Hi Ben... I missed this.
1) Babatha is interesting for a couple of reasons. She doesn't seem to have been a particularly special or important person. She was married more than once, held her own property (even while married), certainly wasn't "owned", and in many other ways seems to have a number of priviledges that run counter to your claims. That and the fact that her lawyer seems to have been a woman ... and although concubinage probably didn't specifically exist outside of polygamous environments, the quote you provided only attempts to address the question of polygamy - it didn't deal much with the other socio-economic evidences.
Babatha lived after Christ. I am talking about the previous three thousand years. Having said this, Babatha was wealthy and most likely the only child of a rich land owner, so her situation is hardly the norm. It is easy to guess her father was powerful enough to make sure his land stayed with his descendants.
2) The patriarchy occurs long before the accounts which describe it. There is certainly in my mind a case to be made that using the Old Testament to describe marriage practices in the patriarchal period is problematic.
Patriarchy developed in four "waves" over a period of a few thousand years, however if Joseph Smith was trying to restore a similar practice to the Old Testament prophets I think it reasonable to look at them.
3) Men were also slaves. This is to say that slavery was an accepted thing, and that it fit into the system of social tiers that the notion of concubinage was probably developed to address (can't have those social climbers can we).
In every case, the ownership of males followed the ownership of women. Male slavery came later, after it became the norm to own women for sexual and procreative purposes. I would like to see some evidence that in Old Testament culture women "owned" men which is different than the wives of wealthy men being served by slaves. I doubt it was common.
4) Whether or not J.S. used the Old Testament, the O.T. system of concubinage clearly has limited (if any at all) applicability in western society.
To be honest I don't think Joseph Smith gave a lot of thought into the details of Old Testament polygamy. I think he needed an excuse for his womanizing, and needed to rationalize his perhaps excessive desire for multiple women, similar to other men we see, even today who claim God commands/demands/authorizes their use of women for their sexual purposes.
I tell you what - since you note this:
And, absolutely there were legal and binding contracts between the male owners of women, again whether they were wives, concubines or slaves, men owned them.
Why don't you provide some of these contracts (at least an example or two) between a man and his wife, or a man and his concubine that indicates this ownership. This ought to at least give us an idea of specifically what milieu you are refering to.
As I am pretty sure you know, there are no written contracts of early Hebrew marriages until (If I recall correctly) about five hundred BC. What we do have are legal documents describing rules and laws that demonstrate how marriage was conducted.
I think it is clear, from virtually every expert of which I am aware, that in the time and place of which we are discussing, the contract was between men and women were the commodity traded.
Ever hear of a bride price?
You know, the price of a wife?
How much does a rapist have to pay the father of his virgin victim in the Deuteronomy? Fifty shekels of silver?
Finally, don't take this as a claim that I think that men and women had equal standing, were treated equally, or anything of the sort. I don't believe this is true. I simply think that your statements go far beyond historical accuracy and instead reflect some of the more truly attrocious periods in the history of western civilization than they do some of our ancient cultures.
I think my statements represent the view of virtually every expert of which I am aware.
~td~