Children in Antiquity

Came across an awesome example of social differences:

"Contrary to our ethnocentric and anachronistic projections of innocent, trusting, imaginative, and delightful children playing at the knee of a gentle Jesus, childhood in antiquity was a time of terror. The women in Luke 18:15-17 who bring their infants to Jesus are almost certainly asking him to touch them because they are sick and dying. Children were the weakest, most vulnerable members of society. Infant mortality rates sometimes reached 30 percent. Another 30 percent of live births were dead by age six, and 60 percent were gone by age sixteen. [...] Children had little status within the community or family. While a minor, a child was on par with a slave, and only after reaching maturity was he/she a free person who could inherit the family estate. The orphan was the stereotype of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. The term "child/children" could be also used as a serious insult (cf. Matt 11:16-17; Luke 7:32)." (Malina & Rohrbaugh, Soc-Sci Com on Synoptics, p.336)

Though they note that they aren't saying that children were not loved and valued. Children meant security in old age (there are some good lines from G-R material about that).

If you are like me, often numbers just brush off and you don't see the significance of what's being said. Let me try to struggle with you by making a visual...





Compare that with a 2001 stat from Statistics Canada



Consider this... out of 1000 births, 300 have died by age six. In Canada, out of 1000 live births, 5.2 die before reaching age one. If we are to arbitrarily extrapolate that, 5.2 x 6, that's roughly 30 dead by age six. Using that number, the death rate is 1/10th as it was in antiquity.

So that is a big whack. If you live on a street with, say, 15 houses, leave your house and walk down the street. The first five houses (roughly) will have lost a lad or lass. :( For every three friends that you have, one of them will have a sibling dead by age 6.