Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

KINSHIP

The heart of developing social relationships is kinship, defined in the broadest sense to include both blood and social ties. People see “who they are” based on the kinship network, in terms of descent patterns, marriage ties, and friendships. Claims and obligations, loyalties and sentiments pivot on these relationships. Basic relationships (whether kin or non-kin) may also hinge on the degree of “tolerance” (perhaps to be equated with “morality”) of actions in both the long and the short term and upon recognition of the implicit rights of reciprocity. In addition, a person is judged by the reputation of his kinship group, and his own actions will have a direct influence on that group’s reputation.

Kinship terms (e.g., father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, nephew) appear throughout the ancestral stories and in other sections of the OT as well. In the Bible, kinship is a portfolio describing personal identity and social standing.

Biblical genealogies, outlining kinship ties, function as historical ties to the past as well as determinants of social place or level. By using genealogies to describe their characters’ kinship, storytellers tell their social status, financial worth, and how much authority they could exercise in the community as a whole. They draw their material for the genealogies from a variety of sources including oral tradition, private family archives, and administrative records.

In what may be an artful genealogical creation, each member of a tribe belongs to a lineage, and all of the lineages are believed to be related by common descent to an eponymous ancestor (i.e., Abraham). Thus, kinship is the basis for tribal unity as well as tribal identity. A tribal society may include thousands of people, each of whom belongs to several kinds of descent groups. In ancient Israel there existed a patrilineal, segmentary lineage system in which each of its households (bêṯ ʾāḇôṯ) belonged to a lineage (mišpāḥâ). These lineages, in which membership and inheritance were based on the father, made up a clan. The clans formed several phratries, and the phratries comprised the tribe. Its lineages were also (once the Israelites entered Canaan) described as localized, having their own designated territories (Josh. 13-19). These social groupings are not necessarily evolutionary. They all continued to exist, even when the monarchy was established, and there was no linear progression which required each to exist in turn for the monarchy to be established.

The social and political units of ancient Israel, as portrayed in the biblical text, can thus be outlined as follows:

1. Individual nuclear families combined into an extended family (bêṯ ʾāḇ), dependent on a paterfamilias (head of household)

2. Lineages (mišpāḥâ) comprising persons who trace their origin to a particular ancestor — including clans, like the Levites, which were nonlocalized, pan-tribal lineages

3. Sibs, which demonstrate a branching of a lineage, such as that in the Aaronic line between Zadokites and the levitical line of Abiathar

4. Phratries (šēḇeṭ), a major division of a tribe (i.e., Judah of the tribe of Israel), having their own designated territories

5. Tribe, a term used here in the collective sense of all of the people of “Israel,” united by kinship, religion, and endogamy.

It would be inappropriate to differentiate between the social forms and stratification of Hebrew and Canaanite tribal peoples. Despite the attempts in the biblical text to draw a religious demarcation between them, their everyday existence — based as it was on the same environmental and economic concerns — would have been virtually the same. Archaeological and textual evidence, while somewhat mixed on this subject, indicate that each household consisted of an extended family of ca. 10-15 adults. It was governed by the head of the household.

The respect due to this social system may be seen in the authority of the head of household and in the commandment to “Honor your father and your mother” (Exod. 20:12). This legal pronouncement demands loyalty more than obedience to the head of the house. It represents a basic value of Israelite society, which has determined that this relationship is a key component of their covenantal community and therefore must be protected.

The transference of this position as head of the household was generational. Inheritance patterns are established which attempt to provide an orderly transition without significantly affecting the inheritance system itself. Primogeniture, for instance, is exhibited in Isaac’s naming of Esau, his older son, as his heir (Gen. 27:1-4). The younger son, Jacob, if this arrangement had actually been carried out, would have received a lesser portion (see Esau’s actual inheritance as the lesser heir in Gen. 27:33-40) and would have had the option of working for his brother or separating himself from the household and establishing his own.

The fragmenting of the extended family household into new units (still within the same lineage, however) is a reflection of inheritance patterns, environmental necessity, and population growth. It is the adaptability of the institution which makes this fragmentation fairly smooth while at the same time initiating changes which will in both the long and short term affect the society. For instance, in Gen. 12:1 Yahweh calls Abram to leave his “father’s house” and to found his own. Burying his father is a rite of passage, which conducts Abram across the threshold of transformation. To bury his father is an exercise in severance or departure from the world of his father. It demands that Abram change the basic pattern of his life and establish a new one.

