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Mediterranean Family Systems: Structure and Relationships · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. So what if I told you that in
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the ancient world, if a guy found himself in this horrifying
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situation where he had to choose between saving his wife from
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certain death or saving his brother, society expected him to
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choose his brother every single time?
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Yeah, not only expected it, but they would view him as morally
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corrupt if he chose his wife. Which is just a staggering
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realization. Oh, for sure.
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I mean, it completely breaks the machinery we use to understand
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relationships today. You know, usually when we look
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at the concept of family, we have a very specific set of
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blueprints. You grow up, you find a spouse,
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you fall in love, you move out, and you start your own
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independent unit. That's like the gold standard.
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It is. It's the core assumption of
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Western society, really. But then you step into the world
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of the 1st century Mediterranean and suddenly those blueprints
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are entirely useless. Yeah, you're looking at a social
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landscape that operates on a completely different
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gravitational pull. Right, and that same feeling of
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looking at something familiar only to realize the machinery we
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are using to diagnose it is just broken.
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That happens when we open the Bible and read about the family.
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It happens all the time. So if you are listening to this,
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if you have ever read the New Testament and wondered why
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sibling language is everywhere, or why Jesus makes such radical
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demands regarding our earthly relatives, this deep dive is for
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you. Absolutely.
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Today we are investigating the ancient Mediterranean family
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model. Our mission is to understand the
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massive societal shift early Christians made by calling
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themselves a family. And as Reformed believers, we
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obviously approach these biblical texts as authoritative
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truth. Right.
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The Westminster Confession is clear on that.
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Spot on we recognize, is that God utilized this specific
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cultural framework to communicate the massive shift
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brought about by Jesus and the early church.
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So to get there, we are looking at research on Mediterranean
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family systems, specifically relying on the historical and
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anthropological work of scholars like Jessup H Hellerman.
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OK, let's unpack this. Yeah, we have to start by
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defining what family actually meant back then compared to what
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we see when we look around our own neighborhoods today.
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Yeah, to grasp how the early church redefined family, we have
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to recognize that our modern American concept is what
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anthropologists call a kindred system.
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A kindred system. Right.
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Think about how you would map out your family tree right now.
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In a Kindred system, family membership is determined by
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relationships connecting to a single living individual.
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Meaning you are at the center of the map.
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Yes, your family includes your parents, your siblings, your
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cousins, and crucially, relatives by marriage.
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Oh, I see. So if you host a Thanksgiving
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dinner, you invite your aunt by marriage, your brother-in-law,
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maybe your spouse's grandparents.
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Exactly. I mean spot on.
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You consider them your family, even though you share absolutely
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no biological ancestor with them.
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Right in our system, my wife and I are the core four of our
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family unit, but we are not blood relatives.
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No, you each have your own set of biological ancestors.
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Yet in our culture, the marriage relationship is lifted up as the
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absolute pinnacle of family life.
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Everything revolves around that chosen partnership.
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But the research points out that in the ancient world, they
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operated under a completely different framework called a
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Petrilineal Kinship Group System, or a PKGA.
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PKTG. Yeah, and in this system, family
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membership is strictly about consanguinity.
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Which means blood. Yes, it is entirely based on
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sharing the blood of a common male ancestor.
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Matt, The exclusivity of that bloodline boundary is startling
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to a modern mind. It really is.
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Let's visualize this. Imagine you were drawing an
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ancient family tree on a piece of paper.
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The Patriarch stands at the top. OK, got the patriarch.
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You draw lines down to his children, and you fill in the
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bodies of everyone who physically possesses the the
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Patriarch's blood with solid black ink.
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So everyone who shares his DNA gets filled in.
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Right. Everyone else is left as an
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empty outline. The moment you look at the
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patriarch's wife, you realize she is an empty outline.
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Yeah, she is technically an outsider to his family because
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she has a different father. She does not share the
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patriarch's blood. That is such a jarring image for
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us both the sons and daughters of that patriarch are filled in
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with solid ink. They have the father's blood.
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But here is the kicker. Only the sons can pass that
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bloodline to the next generation.
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That's the vital distinction. The daughters have the blood,
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but the line stops with them. So the grandchildren on the
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sun's side belong to the patriarchs family.
