The Jewish War: First half of Book 4
Mar. 22nd, 2026 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnLast week: Josephus really hypes Vespasian up! Galilee is also very nice! Discussion of Josephus' prophecy of Vespasian, both in Josephus and in Feuchtwanger's novelization, with detours into Antonia and Caenis.
This week: Internal strife in Jerusalem! Lots of internal strife!
Next week: Last half of book 4.
This week: Internal strife in Jerusalem! Lots of internal strife!
Next week: Last half of book 4.
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Date: 2026-03-26 02:15 am (UTC)But what I can find just by searching is Ketubot 27a:
MISHNA: With regard to a city that was conquered by an army laying siege, all the women married to priests located in the city are unfit and forbidden to their husbands, due to the concern that they were raped...
GEMARA: The Gemara raises a contradiction from a mishna (Avoda Zara 70b): If there is a gentile military unit that entered a city, if it entered during peacetime, after the soldiers leave, the open barrels of wine are forbidden and the wine in them may not be drunk, due to suspicion that the gentile soldiers may have poured this wine as a libation for idolatry. The sealed barrels are permitted. However, if the unit entered in wartime, both these and those are permitted because in wartime there is no respite to pour wine for idolatry. One can be certain that the soldiers did not do so because the soldiers were preoccupied with preparations for a potential attack by the enemy. Why, then, is the mishna concerned that perhaps the soldiers laying siege to the city rape the women?
Rav Mari said: To engage in intercourse there is respite; to pour wine for idolatry there is no respite. Rabbi Yitzḥak bar Elazar said in the name of Ḥizkiyya: There is a different distinction between the cases. There, the mishna is referring to the siege of a city under the rule of the same monarchy. In that case, the soldiers, acting as the enforcement body of the monarchy, seek to minimize unnecessary damage to the city and will refrain from ruining the wine and raping the women. Here, the mishna is referring to the siege of a city under the rule of a different monarchy. Therefore, there are no restraints with regard to ruining the wine or raping the women.
The Gemara asks: Even in the siege of a city under the rule of the same monarchy, it is impossible that one of the soldiers did not wander off and rape a woman. Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said: This is referring to a case where the sentries see each other and do not allow the soldiers to plunder the city. The Gemara asks: It is impossible that the sentries would not doze a bit, enabling some soldiers to enter and plunder the city. Rabbi Levi said: It is referring to a case where they surround the city with chains, and dogs, and branches [gavza], and geese, as obstacles preventing unauthorized entry.
...
With regard to the ruling in the mishna, Rav Idi bar Avin said that Rabbi Yitzḥak bar Ashyan said: If there is a single hideaway there in the city, where the women could hide from the soldiers, it saves all the women married to priests. Due to the uncertainty, the presumption is that each of the women found the hideaway, and therefore they are not forbidden to their husbands.
MISHNA: Rabbi Zekharya ben HaKatzav said: I swear by this abode of the Divine Presence that my wife’s hand did not move from my hand from the time that the gentiles entered Jerusalem until they left, and I know for a fact that she was not defiled. The Sages said to him: A person cannot testify about himself. The legal status of one’s wife is like his own status in this regard. Therefore, your testimony is not accepted, and your wife is forbidden to you.
GEMARA: The tanna taught in the Tosefta: And even so, despite the fact that the Sages ruled his wife forbidden to him because he was a priest, he did not divorce her. He designated a house in his courtyard for her, but did not enter into seclusion with her, and when she would go out of the courtyard she would go out before her sons so that she would not be alone in the courtyard with her husband, and when she would enter the house, she would enter after her sons, for the same reason.
What I take from the passage is this: Kohenim (who cannot marry divorced women or other non-virgins) are more stringently restricted than ordinary Jews. There's evidence in the Talmud elsewhere (Ketubot 40b.7 seems relevant to me) that a woman who is not a virgin is considered less desirable as a bride, but she's not necessarily unmarrigeable in general, nor does her husband have to abandon her if she is raped--- this is only for a Kohen.
The rabbis presume (and they should know) that an invading army has rape on its mind. Rav Mari seems to think the soldiers have time for sexual violence even though they have no time to pray to their gods. There is a presumption that a monarch who intends to rule the city afterwards will try to avoid it being sacked. We've seen the Herodians do this or try to do this repeatedly in the text. The rabbis suggest that a "friendly" army of this sort would use sentries and even guard dogs and other alarm systems to stop the troops from wandering around plundering. The convention that the soldiers get to sack the city is strong enough that if you don't want them to, you are better off camping them outside the walls and having the MPs forcibly restrain them from entering.
