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Women First? On the Legacy of ‘Primitive Communism’

Centre for Studies in Religion and Theology, Box 11a, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia

One of the most important contributions to the study of the Hebrew Bible in the last 25 years is the argument for a mode of production unique to early Israel. Variously called the communitarian (Norman Gottwald), household (Carol Meyers), domestic (David Jobling and Ronald Simkins), or familial (Gail Yee), such a mode of production urges a firm basis in the study of political economics or Marxism. However, another feature of these arguments (apart from Simkins) is that such a mode of production was at least comparatively better for women. The concern of this article is to trace such a motif back through the work of biblical scholars to Marshall Sahlins, the anthropologist who first proposed the domestic mode of production, and then to the crucial work of Friedrich Engels, Lewis Henry Morgan, and J.J. Bachofen. What this article finds is that primitive communism has a more durable legacy in biblical studies than may at first appear.

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