the will of the man; motherhood was the chief function of women. Throughout the canon of the Old Testament violation of the sex-taboo is earnestly condemned and made a subject of warning and of prohibition in the name of Yahveh. Sex-vice, including abortion, exposure of infants, and child sacrifice, are set forth as the distinguishing traits of the heathen, and an abomination to Yahveh. The prophets were constantly fighting the mores of the Jews, which coincided with those of the other people of Western Asia.[1] The Jews who returned to Judea were a selection of those who had the strongest national feeling and who thought that the captivity had been a chastisement of Yahveh. In the rabbinical period, with intenser national feeling, the antagonism to heathenism and sex-vice was even more strongly emphasized, and they often hold the first place in ethical exhortation and discussion. The importance attached, in the New Testament, to eating things offered to idols might not seem comprehensible, but it is conjoined with denunciation of sex-vice, and sex-vice and heathenism went together, and were the antipodes of Christianity. These sentiments entered deeply into the Jewish mores of the rabbinical period, while the standard of marital life, the conception of matrimony, and the status of women remained about on the level of the surrounding nations. Women were held to be inferior, as agents of seduction and evil; a father or husband had a hard task to keep daughter or wife from evil.
In Esdras[2] is an interesting argument to prove that woman is the most powerful thing amongst men; she is alluring and may be wicked, and is classed with wine as a cause of ruin to men.[3] All the wisdom of all the ages
