that this is the nature of marriage: "If a Noachide after his slave for a slave woman, then allows himself to have intercourse with it, it shall die" ref> Malachim IX, 8; Sanhedrin , 57 <super> b </super> </ref> ". The example chosen does not offer us there no fairness amazing for that time? Master and slave are both pagan and the latter has, however, according to Judaism, his inviolable rights of husband and the equal of his master, who is threatened, as a foreigner any, of punishment, if he dares outraging the rights of his fellow-that is indeed the word eloquent than the Rabbis use this occasion to refer to the slave ( habero ).

We say that the indissoluble marriage of words seemed to flow mosaics, and in fact is a simple deduction. That man should not separate what God has joined together, it does not doubt, but the question is precisely what God has joined together, or to use the term Rabbinic This man can really be regarded as his half . If he ever met consistently in the conjugal union, we should say that dissolve it would go against the divine will, but it is not necessarily so and that the couples are each well-matched Arguably, it is rather to unite what God has joined together it is sometimes necessary to resort to this separation and the argument turns against the thesis.

As for the spouses' union itself, no more than the Rabbis and Kabbalists in particular, has included a more perfect, as they have seen not only in body but in the very soul, to tell them constituted of two halves that are involved in the nature of both sexes, so far as to state they were in the Talmud that the man without woman is not a man. If you want to be remembered also that children are in the eyes of biblical Judaism and traditional, we will not hesitate to do justice to it a formula that we should, that Michelet says, to Laws of Manu: "The true formula of marriage, he said that no society that extends into the future is found and asked that man is human only if it is three, ie man, woman and child. " Theosophy devoted this doctrine by introducing the "holy family" in its symbiologie and it is quite likely that we have read the original type of the Trinity: the man (father), child (logos) and mother (St. Spirit)

but some lofty idea that doctors form of marriage, one should not conclude, we repeat, that any separation of the spouses is impossible. But the unanimous opinion of commentators, the Noachide are not subject to the formalities required by the divorce law of Israel. Just as the marriage is contracted by the mere consent of the spouses, as well as it can dissolve them by mutual consent. This is the doctrine that Maimonides did prevail. We find in the Palestinian Talmud text which, though less explicit, is no less instructive in its brevity. it says in effect: "Divorce is there for Noachide? R. Jehouda answers; although there is not at all or the right of divorce is granted to women as well as men ". That provision, as sanctioned by the previous Maimonides, deserves our attention. It proves that the thought of Doctors Pharisees had already elevated to the design of perfect equality between husband and wife in the matter of divorce. So if they did not bring the same trend in the provisions of Jewish law, it is not for lack of boldness, they have given so much evidence or lack of intellectual progress, since they have shown enough in their study of Noachism they were capable, it is only because they had to follow a doctrine received from their predecessors.