Growing Up in Ancient Israel: Children in Material Culture and Biblical Texts

Archaeology and Biblical Studies #23

by Kristine Henriksen Garroway

Growing Up in Ancient Israel uses a child-centered methodology to investigate the world of children in ancient Israel. Where sources from ancient Israel are lacking, the book turns to cross-cultural materials from the ancient Near East as well as archaeological, anthropological, and ethnographic sources. Acknowledging that childhood is both biologically determined and culturally constructed, the book explores conception, birth, infancy, dangers in childhood, the growing child, dress, play, and death. To bridge the gap between the ancient world and today's world, Kristine Henriksen Garroway introduces examples from contemporary society to illustrate how the Hebrew Bible compares with a Western understanding of children and childhood.

Genres: Biblical Studies

348 pages, Hardcover

Published November 16, 2018

Reviews

[samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction
• “Where are the children?” previously, children were included as part of discussions about families, households, and women. This picture is slowly changing with published studies increasingly focused on children. such works challenge the long-held assumption that exploring the lives of children is fruitless because there are very few texts about them and even less material culture indicating the presence of children
o yet children are present in texts and material culture.
• Childist Interpretation
o Formative: Ariès’s theory of childhood as a particular period in a child’s life
o as well as Turner’s study of liminality
o Were children treated as Aries though, as miniature adults, or as children, in the modern sense of the term?
o At its core, childist theory addresses issues raised by its elder hermeneutic: feminist theory. like feminist theory, it seeks to assign a voice to the silent other. Children here are a muted group
• Who Are Children?
o She’s taking for granted a “Ten stage” biological life cycle
 1. Prenatal
 2. Birth
 3. Neonatal
 4. childhood, is unique to humans. 3-6.9 years.
 5. juvenile
 6. Puberty
 7. adolescence
 8. Social and sexual maturation?
 9. adulthood
 10. old age
o However, we should not assume that all past societies adhered to these seemingly natural biological categories
o Ancient near eastern societies were more reliant upon social ages and stages, rather than chronological ones. both textual and archaeological sources favor social ages as opposed to chronological ages.
o if social ages are referred to in textual, archaeological, or ethnographic literature, then these terms will be used. however, often, the simple terms infant/ baby and child will be employed. An infant is one who is still nursing. A child is one who, if left on his own, could not survive; while weaned, a child is still dependent upon an adult. The terms younger and older child are used to refer to an individual at either end of the child spectrum. Finally, the generic term child(ren) will be used as an umbrella term for both infants and children.
• Finding a child in ancient society can be done only if one first knows the adult world
• the household structure of ancient Israel, the בת־אב (bēt-‘āb). literally meaning “house of the father,” this term is used in the hebrew bible to refer to the extended family or a family compound.
• As Meyers writes, “incidental or background information in the hebrew bible is useful, no matter what the date of the text in which it appears, because the economic basis of israelite society remained relatively constant over the many centuries of israelite existence.”
1.What to Expect when you’re (not) expecting
• while there was not a specific word for sex, there were plenty of euphemisms for it: knew, went in, took, lay.
o was the work of penetration AND of god
o abundance of stories of god “opening a woman’s womb”
o As the opener and closer of the womb, God was the one who initiated pregnancy.
• Barrenness and Infertility
o The barren woman/matriarch motif: sarah (Gen 18:9–15), rebekah (Gen 25:19–25), rachel (Gen 30:1), hannah (1 sam 1), and the wife of Manoah (Judg 13)
o Likeness to a disability or a curse; “socially disabled” but is that all of it?
o where the hebrew bible is relatively silent on the issue of male infertility (all but Shunamite husband are victims [1 kngs 4:8-17), ancient near eastern texts can provide some insights.
o Means of curing infertility
 prayer
 magicoreligious practices (Rachel turning to love apple) (aNE has lots of examples of this: vaginal suppository/pessary—sometimes animals; fumigation of the vagina; keeping a special stone, hollow with a pebble inside—sympathetic magic here)
o Unsuccessful Pregnancy: Contraception, BC, and Miscarriage
 contraception includes abstinence, coitus interruptus, anal? (Rebekeh being בתולה , vaginally intact and a virgin, implies that it was possible to be not intact and a virgin..); active breastfeeding (lactational amenorrhea); spontaneous miscarraiges: biblical texts describe a miscarriage as a נפל (nēpel) one who is[has] fallen (out).
• miscarriages handled with money compensation, not lex talionis: fetuses are not humans.
