The "Biblical" nuclear family is a myth

Or: (Un)Familiar structures of the Ancient Near East

I have always held friendship in higher esteem than most of my contemporaries. For better or worse, my desire for friendship and connection goes deeper than what I see in my peers. People nowadays seem far more caught up with finding a spouse or a romantic partner than they do a friend. You'll imagine my surprise, then, upon finding that this romantic obsession only came into reality during the Industrial Revolution. What many Evangelical Christians believe to be "biblical principle" is no older than George Washington:

It is this nineteenth-century reconceptualization of marriage and family—and its later reimagining in the middle of the twentieth century—which continues to form the basis of the sentimental ideal dominating the contemporary Western Christian landscape today.¹

For most of Europe's history, the domestic family contained within it husband, wife, children, yes; but also extended family, servants, orphans, apprentices, and other single adults. Furthermore, the family unit was not defined primarily by emotional bond, but by economic purpose. Households stuck together to avoid starving. This is in stark contrast to the "nuclear family" model, of husband, wife, and kids alone, held together by affection.²

If even the Renaissance family unit looked so different from ours, how much more different was the family structure of Jesus's time and culture?³ This seemingly innocuous question, I believe, has profound theological and sociological consequences for the church.

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Patrilineal Kinship

The first thing we need to talk about is an idea called the patrilineal kinship group. Since I'm an American, I'll use American cultural expectations about the family as my example. 

In the American family system, we consider "family" to be anyone within some arbitrary limit of time and extent—say, 1st or 2nd cousins, and a couple generations back/forward. 3rd cousins, while they may share some amount of my family history, aren't really close enough to function as family; from a practical perspective, they may as well be unrelated to me. The important thing to note here is that American families are built on relationship. 

Marriage plays the central, defining role in American family groups. It is traditionally exalted as the primordial/ultimate/ideal of "family" togetherness. As an American, if my siblings get married, I will consider their spouses to be part of my family.⁴ Further, (and this is because of radical American individualism) marriages are primarily about happiness for both partners, relational compatibility, good sex, etc. Neither of these ideas hold for the Ancient Near East.

In the Ancient Near East (ANE), what defined the family was not relationship but bloodline. Whoever had the blood of the oldest living patriarch was considered part of the family. In particular, the ANE had a patrilineal family model, meaning that the bloodline was only passed down through the males of the family.⁵

For example: let's say Matthew is his family's current patriarch. Let's say Matthew is married to Phoebe, and let's say they have three kids: Mark, Luke, and Johanna. (I am very imaginative with names.) Let's assume each of Mark, Luke, and Johanna are also married and have children. If we're wearing our American cultural lenses, everyone I just listed should be in Luke's family, right? We would certainly consider his wife and his children to be in his family, and we would also consider his grandkids to be part of the family.

A depiction of the four evangelists, from the Book of Kells. If you don’t see the relation to the previous paragraph then…well, I’m afraid I can’t help you.

In societies with patrilineal kinship group (PKG) structure, this is not the case. First of all, since Phoebe is not related to Matthew by bloodline, she is not part of his family! Instead, she is still considered part of her father's family; that is her bloodline. Further, because Johanna is a woman, she is unable to pass on the bloodline, so her kids are not part of Matthew's family—they are part of her husband's. This has many consequences. As social historian Joseph Hellerman writes, the purposes of marriage were, in order of importance:

(1) the promotion of the status of each family, (2) the production of legitimate offspring, and (3) appropriate preservation and transferral of property to the next generation.⁶

See what isn't on that list? There's no mention whatsoever of relational satisfaction, mutual desire, or anything else we nowadays consider integral to marriage. Any sense of relational completeness was a secondary byproduct, not a primary aspiration, of marriage. 

This patrilineal ideal meant that sons remained geographically close to their fathers—they lived patrilocally. Conversely, this ideal also meant that wives never truly became valuable to their husband's family until they bore a son. Sons were required to pass on the bloodline, after all; having male children was the only way for the patriarch to have some measure of security. This is a crucial detail to be aware of when reading the Bible:

1 Samuel 1:10–11: She (Hannah) was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. [11] And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” (ESV)

Hannah presenting Samuel to Eli, painted by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.

Genesis 29:31–30:1: When the LORD saw that Leah was hated, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. [32] And Leah conceived and bore a son, and she called his name Reuben, for she said, “Because the LORD has looked upon my affliction; for now my husband will love me.” [33] She conceived again and bore a son, and said, “Because the LORD has heard that I am hated, he has given me this son also.” And she called his name Simeon. 

[34] Again she conceived and bore a son, and said, “Now this time my husband will be attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.” Therefore his name was called Levi. [35] And she conceived again and bore a son, and said, “This time I will praise the LORD.” Therefore she called his name Judah. Then she ceased bearing. 

