Woody Allen Case Would Stun Ancients : Morality: Sexual relations between family members was enough to bring banishment or death in biblical times.

Not all would ascribe their motivation to divine revelation, but the Hittites, Babylonians and Israelis in the ancient Near East each shared an instinctual opposition to sexual relations among family members.

The specific strictures varied, but banishment or death were the usual punishments for even a single act of incest, and it would have been difficult for people in those cultures to understand the public spectacle accompanying Woody Allen’s affair with the adopted daughter of a woman he was romantically involved with for 12 years.

In the cases of Lot and his daughters, and of Amnon’s rape of Tamar, once was more than enough to create two of Israel’s most powerful enemies and ignite a civil war.

If the affair that has held the attention of New York tabloids since it began seems unusual by contemporary Manhattan standards, it may be too much to even imagine how the cultures in biblical times would have reacted.

“It wouldn’t make any sense to people in the ancient world,” said Victor Matthews, a professor of religious studies at Southwestern Missouri State University.

Harry A. Hoffner Jr., a professor of Hittite studies at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, said many cultures in the ancient Near East had prohibitions against incest.

“I would judge that this was rather a widespread feeling, that it was not a natural thing,” Hoffner said.

While the laws in non-Israeli cultures were not found in theological documents, the biblical prohibitions found in the 18th and 20th chapters of Leviticus and the 27th chapter of Deuteronomy are said to have come from God.

“In the biblical texts, these laws are given by God so it does have a theological overtone,” Hoffner said.

When individuals crossed the lines, the biblical texts tell of some serious consequences.

In the 19th chapter of Genesis, after Lot’s experience in Sodom and Gomorrah, his two daughters get him drunk and have sexual relations with him. But the text says the offspring were Moab and Ammon, the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites, two longtime enemies of Israel.

In Samuel 2:13, Amnon rapes Tamar, his half-sister. Absalom, a full brother of Tamar, has Amnon murdered and civil war later erupts.

“Both stories in a sense are showing the evil which comes from this sort of thing,” Hoffner said.

So how would the biblical writers have reacted to Allen being the lover of 21-year-old Soon-Yi Farrow Previn, whom he first met as the 9-year-old adopted daughter of actress Mia Farrow? Farrow was his lover for 12 years, and the couple adopted two children and had one biological child together.

The filmmaker said his relationship with Previn could not be considered incestuous because he is not a father to Farrow’s adopted children.

But the injunction in Leviticus 18:17 that a person “shall not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter” would seem to cover the romantic triangle in Allen’s case.

Allen, 56, has admitted to being Previn’s lover, and to taking nude pictures of her at her request.

John Hartley, a professor of Old Testament Studies at Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, said people in ancient Israel would have been appalled at Allen’s affair with Previn.

“At a minimum, they would be excluded from the tribe,” he said.