Roman Origins of the Jewish Marriage Kiddushin Procedure

The Rabbinical Jewish marriage procedure consists of two parts: Kiddushin and Nissuin. Kiddushin was understood in antiquity as a binding betrothal after which the wife was prohibited to live with all men, including her husband, and required an official divorce in case the marriage was to be dissolved. The Nissuin was the actual marriage where the wife became permitted to her husband and could now go live with him. During the Talmudic period the Kiddushin and the Nissuin were performed six months apart. After the Kiddushin was performed the wife stayed in her father’s house and the husband was obligated to send her and his new in-laws gifts for the period of six months. After the six months were up, a second procedure, the Nissuin, otherwise known as the Chupah (canopy), was performed in which the couple were officially married and the wife now moved out from her father’s house into her husband’s.

Since the medieval period and until today, both the Kiddushin and the Nissuin are performed simultaneously on the day of the wedding and the couple go to live together right after the wedding. The six months betrothal period has been abandoned once the Palestinian and Babylonian communities lost their supremacy in Halachic rulings around the 8^th century CE.

In this article I would like to propose a novel idea of the real source for the procedure of Kiddushin and how it is rooted in the Roman marriage procedure that existed during the Roman Republic that the Rabbis have adopted for the Jewish marriage in the first century BCE, while the Judeans and the Romans were on friendly terms.

The Mishna in Kiddushin 1:1 lists three options for the Kiddushin procedure:

The Mishna teaches that there are three possible methods through which the Kiddushin can be performed. The groom can purchase the bride using either money or an object that is worth money. The minimum value itself is disputed between Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai. Alternatively, the groom can write a contract to the bride in which he states that he is purchasing her through this contract. And finally, the groom and the bride can simply have sex with the intention of getting married.

This Mishna can clearly be dated by a few stated details. Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel were schools founded by Hillel and Shmmai that operated after Hillel’s death, roughly in 10 BCE until the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Prutah was a Judean bronze coin, minted during the years of 132 BCE – 70 CE. See David Hendin, Guide to Biblical Coins, 5^th Edition, Amphora, 2010, p. 43. Dinar is the Roman silver coin, the Denarius. Italian Issar was a Roman large bronze coin called As. Roughly in 140 BCE the As was retariffed at 16 Ases per Denarius from the original 10 Ases per Denarius. Since the Mishna states that there were 8 Prutahs in an As, then we can deduce that there were 8*16=128 Prutahs in a Denarius. The Judean monetary system was realigned from the Greek Drachma standard to the Roman Denarius standard during the reign of the Hasmonean king Matityahu Antigonus in the years 40-37 BCE. See Daniel Sperber, Roman Palestine 200-400 Money and Prices, 2nd Edition, Bar-Ilan University Press, 1991, p. 28.

This leads us to a problem. Tosefta Bava Batra 5:4, which dates based on the names (Rabbi Akivah, Rabbi Yehudah and Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel) quoted in it roughly to the years 100-132 CE, has an argument between the anonymous opinion and Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel (II) whether the Prutah standard that was originally established by the Rabbis (presumably in the years 40-37 BCE) had 8 Prutot in 1 Issar and 24 Issars in 1 Dinar (anonymous opinion) or 6 Prutas in 1 Issar (Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel II). Based on this argument in the original standard there were either 8*24=192 Prutas per Roman Denarius or 6*24=144 Prutas per Roman Denarius. The problem that clearly arises is where did the Rabbis get the fact that there were 24 Issars (As) in 1 Dinar (Denarius), when we know from Roman writings that the Roman standard only had 16 Ases in 1 Denarius during the 1st century CE. Although, Daniel Sperber does not address this issue directly he writes that this argument in the Tosefta is theoretical since the Prutah coins were not minted by this time period and therefore the Rabbis had to fix the standard artificially, based on the value of the metal content in the coins. See Sperber, ibid. pp. 69-83.