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The grandchildren on the daughter's side belong to a
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completely different family entirely.
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You do think of the ancient family less like a modern social
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network and more like an exclusive inherited citizenship.
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That's a really good way to frame.
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It like if you don't hold the right passport, the male
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bloodline, you are fundamentally an expatriate, even if you sleep
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in the same house and eat at the same table every single day.
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And understand why they did this.
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We have to look at the brutal realities of their world.
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Because it wasn't just them being mean.
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Right. No.
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The cultural rationale behind this strict petrilineal system
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was survival, plain and simple, right?
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They lived in an environment plagued by famine, warfare and
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staggering infant mortality rates.
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The survival of the group, always without exception, took
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precedence over the desires of the individual.
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It had to. Retaining resources, holding
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onto arable land, and maintaining social status
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required a clearly defined, unbroken chain of inheritance.
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Because if daughters could pass on the family bloodline.
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Then the family's resources would legally disperse into
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other competing families when those daughters married and had
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children. Oh, I see.
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It spreads the wealth out until there's nothing left to defend.
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Precisely by keeping the bloodline strictly male, the
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family structure remained a closed, defensible fortress.
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This completely changes our reading of biblical genealogies.
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Oh, it flips it entirely. Like we often read the
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genealogies in Matthew or in Second Temple literature like
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Pseudophyllo, and we wonder why they almost exclusively list
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male offspring. Right.
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And modern readers often impose modern egalitarian sensibilities
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on the text and feel frustrated. We wonder where all the women
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are. But when we understand the
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petrilineal kinship group system, we see that they were
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simply tracing the legal and biological passport of the
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family. Yeah, the males were the only
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ones who possessed the legal mechanism to transmit that
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citizenship to the next generation.
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It was a property deed, not a sentimental family scrapbook.
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That's such a striking thought. A property deed.
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And because the bloodline is passed strictly through males,
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this alters the function of marriage in ways that are
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deeply, I mean extremely, uncomfortable for modern people
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to process. Yeah, this brings up the reality
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of women in the ancient world. In the PKG, marriage was not a
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romantic endeavor. It was a legally binding social
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contract between two distinct corporate entities.
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Two families, right? So if you were drawing up a
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marriage contract back then, you only cared about three things.
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Does this make our family look better in the community?
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Will it give us a legitimate air to carry the passport?
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For sure. And how does the money, the land
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and the property change hands? That's all it was.
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Personal satisfaction or romance was a secondary by product, if
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it happened at all. It was never the goal.
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Never energies were passionately directed toward the success of
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the extended family, not the happiness of the couple.
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So how did they decide who married who?
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Well, we see 2 main strategies for these contracts.
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First, there is endogamous marriage.
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Endogamous marrying within the group.
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Yes, marrying within the extended kin group, like
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marrying a cousin. This kept resources tight and
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strengthen the family from within.
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It prevented land from leaving the clan.
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OK, that makes sense from a survival standpoint.
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Second, there is exogamous marriage, marrying outside the
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group. This was used purely to build
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political or economic alliances with rival families.
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So the daughters are basically strategic assets.
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Spot on. In either scenario, a daughter
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was not a free agent. She belonged to her father's
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patriline until the patriarch decided how to use her to
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strengthen the family's position.
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Wow. Her individual desires were
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entirely secondary to the strategic positioning of her
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bloodline. There is this brutal line from
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the ancient apocryphal book of Ciroc, chapter 22, verse three.
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It says the birth of a daughter is a loss.
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It's hard to even read that today.
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To our ears, that is horrifying, but in their economic reality,
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raising a daughter meant expending resources on a child
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who would eventually be given away to build up another
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family's workforce and lineage. When a daughter married, she
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physically packed her belongings and moved in with her husband's
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family. But as we established with the
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ink and outline visual early. She remained an outsider.
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Right, because she lacked to their blood, her only real
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security in this new alien environment was producing a a
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male heir to continue her husband's patrol line.
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Yeah, that was her lifeline. But I have to ask a challenging
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question here, because if the wife is essentially an imported
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worker and marriage is just a contract, didn't anyone love
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their spouse back then? It's a fair question.
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Like are we saying ancient marriages were totally devoid of
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human affection? No, no, human nature has not
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changed. So marital affection absolutely
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existed, OK, but it was not the priority of the social
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structure. We can look at the historical
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account of Herod the Great and his wife Maryam.
