Page:Unlawfulmarriage00jane.djvu/117

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RELATE TO MARRIAGE.
113

heard any intelligent person say so. We believe, as Selden states, its primary signification to be nakedness, and as it is used in the Levitical prohibitions in connexion with the verb uncover, to express sexual intercourse; and that the prohibitions not only respect single incestuous acts, but are also intended to interdict incestuous marriages.

The quotation in the paragraph next to the last, on the same page, (p. 12,) is faulty. The translation is incorrect, and the Latin quotation, at the foot of the page, leaves out very material words. It is offered as "the testimony of a Jewish Rabbi, Solomon Jarchi." As it is found in Selden, in the same book and chapter from which the preceding quotation was taken, we presume the Puritan derived it from that source, though it is not so stated.

It has been seen how he labors to support his cause by the authority of the great oriental scholar; and that his first quotation, when fairly set before the reader, by exhibiting it in connexion with what went before and followed after it in Selden, entirely fails to sustain his assertion. A similar example is now to be presented where