Update- Jewish Identity: Part 2
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Many of you are also going to want to know where the matrilineal principle originated and scholars have narrowed it down to a pretty clear period of history which was dominated by Roman culture. There is an article I would recommend by Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski's "'Filios Suos Tantum' -- Roman Law and Jewish Identity" (pp.108-136). Modrzejewski clearly demonstrated from Talmudic and other historical manuscripts of that period that the matrilineal principle was of Roman influence. Bryn Mawr writes: "After definitively dating Hadrian's ban on circumcision to 119/120 CE (pp.121-123), Modrzejewski calls attention to an important detail in Antoninus Pius's rescript of the ban after the Bar Kochba war: only male children could be circumcised (p.132). This meant that an adult male could not convert to Judaism without violating Roman law. Given this situation and the fact that Roman Law also traced lineage of barbarians through the mother, the rabbis opted for matrilineal descent. If a Jewish woman married a gentile male, the male would not be able to convert. If a Jewish male married a non-Jewish female, there would be nothing preventing her conversion (which does not involve circumcision; see pp. 128-136). Therefore, matrilineal descent would be the most practical solution and correlate with a Roman matrilineal principle." I also recommend Shaye Cohen's writings on the subject. He has written the most scholarly pieces on this subject to date.
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