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Oh, that's a wild story. It really is.
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Herod had an intense, consuming affection for Maryam, but their
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marriage was not born of a chance meeting and romance.
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It was initially contracted to a line Herod's family with the
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Hasmonean royal line to secure his political legitimacy.
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It was a business deal first. Exactly.
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And when political tensions arose and push came to shove,
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the survival in honor of his power structure trumped his
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emotional fulfillment. Yeah, he eventually had her
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executed. Right, the expectation of
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finding your primary emotional support and identity in a spouse
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is a modern Western luxury. A luxury.
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That's fascinating. In the ancient Mediterranean, a
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good marriage was simply one that enhanced the honor and
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economic position of the extended family without causing
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public scandal. Wait, so you were telling me
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that the physical living arrangements were completely
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dictated by this system? Too.
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Oh, totally. We call it petrol.
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Local residents daughters marry out and sons stay close to the
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father. What did that actually look like
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on the ground? Well, a typical household looked
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entirely different from our nuclear family setup.
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We get a vivid glimpse of this in Matthew 10 verses 35 and 36,
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where Jesus says he came to set a man against his father and a
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daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
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To a modern reader, that just sounds like family tension, like
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fighting at Thanksgiving. Yeah, but Jesus is describing a
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specific physical living arrangement.
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This household included the patriarch, his wife, the first
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born son and his incoming wife, the younger sons and the
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unmarried daughters. All under one roof.
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Basically, they're all living in extremely close proximity,
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usually sharing a single central courtyard, cooking at the same
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fire, and working the same fields.
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Honestly, sharing a single courtyard with my father, my
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brothers, and all their wives? That sounds like a recipe for a
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reality TV show meltdown. Oh, it was incredibly tense.
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There is no privacy. There is no concept of kids
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turning 18, going to college and moving across the country to
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find themselves. None at all.
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And the idea of a man moving in with his wife's family, what
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anthropologists call metro local residents, that was considered
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an absolute disgrace. Really, just moving to the
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wife's family's farm was disgraceful, yes.
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There is an incredible ancient Syriac text called the Ahikar
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Legend. Ahikar is a wise counselor, and
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he offers a series of proverbs. One of them says that carrying
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heavy iron and hauling stones is physically lighter than settling
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in a father in law's house. Wow.
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You'd rather haul stones. You also see this dynamic in the
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ancient romance of Tobit. The character Tobias is
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incredibly reluctant to let his new bride Sarah stay with her
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parents. Because it would reflect poorly
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on him. Right.
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He waits until they are entirely without any patrilineal
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relatives before he even considers making that move.
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That physical proximity was tied to rigid economic reality,
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right? Yeah, the family was both a
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consuming unit and a producing unit.
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They had to work together to eat.
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We see a clear biblical example of this in Mark chapter 1,
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verses 16 through 20. Oh, the fisherman.
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Right, Jesus walks by the Sea of Galilee and calls James and
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John, the text notes. They leave their father Zebedee
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in the boat with the hired men. It wasn't just a weekend hobby.
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No, they were running a multi generational family fishing
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enterprise. This was heavy, dangerous
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physical labor, maintaining Nets, managing boats, and
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handling hired workers. And it makes you realize how
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economically locked in people were.
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Yeah, you couldn't just get frustrated with your dad, move
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to the next town over, and submit a resume for a different
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career. You couldn't.
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Your family was your employer, your landlord, your bank and
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your safety net. To leave your family meant
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walking away from your entire economic viability.
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You would become destitute overnight.
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That is the harsh reality. And this economic structure
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placed with an immense crushing burden on the incoming wife.
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Because she's stepping into this locked in machine.
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Right. Think about her situation.
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She is a young woman, an outsider with no blood
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connection to these people, living in a cramped Petridal
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household. Working every single day for her
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father in law's enterprise. Under the strict supervision of
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her mother-in-law, she is surrounded by a family that does
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not inherently trust her. Man, that sounds miserable.
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Her only path to permanent security.
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Her only way to truly anchor herself in this alien family
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setting is through her children. Which explains the sheer agony
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of barrenness in the ancient world.
