Posted by:
Tevai
(
)
Date: January 15, 2018 01:52PM
MarkJ Wrote:
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> The survival of Babatha's records were a one in
> hundred million type event. Even if thousands of
> these records were still extant today, the chance
> that one of them would be Mary's and Joseph's
> would still be small.
Were the historical situation in a different place, with different people (who had different religious laws), and (perhaps) at a different time in history, I would agree that the chances of discovering the ketubah ("Jewish marriage contract") of Mary and Joseph would be as you say here: "small."
However, in THAT place, and with THAT people (specifically: Jews), and at THAT time---of intense inter-Jewish upheaval (Jews were changing Jewish religion and social culture at an intensely rapid rate, while simultaneously, as a "macro" group, engaged in intense Jewish rebellion against the Romans)---the mathematical odds shift dramatically.
> The Gospel of Mark is generally considered to be
> the oldest of the gospels and it has neither birth
> nor resurrection narratives.
Neither of which have anything to do with Jewish documents or Jewish law, which is what we are talking about in this thread.
> That suggests to me
> that the exceptional nature of Jesus was not known
> at his birth...
Again, this has nothing to do with Jewish documents or Jewish law.
> ...and that his parents had no reason to
> take exceptional steps to document their
> relationship and family status.
This is the fundamental point that you, as a non-Jew, do not understand. A ketubah ("Jewish marriage contract") is not an "exceptional step" or an "exceptional document"...it "IS" the marriage...to the point that, without it, the "marriage" (for all practical purposes) does not exist. [The practical Jewish logic behind this is that it doesn't matter for Jewish men because, under Jewish law, they can be polygamous...but for women, the marriage IS the ketubah. Without that ketubah, and going strictly according to Jewish law, marriage for a woman does not exist. This has been modified in more modern times, especially since the introduction of secular marriage laws which involve their own documentation, and most especially since the Holocaust (where virtually all of the ketubot of Jews caught up in the Holocaust were either lost or destroyed), but in the first century of the Common Era, a ketubah (for a woman) WAS her "marriage." Without it, she had no more legal status, or legal rights, than did a prostitute or a slave.
> Indeed, as Jesus
> himself said, "Do not store up for yourselves
> treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy,
> and where thieves break in and steal. But store up
> for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and
> rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not
> break in and steal. For where your treasure is,
> there your heart will be also."
This has nothing to do with Jewish law, or with the practical necessity of a Jewish woman in historical times needing to keep her ketubah close and safe for all the time she is married. (Should her husband die, the legalities specified in the ketubah for her benefit would be very quickly taken care of, and after that, it would be an important "keepsake," but not so stringently vital---although it may well turn out to be "stringently vital" to her descendants. In very recent world history, one of the practical problems that former Soviet Jews often encountered when they emigrated to Israel was that there were few of them who brought their family ketubot with them...mostly because the ketubot did not exist anymore. These self-identified Jews had an unbelievably difficult time becoming Israeli citizens because their "status" certification as Jews was under the direction of the Chief Rabbinate (an Israeli government function), and the Chief Rabbinate was requiring AT LEAST three generations of ketubot before they would sign-off on a Russian Jew's religious status as a Jew. Enormous problems for EVERYONE...some of them (to my knowledge) still not solved to this day (especially if the Chief Rabbinate would not accept CONVERSION-to-Judaism attempts, which happens).
> ...
> What does impress me about Babatha's records is
> that it is another proof of the high level of
> literacy among the Jews. It has been suggested
> that the Judean population was the most literate
> population on Earth in the 1st century AD (and had
> been for centuries - no need for "Reformed
> Egyptian" for record keeping). This literacy and
> the fact that Judea was at the nexus of the Greek,
> Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian cultures
> and that the Mediterranean ports of Judea brought
> in traders on the Silk Road from as far away as
> China and India in the east as well as from North
> Africa and Atlantic ports of Europe and Britain
> from the west, means the Judean population was
> exposed to perhaps the richest diversity of
> cultures possible. Jesus taught people who were
> not ignorant peasants of some little backwater,
> but rather well-informed, literate citizens of a
> kingdom at the center of the world. Their literacy
> and dedication to learning established a
> self-identity so strong that it survived not only
> repeated invasions and culture imperialism, but
> eventually complete destruction and diaspora. If
> you wanted a clear,coherent message that could
> reach the world and spoke to the world, 1st
> century Judea would have been a great place to
> start.
I totally agree with this. It is one reason (a very minor one, but it IS one of the reasons) I became a Jew.
One additional point: When the recent California wildfires were burning, I related a story here on RfM that happened when I was growing up. There was an out-of-control wildfire burning then, with mandatory evacuation orders, and firefighters were going from house-to-house, breaking in, and checking to see if there were any people still inside. While they were inside, they were grabbing framed photos from the walls, as well as anything else which was easily portable and seemed of special importance to the family. What I did not say in that post (but that I was thinking of) was that the firefighters in that wildfire WERE grabbing framed ketubot from the walls when they found them (because they understood their importance). Most firefighters are not Jewish (though some are, of course)...but pretty much everyone who lives in a substantially-Jewish area learns that, in an emergency such as a wildfire, you grab the ketubot on your way out the door.
It would have been exactly the same back in the first century CE. There is some chance (and I, personally, think it is a fairly good chance, all of the facts considered) that the ketubah of Mary and Joseph still exists, because the Jewish man named Jesus was, in his own local area, something of a local rock star, and anyone who cared about Jews or Judaism would have instinctively, without even a mini-second of thought, protected the ketubah of his parents, or done whatever was necessary to get it to a safe place.
Maybe not...
...but maybe.
Just maybe.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2018 02:04PM by Tevai.