Marriage, Divorce, and Widowhood

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Hylen
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Property Ownership ◽  
Social Patterns ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Status Of Women

This chapter addresses the legal, social, and economic status of women in marriage, divorce, and widowhood. Modern readers often imagine ancient women’s lives as being tightly circumscribed by the authority of their fathers or husbands. This portrait may be applicable to women in many places or times, but it is inaccurate in many respects for the Roman world of the first and second centuries. Although Roman law assumed women’s inferiority to men, it also created legal pathways for women’s independent legal status, property ownership, and participation in civic life. Similar social patterns are reflected in the New Testament.

Women in the New Testament World

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Hylen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
The Social ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Economic Well Being

This book presents and interprets evidence for women’s lives in the social context of the New Testament. Some of the evidence from this period of Roman history suggests that women’s roles were sharply restricted. Other evidence shows women taking on leadership roles, managing property, and the like. Previous interpreters have often argued that the two kinds of evidence describe different groups or arenas where women’s activity was either forbidden or allowed. However, this book argues that the evidence points to complex gender norms that were sometimes in tension. The culture widely recognized modesty, submission to men, and silence as virtues of women. Yet society also encouraged women to contribute to the economic well-being of their families and to serve as patrons of individuals, groups, and cities. The chapters of the book address the virtues of women, their legal status, wealth, patronage, occupations, and speech. Each chapter explores the way the New Testament writings emerge out of and reflect this complex set of social expectations for women.

scholarly journals Constructing the rights and duties of slave-owners as socio-historic context of the New Testament

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Goede
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Legal Contexts

This article aims to construct the rights and duties of slave- owners in antiquity as part of the socio-historical context of the New Testament. In order to achieve this aim, the primary sources referring to Greek, Roman and Jewish law of slavery will first be described. Three aspects of the law of slavery, namely legal definitions of freedom and slavery, the legal status of slaves, and the rights of slave-owners are investigated in Greek, Roman and Jewish law. Relevant texts from these sources are then identified, analysed and interpreted. The re- sults of this process of analysis and interpretation are used to construct the legal context within which the exhortations directed at slave-owners in the New Testament should be read. We submit that Jewish law provided a sound alternative legal and religious context to the writers of the New Testament addressing Christian slave-owners. This alternative context functioned as a counterweight to the strict legal contexts pro- vided by Greek and Roman law.

Women, Children, Slaves, and the Law in the New Testament Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 504-518
Author(s):  
Susan E. Hylen
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
The Law ◽  
Self Rule ◽  
Group Law ◽  
Status Of Women

In the first and second centuries ce, the legal status of women, children, and slaves varies due to factors like location, social status, and wealth. This chapter identifies three factors that complicate the description of these groups’ status under the law: the nature of law as both written law and custom; the breadth of the Roman empire and the practice of self-rule in the provinces; and tensions within the existing historical evidence. It goes on to describe central laws and customs pertaining to marriage and divorce, adoption and care of children, and slave ownership and manumission. Although scholars often contrast Christian practice with Roman or Jewish law regarding women, children, and slaves, the chapter argues that the groups had a good deal in common. Within each group, law and custom are not always in agreement, but they make possible a range of legal actions.

Interpreting Evidence for Women’s Lives

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan E. Hylen
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Women's Leadership ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Discrete Groups ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Women's Lives ◽  
Civic Leadership

Chapter 2 addresses major choices historians face interpreting evidence for women’s lives in the New Testament period. The evidence often sends mixed signals. Some portrays women as active contributors to the economy, civic life, and politics. Other evidence suggests social expectations greatly restricted women’s participation in such activities. The chapter reviews a number of interpretations that divided this evidence into discrete groups of women guided by different rules. For example, many have suggested that women’s leadership was restricted in public spaces. This chapter rejects such interpretations and argues that the various evidence reflects a deep tension that pervaded the culture at large. The tension existed within individual authors and across spaces and subcultures. Women were expected to exhibit the virtues of modesty, industry, and loyalty. However, women from a variety of circumstances negotiated and embodied these virtues in a variety of culturally acceptable ways, including religious and civic leadership.

“The Old Settlers Have Bred a Great Quantity of Slaves”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Paugh
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Legal Case ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Status Of Women

The prospect of legalizing Afro-Caribbean marriage in order to promote fertility raised troubling issues for abolitionist reformers. The previously obscure legal case of Mary Hylas illustrates the legal quagmire created by the uncertain legal status of women who were both married and enslaved. Mary was an enslaved Afro-Barbadian woman who traveled to England with her mistress; while there, she married an Afro-Caribbean man. After her return to Barbados, Mary’s husband sued for her return on the basis that, as her husband, he had greater claim to her person than her master. This case, and the closely related Somerset case, resulted in a legal fracas in which abolitionist and pro-planter lawyers each struggled to define the relationship between marriage and slavery. Mary’s story thus allows us to think more deeply about the world of problems that British reformers faced as they contemplated promoting fertility among the enslaved by encouraging Christian marriage.

