Super fascinating stuff…I love how you went deeper with Hellerman’s writing and brought about a new way of thinking about family. Thanks so much for sharing this.
This is still quite the case in parts of the middle east, especially in less urban, more traditional areas. Nuclear family exists but the bond between siblings is an important one. It is not unusual for a more traditional woman to visit her parents and siblings a few times per week if her husband's family are not preventing her
Thanks for reading! Hellerman talked about it a little bit with Edremit of course, but I didn’t know it was still a common thing in the broader Middle East. Thanks for sharing that info. Would you say they consider siblings more important than spouses?
I really can't say with confidence. I was born and raised in a very urban, very modernized part of the country that have been influenced by Western value systems significantly. I don't think in my circles spouses were less important than siblings for emotional support. But even there, the relationship with family of origin and siblings was very strong for many families. My cousins used to gather in their parents’ house almost every Friday with their spouses up until a few years ago.
I haven't done a super deep dive yet into the Genesis 2 passage, but my current understanding is that here, Jesus is primarily bringing up Genesis to discuss the binding, lifelong nature of marriage—not to elevate it as such. He immediately goes on a few verses later to say "if you can be single, maybe you should be single".
Mark 10:29–30: Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, [30] who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life." (ESV)
Notably here, Jesus doesn't even *mention* spouses here as something worth talking about, nor are we promised spouses in the eschaton.
An idea I've heard in discussion with friends is that Genesis 2 exists to push back on the Babylonian culture that existed at the time Genesis was written, which valued marriage much less than God seems to. So, in that sense, it could be that Genesis was intended to serve as an elevation of marriage *up to* the highly valued bloodline relationships of their culture at the time. But that is, in my view, very different from the elevation that we've created today, wherein sexual romance is valued above every other form of relationship by a thousand-fold.
Super fascinating stuff…I love how you went deeper with Hellerman’s writing and brought about a new way of thinking about family. Thanks so much for sharing this.
This is still quite the case in parts of the middle east, especially in less urban, more traditional areas. Nuclear family exists but the bond between siblings is an important one. It is not unusual for a more traditional woman to visit her parents and siblings a few times per week if her husband's family are not preventing her
Thanks for reading! Hellerman talked about it a little bit with Edremit of course, but I didn’t know it was still a common thing in the broader Middle East. Thanks for sharing that info. Would you say they consider siblings more important than spouses?
I really can't say with confidence. I was born and raised in a very urban, very modernized part of the country that have been influenced by Western value systems significantly. I don't think in my circles spouses were less important than siblings for emotional support. But even there, the relationship with family of origin and siblings was very strong for many families. My cousins used to gather in their parents’ house almost every Friday with their spouses up until a few years ago.
Thanks for reading! Did anything in particular stick out to you/challenge you?
I haven't done a super deep dive yet into the Genesis 2 passage, but my current understanding is that here, Jesus is primarily bringing up Genesis to discuss the binding, lifelong nature of marriage—not to elevate it as such. He immediately goes on a few verses later to say "if you can be single, maybe you should be single".
Mark 10:29–30: Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, [30] who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life." (ESV)
Notably here, Jesus doesn't even *mention* spouses here as something worth talking about, nor are we promised spouses in the eschaton.
An idea I've heard in discussion with friends is that Genesis 2 exists to push back on the Babylonian culture that existed at the time Genesis was written, which valued marriage much less than God seems to. So, in that sense, it could be that Genesis was intended to serve as an elevation of marriage *up to* the highly valued bloodline relationships of their culture at the time. But that is, in my view, very different from the elevation that we've created today, wherein sexual romance is valued above every other form of relationship by a thousand-fold.