NT World 3
New Testament World
4: Households, Marriage & Family
The Household
• Greek. oikos
• Latin. domus
The church in the Greco-roman world met in houses
(Rom. 16:3-5, 23; Phlm 2; Col 4:15; 1Cor 16:19).
Paul may well have started with the synagogue but
soon ended up in a house. Known as the ‘household
(oikeious) of faith’ (Gal. 6:10). Paul often uses
language of the household to describe relationships
within the church (father, brother, sister, children,
slaves). Household codes are a feature of his letters.
Head of the household
Extent
Sphere
Domestic gods & worship
Pater familias
Vesta – goddess of the hearth &
Wife
Legally
(father of the family)
Children
Education
home
Patria potestas
Penates – food, wine, oil, and other
Grandchildren
Marriage
(power of a father)
supplies
Slaves
Finances
Lares – guardians & good fortune
Total authority
Clients
Discipline
Di parentes – ancestral spirits
Life & death
Children – filii familias
Wives & Mothers
• Dutiful wives
• Biological & adopted children
– Self-controlled (Gk. sophron)
• Infant mortality
• Accept husband’s:
– 33% by 1 yr
– Rule
– 50% by 10 yrs
– Friends
• Depended on status
– Gods
– Educated
– Extra-marital affairs
– Work (from 5 yrs)
• Dutiful mothers
• Married
– Stay at home
– Girls 12-14 yrs
– Educate children
– Boys 17-30 yrs
– Attend their needs
Slaves – Instrumentum vocale
Treatment of Slaves
• 33-40% population of Rome
• 10% population elsewhere
• Fed
• Floggings
• Conditions had improved by late 1st BC
• Clothed
• Beatings
• Becoming a slave
• Housed
• Canings
– Conquered people
• Paid
• Sexual abuse
– Economic slaves
• Potential
• Branding
– Born a slave
citizenship
Types of Slaves
• Educated Slaves
• Hard Labour Slaves
– Government assistants
– Gladiators
– Tutors
– Mines
– Physicians
– Agriculture
– Brothel/prostitution
– Household managers
• Domestic Slaves
Manumission of Slaves
– Body slaves
• Aged 30
– Servants
• Libertus or Liberta
– Kitchen workers
• Roman Citizenship
• Artisan Slaves
– Encouraged work
– Potters
– Positive attitude
– Sculptors
• Slavery a process
– Painters
– Upward mobility
• Municipal Slaves
• Legally obliged to provide service
– Bath attendants
• Patronage & reciprocity
– Road construction
– Temple workers
– Jailers
Dr Richard J. Hawes
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NT World 3
Marriage Legislation: Lex Julia
Augustus’ Concern
Rising non-Roman
population
Declining Roman
population
Lex Julia de maritandis
ordinibus 17 BC.
Moral reformation
Social engineering
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Family Legislation
– Incentives for having children
– Penalties for not having children
Immorality Legislation
– Adulterium – illicit sex with an
upper-class married woman
– Stuprum – illicit sex with a widow
or unmarried freewoman
Clothing Legislation
– Stola & Vittae
– Gold ornaments
Greco-roman Marriage
The only legal marriage was between Roman
• Typically arranged
citizens
• Benefit of the family
– Father remained guardian
– Money
– Retained dowry
– Status
Other non-Roman citizens’ marriages were
– Heirs – family line
informal
• Love & romance
– No legal recourse
Greco-roman Divorce & Adultery
Divorce
Adultery
Only if legally married
• What constitutes adultery?
– “Illicit relationship with or by a
Easy & commonplace
Husbands or wives could initiate divorce
woman of respectable rank”
• Married men
Need only send a letter of intent
– Slaves
No reasons needed to be stated
– Courtesans
– Failure to have children
– Young boys
– Political reasons
– Lower-class women
– Fancied someone else
– Prostitutes
– Adultery
• Charges only brought by husbands
• Poisoning became fashionable
New Roman Wives
Why New Roman Wives
Wore sexually provocative clothes
Wore their hair up
• Martial double standards
Gold jewellery
• Husbands spending ‘time’ with the hetairai
Make-up
• Wives neglected
Became sexually ‘free’
• Liberation or competition?
Dispensed with head covering
Avoided having children
Birth Control
Widows
1 in 15 women died giving childbirth
• Disparity in age
Plant and herbs
• Young widows
– Some were toxic
–
⅓ population
Magical prescriptions
– 30-39yrs
Pessaries
– Money
Infanticide
– Time
– Killing
– Influence
– Exposure
• Legally expected to marry within 1 yr
Abortion
Dr Richard J. Hawes
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NT World 3
Primary Sources
Seneca discussing his mother
Unlike the great majority of women you never succumbed to immorality, the worst evil of our time; jewels and
pearls have not moved you; you never thought of wealth as the greatest gift to the human race; you have not
been perverted by the imitation of worse women who lead even the virtuous into pitfalls; you have never
blushed for the number of children, as if it taunted you with your years; never have you, in the manner of
other women whose only recommendation lies in their beauty, tried to conceal your pregnancy as though it
were indecent; you have not crushed the hope of children that were being nurtured in your body; you have
not defiled your face with paints and cosmetics; never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed no
greater nakedness by being removed. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is
the great honour of modesty. (Seneca, ad Helviam, 16:3-4)
1st Century Roman Marriage Prep
“Erotic desire can only be justified within marriage for the purpose of begetting children … [it] is unlawful,
when it is mere pleasure seeking even within marriage” (Musonius, Is Marriage a Handicap? 85.5-6)
“There can be no erotic pleasure between husband and wife because it is a relationship of duty” (Ovid, Ars
Amatoriae 2.585-586; 2.685)
“The purpose of marriage is the procreation of legitimate heirs who will inherit, continue the name, property
and sacred rites of the family (Musonius)
On Abortion
Childbirth hardly ever happens in a gold-embroidered bed since abortionists have such skills and so many
potions, and can bring about death of children in the womb. (Juvenal, Satires, 6.593ff)
Letter from Melissa to Clearete
Melissa to Clearete, Greetings.
