One thing that strikes me in the monarchy narratives is that whenever they introduce a new king, they almost always say who his mama was.
I find this especially interesting because I've heard, read and passed on the "insight" that the geneology at the beginning of Matthew is extraordinary because it contains women: Tamar, Ruth, the wife of Uriah, etc. But apparently this is not extraordinary at all. Hmmmm.
3 comments:
Yes, I noticed this about naming the mothers of the kings. I guess it's evidence of the Israelites being a matrilineal society, at least in part! That's pretty exciting to me.
isn't it so that jews get their religion from their mother even today? In Finland it's so when a baby is born the child automatically follows the mother's religion unless she signs a waiver.
what struck me at some point is how when you trace Jesus' lineage you come back to Ruth. And Ruth was not a Jew. I found that interesting :)
glad the reading is going along well (for some) keep up the good work!
In Jewish law, Judaism passes to a child via the mother for this reason: after the Diaspora, the question "Who is a Jew" was a very real one. Intermarriage was happening; not all Jews were in Israel; they didn't share the same language, etc etc..so how to define who was and who was not? The rabbis decided that although the identity of the father could be in doubt, the identity of the mother never was -- so the lineage passed through the mother.
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