The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry
The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry

The House of the Mother: The Social Roles of Maternal Kin in Biblical Hebrew Narrative and Poetry

in Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library

by Cynthia R. Chapman

Pages 360
Publisher Yale University Press
Published 2017
ISBN-13 9780300197945
A novel approach to Israelite kinship, arguing that maternal kinship bonds played key social, economic, and political roles for a son who aspired to inherit his father’s household

Upending traditional scholarship on patrilineal genealogy, Cynthia Chapman draws on twenty years of research to uncover an underappreciated yet socially significant kinship unit in the Bible: “the house of the mother.” In households where a man had two or more wives, siblings born to the same mother worked to promote and protect one another’s interests. Revealing the hierarchies of the maternal houses and political divisions within the national house of Israel, this book provides us with a nuanced understanding of domestic and political life in ancient Israel.

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