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Yes, if it's a whole new lens on it.
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It wasn't just a private sadness about not having a baby, it was
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a massive crisis of survival status and economic security.
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If she doesn't produce an air, she can be discarded.
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We read Rachel's desperate, screaming plea to Jacob in
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Genesis. Give me sons or I shall die.
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It was in hyperbole. Right, we see the character
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Manoa in the writings of Pseudo Philo threatening to divorce and
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take another wife because his current wife hasn't produced
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fruit. Yeah, look at Hannah in First
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Samuel. Yes, Hannah is relentlessly,
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cruelly taunted by her husband's other wife, Penina.
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Penina had sons standing around him like a plantation of olive
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trees while Hannah wept bitterly.
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The stakes were literally life and death for her standing in
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that in the household. And when a son is finally born
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to this isolated woman, she cultivates A uniquely intense
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bond with him. She does.
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She views that son as her singular foothold in the
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household. This bond goes far beyond what
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Western observers might consider typical maternal affection.
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Oh. Absolutely.
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Anthropologists note that the mother pours all her emotional
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energy, her ambition and her political maneuvering into this
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boy. I think of it like a modern
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corporate merger. OK, let's hear it.
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If you are an outside executive brought into a massive family
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owned business, you have no real security until you secure a
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permanent seat on the board of directors, right?
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For the ancient woman birthing a son was getting that seat on the
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board and you better believe she is going to make sure that seat
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gives her leverage. That's a great analogy.
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We see this explicitly in the ancient texts of Jubilees
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chapter 25, where Rebecca blesses Jacob.
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She doesn't just say a nice prayer, does she?
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No, she says. Her affection and her breast are
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blessing him, and she demands he heed her voice.
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She is actively, aggressively maneuvering him into a position
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of dominance over his brother Esau, so she can secure her own
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future. She is playing the political
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game of the household. We see the same intense
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maneuvering in Roman history. The historian Tacitus describes
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Livia, the wife of Caesar Augustus.
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What did she do? She wasn't just a passive
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Empress. She was plotting with secret
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intrigues, eliminating rivals to secure the Roman Empire for her
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son Tiberias from a previous marriage.
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Talk about helicopter parenting. Seriously.
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And Agrippina went to even more notorious lengths.
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She manipulated the entire Roman Senate and arranged an
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incestuous marriage to her uncle, Emperor Claudius.
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Just to get her son on the throne.
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Yes, solely to promote her son Nero.
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The mother's entire political ambition and future safety is
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channeled entirely through the sun.
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The absolute tragedy of this dynamic is depicted in the
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Second Temple text for Maccabees.
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Yeah, chapters 15 and 16. Right.
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It describes a mother who is forced to watch her seven sons
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suffer martyrdom. The author highlights the utter
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devastation of losing sons before they can produce heirs.
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She laments that she bore seven sons and is now the mother of
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none. And that she will never know the
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happiness of being called a grandmother.
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The loss of her sons wasn't just immense emotional heartbreak.
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It was the total erasure of her legacy, her economic safety and
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her standing within the Petra Line.
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So the mother son bond was a crucial survival strategy.
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But here is where the social structure gets fascinating.
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OK. All right.
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While the mother son bond was strong, the ultimate unbreakable
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bond in the ancient world was horizontal.
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Horizontal meaning. It was the bond between siblings
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who shared the exact same blood. This is the absolute pinnacle of
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ancient relationships. Sibling solidarity.
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This might be the starkest contrast with our modern
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worldview. It really is in our Kindred
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system we look to our spouse for our primary emotional support,
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our companionship, our deepest secrets.
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But in the ancient PKG, the sibling group provided that
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emotional fulfillment. The tightest unit of loyalty,
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affection and trust was the descent group of brothers and
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sisters. You see this hierarchy clearly
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in ancient literature. There is a quote from Ben Sera
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chapter 25 verse one where the author lists things that are
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beautiful in the sight of the Lord.
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The order he uses is really telling.
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He places agreement between brothers first ahead of a wife
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and husband who live in harmony. Given a choice between a
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harmonious marriage and agreement among brothers, the
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ancient mind favored the brothers every single time.
