Video Transcript: Q & A With Henry Reyenga

Henry - Carolyn, this is very curious, in my mind as I listen to this. So divorce I'm gonna just  jump in randomly here. We said divorce is common with that. How common like Americans  statistics 50%?  

Carolyn - Or we have no idea really.  

Henry - But it was common.  

Carolyn - Oh yeah, it was ordinary. I mean, it was not an unusual thing.  

Henry - Okay, so marriage ceremonies, you want to popcorn around,  your mariage  ceremonies, were they done at the city hall, were they done religious temple that were later  on in the church?  

Carolyn - they're all done at home,  

Henry - home.  

Carolyn - Home marriage is a ceremony at home with some negotiations between the families in advance. And then at the time of the marriage, they gather at the bride's home. There is  the exchange of agreements.  

Henry - Are they on paper agreements on paper?  

Carolyn - we don't have any, we don't have any.  

Henry - but there is some agreements.  

Carolyn - Oh, yeah. And certainly there would have been signed agreements with it with when property was involved. But it's not the bride and groom who signed agreements, the fathers  that sign agreements.  

Henry - so you said, you know, really, it's, it's the Alliance family. So that's even across  spectrum, lower ranked family as  

Carolyn - far as we know, and that they would they would do this exchange agreements, and  then the bride and the groom process with all the other people in at night with torches and  everything else to the groom's house. Okay, and enter in and then everybody leaves.  

Henry - Okay, so, okay, so sex in marriage, talk about that. So. So, a man is married to his  wife, and they consummate the marriage. Probably that night. Okay. Then after that, is the  wife expected to open her sexuality up to her husband? Or is that lucidly exclusively the wife  exclusive?  

Carolyn - Husband, not necessarily.  

Henry - So the husband then within could seek prostitutes, have sex with slaves if they owned slaves. And that's not a violation. That's not  

Carolyn - that it's not a violation. Adultery for a man is sex with a woman who is married to  somebody else.  

Henry - Oh, I see it's a violation of two men's code. 

Carolyn - Adultery for a woman is sex with any man other than her husband? Oh, it's a  different, a different standard.  

Henry - So what happens if a wife and that had sex with another man in that culture is that Carolyn - That's adultery.  

Henry - but by definition? I mean, there was that in the Bible that well and had adultery she was  stoned. Jewish culture.  

Carolyn - That is Jewish culture.  

Henry - So now we're into Roman culture.  

Carolyn - Yeah. Well, in the old days, theoretically, under the the father's potesta, yes, he  would have the power to put her to death. Did it actually happened that way? No. But the I  should say that the Emperor Augustus enacted a whole series of new laws about marriage  and family and one of his was that a wife who is proven to have been guilty of adultery, must  be divorced. The husband has to divorce her. Okay. This is for Roman citizens.  

Henry - Right, right. Right. Right. Did was there a lot, despite some of the things and again,  this in nature in humanity. Without Christ, we all would be subjected to even more of those  urges. Were there a lot of adultery going on, despite the fact was there a lot of because  people were living close together  

Carolyn - You mean among Christians?  

Henry - No, no I'm talking just in general, in general,  

Carolyn - General, sure, there may have been right people or people.  

Henry - Did the wife have expectations on her like to call her husband, Lord? Was that really  something she really had very few rights were rights did a wife have?  

Carolyn - depends on the time and place and situation in more traditional societies in very  strict Jewish society, but that's not necessarily what Jews are doing. It would be like that, that  that the husband would have total rights. Theoretically, in Roman practice, that's true. But we have we have a number of examples that we get particularly from literature in which that's  not working you know, women were operating very independently,  

Henry - interesting, interesting one last question. Life expectancy in marriage. Yeah. Okay, so  we were talking last night and you were mentioning something about what if someone makes  a date? Yeah.  

Carolyn - This this is something that has that has worked out both in terms of demographic  studies and some evidence from funerary monuments. A child at birth has a life expectancy of one, okay? If the child survives the first year, he or she has a life expectancy of 10. If the child survives the age of 10, the life expectancy goes up to about 20-21. If you survive that, then  your life expectancy goes up into the 50s and 60s. So a lot of people died young, in the I  could say that in the catacombs, the burial Christian burial chambers in a couple places in  Malta 40% of the burials are the size of children. So that gives you some sense of the high  level of child mortality.  

Henry - So in this concept of family and marriage and it would even be in you said Malta and  Christian, the fact is that there was a lot of despair. During the 

Carolyn - death is everywhere, death is everywhere, right? In the family. It's not only public  executions, which also happened, and you've got the games, you know, Roman society and  people getting killed and gladiators fighting animals and everything else. But death is just  everywhere in the in the household as well.  

Henry - Right. And I think sometimes we forget in the culture where there's, especially in  Western cultures, where there's medicine it's accessible. You know, my dad, as we are taping  this right now, in 2019, is 99 years old. Okay, so, wow. So,  

Carolyn - and there were some people who lived about that long. You know, there's there's  one testimony that that story in Eusebius writes about a man who's 90 years old, but nobody  else said he was born with his so his birth cohort, as we say, right, nobody,  

Henry - right. So in a lot of way up dealing with is a family. Packing, they're there is double  standards all over the place. And so when the Gospel comes into this world it's fascinating  how things are going to really change in the next century.  

Carolyn - Yeah, in the next centuries. It's taking a while for that to happen.