Abstract
The study of families has been a major topic of research on the ancient world especially since the 1990s (Rawson, 2010: 8–10). According to historian of Roman families Beryl Rawson (2010: 2), this represents a major shift in the study of classical culture away from earlier tendencies to attach minor importance to aspects of family existence or to relegate them to secondary discussions of “daily life”: “No longer can we treat as of only antiquarian, or superficially entertaining, interest aspects such as how people dined or bathed, in what sort of housing they lived, who married whom and what happened after divorce or death, what were their religious rites, and what role family and family relationships played in all of these.” The study of children and childhood is a subset of this larger enterprise, with new important surveys of the Roman period emerging such as that by Rawson (2003), Dasen and Späth (eds) (2010), and Laes (2011; Dutch publication in 2006). The topic of this special issue is children and childhood in early Judaism and early Christianity, but research on children and childhood in religious traditions has benefitted greatly from studies on the Greek and Roman worlds. It must also be said that there is now increasing dialogue between ancient historians and experts on early Christianity (Balch and Osiek, 2003) on the topic of families, with classical scholars themselves recognizing that it is no longer possible to conceive of early Christianity as “a separate world” (Rawson, 2010: 4). Roman historians have an enormous advantage, however, over scholars of early Judaism and Christianity because of the existence of extensive material evidence, ranging from inscriptional evidence, to architectural remains, to art and iconography.
Rooted in a broader interest in families (e.g., Osiek and Balch, 1997; Moxnes, 1997; Nathan, 2000; Van Henten and Brenner, 2000; Osiek and MacDonald, 2006), specialists in early Judaism and early Christianity are turning their attention to the study of children and childhood (e.g., Balla, 2003; Bakke, 2005; Bunge, 2008; Horn and Martens, 2009). As one might expect for a preliminary stage of scholarship, these studies mainly take the form of surveys. Detailed analyses of particular texts or bodies of literature are just now beginning to appear (e.g., Aasgaard, 2009; Burke, 2010). The collection of articles in this volume is in keeping with this latter undertaking. The scope of materials is wide and the results are of necessity somewhat impressionistic. 1 The essays examine evidence from the first century BCE to the fifth century CE. There are many important bodies of evidence which are not discussed here in any detail such as representation of children in the New Testament Gospels or in rabbinic literature, to name two obvious lacunae. Yet, however fragmentary this collection might be, it illustrates the value in beginning to examine particular sources in depth and in bringing together Jewish and early Christian material for analysis. As investigators have pointed out, especially for the first two centuries CE, the use of the categories of Judaism and Christianity is in many ways misleading and problematic (e.g., Boyarin, 2006; Mason, 2007) for, among other things, the categories do not do justice to the overlap between traditions and actual historical circumstances of the evolution of communities. One of the contributions of this volume is that it illustrates the overlap of traditions (e.g., approach to education), commonality of themes in the literature (e.g., emphasis on the authority of parents and obedience of children), and similarities in the nature of the engagement with the Roman imperial world (e.g., tendency to engage in apologetic discourse).
The essays included here illustrate that an examination of the topic of children and childhood demands considering a variety of types of sources, ranging from ethical exhortations (the New Testament household codes) and community instructions (the Dead Sea Scrolls), to apologetic texts (Josephus) and narrative accounts (the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), to the idealizations of the Patristic authors (Jerome) and artistic evidence (catacomb images). Each of these types of evidence has its own challenges of interpretation including sometimes overlapping genres; but all of the essays in one way or another reveal that the attempt to extrapolate historical conclusions from textual and material evidence from the ancient world is difficult and problematic on many levels. In this way the study of children and childhood has much in common with the history of women in the ancient world. We are examining constructions of childhood and representations of children as much as we are delving into historical detail.
