Yibbum

The man that marries his brother’s widow is called the yavam (yod-bet-mem) and the woman is called the yevamah. The action is called yibbum in Rabbinic Hebrew. See Dt XXV:5-10. See Jastrow. The disagreements between the sects are fourfold. First, what is meant by brother? How far can it stretch? Second, what if the widow is the sister or daughter of the one first in line to be the yavam? The Rabbinic answer is that there is to be a marriage followed by a divorce straight after, but the older position seems to have been that there is to be a marriage but no nookies. I have a feeling this could be said for both Pharisees and Sadducees, but I will have to find out. You can start to see part of the rationale of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome now. Third, what if the potential yavam is already married? The Rabbinic answer is that he can have a second wife. I have a feeling this was both the Pharisaic and Sadducean position originally. Fourth, what if the yevamah is the sister of the current wife of the yavam? See Lv XVIII:18.

To sum up the positions on all four issues. The modern Rabbanite practice is to avoid yibbum by the process described in the passage in Deuteronomy. (Note that what is literally “in his face” means “in his full sight” in both Hebrew and Greek. It is a legal term in the Near East going back to forever. Forget the rubbish to the contrary). Older practice was to have a marriage followed by a divorce, but I don’t know how the timing worked. The original Rabbinic and Sadducean practice was to go ahead in all four cases, and in the third and fourth there would have been no restriction on sex. The Karaites and I think the Qumran sect are highly shocked by all this. Remember that in the opera John the Baptist says Herod and his wife are “thrice incestuous”. Given that Oscar Wilde would have checked his facts, I leave it up to you to work out their relationship. (The opera is Oscar Wilde’s words with Strauss’s music, and I think the stage directions are from both).

One might speculate further about Marcus and Berenike. Do you remember when Bill Clinton kept saying “I did not have sex with that woman”? In Australia no-one could work out how he could say that, till the ABC and some quality newspapers did some anthropology and found out that for Americans he was telling the truth. Apparently their definition of “having sex” is narrow and clinical. This was a revelation. Anyway, in the Rabbinic halachah, this narrow definition still applies in determining whether a relationship is adultery or incest. In Zoroastrianism it is the same when defining what is incest. The Zoroastrian texts and Maimonides are very explicit in explaining what does NOT count as “sex”. This gives you some scope for perving when you write the next piece.

The other answers will follow.