[b-hebrew] bethulah equals virgin?

Shoshanna Walker rosewalk at concentric.net
Thu Oct 13 23:29:06 EDT 2005

Unmarried women were allowed to be concubines without being denigrated.

There were rules there, too - the man had to support their children, 
and the woman couldn't be with another man.

Furthermore, if an unmarried woman has a child, that child is not 
denigrated by the community, and is not considered a "mamzer"

The unaccepted behavior, is for a MARRIED woman to be with another 
man - there was not a stigma for an unmarried woman to be with a man, 
it was acceptable if she stayed  with the same person....


>>By the way, I don't think that the Torah
>> considers an unmarried woman who is not a virgin to be "unvirtuous". If
>> she
>> married passing herself off as a virgin, that makes her a liar.
>In the very verses we were discussing, Deut 20:13-21:
>1) the man is punished for bringing an evil name upon a virgin in Israel.
>The evil name is not that she was a liar, but that she was not a virgin when
>he married her.
>2) the woman is stoned, not for lying, but "because she hath wrought folly
>away from among you."
>-Steve Miller
>b-hebrew mailing list
>b-hebrew at lists.ibiblio.org

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