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LEO G. PERDUE, JOSEPH BLENKINSOPP, JOHN J. COLLINS, and CAROL MEYERS, Families in Ancient Israel (The Family, Religion, and Culture; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997). Pp. xv + 285. Paper $20.
This is a collection of critically informed essays meant to bring biblical perspectives to the contemporary cultural debate over "family values" in the United States. The volume includes social-historical essays on the Israelite family in the premonarchic, monarchic, and postexilic periods: Carol Meyers, "The Family in Early Israel," pp. 147; Joseph Blenkinsopp, "The Family in First Temple Israel," pp. 48-103; and John J. Collins, "Marriage, Divorce, and Family in Second Temple Judaism," pp. 104-62. They are followed by a synchronic overview by Leo G. Perdue, "The Israelite and Early Jewish Family: Summary and Conclusions," pp. 163-222; and by a final hermeneutical essay, also by Perdue, "The Household, Old Testament Theology, and Contemporary Hermeneutics," pp. 223-57.
The authors agree that the nuclear family of the modern West is not the basic social unit of biblical antiquity. Meyers describes early Israel as an agrarian village culture with the complex, multigenerational, extended "family household" as its basic unit. Corporate solidarity, not...