 intentional miscarraiges: The ritual of the sotah, found in num 5:11–31, prescribes what to do when a husband suspects his wife of adultery. she is taken to the priest, administered an oath and made to undergo a potion drinking ritual.43 The biblical ritual consists of drinking a mixture of tabernacle dirt and holy water
• The priest calls this mixture the “the waters of bitterness that induce the spell/ curse” (מי המרים המאררים; num 5:24). The outcome is this: if the woman is innocent, she shall remain fertile and able to become pregnant. if she is guilty, then the spell water will make her “belly distend and her thigh sag” (num 5:27). This curse has been interpreted to mean a few different things.
• elsewhere in aNe caused by sorcery, too…
o Successful pregnancy
 Bible silent on length, terms. but ane texts tell us pregnancy lasted nine to ten months, with late delivery
 Thus, the stages of a pregnancy are conception (via the divine hand), birth, and the postpartum period of impurity.
• early pregnancy (first trimester), fetus is susceptible to sorcery and disease.
• later trimesters and also at birth, fetus/baby is prone to attacks from demoness Lamaštu.
• yet pregnancy was not kept secret; contrary, it was celebrated
o Announcing the news
 We have no record of birth announcements sent by parents, though we do have annunciations with formulaic nature.
 Texts outside biblical corpus suggest that couples were eager to find out if they were having boy or girl.
• Egyptian medical papyri prescribe urine tests. A pregnant woman was to urinate on wheat and barley seed- lings. if both sprouted, she would bear a child. if the wheat alone sprouted, she would have a boy, but if the barley sprouted, she would deliver a girl. If neither sprouted, she would not have a child
• Mesopotamia has rite of throwing oil in water and reading its threads and webs.
• Desire for a boy and celebration of boy’s birth comes through clearly in ethnographic literature.
2 How to Birth a Baby
• Preparing for Birth
o ancient women did not have the opportunity to choose things such as who would attend the birth, whether the birth would be natural, what music should be playing, and so on.4 instead, as the myth suggests, the birth process was ritualized.
o Men were not a part of the birthing ritual and were not even allowed in the birth chamber.5 instead, a midwife or a helper attended the mother in the birthing room. The Mesopotamian texts refer to these women as šabsūtu and/or qadištu (a priestess or holy woman).
o Words and ritual objects create a safe space.
 Birthing bricks אבנים squatting on bricks
 Stools (not recovered but depicted on plaques
• Labor
o Closest thing in Bible to birth-room scene is 1 Sam 4:19-22, high priest Eli’s daughter in law, wife of Pinchas, about to give birth. She hears that ark has been captured by Philistines and her husband is dead. She immediately gives birth; she “crouched [squatted] and she gave birth for her labor pains [travail] turned upon her” (1 sam 4:19). The following verse says that her attending women (lit., the ones standing [with her]) encouraged her, from which we can infer that multiple women assisted in the birth.
o Poetic literature does make use of birthing imagery though
 describe a person becoming weak before the enemy as being like a woman seized by labor pangs and writhing in childbirth. The word חזק (ḥāzaq; “seized”) plays nicely with the war imagery and implies not only that the writhing is out of the woman’s control, but also that she experiences a sense of terror
o Must deal with Gen 3:16
 Meyers persuasively argues that this text neither depicts the fallen state of women, nor the afflictions by which God cursed woman. rather, a close reading of the text describes the stark reality facing women in iron Age israel (ca. 1200–1000 bce). Meyers translates, “i will make great your toil [ʿiṣṣabon] and many your pregnancies [heron]; with hardship [ʿeṣeb] shall you have children,” so that post-eden women “will work hard and also have many pregnancies.”21 Meyers points out that the noun עצב (ʿeṣeb) can mean both physical and mental anguish and uses the word “hardship” to try to capture both meanings. As she points out, parenting is both physically and mentally taxing. Thus, while women experience pain in labor and delivery, the pain did not increase due to eve’s actions.
o Mesopotamian texts
 Liken birth to soldiers in pain
 Provide practical measures taken to help laboring woman
• Incantations, salves, prayers
• In extreme cases, a male! Exorcist was summoned into birth room to expel the demonic force causing the complications.
• Baby is born!
o Ezek 16:4: As for your birth, on the day you were born, your cord was not cut, you were not washed with water to clean you, nor rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in wrapping (swaddled).” The care withheld from the infant Jerusalem provides a glimpse at the care that was normally given to a newborn.
o Cutting cord
 In Egypt, birth wands might have been used to cut it.
 Mesopotamia attests special knife, or with part of a REED!!!
 cutting and tying the umbilical cord is a momentous moment: the baby becomes a totally separate life. Recitation of protective incantations done during the cutting. Child’s fate determined when the umbilical cord was severed
