Can you expand a little on what aspects of Jesus’ family life surprise you? I am not a scholar of Near Eastern history, but I am familiar with Torah (which can be generalized as ‘Jewish theology and culture’) and I would like to help as best I can.

For now, let’s talk about relationships concerning God - the Jewish God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and Moses, Adonai, Elohim, YHWH, the LORD. He has many names, but we’re gonna call him God for simplicity’s sake. God’s relationship to his people is simultaneously paternal and marital - yeah, sounds weird. Let’s define who ‘his people’ are, though. They call themselves, and in Torah are called, Israel. Israel, which can also be generalized as ‘all Israelites’ or in modern contexts ‘all Jews’ (although when ‘Israelite’ becomes ‘Jew’ is a matter of some contention), but the only ‘true Israelites’, and thus the only inheritors of God’s Kingdom, are direct descendants of the twelve tribes which make up Israel. Israel is a biblical figure as well, and Israel the people gets its name from Israel the person when he has twelve sons who produce the twelve tribes, thus the twelve tribes of Israel. In modern contexts, of course, this concept has some wiggle room, and conversion to Judaism is an acceptable outcome. Anyway, God and Israel. Given that God is the protector and judge of Israel, whose aid to Israel waxes and wanes relative to Israel’s obedience to him (especially in the book of Judges, where “the people did what was evil in the sight of the LORD” [Judg 2:11] and are therefore cursed to be occupied by their geopolitical foes), who more or less ‘gives birth’ to Israel through Adam and Eve, it sounds like God is indeed a magical sky daddy, fake or real as you please. However, while the ‘realist’ books of Judges, Samuel and Kings offer a paternalistic view of God, who brings down judgments upon Israel when it disobeys just as a father would, the ‘romanticist’ book of Psalms, which tends to ignore the wrongdoings of Israel in exchange for singing its praises, portrays Israel and God almost as husband and wife, where the former forgives the sins of the latter (of course, the wife is the sinful one, given that Western society is dramatically patriarchal) due to the agreements made between them. These agreements, analogous to a marriage contract, are symbolized by covenants between God and Israel. There are major covenants, such as the agreement that all Israelites must be circumcised, which comes up in Genesis, or the Ten Commandments, which comes later in Exodus. There are also minor covenants, such as Moses commanding God to strike the name ‘Moses’ from the Torah if God ever decides to smite Israel off the face of the earth, or promises that God makes to relatively minor players such as the titular ‘judges’ of Judges, the most famous being Gideon and Samson. The word ‘covenant’ is thrown around with reckless abandon in the books of Judges and Samuel, where God and unnamed biblical narrators proclaim that Israel has spurned contracts previously made. Sometimes the word ‘covenant’ is even translated as ‘marriage’ in translations of the Bible which take some additional liberties.

Now, Israel is known even in its time as an extraordinarily well-educated and literate people, and a major strength Judaism has over Christianity is that historically Jews have been encouraged to read and learn Torah for themselves in order to truly understand it while Christians have often withheld this information from all except political and religious officials (especially in the slaveholding world, because the book of Deuteronomy very explicitly condemns the slave trade). The need for biblical literacy is even advocated by the Bible, for example, in Deuteronomy 6. This is relevant because the average classical-era Israelite reads and understands everything that I’m telling you now, including the unique paternal-marital relationship that God has with Israel. Because they’re good little Israelites, they of course apply these tactics to their own lives. The wife and father in an Israelite household are very traditional by Western standards, just as God acts (albeit to the umpteenth power) as a very traditional dad and husband, scolding and punishing his kids for wrongdoing and rewarding them with sweets (the phrase “land of milk and honey” is a very popular biblical idiom) when they do as they’re told, and lamenting the sins of his wife (oh boy, does Psalms lament the destruction of Jerusalem) but overlooking them for her sake and being her protector above all else. This is, in a sentence, a gross generalization of how the average post-biblical Israelite views the family - it’s all based on pre-existing Torah.

What about brotherhood? Neither a husband-wife relationship nor a father-child relationship quite qualifies the unique relationships held between siblings. This is a relationship with far less biblical evidence, as God doesn’t really have anyone analogous to a brother, outside of Moses if you really want to start some fights with Jewish theologists; for that reason I am far less qualified to talk about it. By extension, I shouldn’t, and someone who has more direct evidence of how siblings treated each other in New Testament biblical times ought to pick up where I left off, lest I say something incorrect.

P.S. If you haven’t seen TBR read ‘The Last Generation’, please do so. That video had me rolling when it first came out. I tend to stray away from YouTube atheism but I’ll be damned if a Chick tract video doesn’t leave me giggling every time.