Families in Ancient Israel.

• Author: AVALOS, HECTOR
• Position: Review

Families in Ancient Israel. By LEO G. PERDUE, JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP, JOHN J. CLLINS, and CAROL MEYERS. The Family, Religion, ad Culture Series. Louisville: WESTMINSTER/ JOHN KNOX PRESS, 1997. Pp. xii + 285. $20.

Four well-known scholars contribute five essays that reflect well the status of recent study on the family in ancient Israel. Perhaps intentionally, they also reflect the lack of unanimity in modern scholarship in establishing a basic definition for "family." Thus, C. Meyers says that the Hebrew mispahah "does not quite fit the general anthropological understanding of a clan" (p. 13), and prefers for it "residential kinship group." Blenkinsopp (p. 50), however, sees "clan" as the "closest English equivalent" for mispahah. Missed is the opportunity to analyze B. Halpern's theory ("Jerusalem and the Lineages in the Seventh Century B.C.E.: Kinship and the Rise of Individual Moral Responsibility," in Law and Ideology in Ancient Israel, ed. Baruch Halpern and D. W. Hobson, JSOTSup 124 [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991]) that the demise of traditional kinship groups led to the rise of the concept of individual moral responsibility.

In the first chapter, Meyers focuses on the family in "early Israel," by which she means Israel prior to the monarchy. She acknowledges the difficulty of using biblical sources to reconstruct family life in pre-monarchic Israel, and, therefore, turns to archaeology for illumination. Archaeological and ethnoarchaeological data reveal that Israelite families spent most of their time on simple subsistence activities. The most salient quality of the early Israelite family was its adaptability to even the harshest circumstances in a diverse environment.

In a study of the family in First Temple Israel, J. Blenkinsopp regards the bet ab, rather than the mispahah, as the basic social unit. Surveying the views of the canonical texts on marriage, divorce, miscarriage, and inheritance, he discusses how the rise of the state eroded the power of Israelite households, though the state also had positive effects as well.

J. Collins focuses on marriage, divorce, and the family in Second Temple Judaism. While he notes the...