[ ]Paternity and ContinuityA second strategy involves “adding children.”^35 Levirate is such a
strategy, employed after a man’s death. A related strategy, ghost mar-
riage, may be employed when the deceased had not yet married; a kins-
man takes a wife on his dead relative’s behalf.
Another method of adding children involves substituting a daughter
for a son, even in societies where the preferred heir is male. A daughter
can be allowed to inherit outright, or she can serve as a conduit for pass-
ing her father’s property on to her sons. The latter practice, known as
epiclerate, was practiced in ancient Athens.^36 While an epikleros could
marry any man, it was usually preferable that she marry within her fa-
ther’s extended family. In Sasanian Babylonia, a daughter could serve as
her father’s designated successor (s t u ̄ r) in the absence of a son.^37
The rabbis had biblical precedence for inheritance by daughters. In
allowing daughters to inherit in the absence of sons, the Bible expands
the possibility that a man will leave a direct vertical heir. While women
could not inherit together with their brothers, rabbinic inheritance law
affirms the biblical order of inheritance, assigning the estate of a man
who leaves no sons to his daughters. Furthermore, the rights of children
to inherit from their father can be transferred to their offspring; thus a
man’s grandchildren, whether male or female, the children of his son or
his daughter, serve as his heirs and take precedence over his father and
siblings. Again we see that inheritance and levirate are strongly con-
nected; in the absence of a son, a daughter both inherits and exempts
her mother from the levirate obligation; so, too, grandchildren inherit
and exempt their grandfather’s wife from levirate.
The right of daughters to inherit obviates the need to find an heir
through the practice of epiclerate. The Torah envisions inheritance by
daug hters as a t y pe of epiclerate; by requ i r i ng a daug hter who i n her its to
marry within her father’s clan, it ensures that property remains within
the patrilineage. However, commentators limit this requirement of en-
dogamy to the generation of the wilderness;^38 there is no indication that
rabbinic law allowing daughters to inherit also dictated their marriage
choices, although such choices might have been guided by the extended
family or the father himself. Under rabbinic law, a daughter who inher-
its does so outright; she enjoys full use of the property and transmits it
upon her death to her husband or children. The undisputed interpreta-
tion of ben in Deuteronomy : as “issue” rather than “son” indicates