Return to search

The Spectacle of the Sotah: A Rabbinic Perspective on Justice and Punishment

The first chapter of Mishnah tractate Sotah (m. Sot) records rabbinic elaboration and interpretation on the sotah ritual contained in the Hebrew Bible, Numbers 5:11-31. Specifically, the nine mishnayoth that compose m. Sot 1 discuss the circumstances for invoking the trial of the “bitter waters” and the overall treatment of the suspected wife during the trial. This paper argues that, when read together, m. Sot 1 describes an entire economy of justice and punishment that must be imposed on a wife who is merely suspected of adultery, quite apart from whether she is—or is not—guilty of adultery. Through a close reading of m. Sot 1 and by examining the current gender discourse surrounding this text, this paper maintains that the rabbis sought to justify and explain these aspects of the sotah ritual by elaborating their understanding of suspicion and drawing them under a larger conception of measure for measure justice.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:GEORGIA/oai:digitalarchive.gsu.edu:rs_theses-1008
Date02 August 2007
CreatorsDurdin, Andrew
PublisherDigital Archive @ GSU
Source SetsGeorgia State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceReligious Studies Theses

Page generated in 0.0015 seconds