'Give Me Children or I Shall Die': Children and Communal Survival in Biblical Literature

In the subsistence agricultural social context of the Hebrew Bible, children were necessary for communal survival. In such an economy, children's labor contributes to the family's livelihood from a young age, rather than simply preparing the child for future adult work. Ethnographic research evidences that this interdependent family life contrasts significantly with that of privileged modern Westerners, for whom children are dependents. Cultural constructions of children as innocent and separated from economic concerns are certainly not universal, but they have become dominant over the past hundred years through the evolution of a Western moral rhetoric of childhood, compounded by the spread of such ideas and cultural imperialism. This dissertation seeks to look beyond the dominant cultural constructions of childhood 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.;The significance of the contrast between ancient and modern understandings of childhood for biblical interpretation is especially apparent in three prominent themes throughout the Hebrew Bible: (in)fertility, education/enculturation, and child endangerment. In a subsistence agricultural context, human fertility, like that of the flocks and the land, is a form of wealth that is necessary for the family's continued survival. Similarly, the cultural reproduction that takes place through education and enculturation ensures the survival of the cultural community. Therefore, children's death and suffering is not just an affront to the assumed innocence of young victims, but also challenges the potential survival of family and culture. In each of these themes, the awareness that children in the ancient world were valuable laborers who would have been necessary for communal and cultural survival adds nuance and comprehension to the texts in question. The Hebrew Bible assumes an inter-generationally interdependent social context. By breaking from Western individualism and the moral rhetoric of childhood innocence when reading biblical texts, interpreters can better understand them in their ancient social context.