Give Me Children or I Shall Die

Author: Laurel W. Koepf-Taylor

Brand: Fortress Press

Number Of Pages: 224

EAN: 9781451465631

Release Date: 01-11-2013

Package Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.0 x 0.5 inches

Languages: English

Binding: paperback

Details: In the subsistence agricultural social context of the Hebrew Bible, children were necessary for communal survival. In such an economy, childrens labor contributes to the familys livelihood from a young age, rather than simply preparing the child for future adult work. Ethnographic research shows that this interdependent family life contrasts significantly with that of privileged modern Westerners, for whom children are dependents. This text seeks to look beyond the dominant cultural constructions of childhood in the modern West and the moral rhetoric that accompanies them so as to uncover what biblical texts intend to communicate when they utilize children as literary tropes in their own social, cultural, and historical context.