The Power of Children: The Construction of Christian Families in the Greco-Roman World

248 Pages·2013·1.041 MB·English

by  Margaret Y. MacDonald

The Power of Children
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The Power of Children
The Construction of Christian Families
in the Greco-Roman World
Margaret Y. MacDonald
Baylor University Press
© 2014 Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798-7363
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
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mission in writing of Baylor University Press.
Scripture quotations, where not an author’s own translation, are from the
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian
Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United
States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover Design: Andrew Brozyna, AJB Design, Inc.
Cover Art: Stone burial monument with relief representing Neumagen
school with teacher and pupils, about 180 / De Agostini Picture Library /
G. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library
eISBN: 978-1-4813-0225-8 (ePDF)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
MacDonald, Margaret Y.
The power of children : the construction of Christian families in the
Greco-Roman world / Margaret Y. MacDonald.
251 pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4813-0223-4 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Children —History. 2. Children—Biblical teaching. 3. Families—His-
tory. 4. Christianity and other religions—Greek. 5. Christianity and other
religions—Roman. 6. Church history—Primitive and early church, ca.
30-600. I. Title.
BR195.C46M33 2014
261.8’358509015--dc23
2014010732
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
The Codes and Children
2 Small, Silent, but Ever Present 33
Slave Children in Colossians 3:18± 4:1
3 Socialization and Education 67
The Nurture, Teaching, and Discipline of Children
in Ephesians 5:21± 6:4
4 The House Church as Home School 109
The Christian Assembly and Family in the Pastorals
5 Conclusion 149
How Remembering the Little Ones Changes Things
Notes 165
Works Cited 207
Index of Ancient Sources 221
Index of Modern Authors 230
Subject Index 234
v
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Acknowledgments
ith this book, I bring together two of my main interests
Win the study of Christian origins: early Christian fami-
lies and the disputed Pauline literature. Over the past
ten years I have been enriched by the work of scholars too numerous
to mention. Two groups gathering in conjunction with the meeting
of the Society of Biblical Literature, however, have been especially
influential: the Disputed Paulines Section and the Early Christian
Families Group.
I would like to extend special thanks to the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada for supporting my research
on children and childhood in early Christian house churches. In par-
ticular, funding from this granting agency facilitated fruitful conver-
sations with Carolyn Osiek (Emerita, Brite Divinity School), Adele
Reinhartz (University of Ottawa), and Cecilia Wassen (Uppsala
University). I have benefited enormously from their collective knowl-
edge of Roman, early Christian, and Jewish sources in interpreting
the evidence for the lives of children examined in this book. I would
also like to thank my own university, St. Mary’s University (Halifax,
Nova Scotia), for research support and my former university, St. Fran-
cis Xavier University (Nova Scotia), for offering me encouragement in
the form of the senior research award in May 2012.
The staff at Baylor University Press has provided excellent guid-
ance and support. I extend special appreciation to Carey Newman
vii
acknowledgments
viii
for his consistent engagement with the project and many helpful
suggestions.
This book is dedicated to my lifelong partner Duncan Macpher-
son, with whom I have spent many hours discussing children. He
is a wonderful husband and father to our children, Delia and Jake.
For more than thirty years, his support of my scholarship has been
unfaltering.
1
Introduction
The Codes and Children
n the middle of the first-century CE, in ancient Colossae or
ILaodicea, a group of believers in Christ is gathered in the house
of a woman named Nympha (Col 4:15). Her house is a modest
peristyled house or domus (a building with a colonnade), but the inte-
rior courtyard is large enough for an assembly of about fifty people to
gather. It is the same space where earlier in the day children had been
practicing their singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. New-
comers have listened eagerly to the rejoicing and are eager to be taught
this spiritual wisdom (Col 3:16). But now people are making an effort
to listen quietly, with a slave caregiver doing her best to settle the tod-
dlers in her charge. A letter from the Apostle Paul is being read aloud
in the midst of the assembly (Col 4:16). Slave and free children are sit-
ting side by side and are addressed directly, being told that they must
obey their parents in everything, for this is their acceptable duty in the
Lord (Col 3:20). Older slave children, already aware of the confines
of their servitude and constantly reminded of the authority of their
masters (Col 3:20-23), are nevertheless surprised to hear a comfort-
ing message: like freeborn sons and daughters, they will receive their
inheritance from the Lord (Col 3:24).
Not too far away in ancient Ephesus, a father is teaching scrip-
tural traditions (Eph 6:2-3) to his children, along with the stories he
knows about Jesus (Eph 6:4). But these children are not only those
born to his wife; they also include the slave children who live in the
house and children who are playmates from the neighborhood. Some
1