Group fission and social fluidity are basic survival components in a fragile or unstable environment. War, economic exigency, environmental catastrophe, inheritance patterns, and adventurism all contribute to the creation of new houses and the opening up of new areas to exploitation.

Households were the communities within which the Israelites crossed three important thresholds: birth, marriage, and death. It was the way in which each individual dealt with these rites of passage and the ways in which they were counseled, programmed, or restricted by the community that made them so crucial.

Although couples spontaneously conceived and gave birth to several children throughout the course of their marriage, the conception and birth of the male heir was always anticipated. This is graphically demonstrated by the “search for the heir” motif which runs throughout the ancestral narratives of Genesis. The desire for a male heir was complicated if a daughter was born first. Although not stated in the narrative, it is likely that this female child would be weaned sooner than a male in order for the mother to resume ovulating.

Another task of kinship systems within the household is the determination of which adults are eligible to marry, who actually chooses marriage partners, which children live in their parents’ household, and which become heirs. Patrilineal families choose heirs only from the father’s side, matrilineal families only from the mother’s side, and cognate families from either side. Heirs inherit the parent’s social status, financial worth, and authority in the community as a whole. In this way, the social order of the community and the principles of power and authority are perpetuated.

One example of the potential influence of preferential marriage practices is seen in Nahor’s cross-cousin marriage (Gen. 11:29). It fulfills the requirements of both endogamy to marry within one’s own family and exogamy to marry outside one’s own family. Like Jacob who married both Leah and Rachel — his cousins who were sisters — Nahor marries a cousin who has a sister. Nahor’s marriage also established a bond between him and his uncle. The avuncular relationship between a man and his uncle has been seen to be as important as the relationship between a man and his father in the ancient Near East.

Marriage was a matter of business, designed to bring together two households willing to exchange substantial goods and services over a significant period of time. When the marriage was concluded, an exchange of property took place in the form of bridewealth and dowry. This marked the transference of the rights of the bride from her father’s household to that of her husband’s. An elaborate legal framework was developed to administer these items to provide “a circulating pool of resources” used to arrange future family marriages, and in the event of the husband’s death, to provide for the financial support of the widow.

The final obligation of a kinship group was exercised by mourners who supervised the transfer of a member from his or her place among the living to the appropriate place among the dead. In the earlier periods of Israelite history, death did not separate a member from the household. The tomb of a household reflected much the same style and many of the same amenities as its house, although in some cases a more conservative dwelling architecture was followed in the family tomb. For example, it was common enough to continue to bury villagers in cave tombs long after the village itself was constructing free-standing houses.

The rituals by which a body was transferred from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead are virtually identical to those used by midwives to transfer a newborn into the household. In both cases the body is washed, anointed, dressed and carefully placed for adoption. The newborn is placed on the lap, or “womb,” of its parent, and the body of the dead in the tomb, the “womb” of Mother Earth, who is every human’s adoptive parent.

After death, the memory of the deceased was preserved through rituals which suggest a cult of veneration of the dead. Ancestor worship formed a private ritual whereby the family group, without the intervention or interference of any larger political or ethnic unit, remained in contact and provided sustenance for the deceased. The private, apolitical nature of this ritual may be one reason why Saul outlawed mediums and other practitioners of communication with the dead, but then used one when personal need outweighed political concerns (1 Sam. 28:3-25).

In the 8th century b.c.e. the emergent monarchy and priestly hierarchy outlawed ancestor worship. This was to emphasize further sole adherence to Yahweh worship and to curtail magical practices which were conceived as dangerous because by definition they were “private, secret, and mysterious.” Therefore these private ceremonies became a target for the government, which planned to control all aspects of worship and political expression.

Throughout the biblical period, the household and the force of kinship ties dominated relationships, provided opportunities for advancement, and determined inheritance patterns. It would be impossible to understand ancient Israel without reference to kinship ties.

Bibliography. L. Holy, Kinship, Honour and Solidarity (Manchester, 1989); V. H. Matthews and D. C. Benjamin, Social World of Ancient Israel, 1250-587 b.c.e. (Peabody, 1993); R. A. Oden, Jr., “Jacob as Father, Husband, and Nephew: Kinship Studies and the Patriarchal Narratives,” JBL 102 (1983): 189-205; J. Pitt-Rivers, “The Kith and the Kin,” in The Character of Kinship, ed. J. Goody (Cambridge, 1973), 89-105; D. Steinmetz, From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis (Louisville, 1991); R. R. Wilson, Genealogy and History in the Biblical World (New Haven, 1977).

Victor H. Matthews

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

KINSHIP

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)