Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine.

• Author: Matthews, Victor H.
• Position: Brief article

Marriage Gifts and Social Change in Ancient Palestine: 1200 BCE to 200 CE. By T. M. LEMOS. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY Piss, 2010. Pp. xii + 296. $80.

It is often easy to perpetuate an idea or an interpretation rather than analyze it or question its validity. In the case of Lemos' volume on marriage gifts, she rightly reminds scholars that citing a source or making reference to a sociological theory does not mean it actually applies to a particular culture and its practices. Her thorough comparative examination of the marriage practices in the biblical text are illuminated by the work of the anthropologist Jack Goody, and she places her emphasis on social stratification as a central factor in the distribution of bridewealth and dowry.

Structurally, Lemos first reviews the evidence in the biblical text on marriage gifts, taking into account the current debates on source dating of the biblical materials from which she draws her evidence. She then turns to post-biblical evidence, especially emphasizing the Hellenistic and Egyptian influences evident in the extra-biblical Elephantine papyri. At this point Lemos then provides a review of anthropological studies over the last several decades that deal with marriage and marriage gifts. This review includes several case studies (Nuer, Lovedu, North India, ancient Babylonia) as a way of demonstrating that proximity in space does not necessary equate with similar cultural practices. For biblical scholars who are interested in social scientific methods and the relative usefulness of applying them to the biblical text, this chapter is invaluable. However, placing the review of these materials in the third chapter interrupts the flow of examining the biblical and post-biblical textual evidence and I wonder if it might have been better to place it at the beginning of the volume.

With her methodological and comparative presentation in place and with Goody's research on social stratification as a guide, Lemos then turns in chapters four and five to an examination of social stratification in ancient Israel and Judah (from Iron I to 586 B.C.E.). As might be expected as the Israelite culture became more complex, Lemos concludes that the levels of stratification increase over this period of time. Her conclusions are that the village-based, less socially complex society of early Israel emphasized bridewealth ("property tendered by the husband's grouping to the kin of his wife"), without dowry ("gifts...