The prohibitions of various sexual relationships, enumerated in the book of Leviticus and included in the most recent Sabbath Torah reading, are prefaced by a command not to imitate the ways of the Egyptians or the Canaanites, and are followed by another admonition not to imitate Canaanite practices. The text thereby seems to suggest that such relationships, most of which involve forms of incest, were commonplace among both peoples. While little is known about Canaanite law and marital practices, Eve Levavi Feinstein draws upon Hammurabi’s Code (18th century BCE), a Hittite legal code (ca. 1650–1500 BCE), and Egyptian documents to place the biblical prohibitions in context:

The sexual prohibitions in the laws of Hammurabi and the Hittite laws have some affinities with those in Leviticus but are significantly less restrictive. Later Hittite law and [a 14th-century-BCE] treaty point to a wider range of restrictions, but the latter intimates that they were not the norm throughout the region. While the data are limited, these texts at least suggest that the laws of Leviticus 18 were not simply a reflection of the norms prevailing throughout the ancient Near East. They were distinct and most likely unusually strict. . . .

Although Egypt certainly forbade adultery, incest does not seem to have been an Egyptian taboo. As early as the 14th century BCE and through at least the Ptolemaic period [the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE], some Pharaohs married their half or full sisters. There are also documented cases of non-royal marriages between children of the same father from the Middle Kingdom (ca. 1975-1640 BCE) and the Twenty-Second Dynasty (ca. 945-715 BCE), including some that appear to involve full siblings, as well as one marriage between a father and daughter.

The most extensive information on this subject comes from an official census from the 2nd century CE. In the most comprehensively documented region covered by the census, the district capital of Arsinoe, southwest of modern Cairo, 37 percent of all documented marriages are between full siblings.

Taking into account that not everyone has an available opposite-sex sibling and that there was a strong preference for younger women to marry older men, this is close to the maximum of possible sibling marriages. It is the highest level of inbreeding of any known population. Combined with the earlier material, it suggests that Egypt had a very long history of accepting and even favoring marriage between close kin, especially siblings.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.