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Because the marital bond was contracted, the siblings bond
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was biological reality. 100% If we look at the research from
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modern anthropologist in places that still operate somewhat like
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this, it makes total sense. Like where the researchers
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followers conducted a study of a village named Enderman in rural
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Turkey. They observed a woman named Aziz
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and her husband Mustafa. To a western eye, their marriage
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looked cold. Aziz had absolutely no romantic
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expectations of Mustafa. He was not a major source of
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companionship or emotional sharing for her.
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So who did she talk to? Who supported her?
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Her brother Her relationship with her brother possessed a
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highly effective, deeply emotional reliance.
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Even until later life, brothers remain their sister's primary
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source of companionship, advice and physical defense against a
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harsh world. That's amazing.
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Ian Whitaker's anthropological study of GAG society in Albania
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confirms the exact same dynamic. He found the same thing.
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Yes, he found that a woman's true point of social
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identification remains her Natal kin group her brothers for her
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entire life, not the family she marries into.
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This sheds massive light on how we read the New Testament.
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Oh, huge. Think about Mark 10.
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Peter points out to Jesus that the disciples have left
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everything to follow him. And what did Jesus say?
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Jesus responds by listing the extreme sacrifices required for
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the Kingdom, leaving house, brothers, sisters, mother,
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father, children, or fields. Look at what is completely
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missing from that list. A spouse.
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Leaving a spouse is not even mentioned.
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That blows my mind. In their cultural framework,
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separating from a spouse was certainly difficult, but it was
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not considered the highest or most agonizing sacrifice a
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person could make. Leaving your blood siblings was
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the ultimate unimaginable cost. And it really was.
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This completely challenges our modern reading of these texts.
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We constantly elevate the nuclear husband and wife unit.
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They elevated the bloodline sibling unit above all else.
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Because sibling solidarity was the highest ideal in their
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universe, the severing of that bond was considered the most
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gripping, horrifying tragedy imaginable.
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So any situation that forced divided loyalties between a
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spouse and a sibling became high drama.
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The highest drama. There is a story from the
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historian Josephus about Herod the Great's brother Feroris.
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Oh, this is a great example. Feroris was deeply attached to
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his wife, which was already seen as somewhat unusual.
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Herod, being paranoid and controlling, demanded that
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Feroris divorce his wife and marry a royal Princess to build
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a political alliance. He basically forced him to
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choose sides between his brother and his wife.
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And Feroras, shockingly, chose his wife.
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Which was scandalous. This was seen as so utterly
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countercultural, such a massive violation of the natural order
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of sibling solidarity, that Herod actually suggested Feroras
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had been bewitched by potions. He.
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Literally couldn't comprehend a man choosing his wife over his
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brother without dark magic being involved.
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That is wild. We see that same excruciating
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tension in Plutarch's account of Octavia.
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Who is Octavia? Think about Octavia's position.
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She is the half sister of Octavian, the man who would soon
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become the Emperor Caesar Augustus, but she is married to
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Mark Anthony. OK, so these are the two most
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powerful men on the planet. Yes, and they are hurtling
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toward a massive, bloody civil war.
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Plutarch records this devastating scene where Octavia
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is caught in the middle. And what does she do?
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She is standing there in tears, passionately begging the men
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around her to see her impossible position.
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She cries out there, no matter who wins this war, she will be
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utterly miserable. Right, because if her husband
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wins, her brother is destroyed. If her brother wins, her husband
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is destroyed. She is the literal embodiment of
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the ancient world's worst nightmare, the clash between the
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family you were born into and the family you were contracted
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to. That story must have captivated
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Ancient readers because it put a magnifying glass on their
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deepest anxieties. Definitely.
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In modern times, our movie plots and prestige dramas almost
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always revolve around marital infidelity.
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Put in antiquity, the most dramatic tension revolved around
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Siblin treachery. Brother betrayal was the
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archetypal societal breakdown it was.
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It is no accident that in the biblical narrative, the first
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violent evil act after the expulsion from Eden is not a
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marital breakdown, but Cain murdering his brother Abel.
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Yeah, that sets the stage for everything.
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And Greek mythology gives us the tragic story of Ediacles and
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Paul and Isis, brothers who murder each other battling for
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the throne of Thebes. Roman tradition rests on the
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foundation myth of Romulus killing his brother Remus.