Rav Yitzhak has what looks to me like a very customary Talmudic leniency. "If there is a single hideaway", the ruling doesn't apply. I believe it's often the case that the Talmud makes these quite strict legal rulings, debates the fine details and how they relate to the Mishnaic and Biblical authorities, and then at the end you get an escape clause which indicates that in practice the ruling is not to be enforced.
But luckless R. Zekharya ben HaKatzav is still stuck being forbidden from intercourse (or even being alone) with his wife, despite all this! The notes to the Sefaria Talmud say merely that nothing else is known about R. Zekharya, or at least not to the search engine.
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Date: 2026-03-26 06:43 pm (UTC)The convention that the soldiers get to sack the city is strong enough that if you don't want them to, you are better off camping them outside the walls and having the MPs forcibly restrain them from entering.
Oooof.
(Also, poor R. Zekharya and his wife, and I would be tempted to say back to the Sages that if my spouse is like myself, then I ought not to be forbidden from myself, but I realize I am Missing the Point.)
I think I remember that Josephus being a Kohen was an issue for his marriages (at least one of whom could not be considered a virgin under this rule), at least in Feuchtwanger --
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Date: 2026-03-27 10:14 am (UTC)"For when the siege of Jotapata was over, and I was among the Romans, I was kept with much care, by means of the great respect that Vespasian showed me. Moreover, at his command, I married a virgin, who was from among the captives of that country yet did she not live with me long, but was divorced, upon my being freed from my bonds, and my going to Alexandria. However, I married another wife at Alexandria, and was thence sent, together with Titus, to the siege of Jerusalem, and was frequently in danger of being put to death; while both the Jews were very desirous to get me under their power, in order to haw me punished. And the Romans also, whenever they were beaten, supposed that it was occasioned by my treachery, and made continual clamors to the emperors, and desired that they would bring me to punishment, as a traitor to them: but Titus Caesar was well acquainted with the uncertain fortune of war, and returned no answer to the soldiers' vehement solicitations against me."
Now, in Feuchtwanger's novel, poor Mara is decidedly not a virgin, because she got raped by Vespasian himself, and him ordering Josephus to marry her is both for Vespasian a joke and a way to get rid of her. This is of course Feuchtwanger's invention and speculation, but what are the chances a war captive was a virgin, as Josephus here to his readers insists she was, especially since it would have been forbidden to him to marry her if she wasn't? And his insistence that Vespasian showed him respect during his time as a pow does conflict with Vespasian ordering him to marry a war captive, so I can see where Feuchtwanger got the idea that this taboo marriage was to Joseph(us) an exercise in humilation when it happened from.
BTW, when Josephus writes the next wife was "a woman from Alexandria", I guess most likely he means a woman from the Jewish community of Alexandria, but as he doesn't say so explicity, LF made her a Greek Alexandrian (who for the marriage to be legal converts to Judaism nominally but inwardly never accepts it and as the marriage breaks down refutes it.
ETA: Upon further thought, the Alexandrian wife may have actually been a non-Jew, because the last wife, the one Feuchtwanger left out and replaced by the re-marriage to Mara, is introduced as a woman from Crete
AND a Jewess from birth, and since he doesn't say that for the Alexandrian wife, chances that she was Greek are pretty high. (Alexandria was a multicultural city, but as a Macedonian foundation the Greeks were the dominating people.)
The exact quote: "...I also received from Vespasian no small quantity of land, as a free gift, in Judea; about which time I divorced my wife also, as not pleased with her behavior, though not till she had been the mother of three children, two of whom are dead, and one whom I named Hyrcanus, is alive. After this I married a wife who had lived at Crete, but a Jewess by birth: a woman she was of eminent parents, and such as were the most illustrious in all the country, and whose character was beyond that of most other women, as her future life did demonstrate. By her I had two sons; the elder's name was Justus, and the next Simonides, who was also named Agrippa. And these were the circumstances of my domestic affairs."
(None of the sons are the ones from Feuchtwanger's novels, partly, I suspect, because real life always offers more characters than you need in an novel, partly because the three sons in the novel are used by Feuchtwanger to say something very specific thematically in line with his "how to exist as a Jew and a world citizen at the same time" question, and partly because dead offspring of an ambitious Jewish father who die at least partly through his ambition are a life long red thread in his novels ever since his one and only own child died.)