Marriage and Family Law in the Ancient Church Order Literature

Marriage and Family Law in the Ancient Church Order LiteratureJournal of Legal HistorySyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/P2N7NVC8/tei

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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Joseph G.MuellerMarriage and Family Law in the Ancient Church Order Literaturehttp://syriaca.org/cbss/P2N7NVC8https://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/P2N7NVC8https://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/P2N7NVC8Journal of Legal History40:22019203-221Numerous ancient texts present prescriptions on Christianity’s ethic, liturgy, leadership, and other institutions. Scholars call ‘church order literature’ a few of them composed in Greek, because of literary dependencies among them that make them an identifiable corpus. The composition of some of them seems to begin in the first century. In the fourth century, Christians began to gather them in various collections. While all these texts and their collections have no common literary genre, they do all purport to convey a tradition of apostolic teaching on the conduct of church life and its institutions. This teaching sees God’s law based on Christian scripture as the only valid law for church life. This article will present the prescriptions of that law conveyed by the ancient church order literature on the following topics: family requirements for membership in the church, prohibitions defining and defending marriage, regulations on family relationships, and restrictions on who may marry. Even in its dispositions on marriage and family, the ancient church order literature attests Christians’ contact with multiple legal regimes in the Roman empire. This literature reflects a view of the ancient Christian family that is typical in its difference from, and its similarity to, Greco-Roman conceptions. Mueller, Joseph G. “Marriage and Family Law in the Ancient Church Order Literature.” Journal of Legal History 40:2 (2019): 203–21. Joseph G. Mueller, Marriage and Family Law in the Ancient Church Order Literature, Journal of Legal History 40:2 (2019): 203–21.DidascaliaI-III CEIII CENT apocryphacanon lawfamilymarriage