Families in Ancient Israel

Families in Ancient Israel
Author: Leo G. Perdue
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664255671

Four respected scholars of the Hebrew Bible and early Judaism provide a clear portrait of the family in ancient Israel. Important theological and ethical implications are made for the family today. The Family, Culture, and Religion series offers informed and responsible analyses of the state of the American family from a religious perspective and provides practical assistance for the family's revitalization.

Bible, Gender, Sexuality

Bible, Gender, Sexuality
Author: James V. Brownson
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-02-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0802868630

In Bible, Gender, Sexuality James Brownson argues that Christians should reconsider whether or not the biblical strictures against same-sex relations as defined in the ancient world should apply to contemporary, committed same-sex relationships. Presenting two sides in the debate -- "traditionalist" and "revisionist" -- Brownson carefully analyzes each of the seven main texts that appear to address intimate same-sex relations. In the process, he explores key concepts that inform our understanding of the biblical texts, including patriarchy, complementarity, purity and impurity, honor and shame. Central to his argument is the need to uncover the moral logic behind the biblical text. Written in order to serve and inform the ongoing debate in many denominations over the questions of homosexuality, Brownson's in-depth study will prove a useful resource for Christians who want to form a considered opinion on this important issue.

Covenant and Calling

Covenant and Calling
Author: Robert Song
Publisher: SCM Press
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2014-09-24
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0334051908

No other issue in recent times has proved as potentially divisive for the churches as that of same-sex relationships. At the same time as many countries have been moving towards legal recognition of civil partnerships or same-sex marriage, Christian responses have tended towards either finding alliances with proponents of conservative social mores, or providing what amounts to theological endorsement of secular liberal values.

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Perspectives on Reproductive Ethics

The Oxford Handbook of Religious Perspectives on Reproductive Ethics
Author: Davis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2023
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0190633204

"As I write this introduction, the third season of the Israeli series, Schtisel, has arrived on Netflix, eagerly awaited by viewers around the world who would never have imagined how caught up they would get by this family drama of four generations of ultra-Orthodox Jews living in Jerusalem. One episode focuses on Ruchami and Hanina, a young couple who have been married for five years, but without children. It turns out that pregnancy and childbirth would threaten Ruchami's life. She is using an IUD, but she keeps threatening to have it removed, risking her life to become a mother. Finally, with great reluctance, Hanina visits the rebbe, the spiritual authority in their community, to discuss the possibility of using a surrogate. They are, says the rebbe, caught between two "non-ideal" situations: surrogacy, normally forbidden, is non-ideal, but so is Ruchami's unhappiness and the possibility that she might go ahead and take the risk, which is also forbidden"--

African Systems of Kinship and Marriage

African Systems of Kinship and Marriage
Author: A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2015-06-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317406095

First published in 1950 and this edition in 1987, this book is one of the most wide-ranging and respected surveys on kinship and marriage in African social life. In his introduction, Radcliff-Brown provides a masterly analysis of the main features of African kinship systems and the theoretical problems arising from the study of them. The contributions range from examinations of kinship systems among the Swazi, the Tswana, the Zulu, the Nuer, and the Ashanti, to double descent among the Yakö and dual descent in the Nuba groups of the Sudan. The contributors themselves are still viewed as giants in their field: Evans-Pritchard, Meyer Fortes, Max Gluckman, Hilda Kuper, Naderl, A. I. Richards, Schapera and Monica Wilson.

Throughout Your Generations Forever

Throughout Your Generations Forever
Author: Nancy Jay
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1992-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780226395722

Why does sacrifice, more than any other major religious institution, depend on gender dichotomy? Why do so many societies oppose sacrifice to childbirth, and why are childbearing women so commonly excluded from sacrificial practices? In this feminist study of relations between sacrifice, gender, and social organization, Nancy Jay reveals sacrifice as a remedy for having been born of woman, and hence uniquely suited to establishing certain and enduring paternity. Drawing on examples of ancient and modern societies, Jay synthesizes sociology of religion, ethnography, biblical scholarship, church history, and classics to argue that sacrifice legitimates and maintains patriarchal structures that transcend men's dependence on women's reproductive powers.

Reading the Fractures of Genesis

Reading the Fractures of Genesis
Author: David McLain Carr
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664220716

Historical and Literary Approaches

The Decline of Marriage in Namibia

The Decline of Marriage in Namibia
Author: Julia Pauli
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2019-02-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839443032

In Southern Africa, marriage used to be widespread and common. However, over the past decades marriage rates have declined significantly. Julia Pauli explores the meaning of marriage when only few marry. Although marriage rates have dropped sharply, the value of weddings and marriages has not. To marry has become an indicator of upper-class status that less affluent people aspire to. Using the appropriation of marriage by a rural Namibian elite as a case study, the book tells the entwined stories of class formation and marriage decline in post-apartheid Namibia.