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The Greco-Roman philosopher Seneca defines a father's love by strict discipline, where he will not let his children be idle and works them hard. Rabbinic tradition in tractate Kiddushin describes similar discipline that defines a father's role.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Seneca On Providence 2:5
Classical
Do you not see how differently fathers and mothers indulge their children? How the former urge them to begin their tasks betimes, will not suffer them to be idle even on holidays, and exercise them till they perspire, and sometimes till they shed tears—while their mothers want to cuddle them in their laps, and keep them out of the sun, and never wish them to be vexed, or to cry, or to work. God bears a fatherly mind towards good men, and loves them in a manly spirit. “Let them,” says He, “be exercised by labours, sufferings, and losses, that so they may gather true strength.” Those who are surfeited with ease break down not only with labour, but with mere motion and by their own weight. Unbroken prosperity cannot bear a single blow; but he who has waged an unceasing strife with his misfortunes has gained a thicker skin by his sufferings, yields to no disaster, and even though he fall yet fights on his knee.
Date: 64 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
Kiddushin 29a
Babylonian Talmud
Rabbinic
The Gemara comments: According to this interpretation, we learn in this mishna that which the Sages taught in a baraita: A father is obligated with regard to his son to circumcise him, and to redeem him if he is a firstborn son who must be redeemed by payment to a priest, and to teach him Torah, and to marry him to a woman, and to teach him a trade. And some say: A father is also obligated to teach his son to swim. Rabbi Yehuda says: Any father who does not teach his son a trade teaches him banditry [listut]. The Gemara expresses surprise at this statement: Can it enter your mind that he actually teaches him banditry? Rather, the baraita means that it is as though he teaches him banditry. Since the son has no profession with which to support himself, he is likely to turn to theft for a livelihood. This baraita accords with Rav Yehuda’s interpretation of the mishna.
Date: 450-550 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
“... In both Roman and Jewish cultures, the provision of food, clothing, shelter, health care, and education was the primary duty of fathers (Seneca, De providentia 2.5; Philo, On the Special Laws 2.233, 29, 36; cf. 1 Clement 21:6–8). Fathers were responsible to teach their children (especially sons) a means to make a living. That Matthew became a tax collector (Matt 10:3), Peter and Andrew and James and John fishermen (Matt 4:18, 21), Simon a tanner (Acts 9:43), and Lydia a purple-seller (Acts 16:14), was most likely a result of their apprenticeship with their fathers. Thus, boys usually spent their adolescent days with their fathers, learning a trade through an apprenticeship or continuing their father’s job—e.g., Jesus the carpenter was a carpenter’s son (Matt 13:55; Mark 6:3). [...] The obligations of a father to a son were “to teach him the Torah and to teach him a craft” (Tos. Kiddushin 1:11) ...”
Ong, Hughson T.
The Multilingual Jesus and the Sociolinguistic World of the New Testament
(p. 202) Brill, 2016
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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