The work of Adele Reinhartz and Kim Shier demonstrates how descriptions of childhood can be used to further the agenda of ancient authors. Literary and rhetorical purposes often dominate and social history may be accessed only indirectly. While Josephus offers few details about his own children, biblical heroes and their offspring are described as model children. There are several points in common with ancient Greek literature. For example, there are parallels between the command to honor one’s parents and Greek perceptions of filial piety. We might even detect a desire to appeal to Hellenistic and Roman audiences with concepts that resonate with the ideal of veneration of one’s ancestors. There are strong connotations of the apologetic in Josephus’ work, especially in his treatise Against Apion. The focus on family, children, and education in Against Apion very much resembles the preoccupations of some early Christian texts, especially from the late first century CE onward, with demonstrating the order and stability of church households. As Margaret MacDonald indicates, comparison to Josephus’ thought can help us to appreciate the significance of the references to the parent–child relationship and to the socialization of children in the household codes of Colossians and Ephesians. In addition, one senses in both bodies of evidence a tendency to illustrate compatibility with Greek and Roman ethics and even to suggest superiority in relation to the corruption of the outside world; the authority of fathers and obedience of children are paramount.
It should be recognized, however, that sometimes apologetic is subtle and can be communicated visually as well as textually. Comparative evidence from the Roman world leads Janet Tulloch to find in catacomb art a subtle interplay in depictions of ritual with the theme of sacrifice. Christians sought to highlight distinctions from pagans with respect to the practice of sacrifice while they were accused of participating in abominable rites involving the sacrifice of children. For example, Tulloch examines images dating from about the beginning of the third century from the catacomb of Callixtus in Rome and finds evidence of children’s participation in rituals, including the involvement of children in the blessing of foods. According to Tulloch, viewers were intended to draw conclusions about the positive participation of children in early Christian rites; offerings were depicted as Christian gifts or donations and not pagan sacrifices. The theme of children in early Christian ritual as it relates to early Christian visibility is one that is certainly worthy of further exploration.
Like Reinhartz and Shier, Tony Burke argues that it is very difficult to draw social history from the collection of early Christian texts he examines, the so-called apocryphal works. At first glance, these documents seem like a rich resource for the study of children and childhood in early Christianity for they contain many more texts that feature children than the canonical New Testament. But with a special interest in the filling in of biographical details about the life of Jesus, these documents often tell us more about what adults thought about children (including some very negative perceptions) than about the children themselves. Burke’s article, however, reveals two further challenges when interpreting some early Christian texts: (1) the difficulty of working with the manuscript tradition for the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and other childhood stories, some of which comes from little-known medieval manuscripts, and raising the need for ongoing text-critical analysis for proper evaluation of the evidence; and (2) the methodological issues and special requirements for the interpretation of narrative and folklore, such as the fact that transference may have occurred from common folkloric tales involving the childhoods of illustrious figures to the persona of Jesus. In other words, it may be very difficult to extract any reliable information from these texts about the lives of real children. Nevertheless, Burke argues that the firm dating to the second century, the state of text criticism on the text, and the amount of verisimilitude means that the Infancy Gospel of Thomas in particular is of significant utility for the study of children in early Christianity; the incidental details about the lives of children and the cultural expectations concerning education are especially noteworthy.
As difficult as the challenges related to the relationship between rhetoric and reality in the interpretation of texts, to the nature of the manuscript evidence, and to the genre of the literature itself might be, it is probably the interpretation of artistic renderings that emerges as the most complicated task of all. The monuments, statues, art, and iconography of the Roman world offer precious insight into the realities and conceptions of children and childhood, but it is often extremely difficult to determine their significance (Huskinson, 2011: 521–541). For the earliest period, we have no evidence of Christian art. Tulloch’s article illustrates that even when early Christian material evidence such as catacomb art begins to emerge in the third and fourth centuries, there are numerous challenges of interpretation related to both the early Christian material itself and to what we know about the complex functions of art in the Roman world. To date there has, in fact, been very little scholarship on the theme of children and artistic representation in early Christianity. But the value of comparison with Roman representation is illustrated clearly by Tulloch’s article. Given the abundance of evidence in the three important visual genres of Roman art (processions; sacrifice/offering; and banquets) examined by Tulloch, we are invited to think about the often overlooked young figures in early Christian art. In particular, we might probe the significance of these representations for early Christian ritual and identity. In recent years, there has been much attention given to the interaction between imperial ideology and early Christian discourse, including the relationship between imperial iconography and Pauline ideology (Lopez, 2008; Maier, 2005). In line with this scholarship, Tulloch draws our attention to the Ara Pacis (Augustus’ Altar of Peace) where children play a role in the intertwining of the religious and political functions of the imperial cult. The presence of foreign children possibly as emblems of Augustus’ global empire raises interesting questions about early Christian treatment in text and image of the children who were members of church communities, and who were by no means foreign princes, but frequently part of the conquered and enslaved people of the empire. Like the study of early Christian literary sources, the study of art and iconography is bound to reveal a complex relationship between absorption and rejection of imperial ideology in the form of visual rhetoric.
