Saturday, January 06, 2007

'Any Cause' Divorce




David Werner Amran's 1896 book "Jewish Law of Divorce" is the earliest modern text I am so far able to locate describing the Hillel 'any cause' divorce. It is available for a free download.
Chapter 3 starting on page 32 starts the discussion regarding the Talmudists and Jesus. Very interesting. This book very much adds to Instone-Brewer's thesis in his book "Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible".

It was written as an investigation into an Episcopal clergyman who remarried after being deserted by his first wife. As I said it is free. I have placed the link above and in the links side bar.

5 comments:

David IB said...

Congratulations on ferreting out this book. It is VERY hard to get hold of. When I went there I couldn't read it. Any ideas?

And thanks for your intelligent blogs!

Frank said...

Hello David,

I checked the link it's still active. The direct one to the PDF is

http://books.google.com/books/pdf/The_Jewish_Law_of_Divorce_According_to_B.pdf?id=12TONI_WtwEC&output=pdf&sig=GucADVQ_Qk5S-HyX6cklkIs_c-E

Also perhaps try the tinyurl for this book:

http://tinyurl.com/ywbcls

If that doesn't work, you could leave me your email address and I can simply email the entire PDF to you.

Thanks for finding this obscure blog.

David IB said...

The tinyurl and the link from your original post still work, but they go to a page with just a list of chapters, even when I'm signed in with a Google ID. The url to the pdf is a temporary one for a single session, so it won't work for me, but it does show that it works for you. You must be special!

Frank said...

2 things, I believe that I did locate that book in my university office PC, and perhaps the USA rights do not allow viewing in the UK. Given that, I believe that the book is in the public domain -- so I don't believe that if I passed it on to you, I'll be breaking any ethical or international laws. If this is David IB the author from the UK, I'll send the PDF to you if you give me the OK.

David IB said...

Yes, I'm David Instone-Brewer, the one and only as far as I know. Thanks for the offer of the PDF.