Drawing on parallels from Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Early Christian sources alongside of sociological models of agriculture in subsistence economies, this essay makes the case for the presence (if not preponderance) of child shepherds among those who receive the angelic message in Luke 2:1–20. By engaging a childist reading that both considers the position of the shepherds with regards to their economic and social standing in Bethlehem and re-reads the angelic message and proclamation of an infant as sign in light of such a youthful audience, this essay reframes the perceived identity of the Bethlehem shepherds to foreground the children in their midst.
This essay re-reads 1 Peter’s Haustafel from a childist perspective, concerned with children both absent and present. It re-imagines 1 Peter’s Haustafel as a model for the Christian family based on growth and interdependence, rather than power and submission. In this model, God is paterfamilias, mimicking patriarchy in order to bring about a reversal in which elders imitate infants. This is argued in three parts: (1) attending to children and the ideologies that govern their relationships; (2) uniting the metaphors of infants and building blocks; and (3) re-imagining an alternate model of household relationships.
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