The Reign of God is Such as These

Betsworth analyzes the daughters in the Gospel of Mark: the woman from the crowd - whom Jesus calls daughter, Jairus daughter (5:21-43), Herodias daughter (6:14-29), and the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman (7:24-30). To demonstrate how the Gospels first century audience may have heard these stories, Betsworth begins by examining daughters in their ancient Mediterranean context. Betsworth then considers representations of daughters in select texts from the Septuagint and Greco-Roman literature - from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. to the second century C.E. Although these depictions seem to be in contrast to the social-historical construction of daughters, Betsworth shows that in many ways the literary portrayals of daughters function to uphold the values of Greco-Roman culture - especially those of virginity before and faithfulness in marriage.These two lines of enquiryundergird Betsworths investigation. From it she is able to show that the daughters in the Gospel uphold the values of the reign of God, as an integral part of the Gospels inclusive social vision of Gods reign.