I would like to provide a resolution to this contradiction between the Tosefta Bava Batra 5:4 and the Roman As/Denarius 16:1 standard by using the reference in the Gospel of Mark 12:42 read in the original Greek:

The Lepta was half Prutah coin minted during the Hasmonean period, most notably during the reign of Alexander Yanai and clearly still in circulation in 32/33 CE when the story of the Widow’s Mites took place. What is important that Mark states that 2 Leptas (i.e. 1 Prutah) was equivalent to a Roman Quadrans, which was the smallest Roman bronze coin. During the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire there were 4 Quadrans in 1 As, which would imply that there were 4 Prutas in 1 As. However, the Mishna clearly states that there were 8 Prutahs in 1 As. This means that when the Mishna says “Prutah”, it clearly means “Lepta”. The term Lepta was not used in Talmudic literature, because the Lepta denomination fell out of use after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. Hence, the terms Leptah and Prutah were used interchangeably. David Hendin (Hendin, ibid. p. 43) already observed that both Prutah and Leptah varied greatly in weight and therefore were not absolute denominations. This can further prove why the Rabbis in the Mishna and the Tosefta confused the terms Lepta and Prutah.

We can deduce from this analysis that when the Prutah standard was established in the years of 40-37 CE, there were 8 Leptas to 1 As, which was equivalent of 4 Quadrans to 1 As. This standard lasted probably until the year 66 CE, when the Judean government started minting their own silver shekels during the first revolt and the Prutah standard was redefined in terms of the Judean Shekel instead of the Roman Denarius. Since the term Lepta was dropped from usage after the revolt the accepted terminology just used Prutah as the lowest bronze denomination. When the revolt was over and the Judean Shekel gone, the Rabbis has to re-figure out how the Roman Denarius related to the Prutah and they discussed it as recorded in the Tosefta Bava Batra 5:4. They probably did not even realize the some of the smallest denomination coins in circulation were Leptas and some were Prutahs. They simply considered all of them Prutahs, because they looked similar and weighed similar.

Once the Rabbis decided that there were 8 Prutahs (instead of Leptas) in 1 As, they made the conclusion that there must be 24 Ases in 1 Denarius, because there were 4 Quadrans to 1 As and they reestablished the Roman standard to the Prutah standard. 192 Prutahs (really Leptas) per 1 Denarius, really means that there were 192/2=96 Quadrans (actual Prutahs) per Denarius. Then, 96 Quadrans/4 Quadrans per As = 24 Ases per Denarius. Based on this calculation the Rabbis determined that there were 24 Ases in a Denarius, when the real Roman denomination was really 16 Ases in a Denarius.

Based on this we can clearly establish the timing for when the law in Mishna Kiddushin 1:1 was originally put in place. It had to be solidified between the years 40 BCE and 10 BCE, while the Jews and the Romans were still on some what friendly terms, during the supremacy of Hillel and Shammai themselves. Once Hillel and Shammai passed away, their schools started debating the details of the recently established law of the three modes of Kiddushin. By the time of the destruction of the Temple, the original monetary system in which this law was made was already forgotten and had to be redefined by the Rabbis in Yavneh, such as Rabbi Akivah, Rabbi Yehudah and Rabban Shimon Ben Gamliel II.

Now that I have demonstrated the timing of the establishment of the law of Kiddushin, I would like to propose my novel idea on its source. I believe, that once Pompei (who was invited by the Judean leadership) took partial control of Judea in 63 BCE the Rabbis were looking for ways to modernize the Judean laws based on Roman laws. During the Roman Republic in Roman law there were four modes by which marriage was conducted: Usus, Coemptio, Farreum, and Sponsalia. See William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 2nd Edition, Boston, 1859, entry Matrimonium, pp. 735-744.