[1] When Rachel saw that she bore Jacob no children, she envied her sister. She said to Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!” (ESV)

This is but two of many examples of wives crying out because they have not borne their husbands sons. To us, this seems cruel, but to these women bearing a son meant securing their place in the family. Given this difference, what other variations are out there?

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Siblinghood within PKGs

Perhaps the single most shocking, striking, and other words that begin with s difference between their society and ours is the way we think about siblinghood. Let's turn again to Hellerman:

At the very heart of the PKG ideal is the sibling solidarity so characteristic of Mediterranean families. Indeed, sibling relationships reflect perhaps the most important distinction between ancient PKGs and modern Western kindred systems. And it is the PKG sibling relational model that the followers of Jesus appropriate in their image of the church as family. ...the emotional bonding we expect as a mark of a healthy husband-and-wife relationship is normally the mark of sibling relationships.⁷

Long quote, I know, so let's unpack this for a minute. First, he speaks of "sibling solidarity." What characterizes sibling solidarity in the ANE? For starters, siblings were expected to honor and protect their family (bloodline) over anyone else. Josephus tells of a dispute between Herod, his brother, and his brother's wife. Herod calls his brother out and expects his brother to support him: when his brother instead supports his wife, Herod is so shocked that he assumes he must've been "bewitched."⁸ 

This expectation of loyalty extends to relational bonds. In American society, emotional/affective needs are expected to be fulfilled within the context of a marriage. For the PKG society, it is not one's spouse who provides these, but one's siblings. This follows naturally from patrilineality—your wife is not part of your family, but your siblings are. This can be seen in many places in the Bible:

Nehemiah 4:14: And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” (ESV)

Job 1:4: His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. (ESV)

1 Samuel 20:28–29: Jonathan answered Saul, “David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Bethlehem. [29] He said, ‘Let me go, for our clan holds a sacrifice in the city, and my brother has commanded me to be there. So now, if I have found favor in your eyes, let me get away and see my brothers.’ For this reason he has not come to the king’s table.” (ESV)

Note the order in Nehemiah, listed by importance: brothers, then sons, then the rest. Hellerman talks of a modern-day society in Turkey where this sort of relationship still holds. In particular, he notes one couple who, while they've been married for years, the wife still goes back to her family nearly daily because it is her siblings, not her husband, who provide emotional intimacy. Hellerman writes, citing Lloyd and Margaret Fallers:

Indeed, wives in Edremit society have no expectations that their husbands will prove to be "a major source of companionship" in this regard. By contrast, the bride Azize's relationship with her brother is highly affective in nature. The authors contend that "frequently brother-sister relationships [have] an almost romantic quality." ... Brothers remain their sisters' primary source of "companionship, advice, help and defense."⁹

Because siblinghood was the "relational apex" of the ANE, sibling treachery was therefore the worst evil one could commit. The Bible is filled with stories of sibling treachery,¹⁰ as are the writings of Josephus and intertestamental literature like 1-4 Maccabees. Ovid, when describing the downfall of society, writes: "Men lived on what they could plunder: friend was not safe from friend, nor father-in-law from son-in-law, and even between brothers affection was rare."¹¹

All that to say, for the people of Jesus's time, it was not spouses who held the place of honor, but siblings. Or, put more polemically: there is no “nuclear family” in the Bible. It’s a myth. This should indicate just how different their society was from ours—when we read the Bible, we open a window into a different world.

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So what next?

Unsurprisingly, knowing all of this cultural background will make clear new truths found in the Bible, and call into doubt previously unshakeable beliefs of our own. What appears to us as weird, strange, and downright radical views on the natures of siblinghood and marriage were basic cultural assumptions for Jesus, Paul, and all of the first century Christians. This has profound effects on what was, and should be, the relational character of the church. But, this article has to stop somewhere, so that's where we'll pick up next time.

1. Danielle Treweek, The Meaning of Singleness, p. 30.

2. Treweek, Meaning, p. 7-12.

3. The question of why this happened is an excellent one, and one I shall return to in the future.

4. Joseph Hellerman, The Ancient Church as Family, p. 27-29.

5. Although rarer, matrilineal societies also exist—that is, societies where the bloodline is determined by the mother.

6. Hellerman, Ancient Church, p. 31.

7. Hellerman, Ancient Church, p. 36-37, emphasis mine.

8. Josephus, The Jewish War, 1.572.

9. Hellerman, Ancient Church, p. 37; internal quotations from Fallers and Fallers, "Sex Roles in Edremit".

10. Cain and Abel; Jacob and Esau; Joseph and brothers; Aaron, Moses, and Miriam, etc. And that’s just Genesis and Exodus!

11. Hellerman, Ancient Church, p. 41, citing Metamorphoses 1.127-151.