First, A Warning
As we noted, the Talmud often discusses hypothetical cases. But not all unusual cases are hypothetical, even if they seem to be so. So please be advised that this post will discuss sexual relations between people and animals. If this is something that you would rather not read over breakfast, please skip this post, as well as page 26 of Sotah, (and pages 59a-b and bits of 63a of Yevamot).
This page of Talmud discusses details about bestiality.
סנהדרין נה, א
וְהָאִשָּׁה הַמְּבִיאָה אֶת הַבְּהֵמָה עָלֶיהָ, בֵּין כְּדַרְכָּהּ בֵּין שֶׁלֹּא כְּדַרְכָּהּ – חַיָּיב. דָּרַשׁ רַב נַחְמָן בַּר רַב חִסְדָּא: בְּאִשָּׁה שְׁנֵי מִשְׁכָּבוֹת, וּבִבְהֵמָה מִשְׁכָּב אֶחָד. מַתְקֵיף לַהּ רַב פָּפָּא: אַדְּרַבָּה, אִשָּׁה דְּאוֹרְחַהּ הִיא אַמִּשְׁכָּב מִיחַיַּיב, אַמִּידַּעַם אַחֲרִינָא לָא מִיחַיַּיב. בְּהֵמָה דְּלָאו אוֹרְחָא הִיא, לִחַיַּיב עֲלַהּ עַל כל נֶקֶב וָנֶקֶב
Rav Naḥman bar Rav Ḥisda taught: With regard to a woman there are two manners of lying. A woman who engages in intercourse with an animal, whether it is vaginal or anal intercourse, is liable. But with regard to a man who engages in intercourse with an animal there is only one manner of lying, i.e., vaginal intercourse.Rav Pappa objects to this opinion: On the contrary, a woman, whose typical manner of intercourse is vaginal, is rendered liable for lying with an animal only in that manner; she is not rendered liable for something else, i.e., for engaging in anal intercourse with an animal. With regard to a man who engages in intercourse with an animal, by contrast, since it is not its typical conduct to engage in intercourse with a man, he should be rendered liable for engaging in intercourse with it through each and every orifice.
ּBack when we studied Sotah, the Talmud sought to determine whether a woman can undergo the Sotah ordeal if she is suspected, not of adultery, but rather of bestiality, which is a legal a term for sexual relations between a human and an animal. (The preferred psychiatric term is zoophilia.) This ruling is derived from the Mishnah that we learned two days ago, which teaches that a husband cannot forbid his wife against seclusion “with one who is not a person [lit. a man].”
סוטה כו, ב
וְאֶלָּא לְמַעוֹטֵי מַאי? אָמַר רַב פָּפָּא: לְמַעוֹטֵי בְּהֵמָה, דְּאֵין זְנוּת בִּבְהֵמָה
Elsewhere there are other questions that pertain to bestiality. For example….
What about a Cohen?
In Yevamot we learned that according to Rabbi Shimi bar Hiyyah, a woman who had relations with an animal may marry a Cohen (though he does not clarify why the Cohen would want to marry such a woman). This is learned from that phrase again “one who is not a person.”
יבמות נט, ב
אָמַר רַב שִׁימִי בַּר חִיָּיא: נִבְעֲלָה לִבְהֵמָה — כְּשֵׁרָה לַכְּהוּנָּה. תַּנְיָא נָמֵי הָכִי: נִבְעֲלָה לְמִי שֶׁאֵינוֹ אִישׁ, אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁבִּסְקִילָה — כְּשֵׁרָה לַכְּהוּנָּה
Rabbi Shimi bar Hiyya said: A woman who had intercourse with an animal is permitted to marry into the priesthood. This is also taught in a baraita: If a woman had intercourse with one who is not a person, i.e., an animal, although she is liable to stoning if she did so intentionally and in the presence of witnesses who forewarned her of her punishment, she is nevertheless fit for the priesthood.