 once the umbilical cord dries up and falls off, parents buried it in a place connected to the child’s future. A boy’s cord might be buried near a school to ensure he grows up studious. by the same token, a girl’s might be buried in the house so that she would grow up to enjoy her household duties. not only are the children’s fates tied up in the cord, but so too are their genders.
o Cleaning the newborn
 Water pail brought in; child rubbed with oils, fingers inserted into child’s mouth to remove amniotic fluid. In bible, child is rubbed with salt and not oil (was whole child rubbed, or just parts? Child is turned upside down to clear lungs, to ensure the scream
o Swaddling
 Ezek 16: done with a long piece of cloth.
 Cylinder seals and reliefs show wrappings as long pieces of cloth looped over a hook
• Swaddling clothes were old rags
o Legal symbolism of birth!
• Twins in HB (boys) not necessarily fortuitous but also not freaks
Ch 3 The Newborn: Postpartum Rituals and Practices
• Naming Baby
o names recorded a parent’s thoughts about the baby, as well as the child’s legal and social status. hence, there was a lot in the name. however, the naming process was not a uniform one; the time when a baby was named, as well as who named her, varied.
o 2/3 of birth narratives in HB record women naming children.
o Non family members could also name.
o Most biblical and ancient near eastern names express some sentiment, such as the feeling of the parents upon the birth of the child.
o names also include God’s name and reiterate that God is the opener of the womb
o in addition to the biblical naming formula given above, we also find another naming formula in the ancient near eastern record. Mesopotamian sale documents and personal seals record a per- son’s name as: pn (personal name) son/daughter of pn.9 linking a baby to his or her father/mother is a way to link generations together; knowing and pronouncing a person’s name was of great importance as it was the way a person lived on after death.
o Biblical text tells us name was received at birth (no consensus scholarly)
 Slave children perhaps not named for 2-3 years, until weaning.
 For the slave child, this meant his or her own separate identity apart from the mother. Until the child had a name, the mother and child would have been considered one unit or one item, and any sale would have included them both.
• Gender(ing) and Impurity
o The hebrew bible also acknowledges a postpartum period during which the woman and child are separated from the larger community. The duration of the postpartum status is affected by the sex of the child. The purity laws in lev 12 state that a woman giving birth has two stages of impurity, and the duration of each stage is directly related to the sex of the infant. The first stage of impurity puts the woman in the status of one who is niddah, experiencing her menses. it lasts seven days if she bears a boy; however, if she gives birth to a girl, stage one lasts fourteen days. The second stage of impurity is longer. if she bears a male child, her period of postpartum impurity is thirty-three days; if a female child, the woman is impure for sixty-six days (lev 12:1–5). After this time, the mother shall provide the proper sacrifices to the priest, and she shall be made clean (lev 12:6–8).
o A woman remains impure, and thus secluded for over two months after birthing a girl, but only about a month for bearing a son. From a purely physical standpoint, the period of a woman’s lochia has nothing to do with the sex of the child; israelite women did not automatically stop experiencing lochia on day thirty-three or sixty-six, respectively.17 A woman still might have experi- enced some discharge after thirty-three days if she bore a son. we might wonder then why the law does not simply say “the woman shall remain impure for the entire time of her lochia,” but rather makes a distinction based on the sex of the child
 Did girl babies need the extra time bc mothers would be less eager to bond with them, bc they were girls?
o 8th day circumcision
o The gendering process is a long one and begins at birth. Unlike today, where we make a distinction between sex and gender, the hebrew bible understands these two as one and the same. Thus, a child with a penis is a boy and will grow up to be gendered as an israelite man; a child with a vagina, likewise, is a girl who will grow up to be an israelite woman. indeed, even the words used for female and male babies at the time of birth suggest that a baby’s sole gender marker is his or her genitalia. leviti- cus 12:5 calls a female baby נקבה (nәqēbāh) a noun from the verb mean- ( בן ing “to bore [a hole].” A male baby is not called ben but a (zakar), clearly related to notion of masculinity. The Akkadian and Arabic cognates suggest zakar means testicles or the “male organ,” again identifying the baby’s gender first by means of his genitalia.
o Gifts according to gender (in Hittite rituals and Sumerian tales at least)
• Transporting and Feeding the Baby
o Nursing depicted in clay figurines—popular images!
o Transporting done via carriers, visuaolly attested. As textile wraps.
o Nursing/suckling and carrying are described hand in hand: they were baby wearers!
o not being able to latch properly or draw enough milk from the breast was a lethal prospect.
o Weaning done variously. Later than today. Celebrations done (at least for male babies weaning: Isaac)
