Review of Marks, First Came Marriage

H-JUDAIC REVIEW:

Susan Marks. First Came Marriage: The Rabbinic Appropriation of Early Jewish Wedding Ritual. Judaism in Context Series. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2013. ix + 261 pp. $183.04 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-59333-585-4.

Reviewed by Jane Kanarek (Hebrew College)
Published on H-Judaic (July, 2014)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

Ancient Jewish Weddings between Ritual and History

With the goal of uncovering practices that have heretofore been unnoticed in ancient Jewish weddings, Susan Marks sets her methodological task as negotiating between the poles of ritual and history. She contends that approaching the study of Jewish weddings from the perspective of ritual theory alone misleads, but so too does the sole perspective of history. ...