Undermining Ancient Patriarchy: The Apostle Paul's Vision of a Society of Siblings

Abstract

The closest family tie in the ancient Mediterranean society was experienced among siblings. Paul of Tarsus followed the historical Jesus in his attempts 1) to undermine the authority and social cohesiveness of the blood kin group and patriarchal family, 2) to offer an alternative family structure made up of surrogate “brothers and sisters, ” and 3) to make viable a first-century Mediterranean person's choosing to live in such an alternative, trust-based form of social relations by means of a profound redefining of the competitive honor code into which all males had been socialized. Paul's goal was not the creation of an egalitarian community in the political sense, but a well-functioning family in the kinship sense, a family without fathers in which the “strong” would use their strength not for themselves but to empower the “weak.”