darstec

Some years back I read a treatse on the subject of marriage, adultery and fornication. It maintained that some of the original ideas came from Hittite documents and customs long forgotten by the the biblical redactors who edited scripture. According to this treatse adultery mean one thing and one thing only -- two married persons not married to each other having intercourse with each other. And fornication meant one thing and one thing only - one married person having sex with an unmarried person. Neither definition covered two unmarried persons.

The same work went on to explain the puzzle of Abraham saying his wife Sarah was his sister. By the time the redactors were working, the marriage doctrines of the Hittites were long forgotten and they misinterpreted the story which was passed down. Apparently some light was shed on this by new documents discovered in the last half century. It seems that a man would adopt his wife as his sister to confer a higher legal status upon her and further enfore her inheritance rights. Parts of the story were passed down but not the reasoning behind the story, thus the redactors embellished the story, and retold it three times in fact substituting different characters in the retelling and contradicting themselves in the process.
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