adultery

70:7.11But the se­cret so­ci­eties did aim at the im­prove­ment of ado­les­cent morals; one of the chief pur­poses of the pu­berty cer­e­monies was to im­press upon the boy that he must leave other men’s wives alone.

82:4.3As civ­i­liza­tion ad­vanced and pri­vate prop­erty gained fur­ther rec­og­ni­tion in the mores, steal­ing be­came the great crime. Adul­tery was rec­og­nized as a form of steal­ing, an in­fringe­ment of the hus­band’s prop­erty rights; it is not there­fore specif­i­cally men­tioned in the ear­lier codes and mores. Woman started out as the prop­erty of her fa­ther, who trans­ferred his ti­tle to her hus­band, and all le­gal­ized sex re­la­tions grew out of these pre-ex­is­tent prop­erty rights. The Old Tes­ta­ment deals with women as a form of prop­erty; the Ko­ran teaches their in­fe­ri­or­ity. Man had the right to lend his wife to a friend or guest, and this cus­tom still ob­tains among cer­tain peo­ples.

82:4.4Mod­ern sex jeal­ousy is not in­nate; it is a prod­uct of the evolv­ing mores. Prim­i­tive man was not jeal­ous of his wife; he was just guard­ing his prop­erty. The rea­son for hold­ing the wife to stricter sex ac­count than the hus­band was be­cause her mar­i­tal in­fi­delity in­volved de­scent and in­her­i­tance. Very early in the march of civ­i­liza­tion the il­le­git­i­mate child fell into dis­re­pute. At first only the woman was pun­ished for adul­tery; later on, the mores also de­creed the chas­tise­ment of her part­ner, and for long ages the of­fended hus­band or the pro­tec­tor fa­ther had the full right to kill the male tres­passer. Mod­ern peo­ples re­tain these mores, which al­low so-called crimes of honor un­der the un­writ­ten law.

66:7.146. You shall not touch your friend’s wife.

93:4.126. You shall not com­mit adul­tery.

94:8.123. You shall not be un­chaste.

131:2.12“Says God, the cre­ator of heaven and earth: ‘Great peace have they who love my law. My com­mand­ments are: You shall love me with all your heart; you shall have no gods be­fore me; you shall not take my name in vain; re­mem­ber the Sab­bath day to keep it holy; honor your fa­ther and mother; you shall not kill; you shall not com­mit adul­tery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false wit­ness; you shall not covet.’

140:6.5“You have heard the teach­ers of the law say, ‘You shall not com­mit adul­tery.’ But I say to you that ev­ery man who looks upon a woman with in­tent to lust af­ter her has al­ready com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart. You can only judge men by their acts, but my Fa­ther looks into the hearts of his chil­dren and in mercy ad­judges them in ac­cor­dance with their in­tents and real de­sires.”

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

70:10.6The Old Tes­ta­ment re­cords one of these or­deals, a mar­i­tal guilt test: If a man sus­pected his wife of be­ing un­true to him, he took her to the priest and stated his sus­pi­cions, af­ter which the priest would pre­pare a con­coc­tion con­sist­ing of holy wa­ter and sweep­ings from the tem­ple floor. Af­ter due cer­e­mony, in­clud­ing threat­en­ing curses, the ac­cused wife was made to drink the nasty po­tion. If she was guilty, “the wa­ter that causes the curse shall en­ter into her and be­come bit­ter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be ac­cursed among her peo­ple.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symp­toms of phys­i­cal ill­ness, she was ac­quit­ted of the charges made by her jeal­ous hus­band.

82:3.13In olden days many prac­tices now re­garded as im­moral were en­cour­aged. Prim­i­tive wives not in­fre­quently took great pride in their hus­bands’ af­fairs with other women. Chastity in girls was a great hin­drance to mar­riage; the bear­ing of a child be­fore mar­riage greatly in­creased a girl’s de­sir­abil­ity as a wife since the man was sure of hav­ing a fer­tile com­pan­ion.

68:6.8The early races of­ten re­sorted to prac­tices de­signed to re­strict pop­u­la­tion; all prim­i­tive tribes killed de­formed and sickly chil­dren. Girl ba­bies were fre­quently killed be­fore the times of wife pur­chase. Chil­dren were some­times stran­gled at birth, but the fa­vorite method was ex­po­sure. The fa­ther of twins usu­ally in­sisted that one be killed since mul­ti­ple births were be­lieved to be caused ei­ther by magic or by in­fi­delity. As a rule, how­ever, twins of the same sex were spared. While these taboos on twins were once well-nigh uni­ver­sal, they were never a part of the An­don­ite mores; these peo­ples al­ways re­garded twins as omens of good luck.

