Volume 48, Number 17 · November 1, 2001
The Unkindest Cut
By Jasper Griffin
Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale
by Laura Engelstein
Cornell University Press, 283 pp., $32.50
Eunuchs and Castrati
by Piotr O. Scholz
Markus Wiener, 327 pp., $44.95; $22.95 (paper)
Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood
by Gary Taylor
Routledge, 307 pp., $25.00
It is a truth generally acknowledged about sacred books that they are liable to contain utterances which cause difficulties to believers and bafflement, or merriment, to the profane. One of the more difficult texts in the New Testament is the saying of Jesus recorded at Matthew 19:12. He has just laid down a firm line on divorce: to put away, i.e., divorce, a wife, except for fornication, and then to marry again is adultery; and if anyone else marries such a divorced woman, he is guilty of adultery, too. The disciples, dismayed, say, in that case, 'it is not good to marry.'
Review, 3665 words
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