Is Logic Enough to Prohibit Father-Daughter Incest?

See also, Eve Levavi Feinstein, Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 170–174.

See discussion in Jonathan R. Ziskind, “The Missing Daughter in Leviticus XVIII,” Vetus Testamentum 46 (1996): 125–130; idem, “Legal Rules on Incest in the Ancient Near East,” Revue internationale des droits de l’antiquité 35 (1988): 79–109 [p. 100].

See, e.g., Ephraim Neufeld, Ancient Hebrew Marriage Laws (London: Longmans, 1944), 198–199.

This statement is repeated with slight variation in j. Sanhedrin 9:1 [45a].

Notably, this work is the first single-authored collection of rabbinic teachings.

On this literature see, Lennart Lehmhaus, “‘Were Not Understanding and Knowledge Given to You from Heaven?’ Minimal Judaism and the Unlearned ‘Other’ in ‘Seder Eliyahu Zuta,’” Jewish Studies Quarterly 19, no. 3 (2012): 230–58; Günter Stemberger, “Seder Eliyahu Rabbah: Rabbinic Tradition for a Non-Rabbinic Society,” in Diversity and Rabbinization Jewish Texts and Societies between 400 and 1000 CE, ed. Gavin McDowell et al. (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2021), 413–26.

Hebrew text is from Meir Friedman (Ish Shalom), סדר אליהו רבה וסדר אליהו זוטא [Seder Eliahu rabba und Seder Eliahu zuta] (Vienna, 1902).

“Elijah” then adds another argument:

ת״ל 'ערות אשה ובתה לא תגלה' (ויקרא יח:יז). בין אשה ובתה משלו. בין אשה ובתה ממקום אחר.

The verse teaches (Lev 18:17) “do not reveal the nakedness of a woman and her daughter”—whether it is a woman and her daughter from him or whether it is a woman and her daughter from some other person.

This latter exegesis aligns with a reading already implicit in the Mishnah (see below) and is also made explicit Abraham Ibn Ezra’s interpretation of Leviticus 18:17.

See, Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Between Ananites and Karaites: Observations on Early Medieval Jewish Sectarianism,” in Studies in Muslim-Jewish Relations, ed. Ronald L. Nettler (Chur: Harwood Academic, 1993), 19–29.

While we do not have Anan’s work, this is apparent from citations of him found in later Byzantine Karaite authors. See, for example, Moshe Bashyatchi, Sefer Maṭṭeh elohim, ed. Yosef Algamil (Ramlah: Mekhon Tiferet Yosef, 2001), 47.

Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī, Kitāb al-Anwār wal-Marāqib: Code of Karaite Law [in Arabic], ed. Leon Nemoy (New York: The Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1939), 2:365.

Judah Hadassi, Eshkol ha-Kofer (Gözleve, 1836; repr. Gregg: Farnborough, 1971), 117a (alphabet 319); and Elijah Bashyatchi, Adderet Eliyahu (Odessa, 1870), 146a, 148a.

The Hebrew here is heqqesh, a calque of the Arabic qiyās, which in this context denotes all types of human reasoning, not only analogy.

Bashyatchi, Adderet Eliyahu, 4 (unpaginated introductory pagination).

Burning as opposed to one of the other death penalties: stoning, beheading, and strangulation.

Editor’s note: For more on the burning punishments in the Torah, see Esther Brownsmith, “Burning Desire Punished by Fire,” TheTorah (2023).

Leviticus 20 lists many of the same incest prohibitions as Leviticus 18. The rabbis explained this repetition by positing that the first set of laws are an אזהרה, “warning,” and the second set establishes the עונש, “punishment.” This explanation is grounded in many of the parallels in these two chapters; Leviticus 20 often offers punishments for rules set forth in Leviticus 18. Compare, for example, 18:7–8 with 20:14, and 18:23 with 20:15–16.

The Jerusalem Talmud treats the matter thus:

^{ירושלמי סנהדרין ט:א [כו:]} רב חונה שמע כולהון מן הכא (ויקרא יח:יז) ערות אשה ובתה לא תגלה. וכתיב (ויקרא כ:יד) ואיש אשר יקח את אשה ואת אמה זמה היא זמה זמה לגזירה שוה. מה למטן שלשה דורות אף למעלן שלשה דורות. מה למטן בלא תעשה. אף למעלן בלא תעשה. מה למטן דרך נישואין אף למעלן דרך נישואין. מה למטן בשריפה אף למעלן בשריפה.

