let's take a few minutes to discuss the nature of the family in biblical israel now this is
an incredibly complicated and massive topic that deserves a phenomenal amount of attention
but we're just going to be able to touch on it briefly within the scope of our historical survey
we will come back to many of these aspects in a much later video when we talk specifically
about women that's going to be an important part of today's brief lecture as well but i'll
explain why this is so challenging i'd like to speak very briefly and in general broad strokes
about the nature of the family from the earliest sources we have of basically genesis up until the
end of the first temple period which is 586 before the common era so that's a massive chunk of time
we're speaking about really over a thousand years so um you know we're generalizing very heavily
within the space of a few minutes secondly we should understand that's very challenging to
try to describe things which are so elemental to the human condition i mean we use the word family
in a historical context and we use the word family today family is of course something
that all of us are wrapped up in and extremely complex and and deep-seated ways family is
basic to our identity and so it's very difficult to separate our own experience of what family
is or ought to be from what we read in the textual tradition for example if you look at this classic
image it's uh norman rockwell's famous painting freedom from want which of course was featured
in the magazines throughout the middle of the 20th century and this is obviously a thanksgiving
dinner and you see the happy family around it and you know the patriarchal matriarch with
multiple generations of of the family members around the table all smiling as they enjoy this
large turkey right that's the the the title is freedom from want but this is clearly an idealized
image of what a thanksgiving dinner would be like right everyone's happy everyone likes each other
no one's on their phone no one's arguing politics no one's wanting to get back to the football game
this is like kind of like what we want family to be but it's not necessarily what family actually
is so there were elements of an idealized meal that are shown here that we'd like to
sort of project backward in time but it would be absurd to say every single thanksgiving dinner
especially in the year 1943 think of what that must have been like uh you know at the the end of
world war ii and the battle in the pacific and all kinds of very difficult times for americans you
know this is clearly an aspirational thanksgiving dinner so when we go back and look at the the
family in biblical times we're kind of trapped within our own mentality of human experience
and then furthermore we can't read past what the text actually gives us as data the text is
uh moreover layered i mean we have the biblical text itself which describes family to some degree
perhaps aspirationally for then in the ancient period but then it is interpreted through the
mishnah which we're going to speak about in later classes but then that's that doesn't reach
a textual form until centuries later the talmud still later the halacha meaning jewish law still
later than that and then there's individual custom or minhag so these textual layers we're reading
all of these things backwards to try and ascribe what we think a family should be to sometimes very
fragmentary descriptions that go back thousands of years so with that kind of caveat let's try to
understand at least a few basic things about the family in the ancient world which may be somewhat
counter-intuitive to what we think today in the beginning of the 21st century perhaps one of the
most striking aspects of um you know the family in the ancient world is that one of the relative
non-issues is race race is incredibly important in american culture and this is of course the legacy
of the transatlantic slave trade and the civil war and civil rights issues jim crow which is
still playing out as i'm speaking his words were deep in a huge black lives matter social
justice movement that's that's rocking america in the context of a very contentious election
but race does not seem to be a significant category for the bible there are references
to peoples and there are occasionally references to skin color but generally speaking it does not
seem to be a huge you know issue uh for example here's a 17th century representation of moses and
his ethiopian wife in fact she is described at sipora as a kushi she's also described in other
contexts as a midianite and there's some dispute over what exactly that means but the commentators
don't seem to be especially bothered by the idea that moses who is presumably semitic in racial
characteristics would marry an african who could be you know theoretically nubian as we see in
this particular representation so race itself is not nearly as important as peoplehood that is uh
who is your your ethnos to to which ethnos does one bullet belong but continuing with uh gender
that's a far more important thing in the definition of the family ancient world
whether or not one is born male or female is huge there's a lot of discussion which will i
think we won't be able to discuss it here for now um but heterosexuality is considered the norm and
homosexuality is deeply frowned upon especially male homosexuality there is a discussion that
talmud later of multiple genders besides simply male and female and perhaps we'll get to that
when we get to more talmudic discussions but for the time being let's focus ourselves on
two sexes male and female and they're considered to be exclusive for the institution of marriage
however that marriage can be polygamous that is one husband and multiple wives as in the famous