Moving right along, the Talmud in Yevamot then relates this very disturbing story:
מַעֲשֵׂה בְּרִיבָה אַחַת בְּהַיְתָלוֹ שֶׁהָיְתָה מְכַבֶּדֶת אֶת הַבַּיִת, וּרְבָעָהּ כֶּלֶב כּוּפְרִי מֵאַחֲרֶיהָ, וְהִכְשִׁירָהּ רַבִּי לַכְּהוּנָּה. אָמַר שְׁמוּאֵל: וּלְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל. בִּימֵי רַבִּי כֹּהֵן גָּדוֹל מִי הֲוָה? אֶלָּא — רְאוּיָה לְכֹהֵן גָּדוֹל
There was an incident involving a certain girl [riva] in the village of Hitlu who was sweeping the house, and a village dog sodomized her from behind. And Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi permitted her to the priesthood,as she was not considered a zona. Shmuel said: And Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi permitted her even to a High Priest, as she was still considered a virgin. The Gemara is puzzled by this comment: Was there a High Priest in the days of RabbiYehuda HaNasi? Rather, Shmuel meant that she is fit for a High Priest.
Just to be clear: this incident is not cited as a hypothetical “what would happen if?” kind of case. It actually happened, or was believed to have been true.
It’s Time not to be WEIRD
Almost all of the readers of Talmudology, you included, are likely to have fall into the WEIRD demographic, where WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. But WEIRD people represent only about 12% of the current population of the world, and certainly did not exist during the era in which the Talmuds were written. To appreciate the rest of this post, we need to leave behind our WEIRD mindsets. Just because we can’t imagine, doesn’t mean it ain’t so.
The Case of William HAtchett
Buried in the Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England for 1642, just after the granting of 600 acres of land to a Mr. Stephen Day, and right before the authorization to publish some new law books, is the following sentence:
William Hatchet, for beastuality with a cowe, is condemned to bee hanged, and the code to bee slayne & burnt or buried
The historian John M. Murrin, in his classic paper Bestiality in Colonial America, described what happened next:
Only then did Hatchet confess "the full completing this foul fact, and attempting the like before." He became so penitent that his execution was postponed an extra week to let the grace of the Lord complete its work. "There is no doubt to be made but the Lord hath received his soul to his mercy," Winthrop affirmed.
In March 1643 the Court of Assistants sentenced an Irish servant, Teagu Ocrimi, to stand at the place of execution with a halter around his neck and to be severely whipped "for a foule, & divilish attempt to bugger a cow of Mr. Makepeaces."
Whether or not William Hatchet was really guilty of the crime is not known. Remember, he was tried by the same people who brought you the Salem witch trials, in which over two hundred people were accused of being witches. Nineteen were hung. But bestiality was certainly on the minds of the Puritan settlers of New England, and it is the topic of at least two fascinating scholarly papers (one here, the other here). John Carnup, the author of one of these papers noted that William Bradford (d. 1657) who served as Governor of Plymouth Colony for some thirty years
…was probably right in ascribing the greater evidence of bestiality in Plymouth to the magistrates' diligence in bringing the guilty to trial. And it is possible that the Puritans' intense biblical-mindedness, especially in their reading of Leviticus, encouraged them to detect and prosecute crimes that justices in England were more inclined to ignore. Two years after Samuel Danforth inquired into the cry of Sodom, a writer in England remarked that 'such crimes as these are rarely heard of among us.' Rarely heard of does not mean rarely committed. Bestiality may indeed have been a common practice among young men in England's rural areas, as Thomas Granger hinted when he confessed that he had acquired the habit from a man who, in turn, had picked it up among keepers of cattle in England.
But how widespread was this practice in the rest of the world?
“Bestiality - human sexual relations with animals, has been part of the human race throughout history, in every place and culture in the world.”
Bestiality: A Very Short History
In the introduction to her article on the history of bestiality, Hani Milestski wrote that “most of the material reviewed and discussed is anecdotal, some is unbelievable, and occasionally authors provide conflicting data. It is important to take into consideration that some of the facts and views presented came from works that are questionable with regard to their validity.” All of which makes for a rather poor foundation on which to build an edifice known as history. But let’s go on.