^{j. Sanhedrin 9:1 [26:]} Rav Ḥona learned all of [the details of the Mishnah’s] prohibitions from this (Lev 18:17): “Do not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter.” And it says (Lev 20:14) “If a man takes a woman and her mother, it is depravity.” “Depravity” “depravity” is a gezeirah shavvah. Just as it goes three generations down (daughter, granddaughter), it goes three generations up (mother, grandmother). Just as down it is a prohibition, so too up is a prohibition. Just as down it means by marriage, so too up means by marriage. Just as down is punishable by burning, so too up is punishable by burning.

It is possible that it had some kind of a fortiori reasoning in mind, something along the lines of “if a step-daughter is prohibited, then certainly a daughter.” Alternatively, the Mishnah may have deployed Rav’s a fortiori argument discussed above.

The rabbinic term for this category is anusato, literally “a woman he raped,” but this category covers any out of wedlock encounter.

See also j. Yebamot 11:1 [11d]; Sifra Kedoshim, par 4, 10:12.

See, for example, the Jerusalem Talmud’s treatment:

^{ירושלמי סנהדרין ט:א [כו::]} רב הונא אמר: "עד כדון בת בתו לנישואין. בת בתו מן האונסין? כתיב (ויקרא יח:י) 'ערות בת בנך או בת בתך לא תגלה ערותן.' מה אנן קיימין? אם לנשואין הרי כבר אמור. אלא אם אינו עניין לנישואין תניהו עניין לאונסין.

^{j. Sanhedrin 9:1 [26d]} Rav Huna said: “Until now, we have learned a granddaughter from a woman he married (Lev 18:17). What about a granddaughter from a woman he did not marry? It says (Lev 18:10): “The nakedness of your son’s daughter, or of your daughter’s daughter—do not uncover their nakedness.” What does this cover? If [the granddaughters] of a woman he married, this is already stated (in Lev 18:17). Rather, if it is not about [is granddaughters through] a woman he married then it is about [his granddaughters through] a woman he did not marry.

See also j. Yebamot 11:1 [11d].

Abayye’s reasoning here contradicts the view reported in his name in b. Sanhedrin 76a. Modern scholars might suggest that the Talmud was aware of different traditions regarding Abayye’s view. Joseph Teʾomim, Ginat veradim (Lublin, 1897), 11a, claims that Abayye changed his mind to adopt the view set forth in this passage.

This term features most prominently in Mishnah Ḥagigah 1:8.

In his commentary on the passage, Rashi (R. Solomon ben Isaac, 1040–1105) explains:

^{רש"י כריתות ה. ד"ה "אתיא הנה"} ...לא כתיבא באנוסתו אלא אתיא הנה הנה מאשתו כתיב באשתו שארה הנה זמה היא וכתיב באנוסתו כי ערותך הנה מה התם כתיבא בתו דכתיב אשה ובתה אף כאן נמי באנוסה עשה בתו כבת בתו...

^{Rashi, Keritot 5a s.v. “atya heina”} …In the verse about an extramarital encounter (Lev 18:10) it never says [daughter], rather we learn this from the verse about the wife (Lev 18:17) [with a gezeirah shavvah using the words] “they are” “they are.” Regarding one’s wife it says “they are her kindred, it is depravity” and regarding a non-wife (literally “rape victim”) it says “they are your nakedness.” Just like over there it references his daughter, since it says “a woman and her daughter” (which includes his own daughter), so too by the non-wife, a daughter must be the same as a daughter’s daughter…

See, Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 98–99, 242, 310–12.

The Judeo-Arabic reads:

ומנהא מה לא יפצח אלכתאב בה אלא אן אלכבר סאוא בינהמא ... וכמא קאל פי תחרים אבנתא לזוגה ערות אשה ובתה לא תג': ולם ידכר בתך: וגא אלנקל באצ'אפה אבנת אלרגל פי אלתחרים אלי אבנת אבנתה כמה אצ'פת אבנה זוגתה אלי אבנת אבנתהא וכאנת [לפט]ה הנה אלמקולה ההנא כלפטה הנה אלמקולה [ה]נאך.