story of uh jacob marrying two wives rachel and leia shown here in michelangelo's representation
and in fact there's kind of like a half marriage status which is called the pillage in hebrew or
a concubine in um in english and a concubine is essentially like a wife in all respects but
lacking the protections that are inherent to marriage as the talmud defines it again
later in the jewish tradition we have these definitions that are explained a concubine may
simply be dismissed at will whereas a wife has a guarantee in her wedding for um you know marital
support during the marriage and if the marriage is dissolved then she has a right to support
afterwards in the form of a financial settlement we'll get back to that in just one second we talk
about divorce it's also important that gender has relationship to the status of the children
patrilineal descent is not recognized in much of jewish history it's not entirely clear what
exactly is going on in the biblical text alone when you separate the biblical text from the later
discussions of it in the mission of the talmud and the commentaries
it appears that there is patrilineal descent in many of the figures of the the bible
joseph of course marries a egyptian woman um again there's midrashim that would uh adjust
that slightly same with moses who we saw earlier some commentators like toast vote just to continue
this one more sentence toast vote in the middle ages suggests that before the giving of the torah
the the law was patrilineal that a child followed his or her father's status and after giving the
torah it became matrilineal certainly for the huge bulk of jewish history judaism has been strictly
matrilineal until 1983 when the reform movement introduced the um the idea of patrilineal descent
again i mentioned that in the last video we'll have to come back to the 20th century
um so at any rate the mother is extremely important whether or not the mother is a
full wife or a concubine um or as we shall see later even a more casual relationship
women also have very distinct status with regards things like slavery jewish men may be enslaved
jewish women may not be enslaved once they reach maturity they may not be enslaved at all they have
a diminished agency however there are certain elements of legal practice meaning
you know for example serving as a witness and things like that again i'm reading uh the biblical
texts through the lens of the later commentators of mishnah and talmud but women seem to be
at a diminished status when it comes to certain elements of their legal standing and similarly in
terms of inheritance the general sp the general understanding of women in the biblical period
is that their women are almost always existing and it's considered to be an ideal status uh
to be within the shadow of another male either within the shadow of their father
that is the under the protection of their father later under the protection of their
husband and uh finally in a widow status then under the protection of their adult sons
they're always men who are protecting women the idea of a woman who is separated from this
is considered to be placing her at tremendous disadvantage on the other hand that does not
necessarily diminish a woman's rights as a single person to engage in business own land
affect contracts and all kinds of things much more of this we'll discuss when we speak specifically
about women later on in this series but there's no question that it would be absurd to ascribe you
know a kind of modern equality to men and women in the ancient world this is a patriarchal society
the only thing i think is worth really debating is whether or not it is a uh like a benign or
beneficial patriarchy if you want to argue that such a thing exists at all the last thing i should
point out is that in terms of the family structure which was often multi-generational living in
the same household and things like that is the idea of lineage now uh the um the concept of uh
legitimacy in modern terms like whether or not someone is illegitimate illegitimate or to use
a more colloquial term bastard it has a distinct meaning in the biblical tense there is something
called a mamzaire again more fleshed out when we get to the mishnah but the offspring of a
non-sanctioned relationship is not necessarily disadvantaged in their future lives the only
sanctions are applied and they are very heavy sanctions are when a marriage is prohibited such
as for example a marriage that involves a married woman and someone other than her husband or a
brother and a sister a father and a daughter and so on but relationships which could conceivably
be consummated but they have not you know been officially sanctioned by religious
authorities nevertheless do constitute you know relationships that do not result in illegitimate
offspring and in fact if i can cite my teacher rabbi uzio malevsky he used to say that one
should never cast aspersions at anyone's lineage or background because in reality when you look at
the the biblical line of the messiah it runs through some very sketchy relationships when
you look at them on the surface such as for example judah and his widow daughter-in-law tamar
shown here in an extremely you know challenging passage in genesis that usually is skipped over
in grade school because it is really a little bit too racy or boaz and ruth and bruce status
and then furthermore david and batsheva all of these relationships all invoked certain questions
of legitimacy and nevertheless this is considered the line from which the messiah will be born
in the jewish tradition so one should never cast aspersions at anyone's family background okay i
hope you found that interesting and we will continue with one final discussion of daily
life in biblical history we're going to look at ritual life very briefly thank you for watching
you