Editing Jewish views on marriage (section)

===== Fidelity =====
In the classical era of the [[rabbi]]nic scholars, the death penalty for adultery was rarely applied. It forbids conviction if:
* the woman had been raped, rather than consenting to the crime;<ref>''Ketubot'' 51b</ref>
* the woman had mistaken the paramour for her husband;<ref name="JewEncAdu"/>
* the woman was unaware of the laws against adultery before she committed the crime;<ref name="JewEncAdu"/>
* the woman had not been properly warned. This requires that the two witnesses testifying against her warn her that the [[Torah]] prohibits adultery; that the penalty for adultery is death; and that she immediately responded that she is doing so with full knowledge of those facts. Even if she was warned, but did not acknowledge those facts immediately upon hearing them, and immediately before doing the act, she is not put to death. These conditions apply in all death-penalty convictions.<ref>Talmud, Ketubot 33a</ref>

These rules made it practically impossible to convict any woman of adultery; in nearly every case, women were acquitted.<ref name="JewEncAdu"/> However, due to the belief that a priest should be untainted, a [[Kohen]] was compelled to divorce his wife if she had been raped.<ref name="JewEncAdu"/><ref>''Yebamot'' 56b</ref>

In [[Amoraim|Talmudic]] times, once the death penalty was no longer enforced for any crime,<ref>''Sanhedrin'' 41</ref> even when a woman was convicted, the punishment was comparatively mild: adulteresses were flogged instead.<ref name="JewEncAdu"/> Nevertheless, the husbands of convicted adulteresses were not permitted by the Talmud to forgive their guilty wives, instead being compelled to divorce them;<ref>''Sotah'' 6:1</ref> according to [[Maimonides]], a conviction for adultery nullified any right that the wife's [[Ketubah|marriage contract]] (Hebrew: {{transliteration|he|ketubah}}) gave her to a compensation payment for being divorced.<ref>Maimonides, ''Mishneh Torah'', ''Ishut'' 24:6</ref> Once divorced, an adulteress was not permitted, according to the Talmudic writers, to marry her paramour.<ref>''Sotah'' 5:1</ref>

As for men who committed adultery (with another man's wife<!--rather than with an unmarried woman-->), [[Abba ben Joseph bar Hama|Abba ben Joseph]] and [[Abba Arika]] are both quoted in the Talmud as expressing abhorrence, and arguing that such men would be condemned to [[Gehenna]].<ref>''Sotah'' 4b</ref>