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It's everywhere. Josephus raised extensively
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about this fear, detailing how Cleopatra systematically killed
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her own siblings to secure power.
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And how Aristobulus imprisoned and starved his brother
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Antigonus. Josephus actually remarks that
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this murder was sure proof that Calumny severs all ties of
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affection. Their logic was simple.
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If Blood Brothers who share the exact same essence could not
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prevail against envy and greed, society itself was doomed.
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And to prevent that societal breakdown, siblings were
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expected to side with siblings against outsiders, no matter the
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circumstances. Protecting family honor was
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paramount. Right or wrong didn't matter.
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Blood mattered. Josephus recounts a wild
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situation involving A ruler named Archelace.
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Archelaus was a terrible, brutal ruler and his own relatives
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genuinely hated him. They couldn't stand him.
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But when an embassy from Judea went to Caesar Augustus to
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formally vote against Archelaus and have him removed, his
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relatives refused to join the embassy.
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Why? They believed they would be
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deeply disgraced in the eyes of Caesar if they acted against
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their own kin in public, even a kin member they privately
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despised. They'd rather suffer under a
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tyrant brother than public publicly shame him.
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We see that same fierce Protection and Plutarch story
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about Mark Anthony's mother, Julia.
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What happened there? Well, when political assassins
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came to kill her brother Lucius Caesar, assassins who were sent
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by her own son, Mark Antony, she stood in front of the door,
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physically barring their entrance.
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Her own son sent them. Yes, she told the armed soldiers
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they would have to kill her before they could kill her
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brother. She successfully saved his life
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by invoking that intense sibling obligation.
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She dared the soldiers to violate the sacred bond of kin.
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Exactly. I mean spot on.
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Protecting that honor internally meant concealing faults from
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outsiders, right? All heavily.
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And the PKG protecting the family's public honor takes
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precedence over telling the factual truth to outsiders.
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The texts are full of this. The Akar legend has the
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protagonist using deceit to protect his honor.
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And in the city picker, full text called The Testament of
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Joseph, Joseph actively lies to the Ishmaelites and to an
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Egyptian official. Why?
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To protect himself. No, specifically to protect his
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brother's honor, he conceals the embarrassing fact that they sold
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him into slavery out of jealousy.
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Wow, he lies to cover for the guys who sold him.
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Julia de Boulay's modern anthropological study of a rural
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Greek village shows the exact same dynamic today.
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She observes villagers lying to authorities to protect family
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members, quoting A villager who justifies it by saying God wants
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people to cover things up. So what does this all mean for
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us as Reformed Christians? We subscribe to the Westminster
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Confession. We value objective truth.
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The 9th Commandment is clear about not bearing false witness.
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It is a massive tension. How do we process reading about
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biblical cultures where lying to protect your brother's honor was
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seen as virtuous? That is a crucial tension for
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any modern reader of Scripture. We have to differentiate between
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an honor and shame society and a guilt and innocent society.
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OK, let's break that down. We live in a guilt and innocent
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society shaped largely by the Enlightenment and Reformation
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thinking, where objective empirical facts determine
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morality. If you lie about a fact, you are
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guilty regardless of your motive.
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Right. In an honor and shame society,
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the greater truth of family integrity often overrode the
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lesser truth of empirical facts. The highest moral good was
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preserving the family's standing in the community.
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To them, betraying a family member's weakness to a hostile
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outsider was a far greater moral failing than fudging empirical
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facts. So they weren't just being
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malicious liars, they were serving a different moral
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master. We do not have to adopt their
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moral framework. In fact, Scripture continually
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calls believers to a higher standard of truth.
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But we must recognize how their culture operated to understand
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the motivations of the people in the historical narratives.
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They operated under a system where all outsiders were
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presumed dishonorable and dangerous until proven
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otherwise, and absolute loyalty was reserved strictly for the
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bloodline. Because the outside world was so
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dangerous, protecting family honor externally was paired with
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an equally demanding internal expectation.
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The absolute sharing of resources.
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Sociologists call this concept generalized reciprocity.
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Generalized reciprocity. So how does that work?
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It is the practice of giving to your kin without any
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specification of return. You just give it.