162:3.1It was dur­ing this visit to Je­ru­sa­lem that Je­sus dealt with a cer­tain woman of evil re­pute who was brought into his pres­ence by her ac­cusers and his en­e­mies. The dis­torted rec­ord you have of this episode would sug­gest that this woman had been brought be­fore Je­sus by the scribes and Phar­isees, and that Je­sus so dealt with them as to in­di­cate that these re­li­gious lead­ers of the Jews might them­selves have been guilty of im­moral­ity. Je­sus well knew that, while these scribes and Phar­isees were spir­i­tu­ally blind and in­tel­lec­tu­ally prej­u­diced by their loy­alty to tra­di­tion, they were to be num­bered among the most thor­oughly moral men of that day and gen­er­a­tion.

162:3.2What re­ally hap­pened was this: Early the third morn­ing of the feast, as Je­sus ap­proached the tem­ple, he was met by a group of the hired agents of the San­hedrin who were drag­ging a woman along with them. As they came near, the spokesman said: “Mas­ter, this woman was taken in adul­tery—in the very act. Now, the law of Moses com­mands that we should stone such a woman. What do you say should be done with her?”

162:3.3It was the plan of Je­sus’ en­e­mies, if he up­held the law of Moses re­quir­ing that the self-con­fessed trans­gres­sor be stoned, to in­volve him in dif­fi­culty with the Ro­man rulers, who had de­nied the Jews the right to in­flict the death penalty with­out the ap­proval of a Ro­man tri­bu­nal. If he for­bade ston­ing the woman, they would ac­cuse him be­fore the San­hedrin of set­ting him­self up above Moses and the Jew­ish law. If he re­mained silent, they would ac­cuse him of cow­ardice. But the Mas­ter so man­aged the sit­u­a­tion that the whole plot fell to pieces of its own sor­did weight.

162:3.4This woman, once comely, was the wife of an in­fe­rior cit­i­zen of Naz­a­reth, a man who had been a trou­ble­maker for Je­sus through­out his youth­ful days. The man, hav­ing mar­ried this woman, did most shame­fully force her to earn their liv­ing by mak­ing com­merce of her body. He had come up to the feast at Je­ru­sa­lem that his wife might thus pros­ti­tute her phys­i­cal charms for fi­nan­cial gain. He had en­tered into a bar­gain with the hire­lings of the Jew­ish rulers thus to be­tray his own wife in her com­mer­cial­ized vice. And so they came with the woman and her com­pan­ion in trans­gres­sion for the pur­pose of en­snar­ing Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment which could be used against him in case of his ar­rest.

162:3.5Je­sus, look­ing over the crowd, saw her hus­band stand­ing be­hind the oth­ers. He knew what sort of man he was and per­ceived that he was a party to the de­spi­ca­ble trans­ac­tion. Je­sus first walked around to near where this de­gen­er­ate hus­band stood and wrote upon the sand a few words which caused him to de­part in haste. Then he came back be­fore the woman and wrote again upon the ground for the ben­e­fit of her would-be ac­cusers; and when they read his words, they, too, went away, one by one. And when the Mas­ter had writ­ten in the sand the third time, the woman’s com­pan­ion in evil took his de­par­ture, so that, when the Mas­ter raised him­self up from this writ­ing, he be­held the woman stand­ing alone be­fore him. Je­sus said: “Woman, where are your ac­cusers? did no man re­main to stone you?” And the woman, lift­ing up her eyes, an­swered, “No man, Lord.” And then said Je­sus: “I know about you; nei­ther do I con­demn you. Go your way in peace.” And this woman, Hildana, for­sook her wicked hus­band and joined her­self to the dis­ci­ples of the king­dom.

84:4.7Among the un­mixed tribes, child­birth was com­par­a­tively easy, oc­cu­py­ing only two or three hours; it is sel­dom so easy among the mixed races. If a woman died in child­birth, es­pe­cially dur­ing the de­liv­ery of twins, she was be­lieved to have been guilty of spirit adul­tery. Later on, the higher tribes looked upon death in child­birth as the will of heaven; such moth­ers were re­garded as hav­ing per­ished in a no­ble cause.