Nono, I was refering specifically to the culture and time period in which the old testament was composed, not other cultures or time periods - those were clearly patriarchical, it would be a mistake to dismiss that when interpreting the old testament. Considering the culture in which a written artifact was composed is one of the main pilars that hermeneutics relies on (but obviously not the only one)
Let's start with "time period in which the old testament was composed"
When was that exactly? I believe the oldest extant versions are from around 300 AD. We have a rough idea of when certain books might have been written, but that is open to debate, and strong arguments have been made that put the origin of certain parts of these books centuries apart. Even the composition of a 'canonical' version of these books collections is not really clear before a certain point that is several centuries removed from the time in which we think they might have been originally written.
Different books or even different parts of a book (even what constitutes a 'book' in the old or new testament is not well defined for any given time period before a certain point from when we have some evidence of a certain standardization at a certain place - which doesn't even mean all traditions everywhere using these books follow that same standard from that point onward) might have been written at times centuries apart and might have originated in different cultures.
My point is, sweeping statements about customs and practices of specific societies as they were between one and three millennia ago is very hard to make. Even something like "the people who wrote this book clearly practiced primogeniture" is packed with lots of assumptions. And if we could know that a certain part of some scripture was from a definite time period and originally written in a certain language... who wrote it? Where? What was the legal system there?
Take another example, a period and people we have a lot of data about: in XVII century England, for example, primogeniture and entail were standard... for the elite. Not for the middle class. You see what I'm getting at?
Put simply, what I meant with my previous comment was: we have literally no idea if the people who wrote these supposed genealogies in Exodus were in fact practicing these inheritance legal forms you mentioned.
> "which we think they might have been originally written"
please don't assume about me, almost all of what you wrote was known to me prior before reading your comment. That information regarding XVII century England for example is something I would have supposed, but did not know for sure; I just knew the equivalent for German society at that time.
> When was that exactly? I believe the oldest extant versions are from around 300 AD. We have a rough idea of when certain books might have been written, but that is open to debate, and strong arguments have been made that put the origin of certain parts of these books centuries apart. Even the composition of a 'canonical' version of these books collections is not really clear before a certain point that is several centuries removed from the time in which we think they might have been originally written.
Yeah, 300 AD would be a sensible starting point. I am strictly talking about ancient Israel, during the time where the old testament was composed, where the exact point in time does not even matter for my claim, because my claim is: "The society that composed the OT was primarily patriarchical during most of the perioud where the OT was written, edited, read, to such a degree that it would be a mistake to pretend it was not." Nobody claims to have a time machine, of course.
Here are some well-reputated sources that strengthen my claim, and are congruent with what I rememember from my own readings of the Code of Hammurabi and the Old Testament way back:
- "Hennie J. Marsman, Women in Ugarit and Israel: Their Social and Religious Position in the Context of the Ancient Near East (Brill, 2003)". Massive comparative study of the ANE, her conclusion: [AI/]She concludes that while women had more rights than often assumed (they could sometimes buy land or engage in trade), the societies were undeniably patriarchal in their legal architecture. High priesthoods, kingships, and tribal elderships were exclusively male domains.[/AI]
- "Hans Jochem Boecker, Law and the Administration of Justice in the Old Testament and Ancient East (1980)", summary: [AI/]Analyzing the biblical Covenant Code, the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, and Middle Assyrian Laws, Boecker points out that women were legally disadvantaged. For instance, in many ANE legal codes, a woman's sexuality was treated as the property of her father or husband. Boecker writes regarding ANE legal codes: "There cannot either, of course, be any question of the legal equality of men and women"[/AI]
"Ancient Near Eastern societies have traditionally been described as patriarchal, and the Bible, as a document written by men, has traditionally been interpreted as patriarchal in its overall views of women.[1]: 9 [2]: 166–167 [3] Marital and inheritance laws in the Bible favor men, and women in the Bible exist under much stricter laws of sexual behavior than men. In ancient biblical times, women were subject to strict laws of purity, both ritual and moral.
Recent scholarship accepts the presence of patriarchy in the Bible, but shows that heterarchy is also present: heterarchy acknowledges that different power structures between people can exist at the same time, that each power structure has its own hierarchical arrangements, and that women had some spheres of power of their own separate from men.[1]: 27 There is evidence of gender balance in the Bible, and there is no attempt in the Bible to portray women as deserving of less because of their "naturally evil" natures."
Heterarchy being present would not render the society non-patriarchical, especially when it comes to matter like the one that started this subthread, in that geneology trees should be viewed through a patriarchical lens, and that it is more likely that those elements are something familiar to the intended audience (which is not some small religious elite, mind you, the opposite, those narratives were written for a deeply religious society, with a scripture-based religion).
> Put simply, what I meant with my previous comment was: we have literally no idea if the people who wrote these supposed genealogies in Exodus were in fact practicing these inheritance legal forms you mentioned.
Of course not, put that way, we know basically nothing about anything and could simply abandon the discipline of academic history.
Scholars have to make and do make educated guesses though, which forms a consensus if enough do agree, and the current consensus is still that ancient israel had a patriarchical legal framework, and for example also that women were economically dependent over large amounts of time. Which is also reflect in a lot of books in the OT, which makes sense if 1) the stories where intended to be relatable and 2) the authors used what they observed around them to describe it. That depends on the genre of course, for prophetic books or lyricals books, there are different rules, but when it comes to the stories that have a narrative core, then this absolutely is something that historians consider when it comes to how the intended audience of the literarical work is structured. Constistently so, across regions and times.
