Salome Divorces Her Husband

Josephus

Jewish Antiquities 15.259–260

93–94

Sometime afterward, when Salome happened to be quarreling with Costobarus, she sent him a bill of divorce and dissolved her marriage with him, though this was not in keeping with the Jewish laws. For it is lawful among us for a husband to do this, but a wife, if she departs from her husband, cannot be married to another man unless her former husband allows it. However, Salome chose to follow not the law of her country but the law of her own authority and so renounced her wedlock, and she told her brother Herod that she had left her husband out of her goodwill to [Herod], because she perceived that [Costobarus] was planning sedition against him with Antipater, Lysimachus, and Dositheus.

Translated by William Whiston, adapted by Aaron Samuels.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 2: Emerging Judaism.

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Creator Bio

Josephus

37–100

Flavius Josephus was born into a prominent Jewish priestly family and served as a general stationed in the Galilee during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). He was captured by the Romans and eventually integrated into the Flavian imperial aristocracy, who commissioned him to compose chronicles of the Jewish–Roman war and the history of the Jews. Josephus’ works, all written in Greek, include The Jewish War, Jewish Antiquities, Against Apion, and his autobiography, Life of Josephus. These writings provide important insights into the Judaisms of the Second Temple period and include one of the few surviving accounts of the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

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