WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
hath not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."
The price paid for a wife in the time of Hosea was fifteen pieces of silver and a homer-and-a-half of barley. If the buyer grew tired of the woman, he had merely to publish the fact that she had "no favour in his eyes," and send her from the home. When a husband conceived suspicion of his wife's infidelity, he was permitted to subject her to a barbarous form of trial by ordeal.
The Jews remained a semi-barbaric race when Babylon and Egypt were hoary nations. The position of their women was greatly inferior in every respect to that of the women of ancient Babylon. Up to the Fifth Century, B.C., polygyny of an almost primitive character survived among the Hebrew people. The practice was not even reprobated by some of the early Christian reformers. It lingered till the Reformation, and was permitted by Martin Luther.
The priestess had wielded power in the old civilisations of the East; but, under the rule of St. Paul, Christian women were even forbidden to speak in the churches. The celibate life was exalted. Later, St. Gregory of Nyssa taught that wedlock is the outcome of iniquity. St. Augustine, who believed in woman's inferiority, declared that bigamy might be permitted if a wife was sterile.
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