Women, death, and mourning in the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world.

This dissertation explores one aspect of Jewish women's religious lives, namely that of women mourning the dead from approximately 600 BCE to 400 CE. The scarcity of literary sources pertaining directly to women's mourning necessitates an interdisciplinary approach to this project. Literary, archaeological, and ethnographic materials are assembled from a variety of eastern Mediterranean societies and time periods in order to suggest a social setting for ancient women's mourning. These materials are analyzed from a feminist perspective which recognizes both the patriarchal nature of the texts and their subsequent interpretations. Studies highlighting gender distinctions in death and mourning customs are only about twenty-five years old. These studies show that women mourn primarily in domestic settings apart from the official religious cult dominated by men. Woman's role as mother in patriarchal society serves as a focal point for this dissertation. First, a feminist literary critique of narratives of weeping mothers or childless women from the Hebrew Bible, LXX, New Testament, pseudepigraphal and rabbinic writings reveals that women's grief was closely linked with the societal expectation that women were to bear children (sons). Second, these narratives of weeping mothers provide a basis for the communal expressions of grief in women's mourning rites and in the composition of women's laments. Third, women's childbearing function is exploited in texts that blame women for sin and death in the world. This accusation as articulated in the curses of Eve and in pollution legislation maintains systems of social control of women. Ethnographic studies from the eastern Mediterranean region suggest a social milieu for women's mourning which includes exaggerated emotional gestures, communication through traditional lament forms, and the creation of community among the participants. Such mourning behavior can articulate women's social protect against patriarchal social structures. A literary and sociological analysis of the lament in 4 Macc 16:6-11 illustrates these characteristics of women's mourning. Finally, women's mourning is seen as a religious event which contains ritual drama, communicates myth, and creates community.PhDAncient historyCultural anthropologySocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129371/2/9500999.pd