There is much in this collection that highlights interpretative challenges and the dangers of the filling in of gaps in evidence from the past; but there is also much that draws attention to the dangers in assuming the absence of children and points to the value of using the “lens” of the child to view evidence in a new way. Ongoing research on women in the Dead Sea Scrolls is shattering earlier images of the sectarian community at Qumran as primarily a male celibate community (e.g., Schuller, 1994). Cecilia Wassen reveals that the Scrolls are by no means silent with respect to the lives of children in the Second Temple period. Like Tulloch, she refers to ritual activities: the participation of women and children in the “renewal of the covenant” ceremony. But Wassen’s main theme is education (including the learning that takes place in the midst of ritual), concentrating especially on the Rule of the Congregation (1QSa) and the Damascus Document. In common with recent work on Roman families (Harlow and Laurence, 2002, 2007), she situates education within the life course. Indeed, it is the source material itself that leads her in this direction, for like marriage and mature adulthood, youth is considered a life-stage. Not only do children learn the Torah, but they must be initiated into a knowledge of sectarian literature. And, as Wassen indicates, we must not assume that these children are male; there is no reason, for example, why girls would not be included among the children receiving an education according to 1QSa. Here Wassen has her finger on an important methodological issue, for girls are arguably the most underrepresented familial group in ancient literature and, as a result, in secondary sources on the family. Yet, without explicit evidence to the contrary, we should be cautious about excluding them from our purview (Osiek and MacDonald, 2006: 93–94). Indeed, Carolyn Osiek’s article discussed further below reminds us that the education of girls was sometimes highly valued and more diverse than is often thought.
In concentrating on the methods of education revealed by the Dead Sea Scrolls, Wassen increases our understanding of the variety of cultural expectations with respect to ancient education. While education in the Torah could involve primarily memorization, it often also involved basic literacy, with writing being considered a specialized trade. According to Wassen, the focus on learning at Qumran, however, may indicate a much higher literacy rate than in other segments of the population and it is clear that scribes were part of the sectarian population. Particularly intriguing is the Qumran emphasis on communal education since the home was the traditional place for the earliest education of children among Jews of this era. Wassen’s evidence should be brought to bear on the discussion of emphasis on education in some of the household code material discussed by MacDonald. How should we interpret the call for mothers and fathers to educate their children in the Lord when the community is gathering in the familial setting of the house church? While the first Christians did not create separate schools, the house-church setting no doubt blurred the line between familial and communal education, with the members of extended households combining with members of other households to be instructed by the house owner/head of the house church. There are other interesting points of comparison. Wassen notes that in contrast to the heavy emphasis on corporal punishment in antiquity, the Damascus Document presents the Examiner as being gentle with his charges. The world view of Ephesians is increasingly compared to that of the Qumran literature, and here too we note a similar perspective: fathers are instructed not to provoke their children, but to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4).
The theme of education is one which is reflected to varying degrees in all of the essays, but is especially central to the articles by Wassen and Osiek. Both articles illustrate that a focus on children and childhood can lead us to uncover new aspects of the evidence concerning education in early Judaism and early Christianity. Moreover, as Osiek argues, to limit notions of education to formal philosophical and rhetorical training represents “an elitist and sexist bias.” Scholars have certainly recognized the significance of education for the establishment of early Christianity, but up to this point have concentrated mainly on the philosophical school as offering the model for church groups. This model does not take account of the less formal opportunities for the education of the young that were closely tied to family life in the ancient world. Such considerations become especially important for the education of women. Titus 2:3–5, where older women are instructed to teach younger women to be good wives, mothers, and household managers, offers an especially good example of how church groups may have capitalized on societal expectations concerning education and the life course; the ongoing education by older females throughout the process of a first marriage and birth of a first child was an experience that united pagan, Jewish, and early Christian women. Osiek’s article, however, presents some unusual and thought-provoking evidence, drawing connections between roles and tendencies that are often not considered together: motherhood and asceticism, as well as literary education and the formation of young women. She is mainly concerned not with the education of girls to become good mothers, but with education of girls for an ascetic life, where mothers play a crucial (though not exclusive) teaching role.
