ADOPTION (a-dop'shun), (Gr. cloefizia, hwee-oth es-ee'ah, the placing as a sou). The Old Testament does not contain any word equivalent to this; but the act occurs in various forms. The New Testa ment has the word uloOcala often (Rom. viii:15, 23; ix:4; Gal. iv:5; Eph. i:5), but no example of the act occurs. The term itself is well defined, and the act described, in the literal signification of the Greek word. It is the placing as a son of one who is not so by birth.
The practice of adoption had its origin in the desire for male offspring among those who have, in the ordinary course, been denied that blessing, or have been deprived of it by circumstances. This feeling is common to our nature, but its operation is less marked in those countries where the equalizing influences of high civilization lessen the peculiar privileges of the paternal character, and where the security and the well-observed laws by which estates descend and property is i trans mitted withdraw one of the principal induce ments to the practice.
(1) Among the Hebrews. Almost all of the instances in the Bible occur in the patriarchal period. The law of Moses, by settling the rela tions of families and the rules of descent, and by formally establishing the Levirate law, which in some sort secured a representative posterity even to a man who died without children, appears to have put some check upon this custom.
(2) Greeks and Romans. The allusions in the New Testament are mostly to practices of adoption which then existed among the Greeks and Romans, and rather to the latter than to the former, for among the more highly civilized Greeks adoption was less frequent than among the Romans. In the East the practice has always been common, especially among the Semitic races, in whom the love of offspring has at all times been strongly manifested. And here it may be ob served that the additional and peculiar stimulus which the Hebrews derived from the hope of giv ing birth to the lessiah was inoperative with respect to adoption, through which that privilege could not be realized.
(3) Confined to Sons. It is scarcely neces sary to say that adoption was confined to sons. The whole Bible history affords no example of the adoption of a female, for the Jews certainly were not behind any Oriental nation in the feel ing expressed in the Chinese proverb—'lle is hap piest in daughters who has only sons' (Hem. sur
les Chinois, t, x:149).
The first instances of adoption which occur in Scripture are less the acts of men than of women, who, being themselves barren, give their female slaves to their husbands. with a view of adopt ing the children they may bear. Thus Sarah gave her handmaid Ilagar to Abraham. and the son who was born, Ishmael, appears to have been considered as her son as well as Abraham's. until Isaac was born. In like manner Rachel, having no children, gave her handmaid Bilhah to her husband, who had by her Dan and Naphtali (Gen. xxx :5-9), on which his other wife, Leah, although she had sons of her own, yet fearing that she had left off hearing, claimed the right of giv ing her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, that she might thus increase their number, and by this means she had Gad and Asher (Gen. xxx :9-13). In this way the greatest possible approximation to a natural relation was produced. The child was the son of the husband, and, the mother being the property of the wife, the progeny must be her property also; and the act of more particular appropriation seems to have been that, at the time of birth, the handmaid brought forth her child 'upon the knees of the adoptive mother' (Gen. xxx :3). Strange as this custom may seem, it is in accordance with the notions of representation which we find very prevalent in analogous states of society. We do not see the use of explaining away customs we do not like, or which do not agree with our own notions, by alleging that by this ex pression nothing more is meant than that the son was to he dandled and brought up upon the knees of the adoptive mother. In this case the vicarious bearing of the handmaid for the mistress was as complete as possible. and the sons were regarded as fully equal in right of heritage with those by the legitimate wife. This privilege could not, however, be conferred by the adoption of the wife, but by the natural relation of such sons to the husband.