Usus, was a marriage if a woman lived with a man for a whole year as his wife. This law was already mentioned in the Twelve Tables, which is the earliest written Roman law code from around 450 BCE. Usus corresponds to the Jewish mode of marriage of intercourse, where a couple are married simply by the fact that they had sex for that purpose. The Rabbis apparently dropped the Roman requirement of duration of one year, and simply required that sex occurred with intent of marriage, even just once.

Farreum, also known as Confarreatio, was a form of marriage in which certain words were used in the presence of ten witnesses and accompanied by a religious ceremony. During the ceremony the bride said to the groom “Ubi tu Caius, ego Caia”, which means “To you Gaius I am Gaia”. For details and sources, see Smith, ibid. p. 743.

Coemptio was a fictitious sale of the woman to the husband. Witnesses had to be present during the procedure.

Clearly, the Rabbis established the ceremony of Kiddushin with money after the combination of the Farreum and Coemptio, which included witnesses, a minyan (quarum of 10 men), and a statement made by the husband, הרי את מקודשת לי, “You are betrothed to me,” after which he fictitiously purchased the bride with the money or an object of value that he gave her. The rabbis made sure that they kept the focus on the groom buying the bride and not the bride selling herself to the groom, hence it was the groom who made the statement of acquisition and not the bride as was in the Roman procedure.

Sponsalia was an written agreement to marry. It was a contract between the future husband and the man who was giving the woman away in marriage, usually the father or the brother. The Rabbis clearly adopted the practice of Sponsalia as the mode of marriage by contract.

By the time of Claudius in the 1st century CE all of these forms of the marriage procedure mostly fell out of use, especially Usus, Competio and Sponsalia and were replaced exclusively by Farreum, where a marriage was performed only by a religious ceremony, without intercourse or any kind of purchase taking place. See Smith, ibid.

It is clear from the lengthy discussion of this Mishna in the Babylonian Talmud (Kiddushin 2a-5b) that the Talmudic anonymous voice (the Stam) tries really hard to prove that the sources for these three modes are not Biblical as was suggested but rather were derived by logic, such as a Kal Vachomer (Derivation from Minor to Major). None of the Biblical sources that the Talmud cites are explicit or even implicit. The Talmudic editors had to stretch the quoted verses really far in order to try to prove that the sources for these modes are Biblical. In the end of the discussion the Talmud fails to prove any of the sources either Biblically or logically and simply accepts the fact that they exist and there are only three of them because that is what is stated in the Mishna. It seems to me that the reason the Talmud goes through this discussion and spends so much effort on trying to prove that these laws are not Biblical in origin, because somewhere in its memory of the oral tradition it vaguely remembers that these laws were Rabbinically established based on non-Biblical sources which are much closer to logic than to any kind of tradition. Hence the tradition is not Jewish, but Roman.

In conclusion, my novel proposal is that the Rabbis established the three modes of marriage as an adaptation of current Roman laws of marriage between the years of 40-10 BCE, when they established not only the law, but also the monetary standard based on the roman monetary standard of the time. Their goal was to modernize the Jewish legal system in light of the supremacy and friendship of the superpower of the time. By the time these laws got to be recorded in the oral writing of the Rabbis of the 2nd century CE, the Roman marriage traditions fell into disuse even among the Romans and the Rabbis were not familiar with them. The monetary system also has changed significantly enough that the Rabbis were not sure how the Hasmonean Prutah which already fell out of use made sense within the Roman Denarius system of the 2nd century CE. The Talmud being even further removed from the origins of these laws attempts to define them either based on Biblical sources or pure logic, but fails to do so. Finally, it did not even cross the Rabbis’ mind in the 2nd century CE that the hated Romans, their primary enemy, were the source of their laws of marriage, stemming from the fact, already long forgotten, that once upon a time they used to be friends.

Bibliography:

Guide to Biblical Coins
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Roman Palestine 200-400 Money and Prices
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Jewish Marriage in Antiquity	Jewish Marriage in Antiquity	Jewish Marriage in Antiquity
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The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage	The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage	The Metallurgy of Roman Silver Coinage
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