ABSTRACT

Kinship and family are closely related concepts in the study of the New Testament, but they do not refer to exactly the same thing. Kinship refers to the imposition of “… cultural order over the biological universals of sexual relations and continuous human reproduction through birth” (Parkin 1997: 3). The study of kinship systems typically involves investigations of relations of filiation (links between parent and child), relations of siblingship (brothers and sisters), and relations of marriage. Social anthropologists have described a variety of kinship systems in many societies throughout the world which take account of the way individuals or groups of individuals are understood to be related to one another. For example, various societies emphasize patrilineal descent (that is, links through the father backwards into preceding generations and forward into future generations), while others are matrilineal, emphasizing links through the mother (Parkin 1997: 15).