John Witte, Jr, teaches at Emory University in the USA, and is well-known and respected internationally in the area of ‘law and religion’ studies. This book is an exemplary combination of concise exposition and critical assessment applied to the different ways in which law and theology have understood legitimacy and illegitimacy and their consequences. The framework is chronological, and the enumeration of points facilitates comprehension of a scholarly presentation, as do the summary and conclusions to each chapter. There is a good bibliography. The opening chapter is on illegitimacy in early Judaism and Christianity, followed by a chapter on the classical Roman law of illegitimacy and legitimation, and then a chapter on sex, marriage and illegitimacy in medieval canon law. The other two chapters cover the English common law of illegitimacy and its reforms, and finally the new law of non-marital childhood in America and beyond. The biblical text, in its different contexts, that ‘the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children’ comes, of course, from the Old Testament yet it has proved enduring, still being applied severely by an Ohio family court in 1961, for example. The text has had more than one kind of interpretation, however, and the index to biblical sources shows just how many other texts need to be considered. The Old Testament account of the banished Ishmael has influenced lawyers and theologians, but it too has been subject to a variety of interpretations. Witte puts forward several propositions that will stimulate reflection: for example, that until the fourth century the Roman law of illegitimacy was designed more to control commerce and society than to deter sex and immorality; that medieval canonists divided the illegitimate according to the gravity of their parents' sexual sin; that English common law shifted the focus from sin and morality to land and inheritance; and, to generalise about the United States, that the rights and best interests of the child are the dominant legal logic. Witte's forthright ‘concluding reflections’ show just how many topical issues are raised by the subject that he has presented. He quotes the intriguing remark from a recent legal case that there are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents. There is a succint indication of his own thought and concerns when he states that if biblical theology no longer should support illegitimacy, and the law no longer should stigmatise illegitimates, what can be done about the current problem of so many children born out of wedlock? As the book's subtitle promises, the relevant law and theology are reconsidered.