I would imagine that this holds for other religions as well.
Personally I’m of the opinion that historically marriage is Disease control.
Imagine life with no medication or testing. Keeping marriage “pure” is a way to keep people healthy.
Any society that didn’t follow this would have a lot of STDs. The stricter a society the healthier the people.
Hence why so much social pressure developed.
Lots of Jewish practices have to do with health and sanitation.
Long list of things that makes a person “unclean” for X days.
I see many Parallels with Covid. It is creating new traditions that could last generations.
Someone coughs, they are “unclean” for 14 days. Social rules are completely different now.
Modern medication changes the game drastically. Lots of things are no longer a death sentence.
Same.
> Personally I’m of the opinion that historically marriage is Disease control.
While I don't disagree that this is a benefit, marriage isn't necessary for this to occur - only fidelity. Plural marriage would work just fine in this context, as would polygamy/polygyny.
Marriage is, at its root, a means of ensuring the generational transfer of wealth: it means that the person who possesses capital in the society (typically the man) can pass their wealth on to their children. It also provides some assurances to the legally subordinate partner that they will not be destitute should the other die or abandon them.
In my mind marriage developed as an adaptation to large civilizations. Whereas we once lived in roaming nomadic tribes, and fluid small groups (as can be observed in some remote tribes today), I think once agriculture flourished and towns started to outgrow the individual it became necessary for something like the nuclear family to develop. With families belonging to clans and clans belonging to city-states.
You're making a lot of assumptions about Covid and long term effects. The Spanish flu was many times deadlier and yet it did not change anything once it faded out several years later, things went back to normal.
A child you may have outside of marriage, no matter how obvious it is that it's yours, is illegitimate; not legally considered. Suddenly, adultery on the part of your wife is a very big deal indeed, and all the various other effects this has.
Obviously things have changed in many societies now, but historically this was a very big one.
Surprisingly recent, perhaps. See Trimble vs Gordon, of 1977.
[0] And others too, but very strongly pronounced in these cultures.
Is there further reading for this?
Not exactly about a number of days, but Deuteronomy 23:12 instructs those going to battle to carry a shovel so they could bury their excrement and not leave it exposed in the camp, lest God abandon the camp and not defend them from their enemies. (After all, God is holy and poop is not).
I highly recommend reading the original literature and not a secondary source. The way the text weaves reasonable ideas with superstition, threats of abandonment and punishment with messages of hope is a fascinating window into the way people thought in another time and place.
Becoming sick was near equivalent to being a sinner, so good hygiene and righteousness had some overlap.
Follow these rules, you won’t get sick. Got sick? You didn’t follow the rules.
Harsh reality, but a harsh time.
Menstruation is in Leviticus 15: https://biblehub.com/niv/leviticus/15.htm
... in fact, most of Leviticus is about "clean" vs. "unclean".
I'm reminded of GK Chesterton, in Heretics: "Posting a letter and getting married are among the few things left that are entirely romantic; for to be entirely romantic a thing must be irrevocable."
On a second thought I assume it is because poverty, alcoholism, and family traumas (ranging back to WW2 and UPA/UIA raids) are all common in the lands of my origin, and religiousness becomes more like another drug and less like an actual, sane belief system.
So at least for that segment, it may very much look like something that is 'done' but the reality hits once the well-wishers go home.
This is a bold assumption that will not hold in many countries and regions that consider marriage as something that is "done", especially if the act that proclaims it as "done" it's performed in the presence of some holy man, in a holy building, and if the marriage is, in any way, legally or morally "irreversible" or impossible to effectively unmake even for strongest and most plausible reasons to do so.
Such rules, counter-intuitively, make it much harder for marriages to be happy. If a marriage is "done", then there's no point in trying to "make" it - whether it means to make it better, make it worthwhile, or even make it happen with someone better-suited for the role.