Baker Academic

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Civic Masculinity and Marriage in Jesus' World

David B. Capes, recently appointed academic dean at Houston Graduate School of Theology (congrats!), reviews my The Wife of Jesus over at A Word in Edgewise. I am grateful to David for emphasizing my discussion of civic masculinity in Jesus' world. To my mind, civic masculinity is--or should be--the most important factor in any discussion of Jesus' sexuality. Here is his summary of this discussion:
Le Donne offers a helpful construct for what was typical of Jewish males in the first century. The term he uses is “civic masculinity”; it represents the gender role most Jewish men would play in their day. It would include things like marriage and having children, working a trade and taking responsibility for one’s economic well-being, passing the faith along, seeking to own and work the land, etc. Jesus, according to Le Donne, may have been raised to accept this role, but he may have subverted it in his public ministry. Jesus , he says, “invested in the two-sided coin of economic disobligation and celibacy.” Such a lifestyle was probably considered “crazy” by ancient standards and “anti-family” by modern.
I would only add that the patriarch of the clan in many cases controlled an extended group of relatives, oversaw important decisions (e.g. arranged marriages), and was the face of the group in public with the hope to bring honor to/via ancestral connections and project well-being forward for future generations (various eschatological frameworks incorporated). In short, this "alpha male" was measured by his ability to control and care for the clan. Of course this ideal was manifested in various ways and in varying degrees. Marriage in Jesus' world fit within this matrix and eroticism ("romance" wasn't invented yet) was rarely an important factor.

My conclusion is that modern projections of romantic relationships onto common folk in pre-medieval, agrarian societies are anachronistic. To speak of marriage in Jesus context--including "biblical ideals" of marriage--requires us to acknowledge that our ideals, institutions, and practices are almost entirely dissimilar to those in Jesus' world.

-anthony

10 comments:

  1. Anthony, I'm curious if you discussed Jeremiah 16:1-4 in your book.

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    1. I might mention this passage once, Julian. I don't think that I offered any detailed discussion.

      -anthony

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  2. Anthony,

    When do you mean when you say "'romance' wasn't invented yet"? What is all that gushy, gooey stuff we read about in the ancient romance novels? (Is that all pure eroticism?)

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    1. John, I deal with this at length in my chapter titled "From Persia with Love." The short of it is that Troubadour love poetry/song invents the ideals of romance borrowing from Persian influence. Romance doesn't become part of the "courting" tradition for commoners until much, much later. Of course, we have various forms of eroticism evinced in the literature of elites much earlier.

      -anthony

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    2. I see now that I asked basically the same question two years ago. Polyurethane fumes must be erasing my memory.

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  3. Overall I agree. However, marriages, kinship systems, vary significantly from one culture to the next. And so here, don't forget that in a polygamous society, if a Solomon say had 300 wives, then 299 men might have none.

    So celebate men, or men without wives, might be in some ways somewhat more common than we have thought.

    At the same time to be sure, cheating, and combat between males in part to acquire women, would also be a compensating factor. So that one woman might have several husbands, over time.

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    1. Anonymous,
      Your point about polygamy is interesting in that it reminds us that marriage is tied to economics in crucial ways. So rich men and women might have better success in marriage. E.g. the Babatha documents: Babatha was a rich woman in the first century who owns land/orchards and marries a young man named "Jesus, the son of Jesus" (pretty common name) as evinced in a surviving legal document. She is able to outlive her husband and marry again. One might imagine that many men did the same (maternal death during childbirth was very high - perhaps as many as 1 in 8 women died during childbirth). So your point is important in this way. But your example isn't quite as helpful. Can we point to any man contemporary to Jesus with as many as 300 wives?

      -anthony

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    2. No. But of course Solomon was exceptional. Wonder what was typical in Jesus-era Arab or Aramaic culture.

      Later Muslims had many wives: maybe that accounts for some dissatisfaction in young males, and the interest in the virgins in heaven. Muslims were limited finally to three to five wives. But even that would cause chronic scarcity among many.

      What was the practice in 20 AD? Don't know. But Jesus accuses one woman of having five or so husbands.

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    3. There a couple problem here, Anonymous: (1) Solomon was a much celebrated figure and thus many of the larger-than-life numbers attached to his legacy are symbolic; (2) The "great men" who emerge from the first century are often discussed without mention of the important women in their lives. Of course, we can point to typical patterns (stereotypes) of women entering narratives to serve such purposes. For the most part, it is difficult to determine an average based on narratives. Sociologically speaking, it more common for wealthy men to consider taking multiple wives.

      -anthony

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  4. Thanks. I'll need to read it.

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