The position that "many instances of primogeniture in the old testament would have been something not deeply known and likely experienced first hand by the typical reader" is pretty hard to defend, as I argued above. That is as close to knowing as we can get without a time machine - but if one does not make such (well-founded) assumptions, then much of the humanities, including hermeneutics, stands on shaky grounds.
If whoever wrote the stretches of the Exodus that might read as genealogies in current translations, in a jarring discontinuity between fluent narrative just before and after them actually meant them as genealogies, I have my doubts.
Did these authors write genealogies because they were practicing primogeniture? Unclear. Were they? To answer that we'd have to figure out who wrote these excerpts, when, where did they live, what was the legal system then and there and did these exact rules apply to them? Short answer is we don't know.
We know very little of history prior to a few hundred years ago. We know a lot of well documented episodes but to do social history even of the renaissance is a serious undertaking and shouldn't be trivialized in terms of "surely it was like so back then". Even the early medieval period has a lot of blanks. Did you know a homossexual bishop called "Flora" lived in first millennium France?
Early iron age? Attributing authorship and writing sociological analysis when we don't even know in which century exactly they lived is far fetched to say the least.
Anyway, you don't seem to be taking me seriously, and to be reading as a confrontational argument something that I meant as a friendly and helpful nudge towards digging deeper instead of making assumptions.
> Of course not, put that way, we know basically nothing about anything and could simply abandon the discipline of academic history.
This to me indicates this is something else than a friendly exchange between history nerds so I'll drop the issue.
> Even the early medieval period has a lot of blanks. Did you know a homossexual bishop called "Flora" lived in first millennium France?
I did not, but like all the facts you mentioned so far, this is not a surprise at all for me (if that was the intention), since it does not contradict any belief I had about first millenium france. It is an interesting fact, though!
> Anyway, you don't seem to be taking me seriously
That's not the case, and I am sorry if I came over as such; I would not have tried to argue my points if I would not have taken you seriously. English is also not my native language, which might contribute to more subtle points being missed/misscommunicated.
> to be reading as a confrontational argument something that I meant as a friendly and helpful nudge towards digging deeper instead of making assumptions
You see, that's the issue; your nudge would only be helpful if I indeed did not dig appropriately deep yet already; which may or may not be, but instead of verifying it first, you told me things that I either knew already, or that did not address my point at all, which was irritating. I am all for infodumps, everytime, everywhere, love 'em. What I took issue with was that you seemed to assume a lack of knowledge, and decided to nudge, seemingly not considering the possibility that you might have completely missed my point.
Which is, succinctly stated: "Surely we should be able and are able to make educated assumptions about all aspects about anytimeanywhere of human history; with the strong assumption that we do not have time machines and are therefore are limitited to guessing (or theorising, if one wants to use the fancy word), not measuring or anything or anything of that sort. It is perfectly understood that it's all guesswork, that might be mightly off regarding how it really was - and if we are lucky, the theory is not totally off".
You seemed to take this as a much stronger claim, as is evidenced by you bringing up exceptions to the "rule" more than once; that would only make sense if you literaly believe that statements such as "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was meant in its absolutes (or with absolute certainty), which it was not. Anectodes, counterexamples and so on are meaningless when it comes to statements of bigger trends. They would only be relevant if they would turn out to be a common occurance, or when the source mentions the homosexuality of a monk in passing, without making a big fuzz about it for example - a possible indication that non-hidden homosexuality amongst monks might have been at least tolerated, and maybe even not-rare in first millenium france in at least that monstery. Or was not an issue to the person who reported that. Or it was a smear campain (not all sources are reliable). And so on and so on... (Note: I don't doubt that a homosexual monk named Flora existed back than, it might be well established that he did. I am just using that fact as an example)
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To wrap up: Infodumps/facts? Heck yeah! Exchange? Yes please. The two of us talking past each other? That's not an exchange, yes. Simply assuming I do not know something instead of verifying it? Heck no, I firmly reject that. If you would have shown me where I was wrong, a nudge would have been appreciated, but as I read it, even now, you simply misunderstood my claims - then, the nudge was missplaced, and came over as patronizing to me.
I think I understood now where it went wrong and what you tried to bring across. Appreciate the facts you droped; I am more the top-down than bottom-up type, but facts like those are interesting to me nonetheless.
I will also stop this thread; in case it helps resolving open ends: "most of the books in the old testament were written/edited/composed for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition" was and is my intended claim; independent of who the individuals where that wrote these books, of periods where social hierarchies within the intended audiences at time of writting/editing/composition changed, and so on and so for. Yes, that audience encompasses a bit amount of time and space. Still, people who are paid to think and write about this seem to majorily agree with "most of the books in the old testament were written for with an audience in mind that mostly viewed being the first born son a special, higher social condition", if I did not wildly misread the current consensus of academic research. Again, this is a big picture claim; no singular counterexamples or short time periods can change the assumed validity of that statement, only once new sources or new interpretations of old sources indicate a different quantitative historic reality than previously assumed.