The evidence discussed by Osiek comes mainly from the 3rd to 5th centuries and concerns especially the rearing of girls to be virtuous ascetics in training. We encounter some of the same problems with interpreting these texts as with the others discussed in this volume: Do they represent male idealizations of women (in these cases, monastic women) or do they offer us a window into a fairly sophisticated pattern of female education? We sense tension, for example, in the way formation is divided along gender lines. Girls should be educated when they are young, especially by their mothers and other women, but the Patristic authors think only a man is suitable for certain educational tasks. For example, in his advice to Laeta about raising her daughter for ascetic life, Jerome (Ep. 107) advises that a young girl should have good male tutors who will teach her proper speech and not the tendency to shorten words (Osiek suggests he has in mind some type of household communication). In some respects, Jerome’s advice is predictable. Music and frivolity should be avoided – even at the wedding of slaves (an interesting allusion to family complexity; see further below). Parents are to be examples of virtue – even if their dining is not subject to the same restraint, and therefore children should not dine with their parents (Jerome seems to assume that parents have a certain weakness of the flesh!). Presumably with her nurse and parents at her side, the girl should be initiated young into the rhythm of daily prayer. But in other respects, Jerome’s comments are more surprising, revealing a conviction that the girl can gradually come to terms with the depth of the meaning of Scripture. She should memorize verses of Scripture, but also learn to read and eventually work through all of the texts, culminating in the Song of Songs, which requires the wisdom of the other texts to discern its spiritual meaning. Here Jerome’s advice with respect to progress and initiation has points in common with the Dead Sea Scrolls. But whereas the social status of the sectarians at Qumran is unclear, the women in the sources discussed by Osiek were obviously wealthy elites who could have enjoyed lives of luxury. Nevertheless, during the monasticism of this era women were still leading a counter-cultural life and bringing their daughters along with them. As Osiek points out, instead of luxury, these elite women chose lives of severe asceticism, but also a level of learning that probably no other women of their time enjoyed, with the possible exception of those rare women philosophers, like their contemporary Hypatia of Alexandria, who make fleeting appearances in the sources.
By way of a final point, it should be noted that the articles in this collection offer much food for thought concerning our dialogue with the past. On the one hand, we are reminded of common ground. When Josephus, for example, recognizes that good parents do not necessarily lead to good children, his attitude reveals an almost modern resignation to the forces over which individuals have little control. But the negative perceptions of children as discussed by Burke in relation to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas seem quite foreign from a modern perspective. As with analysis of ancient life generally, it is important to guard against anachronism in investigations of children and childhood in early Judaism and Christianity, and increasingly scholars are warning against misrepresenting and judging ancient child-rearing practices on the basis of our own customs (Golden, 2011: 266). Perhaps above all, it is important to come to terms with the shape of ancient families and households, and the presence of children within them. One of the real dangers we face is in failing to recognize the presence of children when ancient audiences would have assumed their presence. In dealing with references in our sources to parents and children and even to married couples we must constantly bear in mind that such categories overlapped with the categories of slave and master (e.g., slaves could be parents, children could be slaves, and slaves could view their alliances as marriages even if their unions had no legal validity). What this means is that family and community interactions were often much more complex than we might first imagine.
Recognition of the dangers of anachronism is an important first step in critical evaluation and ethically responsible interpretation of sources that continue to influence modern society. Our perceptions of childhood/children and especially parental authority have been fashioned by the classical past, and contemporary society continues to debate such questions as how much emphasis should be placed on the obedience of children or the best environment in which to educate a child. Moreover, the parameters have changed, but the sexual enslavement of children is very much a contemporary issue, and scholars are exploring how the legacies of ancient texts on slavery, including the New Testament household codes, continue to reverberate in the modern world (e.g., Brooten, 2010). Thus, research on children and childhood in the ancient world has an important contribution to make to this project. The essays in this volume only represent a fragment, however, of the work that needs to be accomplished on specific bodies of evidence. From a historical point of view, there are strong indications that children were more significant to the membership and growth of early Jewish and early Christian groups than has often been recognized. There are signs that analysis of ancient narratives and ancient ethical discourse will uncover problematic and disturbing conceptions of the child, especially the slave child. But as the essays in this volume illustrate, there is also the promise of discovery of the value attached to children and parenting in overlapping religious traditions.