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Yeah, you do not dictate the time, the quantity, or the
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quality of the return. If your brother needs a cloak,
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you give him your cloak. You do not write up a loan
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agreement. You don't charge interest to
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your brother, right? This is heavily contrasted with
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balanced reciprocity, which is basically trading goods of equal
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value with neighbors, or negative reciprocity, which is
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trying to get something for nothing, usually by stealing
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from enemies. But within the PKG, sharing
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resources without keeping a Ledger was an absolute given.
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It was a survival mechanism. The examples in the literature
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are abundant. In the Book of Jubilees, Jacob
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sends constant provisions to his parents without asking for
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payment. In the Book of Tobit, Tobit
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gives his bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked.
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Specifically among his brethren, he.
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Takes care of his own. There is even a wild, almost
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comical historical account of a diplomatic treaty between the
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Spartan king Areos and the Judean High priest Onaias.
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I love this story. Through a massive stretch of
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historical imagination, they claimed a distant blood
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relationship through Abraham. They basically made it up.
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Right, because they established this fiction that they were
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brothers. The Spartan king actually wrote
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in the treaty that Spartan cattle and property belong to
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the Judeans and Judean property belong to the Spartans.
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They treated each other's wealth as a shared communal pot simply
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because they invoke the language of kinship.
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It's crazy how powerful that word was.
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The flip side of sharing physical resources is the
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obligation of forgiving wrongs. Yeah, sibling reconciliation is
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an assumed non negotiable ideal within this framework.
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In the ancient romance of Joseph and Asanath, the willingness to
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reconcile with an estranged brother provides the entire
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resolution to the narrative conflict.
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The Testament of Zebulon explicitly commands do not
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calculate a wrong done by each to his brothers.
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Retaliation, lawsuits and holding grudges were meant for
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outsiders. Grace and shared resources were
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reserved for insiders. But the ultimate act of
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reciprocity, the absolute non negotiable duty that proved you
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were a loyal family member, was providing a decent burial.
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Oh man, the burial issue is huge in the ancient world.
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Tobid risks his life sneaking around under threat of execution
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just to bury the dead of his kin group.
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We mentioned Ferrer's earlier. He tries to buy his brother's
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corks from his enemy, offering massive sums of money just to
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give it a proper burial. And years after a horrific
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massacre in the Tutelberg forest, the Roman army returns
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to the site and goes into a frenzy of grief, desperately
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trying to bury the unburied bounds of three entire legions,
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treating every unknown soldiers skeleton as if it were a blood
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relative. This duty was inviolable.
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Josephus explicitly states in his writings against APN that
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the funeral ceremony must be undertaken by the nearest
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relatives. To leave a relative unburied was
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to damn their honor permanently. This is the precise cultural
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context that makes Jesus's words in Matthew chapter 8 so
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shocking. People totally miss how
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scandalous this was. A man tells Jesus he wants to be
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a disciple, but asks to 1st go and bury his father.
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To any person in a P kg society, that is the most sacred,
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unquestionable obligation imaginable.
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Drop everything to bury your. Father and Jesus replies, follow
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me and let the dead bury their own dead.
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That statement would have been scandalous.
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To a 1st century crowd, it would have sounded like madness or
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sheer heresy. It was radically
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countercultural. It showed that Jesus was forming
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a new allegiance, a new family structure that superseded even
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the most sacred bloodline duties of the ancient world.
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That economic and emotional safety net of generalized
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reciprocity is what made the ancient family incredibly
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resilient, though. Against famine, against war,
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against predatory taxation. If you had a strong sibling
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group, you survived. You pooled your resources, you
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protected your honor, and you buried your dead right.
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But generalized reciprocity took care of the present generation.
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The PKG was completely obsessed with both the past and the
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future. We can call this the vertical
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focus. Yeah, we have a horizontal focus
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in the West. We care mostly about our living
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relatives, the people we can text or call.
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My immediate family, right? The Mediterranean world had a
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vertical focus. They were preoccupied with
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ancestors who were long dead and descendants who were not yet
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born. Because personal honor was
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entirely tied to ancestral lineage.
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Who your great grandfather was determined your value in the
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marketplace today. This illuminates the intense,
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highly charged dispute in John chapter 8 between Jesus and the
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Judean leaders. It's a classic public challenge
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and repost scenario. Which was a common rhetorical
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battle in Honor shame cultures. The Relivus leaders appeal to
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Abraham as their father to claim honor and legitimacy in front of
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the crowd. And Jesus pushes back hard.