Man and Wife

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilkie Collins
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Wilkie Collins ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Country House ◽  
Radical Critique ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Marriage Laws ◽  
Woman In White ◽  
The Moonstone ◽  
Status Of Women

This time the fiction is founded upon facts' stated Wilkie Collins in his Preface to Man and Wife (1870). Many Victorian writers responded to contemporary debates on the rights and the legal status of women, and here Collins questions the deeply inequitable marriage laws of his day. Man and Wife examines the plight of a woman who, promised marriage by one man, comes to believe that she may inadvertently have gone through a form of marriage with his friend, as recognized by the archaic laws of Scotland and Ireland. From this starting-point Collins develops a radical critique of the values and conventions of Victorian society. Collins had already developed a reputation as the master of the 'sensation novel', and Man and Wife is as fast moving and unpredictable as The Moonstone and The Woman in White. During the novel the atmosphere grows increasingly sinister as the setting moves from a country house to a London suburb and a world of confinement, plotting, and murder.

Women in the Roman World

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Letizia Caldelli
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Roman Women ◽  
Women's Role ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
Women’S Views

Inscriptions help us reconstruct some elements of the lived experience of women in the Roman world. This chapter analyzes the epigraphic evidence for women’s role in economic, cultural, religious, and civic life, acknowledging the inevitable biases inherent in such texts. We do not usually have access to women’s views of themselves or of each other, since men were responsible for the majority of the relevant inscriptions. Nevertheless, we can study how men looked upon women, how they reacted to them, and what their expectations of Roman women were .

Reading the New Testament Household Codes in Light of New Research on Children and Childhood in the Roman World

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 376-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Y. MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Life Course ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Roman World ◽  
House Churches ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Children And Childhood ◽  
Parent Relationship ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Life Course

The references to children and the child–parent relationship in the New Testament household codes (Col 3:20–21; Eph 6:1–4) have received little attention from scholars. Yet recent, cross-disciplinary interest in the study of children and childhood invites us to consider these exhortations afresh. In particular, current research in Roman Family Studies has led to greater appreciation of the multifaceted circumstances of children, raising new questions about the children who were addressed directly in the household codes of Colossians and Ephesians. Two themes are especially important to consider: (1) overlapping categories of identity tied especially to the complex structures of a slave-holding society; and (2) the household as a locus for education throughout the life course. Informed by current research on children and childhood, the household codes appear to be even more significant than was previously thought for understanding the place of house churches in the Roman imperial world. Les références aux enfants et la relation parent-enfant dans les codes domestiques du Nouveau Testament (Col 3.20–21; Ép 6.1–4) ont reçu peu d’attention des chercheurs. Pourtant, récemment, l’intérêt interdisciplinaire dans l’étude des enfants et de l’enfance nous invite à reconsidérer ces exhortations. En particulier, la recherche actuelle en études familiales romaines a conduit à une plus grande appréciation de la situation des enfants à multiples facettes, ce qui soulève de nouvelles questions sur les enfants qui ont été adressées directement dans les codes domestiques de Colossiens et Ephésiens. Deux thèmes sont particulièrement importants à considérer: (1) catégories qui se recoupent d’identité liée en particulier aux structures complexes d’une société esclavagiste, et (2) la maison comme un lieu d’éducation tout au long du cycle de la vie. Informé par la recherche actuelle sur les enfants et l’enfance, les codes domestiques semblent être encore plus importants qu’on ne le pensait pour comprendre la place des églises de maison dans le monde romain impérial.

Features of the legal status of subjects of Civil Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-188
Author(s):  
Iryna I. Banasevych ◽  
Ruslana M. Heints ◽  
Mariia V. Lohvinova ◽  
Oksana S. Oliinyk
Keyword(s):  
Legal Status ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Law ◽  
Historical Method ◽  
Legal Method ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Legal Entities

Theoretical and applied research of the features of the legal status of the subjects of civil law remains debatable today. Doctrinal and legislative analysis of this subject points to unresolved issues in this area. In particular, the provision on defining the state as a party to civil law remains controversial. There is no consensus on the definition of individuals and legal entities as subjects of civil law among scholars. Furthermore, the legal regulation of certain types of entities is somewhat unsystematic and chaotic. This is largely due to the insufficient development of theoretical issues related to the subjects of civil law. The above issues determine the relevance of the study of the features of the legal status of subjects of civil law. The purpose of the study is to investigate the features of the legal status of subjects of civil law based on doctrinal and legislative analysis. The study is based on a systematic approach, which lies in studying a complex system of relationships between subjects of civil law. Furthermore, the study is based on the laws and principles of dialectics, which contribute to the study of the legal status of the subjects of civil law. Systemic and structural-functional analysis was used to comprehensively describe the legal status of subjects of civil law. The historical method contributed to the study of the evolution of research on the subjects of civil law. The formal legal method helped identify the special features of the provisions of regulations concerning the subjects of civil law. With the help of the comparative legal method, the study analysed the provisions of the Civil Code of Ukraine in terms of regulation of subjects of civil law and such regulation was compared with other countries. The study defined the concepts and types of subjects of civil law and considered the features of the legal status of individuals, legal entities, as well as the state as a special participant of civil law. Special attention was paid to the historical analysis of the development of approaches to the definition of subjects of law, starting with Roman law

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