By the Matriarchate, maternal system or ‘mother-right’ is
not to be understood a system in which women actually rule (gynekocracy), but only one in which they are rded as con- Stituting the family bond. They determine the recognized relationships, so that maternal relatives are treated as kin, while the paternal are ignored; and names and property are consequently transmitted through the offspring of the female members of the group. Such a system, M‘Lennan contends, points to a time when paternity was usually, or in a great pro- portion of cases, uncertain. ‘The connexion between these two things—uncertain paternity and kinship through females only— seems 80 necessary—that of cause and effect—that we may con- fidently infer the one where we find the other’ (Prim. Mar.4 126). This theory as to the origin of the maternal system is doubtless much more plausible than that of Bachofen, the pioneer in the field (Das Mutterrecht, 1861), who supposed that women, disgusted with the licentious primitive customs, rose in rebellion, procured the benefit of a marriage-law, and by their victory won an influence by which they reorganized the whole social life in their own favour. Starcke, however, denies that female descent necessarily points to uncertain paternity. ‘The reckoning of kinshi eat the father only is a fact, yet no one has ever asser' that this is due to uncertainty with respect to the mother’ (Prim. Fam. p. 18).
While Hebrew society in OT times represents an advanced stage in the evolutionary scheme, viz. that in which polygyny and paternal govern- ment are the dominant forms, the OT litera- ture has nevertheless been largely drawn upon in the discussion, on the ground that it embodies survivals from the diverse customs of prehistoric times.
The evidence for a prehistoric stage of poly- androus marriage among the ancestors of the Hebrew stock is of no great weight. Most stress has been laid on the peculiar custom of the levirate marriage, which M‘Lennan seeks to interpret as a right of succession derived from the special form of polyandry in which a family of brothers have a wife in common (Prim. Mar.? 163), but this explanation is viewed with growing disfavour. Some use has also been made of the observation that the Hebrew words for brother, sister, and father occur with considerable latitude of meaning (οἵ. especially 2x with root-meaning ‘nurturer,’ thence ‘progenitor’ and even ‘hus- band,’ Jer 34; W. R. Smith, Kin. and Mar. p. 118) —the suggestion being that this points back to a time when paternal relationships were not distin- guished because not ascertainable. It may, how- ever, be safely said that these arguments would carry no conviction were it not for the assertion that an early stage of polyandry is proved to have been traversed by the kindred stock of the Arabs (ὁ... And even the assertion that Tibetan polyandry prevailed among the early Arabs is only made in the modest form that it meets all the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, and that the conditions under which this type of sexual relationship arises were actually present in Arabia (p. 124).
Phe evidence for the operation of the so-called matriarchate or ‘mother-right’ is of much greater weight, though some of the arguments are far- fetched and weak. (a)The custem of tracing descent through the female line may have survived in the distinction which long continued to be drawn between paternal and maternal relatives, with the consequence that marriage was allowed with a sister- german, a father’s sister, a brother’s daughter, etc. (see Bars of Marriage). From the same point of view A bimelech seeks assistance against his brothers from ‘the family of the house of his mother’s father,’ and urges the plea, ‘Remember that I am your bone and your flesh’ (Jg 9'°). Agreeably to the same system, under which the uterine brothers have special duties of guardianship, we find that Laban is prominent in the negotiations about Rebekah’s marriage (Gn 24”), and that Simeon and Levi avenge the wrongs of Dinah (343), In the patriarchal history the family-tree of the two allied families in Syria and Palestine is worked out with reference Milcah and Sarah (Fenton,
264 MARRIAGE
Early Heb. Life, p. 7).*
The force of much of this is indeed weakened by the obvious consideration that under a system of polygyny it is absolutely necessary for purposes of distinction to give promi-
nence to the mother, and in case of domestic troubles to seek help of her kindred; but enough remains, especially in the matter of permitted degrees, to justify the belief that the Hebrew history contains fossil remains of the matriarchate. (6) The allegation that among these vestiges we are to reckon the so-called beena marriage, made simultaneously by M‘Lennan and W. R. Smith, and since repeated with the utmost confidence, really rests on a most precarious foundation. ‘In beena marriage,’ to quote the former (Patr. Theory, Ρ 42), ‘the young husband leaves the family of 1is birth and passes into the family of his wife, and to that he belongs as long as the marriage subsists. The children born to him belong not to him, but to the family of their mother. . . . His marriage involves usually a change of village; nearly always (where the tribal system is in force) a change of tribe.’ Of this custom an example is furnished, it is said, in Jacob’s marriage (Gn 29 ff.). He becomes a member of his wives’ group, he buys his place by service, and Laban claims the wives and children as his own (31%). What has been overlooked is that Jacob is represented as a fugi- tive from vengeance, who was not in a position to bring his wife into his own family, and that there is a design to exhibit Laban as a grasping and churlish person; and in the light of these facts Jacob’s marriage appears to be merely an excep- tional arrangement with a hard man, to which he was driven by stress of circumstances. A further proof is discovered by W. R. Smith in the phrase ‘go into’—a relic, as he thinks, of the time when the husband literally left his home to join his wife, while the same practice had its visible monument in the long-continued custom of pitching a special tent for the consummation of marriage (Kin. and Mar. pp. 176, 291). More impressive is the M‘Lennan-Smith suggestion, widely accepted by later writers, that it is beena marriage which is indicated in Gn 2% in the words(of Adam [Del.]; of the narrator [Keil, Dillm.]): ‘ therefore shall (doth) a man leave his father and his mother, and shall (doth) cleave unto his wife ; and they shall be (are) one flesh.” What is here contemplated, it is said, is that the man leaves the household, the family, of his birth and is adopted into his wife’s kin. Now in interpreting the verse the first question which we have to ask is, What was the sense which the narrator intended to convey? And what seems quite certain is that it cannot have been the inten- tion of a writer standing on the confines of the propucticel period to give his sanction, if not that of Adam, to a form of marriage which was obso- lescent if not obsolete. If it be admitted that in the historical period ‘the man is the head of the family, and of the wife, who is transferred from her family to that of the man’ (Nowack, Arch. i. p. 153), 1t cannot be supposed that the purpose of J was to revive the aitasieaiiead and discredited type of family life. Much more likely is it that the command to leave father and mother and cleave to one’s wife was directed against some loose form of marriage which does not involve the founding of a home, e.g. the so-called mota type, in which the husband’s association with his wife is limited to occasional and clandestine visits (ef. Samson’s marriage). There remains, indeed, the possibility that the saying ‘therefore shall a