'I:. ,
Adultery l'Emilius THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA 218
into disuse. During the Roman invasion of Pales-tine, and the
last days of the commonwealth, the
Sanhedrin, under the presidency of Ordeal JOHANAN BEN ZAKKAI,
abolished the
Annulled. ordeal entirely; as the JHislmah states, "when
adulterers became 'numerous,
the ' ordeal of the bitter waters ' ceased, and it was R.
Johanan bcn Zakkai who abolished it; as it is written (Hosea, iv.
14), 'I will not punish your daughters, when they commit whoredom,
nor your spouses, when they commit adultery; for themselves arc
separated with whores, and they sacrifice with harlots'" (Sotah,
ix. !l). Fo1 it appears that under the Roman regime, immorality
spread among the people, the judges became corrupt, the springs of
justice were defiled, and general demoralization re-sulted (Graetz,
"History of the Jews," ii. 237, 238). Probably for this very reason
Queen Helena of Adia-bene, the illustrious and munificent proselyte
to Juda-ism, favored the ordeal; for she presented a golden tablet
to the Temple with the chapter from the Law engraved on it, to be
used for the rite of the ordeal (Tosef., Yoma, ii. 3; J\1islurnh
Yoma, iii. 10; Gem. ib. 37b). But even if it had not been
abolished, the rite would have sunk into abeyance with the fall of
the Temple, because, according to the Law, the cere-mony could not
be performed elsewhere.
In the patriarchal days the Adultery of the wife required no
proof, for whenever the head of the
family suspected her, he could kill The Law in her. Thus Judah
ordered his daugh-
Patriar- tcr-in-law, Tamar, to be burned be-chal Days. cause of
her supposed Adultery (Gen.
xxxviii. 24). Her crime consisted in unlawful intercourse with a
man other than the brother of her deceased husband. For at first it
was the custom, and afterward it became the law, for the widow of a
man who had died without leaving issue, to marry his brother, so
that the child of this union might be of the blood of the deceased
and bear his name (Dcut. xxv. 5, 6; see LEYIRATE). In such cases
the widow was really considered the be-trothed of her
brother-in-law, and her intercourse with another than himself was
punishable as Adul-tery. When the punishment of the adulteress and
her paramour was taken out of the hands of the husband and assumed
by the civil law, this, like every other crime, had to be proved by
two or more witnesses, before a conviction and sentence could
follow (Deut. xix. 15; Maimonides, "Hilkot Ishut," xxiv. 18).
Under the theory of the Talmudists, which still further
mitigated the severity of the law, the woman could not be convicted
of Adultery until it was proved that she had been previously
cautioned, in the presence of two witnesses, not to have any
com-munication with the suspected man, and that, in spite of such
caution, she had met him secretly un-der circumstances that would
make the commission of the crime possible (JHishnah Sotah, i. 1, 2
; Gem. 2b). This caution was given to her because of the general
tendency of the rabbinical law toward mercy, based in this case on
a technical interpretation of the Biblical text (Num. v. 13).
Practically, it worked an acquittal in nearly every case. If,
however, the husband was not satisfied with the result, the right
of divorce was left open to him, although, when divorced under such
circumstances, the wife did not lose her property rights under the
l~etubah. If ru-mors of the wife's Adultery were circulated during
the absence of the husband, the court had the right to summon and
caution her with the same effect as though it had been done by her
husband (Maimoni-des, "Hilkot Sotah," i. 11).
The paramour was technically the adulterer (rwef), and under the
Biblical law suffered death together
with the adulteress (noejet). His Status of crime was held in
the greatest ab-
Adulterer. horrence, and Raba and Rab voiced the general opinion
when they said
that nothing would excuse the wilful adulterer, nor would all
his virtues save him from Gehenna (So-tah, 4b). Even a lustful
desire was deemed a moral crime, and the echo of "Thou shalt not
covet thy neighbor's wife" rings throughout the Talmud and
rabbinical writings, and is reechoed in the New Testament (Ex. xx.
17; Eben ha-'Ezer, 21; J\Iatt. v. 27, 28). The adulterer's folly is
condemned and makes him liable to the jealous wrath of the
out-raged husband (Prov. vi. 32-34; Job, xxxi. 9, 10). In Talmudic
days, long after the abolition of the death penalty, the adulterer
was punished by flagel-lation, and was forbidden to marry the
faithless wife after she had been divorced. Even the mere
sus-picion of the crime was sufficient to prevent their marriage. A
case, however, is suggested in the Tal-mud in which this
restriction seems to have been removed. Herc the woman having been
suspected of Adultery was divorced, and having remarried was again
divorced, and then manied the man who had originally been suspected
of having committed Adul-tery with her; the marriage was declared
lawful, because it seems that the intervening marriage was
considered in some degree a refutation of that sus-picion, and
acted as a limitation upon the original interdict (Yeb. 24b).
