Constructing Early Christian Families: Family as Social Reality and Metaphor

Despite the importance of “family” as a concept and reality in early Christianity, there have been few comprehensive studies of this topic. This collection of essays, most of which were developed in conjunction with a seminar in Oslo in 1995, focuses on the family as a social institution as well as metaphor. Marked by the explicit attempt to bring together classical, anthropological, and biblical studies, the collection is divided into three sections: the social context of early Christian families, family as metaphor, and the impact of asceticism. The result of covering so much ground in a short volume is an inevitable thinness of treatment. This reviewer will not be alone in wishing the far greater development of some topics and the omission of others.

The first section begins with an essay by the editor setting forth the multiple social relationships covered by the simple term “family.” Studies must focus not only on the household, but also kinship, marriage, and interrelations between members. S. Guijarro’s essay brings archaeological evidence to bear upon the question of family structure in the Galilee; from the type of house, the number of family members, the capacity for mutual support, the amount of land, and the social group to which the family belonged, he argues for four different family types in the first century. J. Barclay suggests that whereas family structures facilitated the transmission and preservation of Judaism, Christianity combined an anti-familial attitude with one that sought to re-embed discipleship within the household. S. Barton’s essay sets Jesus’ radical call to abandon family ties within the context of Jewish ascetical sects (the Therapeutae and Essenes) and Greco-Roman philosophy (the Cynics); in all these groups initiation into a family-style unit was dependent upon prior rejection of one’s social family.

The second section of the book discusses the role of fictive kinship. E. M. Lassen discovers that the controlling metaphor for Roman society was that of a family of fathers and sons, in which the Christian preference for the language of “brother” would have been intelligible, if odd. Three subsequent chapters discuss “brotherhood.” P. Esler understands Paul’s use of brother imagery in Galatians 5:13 and 6:10 as furthering identity formation and social control. K. Sandnes argues, against E. Shüssler Fiorenza, that brotherhood structures were always embedded within hierarchical household structures, as evidenced in Paul’s appeal to Philemon. R. Aasgaard uncovers similarities between Paul’s letters and Plutarch’s treatise On Brotherly Love: both authors distinguish an ethics of brotherhood from that of family or friends. After subjecting the brotherhood language in I Thessalonians to a “gender hermeneutical reading,” L. Fatum discovers that whereas women might convert to Christianity, they could never be numbered among the brothers of Christ.

Opening the third section on the impact of asceticism on understandings of sexuality and family, D. Martin analyzes Paul’s understanding of marriage, as a means of eliminating desire, from the context of contemporary medical writings as well as Aristotelian and Stoic sexual ethics. Against M. Nusssbaum’s assertion that the Stoic position was uniquely “rational,” Martin uncovers the internal logic governing all these systems and argues that none can be unproblematically recuperated for our time. The final two essays, by R. Uro and I. Gilhus, question the connection between the ascetical language in the Gospel of Thomas and Sethian Gnosticism and social practice.

While there is good material here—Dale Martin’s contribution being by far the best—the collection as a whole is marked by a certain interpretative flatness. Models, especially those developed by B. Malina and other members of the Context group, are too often presented as reality rather than as hermeneutical tools. Despite the subtitle, realia takes a far back seat to metaphor. Indeed, the book’s handsome cover of Masaccio’s “Distribution of alms and the death of Ananias” underscores the lack of any real consideration of the family as an economic...