Levirate Marriage and the Family[ ]that while a man’s preferred heir is his son, a daughter obviates the need
for levirate. A man who had daughters thus had a clear vertical heir and
was not considered “childless”; however, his “name” or direct lineage
would not be preserved, since his daughter’s children would be assigned
to their father’s patrilineage.
Both the Greeks and the Romans employed adoption as a strategy of
continuity. Adoption transferred an individual from one family to an-
other, cutting off ties to the former family in order to create legal ties to
the latter. In Greece, adoption could be arranged during a man’s life-
time or posthumously and usually involved the adoption of a close rela-
tive.^39 In ancient Rome, adoption was resorted to frequently to obtain
an heir. Adoption was preferred to divorce and remarriage, or even to
remarriage after a man was widowed.^40 Roman adoption almost always
involved an adult adoptee, and often the adoptee was a member of the
man’s extended family. Adoption meant the severing of the adoptee’s
legal ties to his natal family and was used primarily to secure an inheri-
tance. Although daughters could inherit from their father, the family
name could not be transmitted through the female line; thus adoption
was an attractive option for a man with only daughters. A man who had
no sons might adopt his son-in-law or adopt a male relative, who would
then marry the adoptive father’s daughter. Adoption could also be used
posthumously to secure an heir who would continue the family name;
in such a case a man would identify an individual, often a close relative,
in his will who would be adopted after the testator’s death.^41
Adoption, however, is absent from rabbinic sources, at least as an
institution with legal ramifications. The legal ties between parent and
child could not be broken, nor could such ties be legally created be-
tween two individuals who were not assumed to be biologically related.
A stepfather could assume financial responsibility for a wife’s child by a
previous marriage, but the child remained the legal offspring and heir
of his or her own father.^42 A stepmother might care for her husband’s
children by a previous marriage, but she remained a stepmother, not a
mot her.^43 While raising an orphan in one’s home was praiseworthy and
the orphan was “accounted to the guardian as if he had sired him,” this
accounting was meant to be an expression of praise, not a legal right
or responsibility.^44 Adoption, then, was not recognized as a vehicle for
providing a childless man with an heir; a child raised by a man but not