The child of an incestuous or adulterous connec-tion was known
as a MA~IZEH. It was not permitted to become a member of the Jewish
body politic (Dent. xxiii. 3 r A. V. 2]), and could not intermarry
with a Jew or Jewess (.J>:id. iii. 12), although it did not lose
its right to inherit from the husband of its mother, who, while not
the legitimate father, was for this purpose the putative father
(Yeb. ii. 5; :Maimonides, "Nal)alut," i. 7). BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.
Selden, Uxor Hebraica, 1646; J. c. Wagen-
sell (translation of the Talmudic treatise Sotah, with elaborate
annotations). Altdorf, 1674; Michaelis, 11-Iosailsches Eherecht,
1785, v passim; Saalschiitz, Das .Mosaische Recht, 1853, 2d ed.,
ii. 570-575; Z. Frankel, Grundlinien des Mosaisch-Tal-mudische
Eherecht, Breslau. 1800; M. Duscbak, Das lliosa-isch-Talmudische
Eherecht, Vienna. 1864; M. Mielzlner, Jew-ish Law of lliarriaue and
Divorce, Cincinnati, 1884; D. w. Amram, Jewish Law of Divorce,
1896; Leopold Low, Gesam-melte Schriften, Iii. 13 et seq.
D. W. A. ADUMMIM ("The Red "): Steep road leading
from the plain of Jericho to the hilly country around Jerusalem.
It was a part of the boundary between Judah and Benjamin (Josh. xv.
7, xviii. 17). The name refers to the redness of the material of
which the road is made. It is now called Tala'at ed-Dam.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Buhl, Geouraphie des Alten PaW.Stina, pp.
75, 98. G.B. L.
ADUMMIM. See CoINs. ADVENT OF MESSIAH. See MESSIAH. ADVENTISTS :
A Christian sect. Among the
chief tenets of the Adventist faith are: (1) The res-toration of
the Jews to the Holy Land (see Bengel, "Gnomon on the New
Testament"), and their con-version, based on Rom. xi. 25, 26
(Ritschl, "Gesch. des Pietismus," i. 565-584). Hence the interest
shown by the Adventists in the Zionist movement, though many
believe that the return will not take place till after the
Resurrection, basing their views on the passage of Ezekiel,
"Behold, 0 my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to
come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land
oflsrael"
r
219 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA Adultery JEmilius
(xxxvii. 12). (2) Literal interpretation of the whole Bible,
including the Old Testament and the Mosaic law.
The notion of waiting for the Second Ad vent of Jesus,
calculated to take place during the present generation, originated
in England (E. Irving), spread over Ireland (A. Darby) and Germany
(I. A. Bengel), and became especially popular in N cw England under
the influence of W. Miller of Pitts-field, Mass., the prophet, who
predicted the coming of the Messiah in the year 1843, basing his
calculation principally on the "seventy weeks" of Daniel. A
division ot the Adventists accentuated the Sabbath of Creation, and
the consequence was the formation of the SEVEN'l'H-DAY ADVENTISTS.
Some insisted also on abstinence from swine's flesh, in accordance
with the Mosaic law. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Carroll, Religious Forces of the
United
States, New York, 1893; White, Sketches of the Life of WilUam
Miller, Battle Creek, Michigan, 1879; Loughborough, Rise and
Progress of Seventh-Day Baptists, Battle Creek, Michigan, 1891.
K. .1EGIDIUS OF VITERBO (or .1EGIDIUS AN-
TONIUS CANISIUS); Cardinal and Christian cabalist; born in 1470
at the Villa Canapina, in the diocese of Viterbo, of rich and noble
parents. After a course of studies with the Augustinians at
Viterbo, he was made doctor of theology, and in 1503 became general
of his order. He died November 12, 1532. In Jewish history the name
of lEgidius (or Egidio) is coupled first with the grammarian Elias
Levita, who instructed him in Hebrew. When the turmoil of war drove
Levita from Padua to Rome, he was welcomed at the house of
lEgidius, where, with his family, he lived for more than ten years,
all his wants being supplied. It was there that Levita's career as
the foremost tutor of Christian notables in He-brew lore commenced.
The firsi'edition of Levita's "Bal;rnr" (Rome, 1518) is dedicated
to lEgidius. In return for his Hebrew instruction lEgidius quite
willingly introduced Levita into the profane branches of learning
and the Greek language, thus enabling the latter somewhat to
utilize Greek in his Hebrew lexicographic labors-a debt freely
acknowledged by Levi ta, who, inJ521, dedicated his" Concordance"
to the cardinal. It must ba noted,. however, that lEgidius' anxiety
to master the sacred tongue sprang neither from philological
inclination nor from a de-sire to attain a better method of
Biblical exegesis: his main motive was thus to be enabled lo
penetrate the mysteries of the Cabala. As a cabalist, lEgidius
belonged to the interesting group of sixteenth-cen-tury Christians,
among whom Reuchlin and Pico della Mirandola also were prominent,
who believed that Jewish mysticism, and particularly the Zohar,
contained incontrovertible testimony to the truth of the Christian
religion (compare CABALISTs, CHRIS-TIAN). No wonder, then, that in
the course of Reuchlin's conflict with the obscurantists (1507-21),
in which the preservation of the Jewish books was at issue, the
cardinal wrote (1516) to his courageous and enlighteneg friend:
"While we labor on thy behalf, we defend not thee, but the law; not
the Talmud, but the Church." lEgidius also engaged another Jewish
scholar, Baruch di Benevento, to translate for him the Zohar (the
mystic Book of Splendor). The scholar last named may also have been
partly responsible for the numerous cabalistic translations and
treatises which appeared under the name of lEgidius. The cardinal
appears to have been a zealous collector of Hebrew manuscripts, of
which many are still to be seen at the Munich Li-brary, bearing
both faint traces of his signature and
brief Latin annotations. In the Angelica at Rome an exceedingly
valuable old Bible manuscript is ex-tant, which was given by Leo X.
