gentleexit

Church canons are telling about the group's concerns. Take the Canons of the Council of Elvira (I think the first council with canons). Of the first twenty one, I count eight about marriage.

They can be very precise ...

but lax. Being a one man woman is somewhat optional ...

I can't see "Focus on the Family" saying "only broke the laws of marriage".

mountainman

Dear gentleexit,

Christian church canons are fourth century inventions. The civil and family laws of the Roman empire until that time were essentially carried over from the greek expression of them, one of which still extant are the Great Law Codes of Gortys.



Best wishes,


Pete

figuer

Pre-Christian Roman society made quite an issue about "family-values", so it would have nothing to do with Jewish influence.

figuer

Are you claiming that Roman family law derived from the Greek? That seems strange...

mountainman

Dear figuer,

The Gortys Law Codes are a fairly recent discovery. As far as I am aware, the greek law system identified at Gortys, predated the Roman empire, and thus may well have been "Romanised", but not discarded. The concept of the Graeco-Roman civilisation suggests a basis in many things Greek. The history of Gortys is relevant to the Romanisation process, in that they spared the destruction of Gortys, and allowed it to continue to operate under its traditional greek customs.

I do not know of comparable finds for "Roman Law" in antiquity, which are this extensive. Do you? I think there are a list of Roman laws extant, but nowhere near as substantial and diverse as the extant greek codes. What can you tell me? The Romans had unique military codes. These military codes were essential in their miliary supremacy for hundreds of years. But what did the ROmans really add of value? Did they have unique law codes over and above the greeks? What were they?

As an afterthought, whatever "law" was intended to be addressed within the binding of the new testament, it appears that its authors intended that this was to be addressed to a greek audience, not a Roman audience for example.


Best wishes,


Pete

Ben C Smith

This is correct. Augustus made family values a central issue in the empire (patria postestas and mores maiorum). No Jewish influence necessarily required.

It was, IMO, at least partly in reaction to the Augustan family platform that Christianity developed its antifamily stance early on; the Roman system depended on the pater familias keeping his family completely in line, and earliest Christianity was very much into setting Jesus over and against the Roman system. Think of the Jesus sayings in the gospels. Disciples comprise the mother and siblings of Jesus (Mark 3.34-35), but what about the father? Ah, the father is God himself. No pater familias stands between anyone and the father.

That Christianity eventually took these Greco-Roman family values on board is not surprising; the social pressures in this direction would have been formidable. Contrast the usually accepted genuine Pauline epistles (especially 1 Corinthians 7 and Galatians 3.28) with the spurious Pauline epistles and their Haustafel passages.

Ben.

figuer

The Latins fancied Greek culture, that is well known, but their society and its legal/political structure was an independent although related development. I don't see any reason to consider that the Roman concept of family was influenced by the Greek. Family structure, while variable, responds to general archetypes.Nothing unusual about that. The Romans did not destroy Greece. Thus nothing relevant at all.The Roman Republic had a system of law that preceded Greek influence. Such conceptions about the Romans are trite, old and baseless. But most importantly, what has family values to do with the law itself? It is an entirely different concept.

That is irrelevant.

Is your new obsession making the Gorty Laws into the fountainhead of Roman Civilization? Changing the broken record now that you must have realized your complete failure in convincing anyone that Christianity was a Constantinean invention?

Huon

The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary
Against Helvidius. This tract of saint Jerome appeared about 383.

22. And now that I am about to institute a comparison between virginity and marriage, I beseech my readers not to suppose that in praising virginity I have in the least disparaged marriage, and separated the saints of the Old Testament from those of the New, that is to say, those who had wives and those who altogether refrained from the embraces of women: I rather think that in accordance with the difference in time and circumstance one rule applied to the former, another to us upon whom the ends of the world have come. So long as that law remained, (Genesis 1:28) Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth; and Cursed is the barren woman that bears not seed in Israel, they all married and were given in marriage, left father and mother, and became one flesh. But once in tones of thunder the words were heard, 1 (Corinthians 7:29) The time is shortened, that henceforth those that have wives may be as though they had none: cleaving to the Lord, we are made one spirit with Him. And why? Because He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife. And there is a difference also between the wife and the virgin. She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. Why do you cavil? Why do you resist? The vessel of election says this; he tells us that there is a difference between the wife and the virgin. Observe what the happiness of that state must be in which even the distinction of sex is lost. The virgin is no longer called a woman. (1 Corinthians 7:34) She that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. A virgin is defined as she that is holy in body and in spirit, for it is no good to have virgin flesh if a woman be married in mind.

Source :
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3007.htm

The women who are on FRDB will appreciate the delicate feelings of Jerome about women...

vid

Thanks to all, so far. Jerome was on my to-read list about this topic for some time

Ben C Smith: Do you know some online source which discusses Augustus family law more in detail?

Toto: Cited "Council of Elvira" seems to contradict Joseph Martos' "Doors to the Sacred, A Historical Introduction to Sacraments in the Catholic Church" (unfortunatelly I can't order books to check myself ). Would you say this Council of Elvira was more an exception or a norm?

I think one part of today's "family values" which AFAIK wasn't present either in Jewish, Roman or Greek law was that married men are only allowed to have sex with their fiance - no prostitutes allowed. When do we trace this influence on christianity? I remember reading that Moslim laws already contained this restriction in ~7th century, but I doubt they could be influence on christians.

Ben C Smith

Try Richard Saller from the University of Chicago, Family Values in Ancient Rome:

After Caesar's successor, Augustus, won the civil war in 31 BCE and established his autocratic rule over the empire, he sought to establish his political legitimacy by reversing the moral decline of the past century. To do so, he passed a body of moral reforms, most of which were directed at the restoration of family values. In particular, Augustus made adultery a public crime and tried to force Romans to marry and to have a certain number of children, by establishing financial penalties for failure to do so. Augustus apparently didn't believe in the dictum that "you can't legislate morality." According to Tacitus, these laws didn't have the intended improving effect, and they certainly aroused the resentment of upper-class Romans at the intrusion into their private lives.

But, if you can get your hands on J. D. Crossan and J. L. Reed, In Search of Paul, you will find a great deal more detail than an online article can give. (Crossan and Reed give epigraphic, archaeological, and other lines of evidence for the family reforms attempted by Augustus.)

Ben.

ETA: Also available online (as a limited preview book from Google Books) is Kinship and Gender by Linda Stone. (This link will take you directly to a relevant passage.)