Of your own volition it appears to me that you have the characteristics of what is good. For you wish
zealously to hear [teaching] about a wife's adornment. It gives a good indication that you intend to perfect
yourself according to virtue. It is necessary then for the free and modest (sophrona – self-controlled) wife to
live with her lawful husband adorned with quietness, white and clean in her dress, plain but not costly, simple
but not elaborate or excessive. For she must reject garments shot with purple or gold. For these are used by
hetairai (high class prostitutes) in soliciting men generally, but if she is to be attractive to one man, her own
husband, the ornament of a wife is her manner and not her dress (stola). And a free and modest (sophrona –
self-controlled) wife must appear attractive to her own husband, but not to the man next door, having on her
cheeks the blush of modesty rather than of rouge and powder, and a good and noble bearing and decency
and modesty (sophrona – self-controlled) rather than gold and emerald. For it is not in expenditure on
clothing and looks that the modest (sophrona – self-controlled) woman should express her love of the good
but in the management and maintenance of her household, and pleasing her own husband, given that he is
a moderate (sophronounti) man, by fulfilling his wishes. For the husband's will ought to be engraved as law
on a decent wife's mind and she must live by it. And she must consider that the dowry she has brought with
her that is best and greatest of all is her good order and trust in both the beauty and wealth of the soul rather
than in money and appearance. As for money and looks, time, hostility, illness and fortune take them away:
rather the adornment of soul lasts till death with women who possess it. (P.Haun. II 13, ll. 1-42)
Bringing up children
Theano to Euboule, Greetings.
I hear you are bringing up the children indulgently. But a [good ...] mother's interest is not [concern for the
pleasure] of the children but their [training in moderation (sophrona – self-controlled). Look] out lest you
accomplish not the work of a loving mother, but that of a doting one. When pleasure and children are brought
up together, it makes the children undisciplined .... Take care, my friend - conscious of the fact that children
who live licentiously become slaves when they blossom into manhood - to deprive them of such pleasures.
Make their nourishment austere rather than sumptuous. (P.Haun. II 13, ll. 43-47)
Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 AD)
Those women who wear gold, who occupy themselves in curling their tresses, and engage in anointing their
cheeks, and painting their eyes, and dyeing their hair, and practising the other pernicious acts of luxury, bedecking the outer covering of the flesh - in true Egyptian fashion - to attract their idolatrous lovers ... for love
of finery is not for a wife but a courtesan; such women think little of keeping house beside their husbands;
but, loosing their husbands' purse-strings, they expend its resources on their pleasures, that they may have
many witnesses to their seeming beauty, and the whole day they spend with their slaves, devoting their
attention to beauty treatments. (Clement, Paidagogos 3.2.4.2-5.4)
.
Dr Richard J. Hawes
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NT World 3
Annotated Bibliography
Moyer V. Hubbard, Christianity in the Greco-Roman World (Peabody: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2010). Hubbard has a very helpful chapter on the family and sexual ethics. In particular he
does a good job of applying the household structure to the structure of the house-church format in the days
of the early church. Lots of useful and insightful NT examples.
.
James S. Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era: Exploring the
Background of Early Christianity (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 1999). Jeffers has a whole
chapter on slaves and slavery which is reasonably detailed with many NT examples. He also dedicates a
chapter to family and women and how it functioned.
Bruce W. Winter, Roman Wives, Roman Widows: The Appearance of New Women and
the Pauline Communities (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2003). The best and latest
research by a first rate evangelical NT scholar. Winter examines the issue surrounding the appearance of
Roman new wives using Augustus’ legislation and many of the contemporary philosophical responses. In
particular he reinterprets a number of contentious NT passages in the light of Roman legislation and the
concern that the Roman authorities were experiencing with many of these ‘liberated’ women.
Bruce Winter, ‘You Were What You Wore in Roman Law: Deciphering the Dress Codes of
1 Timothy 2:9-15’, Whitefield Briefing 8:4 (2003).
[http://klice.co.uk/uploads/whitfield/Vol%208.4%20Winters.pdf]
Bruce Winter, You Were What You Wore. (Audio Lecture Sept. 2000)
[http://thegospelcoalition.org/resources/a/you_were_what_you_wore]
Ben Witherington III, Women in the Earliest Churches (SNTSMS 59; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991). A useful monograph on the role and place in both Greco-Roman
st
society and the early church in the 1 century AD. By academic standards a little old now and appears to
lack from Winter’s insights concerning the appearance of new wives. Nonetheless it still contains many
helpful insights surrounding the historical contexts of these women in the early Church.
Robert Knapp, Invisible Romans: Prostitutes, Outlaws, Slaves, Gladiators, Ordinary Men
and Women… The Romans that History Forgot (London: Profile Books, 2013). Knapp has an
excellent chapter on slaves in this book. Furthermore he examines slavery from the perspective of the slaves
themselves rather than just using the writings of the elite. His chapter on prostitution is also very informative
if chilling and gives us a neglected insight into the lot of many more women who were not fortunate enough
to be born into the houses of the urban elite! A scholarly yet very readable book and accessible book.
Mary Beard, Meet the Romans. (DVD). Brilliant documentary series introducing Roman society and
life. Contains three episodes – the third episode deals with family/household life. She is very insightful
concerning the lives of Children.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=1NdaBCfoK3o&feature=endscreen]
Dr Richard J. Hawes
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