Bestiality seems to have been part of the very earliest human activities. Among the many cave paintings found at Valcamonica in the Italian Alps paintings is one depicting a man having sex with a horse. The painting may date back to the Paleolithic era, some 8,000 years ago (although it may also be considerably younger, say only 4,000 years old).
Continuing with Dr. Miletski’s study of anecdotal and unreliable sources, she notes that “animal–human sexual contacts are occasionally portrayed on Egyptian tombs. Apparently, “Egyptian men often had sexual intercourse with cattle or any other large domesticated animal, while the women resorted to dogs.” Despite this, bestiality was punishable in Egypt, “by a variety of torture mechanisms, leading to death,” though we have no way to weigh the truth of her claim, based as it is on self-published monographs more than fifty years old. Meanwhile, in ancient Rome,
Emperors, such as Tiberius (AD 14–37), his wife Julia, Claudius (AD 37–41), Nero (AD 54–68), Constantinus (a.k.a. Constantine the Great, AD 274–337), Theodora (Emperor Justinian’s wife, AD 520s), and Empress Irene (AD 797–802), had been known to either engage in bestiality or enjoy watching others engage in bestiality..
We will skip over the records of bestiality in the Middle Ages. There are many of them (and there’s an entire book on Sex in the Middle Ages. It might make a nice Mother’s Day gift). Instead, let’s move to more recent research. One of the first modern studies on the phenomenon was performed by Alfred Kinsey. In his 1940 survey of American sexuality, he discovered that with about 8% of all men reporting a history of sexual activity with animals and nearly half of boys growing up on a farm reporting at least one episode of sexual activity with an animal. In women, 1.5% of respondents had sex with an animal before adolescence and 3.6% had sex with an animal after adolescence. Subjects reported that three-quarters of the animals in these encounters were dogs. “Kinsey's findings” wrote one psychiatrist, “seem to suggest that bestiality may be a relatively common phenomenon.”
Bestiality and Psychiatric Illness
Psychiatrists have also learned that bestiality, or better, zoophilia, is far more common in those with psychiatric illness than it is in the general population. In one 1991 study demonstrated a lifetime bestiality prevalence rate of 30% in a group of 20 randomly selected psychiatric inpatients as compared to 0% in control groups of 20 medical inpatients and 20 psychiatric staff. Before generalizing, remember that this study has a very small sample size “and did not consider the presence of active symptoms of mental or general medical illness such as delusions, disorganized thought process, manipulative personality traits, or delirium that may have influenced their results.” In other words, perhaps some of the patients were making the whole thing up. Another (multi center!) study revealed that zoophilia is also associated with penile cancer.
Before leaving the topic, we should take note of the fact that psychiatrists encounter zoophilia often enough for one of them to have developed a new classification of it. Subtypes include a “zoophilic fantasizer” who only dreams about it, a “regular zoophile” who might turn to humans when animals are unavailable, and perhaps scariest of all, a “homicidal zoophile” whose proclivities extend to preferring to have sex with dead animals over living ones.
From Aggrawal A. A new classification of zoophilia. J Forensic Leg Med 2011;18(2):73–8.
Sometimes that Talmud discusses cases that are most certainly hypothetical. And sometimes it discusses cases that might seem to our WEIRD minds only to be hypothetical, when in fact they do occur. And sometimes it is hard to tell which is which.
“וְאָמַר רַבִּי אֶלְעָזָר, מַאי דִּכְתִיב: ״זֹאת הַפַּעַם עֶצֶם מֵעֲצָמַי וּבָשָׂר מִבְּשָׂרִי״ — מְלַמֵּד שֶׁבָּא אָדָם עַל כל בְּהֵמָה וְחַיָּה, וְלֹא נִתְקָרְרָה דַּעְתּוֹ עַד שֶׁבָּא עַל חַוָּה
And Rabbi Elazar said: What is the meaning of that which is written: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Genesis 2:23)? This teaches that Adam had intercourse with each animal and beast in his search for his mate, and his mind was not at ease, in accordance with the verse: “And for Adam, there was not found a helpmate for him” (Genesis 2:20), until he had intercourse with Eve.”