to lEgidius. The British Museum contains a copy of Makiri and the
Midrash on the minor Prophets, written for the cardi-nal at Tivoli,
in the year 1514, by Johanan b. Jacob Sarkuse. The study of Jewish
literature led the cardinal to a friendly interest. in the Jews
them-selves, which he manifested both in his energetic
encouragement of Reuchlin in the struggle referred to above and in
a vain attempt which he made in the year 1531, in conjunction with
the cardinal Geronimo de Ghinucci, to prevent the issue of the
papal edict authorizing the int.roduction of the In-quisition
against the Maranos.
The writings commonly attributed to lEgidius are numerous. Most
of them are to be found in manuscript form in the Bibliotheque
Nationale, Paris, but their authenticity is still to be
estab-lished. Aside from minor works on the Hebrew language, the
majority by far are of a cabalistic nature. There is scarcely a
classic of Jewish medi-eval mysticism that he has not translated,
annotated, or commented upon. Among these works may be mentioned
the Zollar (Splendor); "Ginnat Egoz" (Nut-Garden); "Sefer Raziel"
(Book of Raziel); "Ma'areket ha-Elphut" (System of Theology); "
'Eser Sefirot" (Ten Sefirot). BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jiicher,
Gelehrten-Lexlkon, supplement, ed.
Adelung, i. cols. 252 et seq.; Gelger, Das Studium d. Hebr.
Sprache in Deutschland, p. 56; Gratz. Gesch. d. Ju-de~~ 2d ed., Ix.
90, 154, 214, 266; Perles, Beitlrll(le zur Gesch. d .. Hebr. u.
Aramliiscfien Studien, pp.170, 200 et Req . Munich, 1884; Kraus,
Griechische u. Lateinische Lehnwarter, I, 306; Steinschneider,
Christliche Hebraisten, in Zeit. f. Hebr. Bibl. i. lla; idem, Cat.
Bodl. col. 2140; idem, Cat. Munich, pp. 173, 176; Buber, Yan,.
Machiri, introduction.
H. G. E. .1ELIA CAPITOLINA. See JERUSALEM. .1EMILIUS, PAULUS
(called also da Gin,
i.e., Grynreus) : Hebrew bibliographer, publisher, and teacher;
born at Rodlsee, Germany, probably in the first quarter of 11.he
sixteenth century; embraced Christianity in Rome; died 1575. He was
employed in copying Hebrew manuscripts, and for this purpose
visited the libraries of Paris, Louvain, and Rome. In 1544 he
edited and printed at Augsburg a Judaio-German translation of the
Pentateuch and the Haf-tarot, dedicating it to Widmannstadt,
custodian of the Hebrew department of the Munich Library.
Grlin-baum (" Jlidisch-Deutsche Chrestomathie," p. 14) thinks that
lEmilius copied from the Cremona edi-tion of 1540. The translation
is, on the whole, the same which is used at the present time (1901)
in Poland. Perles supposes that lEmilius, together with Isaac of
Glinzburg, was the editor of the Judaio-German "Sefer ha-Musar"
(Book of Ethics), published at Isny in1542. In 1547 .LEmilius was
appointed professor of Hebrew at Ingolstadt; and in the following
year he published an anti-Jewish pamphlet. In 1562 heed-ited a
.Tudaio-German translation (in German charac-ters) of .the Books of
Samuel, without, however, making known that it was a copy of a
similar trans-lation-though in Hebrew letters-published in
Augsburg, 1543, by :e:ayyim Schwarz. In 1574 he was engaged for
forty-six weeks at the Munich Li-brary i_n making and revising the
catalogue of He-brew manuscripts and books. Thus Paulus lEmilius
was the first Jewish bibliographer. BIBLIOGRAPHY : Stelnschnelder,
Sitzungsberichte der Bayri-
schen Akade.mie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Philo-logische
Cla.'lSe, 11:, 1875 ; Griinbaum, Jildisch -Deutsche Ghrestomathie,
pp. 14 et seq.; Perles, Ju Monatsschrift, 1876, pp. 363-368 ; idem,
Beitrlige zur Gesch. der He-brliischen und Aramliischen Studien,
pp. 155, 165, 170, Munich, 1884.
M. B.