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He challenges their physical lineage with a spiritual one.
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He tells them if they were truly Abraham's children, they would
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act like Abraham. The argument escalates.
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The tension rises until Jesus looks at them and says the
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unthinkable. You are of your father, the
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devil. To a Mediterranean reader, that
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exchange is electrifying. Because Jesus is attacking the
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very foundation of their public honor.
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He is taking their vertical focus on biological ancestry and
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completely reframing it around spiritual obedience and faith.
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Local focus also extends forward into the future through the
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preoccupation with inheritance. This wasn't about getting your
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individual slice of the pie when your parents die so you can go
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buy a sports car or take a vacation.
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It was about keeping the estate intact to ensure the family's
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survival and honor for the next generation.
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The story of Naboth's vineyard in First Kings 21 is the perfect
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illustration of this mindset. King Ahab wants Naboth's
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vineyard to turn it into a vegetable garden.
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He goes to Naboth and offers him a better vineyard in exchange or
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the full cash value. From a Western capitalist
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perspective, it is a great deal. Take the cash and upgrade.
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But Naboth flatly refuses. The king of Israel, he tells
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Ahab. The Lord forbid that I should
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give you the inheritance of my father.
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'S to Naboth. That plot of Gert was not a
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commodity. It was the physical
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manifestation of his family's bloodline, their history, and
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their honor. I think of it like modern
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inherited wealth tied to a historic estate.
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Navoff treated the land not as a commodity to be sold for a quick
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profit, but as a sacred trust. He wasn't the owner, he was just
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the current manager of his ancestors estate.
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His job was to pass it down, to sell it to an outsider.
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Even the King would be a huge betrayal of his forefathers and
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his unborn descendants. The retention of that
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inheritance was the only way to preserve the descent groups
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honor in the community. It was a collective asset, not
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individual wealth. OK, we have covered a massive
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amount of ground here. Let's pull together the core
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elements of the of patrilineal kinship group.
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We are looking at a system built on contractual marriage aimed at
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family status. We see patrilical living where
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the incoming wife is essentially an alien worker relying on male
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children for survival. We see intense, unbreakable
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sibling solidarity that Trump's marital bonds.
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We see aggressive defense of family honor, total resource
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sharing through generalized reciprocity, and a deep vertical
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focus on ancestors and inheritance.
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When you lay all that out, you finally see the magnitude of
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what the early Christian leaders did.
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Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they deliberately
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Co opted this exact cultural framework.
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They took the most exclusive blood based closed door
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institution in the ancient world and applied it to a group of
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completely unrelated people. Jews, Gentiles, slaves, free
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men, women's who shared faith in Christ.
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They leveled the social playing field completely.
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High status Roman citizens and wealthy merchants began calling
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indigent poor members brothers. They engaged in generalized
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reciprocity, voluntarily sharing their wealth and property with
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people who did not share a single drop of their physical
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blood. They created a surrogate descent
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group. It was so effective, so radical
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and so visible that outsiders were stunned.
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Look at the historical record of Julian the Apostate.
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He was a Roman emperor who despised Christians and tried to
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revive paganism. He wrote letters in sheer
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frustration about the impious Galileans, complaining bitterly
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that these Christians supported not only their own poor, but the
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Pagan poor as well. They were acting out the
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absolute highest duties of PKG siblings, but extending that
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safety net far beyond the biological bloodline.
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They redefine consanguinity. Instead of sharing the blood of
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a physical patriarch like Abraham or Roman Noble, they
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shared the blood of Christ. That shared blood brought them
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into a new petrilineal kin group, complete with all the
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rigorous expectations of sibling solidarity, resource sharing,
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honor, defense and mutual care. Consider this, when Jesus looked
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at the crowd sitting around him and said, Whoever does the will
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of God, he is my brother and sister and mother, he wasn't
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giving a warm sentimental illustration for a greeting
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card. No, it was so much more than.
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That he was completely dismantling the most rigid,
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legally binding and socially exclusive institution of the
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ancient world and drafting a new inheritance contract with his
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own blood. How does reading the New
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Testament through the lens of 1st century family values change
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the way you view your own local church?