GELOSIA, LEGGE di. — According to the law contained in Num. 5:11ff., the husband who harbors suspicions regarding his wife’s fidelity, suspicions not confirmed by any testimony, brings the woman to the priest, offering an oblation to invoke any possible guilt.
The oblation consists solely of barley flour. The priest pours holy water into an earthenware vessel and adds dust from the floor of the tabernacle (thus rich in social forces as well). Then he has the woman approach, loosens her hair, and places the flour in her hands while he holds the vessel with the water. The woman pronounces the formula of self-imprecation in case she is guilty. If guilty—as the priest declares—“the Lord make thee a curse and an oath among thy people, that He cause thy thigh to rot and thy belly to swell.” The woman answers: “Amen, amen.” The priest then writes the curses on a scroll and dissolves them “in the bitter water of cursing.” The priest burns a handful of the barley (“askaroth and invocation”) on the altar as an offering, and then makes the woman drink the water.
The system was directly applied to the Old Testament by H. Hubert, M. Mauss, and J. G. Frazer; followed by A. Lods, A. Loisy, and especially A. Causse. These authors maintain the following evolution: collectivistic religion of the nomadic period, Mosaic religion (Yahwism), syncretistic religion in Canaan, religion of the monarchical period, moral religion of the prophets, post-exilic religion, first individual and then universalistic. It is also the logical, indispensable foundation of the opinion of K. L. Schmidt, R. Bultmann, G. Bertram, M. Dibelius (proponents of Formgeschichte) and of those (A. Loisy) who, with them, admit that the Christian community (particularly that of Antioch), as such, was the creator of Christian ideas and values.
Jealousy, based on an unsustainable metaphysics and arising from misunderstandings, is contradicted by the certain data of history and ethnology, which demonstrate the eminent place of the individual person, the elevated moral sense, the idea of the Supreme Being, and the notion of personal responsibility that were in force among ancient peoples and among those today called “primitive.”
2) Contributions: S. Deploige, *Le conflit de la morale et de la société*, iv, 1913; 3) id., iv, 1927; H. Finard de la Boullaye, *L'étude comparée des religions*, I, iv, 1925, pp. 431-50; L. De Grandmaison, *Jésus-Christ*, I, iv, 1928, pp. 195-200; II, iv, 1928, pp. 474-79; E. Magnin, *Religion*, in *DThC*, XIII, cols. 2206-2227; E. Florit, *Il metodo della storia delle forme*, Rome 1935, p. 19; S. A. Causse, *Du groupe ethnique à la communauté religieuse. Le problème sociologique de la religion d'Israël*, Paris 1937; R. Jolivet, *Ethnique personnaliste*, in *Archives de philosophie*, I, (1938), pp. 112-17; G. Gurvitch, *Essai de sociologie*, iv, 1938; F. M. Braun, *Formengeschichte*, in *DB*, III, cols. 312-17; Francesco Spadafora.