 Was weaning gender-specific?
o wet-nurse contracts also attest to another reality, the fact that not all babies were nursed by their mothers. Mother unable to, or, mother died, or, mother has particular social status.
• Alternative to nursing
o it seems that at times babies, or perhaps even young children, were fed with the ancient equivalent of a sippy cup. Juglets. Colorful, with spout. none of the excavation reports include detailed information as to what remains were found in the juglets. one might hypothesize goat’s milk or water would have filled the bottles, or even breastmilk.
• Comforting and Quieting the Baby
o Mesopotamian lullabies that are both harmonious and instructive
 A lullaby written to quiet a sumerian princess starts with the sounds: u5.a, u5.a, or “ooa, ooa.”
o Rattles! Many extant. Barrel shaped or anthropomorphic
 in part because of their size and weight and the fact they were made out of ceramic materials, scholars have dismissed the rattle as a child’s toy.
 They were found in tombs and cultic settings, in deliberate fill (why not bury a man with an infants toy tho?) and also occupational areas.
4. Inside Out: How to ward Off Evil from Belly through Birth
• Warding off dangers during pregnancy
o there are no biblical texts that reference yhwh protecting the fetus from harm it might endure in the face of nefarious demons.2 nevertheless, as the adage goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
o Pazuzu was known to attack fetus.
 Women wore necklaces with his image as means of sympathetic magic to ward off his attacks.
o Protective talismans used for high risk births (twin talisman)
• Warding off dangers during childbirth
o Egyptian birthing kit contains bricks, wands, rods. Stands
 Wands also found in burial contexts. Made from tusks and husks
o Figures of Bes, a minor Egyptian deity. Well known throughout Levant though. Continued to be popular through Greco-Roman period. By Yahwists.
• Postpartum Dangers
o Miscarriages (nepel; something that has fallen [out])
o in Mesopotamian art, however, we find a demon associated with the netherworld called the kūbu (fig. 4.8). while the word kūbu does not mean “stillborn” per se, depending on the context, it can be translated as such. Associated with the earth and the netherworld, these pitiful beings are both harmful and helpful to the living. one can suffer from the “hand of the kūbu,” but also reap the benefits of a peaceful harvest given by them.
 Emaciated, shrunken looking figures, like the fetus in the womb in advanced stage of development. Fetal position
 Cincinnati Kubu figure is a form that no parent would wish a child to have. **??I’d love more.
• Protecting newborns
o SIDS: deaths at night, midnight and 9am. Babies under 1 but esp 2-4months vulnerable. Risk factors exceptionally common in ane.
o For those in the ancient world, infant and childhood death in the night was thought to be caused by a demon or a demoness. nighttime jinn came to attack not just young children, but anyone who was weak and vulnerable
o Apotropes to guard house include rituals, positive charms.
 wedjat eye in Israel in Iron Age!
o Guard dogs (clay figurines) common too!
o Light in rooms at night (lamps could be moved and sleep was vulnerable time!)
o Lamaštu
 Quiet at night kept the demons away and kept house-hold ancestors (or gods) happy and protecting the house.
 Infant cries did two things 1. Drew attention of demoness Lamastu (like Lillith, daughter of Anu and Antu, kicked out of heaven and roams with mortals and sneaks into open windows or doors to suckle children with her own poisonous milk)
 She is the reason babies died in th

[Luke Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Garroway uses biblical texts, archaeological and iconographic evidence from the ancient Near East, and ethnographic findings to paint a plausible picture of what life would have been like for children in ancient Israel. Topics covered include pregnancy, birth, rituals surrounding birth and infancy, enculturation of children, playtime, and much more.

I had a few gripes with this book. First of all, due to a lack of evidence from the area of ancient Israel and/or from the biblical text, Garroway is forced to frequently make statements like “even though we have no evidence for this in ancient Israel, we can assume that such and such thing was also practiced there.” While conclusions like these are legitimate—and in some cases, they are probably correct—I think Garroway makes too many of these types of statements in the book. Garroway’s work is also heavily informed by ethnographic research done among 19th- and 20th-century Palestinian and Iranian populations, which I believe can be helpful, but only if it is used carefully and sparingly. Lastly, there were a number of typos/writing mistakes that sometimes distracted from Garroway’s work.

That being said, though, I learned so much from this book, and I loved reading it as a brand new dad. The similarities between the ancient world and today are fascinating, and the differences are quite interesting as well. Garroway’s child-centered approach to the Hebrew Bible and to material culture is much needed in an area of study that focuses almost exclusively on the lives of adults.