Yehuda Zvi Stampfer, “פירוש רס"ג לי"ג מידות שהתורה נדרשת בהם על פי המקור הערבי: פרשנות, מגמות, ומקורות עלומים” [Saʿadia Gaon’s Interpretation of the Thirteen Hermeneutical Principles according to the Arabic Source: Commentary, Tendencies, and Unknown Sources], Tarbiz 87.4 (2020): 641–705 [p. 682].

This understanding of gezeirah shavvah laws was widespread among medieval authorities, after all, gezeirah shavvah-style reasoning could be applied willy-nilly, perhaps to any word found twice in scripture.

See, e.g., Moritz Steinschneider, Catalogus librorum hebraeorum in bibliotheca Bodleiana (Berlin, 1852), 2:2163; and Samuel Poznański, The Karaite Literary Opponents of Saadiah Gaon (London: Luzac, 1908), 75 n. 1.

See, e.g., Hartwig Derenbourg and Mayer Lambert, eds., Traité des Successions suivi des opuscules et consultations Halachiques de R. Saadia Ben Iosef al-Fayyoûmî (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1897), 172–73 (#136); and Saadia ben Joseph, The Book of Commandments (Kitāb al-Sharāʾīʿ) of Saadia Gaon [in Hebrew], ed. and trans. Nissim Sabbato (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2019), 94–95, 276 line 374. For a discussion of the difference between Rabbanite and Karaite attitudes towards these second level incest prohibitions, see Marty Lockshin, “Which Relatives Are You Prohibited from Marrying?” TheTorah (2019).

Saadia, or at least some of his later readers, may also have had interreligious concerns to ascribe the nonscriptural prohibition against father-daughter incest to God. The eleventh-century Andalusian Muslim polymath and polemicist Ibn Ḥazm wrote as follows:

فنجد من يستحلّ نكاح ابنته وابنة أخيه كالمجوس واليهود.

We find some who permit marriage to one’s daughter or his brother’s daughter, like Zoroastrians and Jews.

It is possible that Ibn Ḥazm meant that Zoroastrians have no father-daughter incest prohibition and Jews have no uncle-niece one. Nevertheless, it is also possible that Ibn Ḥazm was aware of Leviticus’ silence on this matter, and meant the comment polemically, even if it isn’t strictly accurate. If Ibn Ḥazm’s source of knowledge about Judaism were Karaite, a distinct possibility, the chance that he knew about the absence of this prohibition from the Torah increases.

The Judeo-Arabic reads:

אלמצוה אלסאדסה ות'לאת'ין ות'לאת' מאיה, אלנהי אלד'י נהינא ען נכאח אלבנת נפסהא, והד'ה לם תבין פי נץ אלתורה, לם יג'ינא ערות בתך לא תגלה, ואנמא סכת ענהא לביאן אלאמר ווצ'וחה, לאנה חרם בנת אלאבן ובנת אלבנת בעדא מן אלבנת. ופי גמר יבמות קאלוא בתו עיקר אסורא מדרשא אתיא ...

Moses Maimonides, Sefer ha-Miṣvot: Maqor ve-targum, ed. and trans. Yosef Qafīḥ (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kook, 1971), 333–34 (negative #336).

This translation follows Qafih; Ibn Tibbon has “all the more so” (ve-khol she-ken), perhaps based on a different text.

This spelling of גמרא is standard for Maimonides.

ונץ גמר כרתות אל תהי גזרה שוה קלה בעיניך, שהרי בתו אחד מגופי תורה ולא למדה הכתוב אלא בגזרה שוה ...

Here and in the next ellipsis, Maimonides repeated and explained the gezerah shavvah.

ואתעבר קולהם לא למדה הכתוב, ולם יקולו לא למדנוה, לאן הד'ה אלאשיא כלהא נקל ען אלרסול, והי תפסיר מרוי כמא ביינא פי צדר תאליפנא פי שרח אלמשנה, ואנמא סכת אלנץ ען ד'כרהא לכונהא ימכן אן תתעלם בגזרה שוה, והד'א הו מעני קולהם לא למדה הכתוב אלא בגזרה שוה, וכפי בקולהם גוף תורה.

The term mi-pi ha-shemuʿah in Maimonidean literature denotes Sinaitic teachings.