[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: orion-list cemeteries



    [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set]
    [Your display is set for the "ISO-8859-8" character set]
    [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly]

Rick Strelan wrote:
> Could the imbalance of males and females in cemeteries partly be accounted
> for if, in fact, a widow left the area on the death of her spouse? I assume
> most wives were [considerably] younger than their husbands.
>

At first sight, this suggestion seemed quite worth considering to me, but I 
don't think it will lead very far:  Though I believe that the wives were quite 
young at the time of their (first) marriage, I am not convinced that most of 
them lived long enough to see the death of their husbands, if you do not assume 
that they lived a kind of "Josephsehe":  Lots of women in that times died young 
from too many pregnancies, one following each other, or from miscarriages.  I 
can't believe that, under those circumstances, so many woman would have lived 
longer than the men. 
Take a look at the OT, especially the Patriarchs and their wives: Sarah, though 
only having one late child, dies before Abraham. Rachel dies giving birth to 
Benjamin. I think that this kind of situation was common as well in the Second 
Temple Period. 
In law texts, of course, we learn more about widows than widowers, as the men 
had no problems in marrying again, and they had no problem with their social 
status or means to live on.

Marion Sieker-Greb

Tettnang, Germany

For private reply, e-mail to Marion.Sieker-Greb@t-online.de (Marion Sieker-Greb)
----------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from Orion, e-mail to majordomo@panda.mscc.huji.ac.il with
the message: "unsubscribe Orion." For more information on the Orion Center
or for Orion archives, visit our web site http://orion.mscc.huji.ac.il.