Daily Life in Bible Times

We live 2-4,000 years removed from what can be called Bible times. Think just for a minute of all that has changed:

Life expectancies, relationships of husbands and wives and children and parents and “citizens” and leaders; food and drink; cultures and religious festivals and worship centers; the relationship of individual and state and of religion and state; divine right of kings and rulers and attitudes toward other countries and leaders; languages … and think about education and reading and travel … provisions and storage … and just think about what was known about the basics of life (blood, air, how the body works, how things grow and gravity and sun) … and we could go on.

Daily life is where ordinary people lived. What was it like? You can study the ancient texts and start building up a databank of how things worked in daily life, or you can purchase the new set under way from Hendrickson:

E.M. Yamauchi, M.R. Wilson, Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post Biblical Antiquity. Volume 1 is now available, and it is an amazing accomplishment by good historians, with excellent summaries, good breakdown into various kinds of evidence, and magnificent bibliographies. Here are the topics discussed:

Abort
ion
Adoption
Adultery
Age & the Aged
Agriculture
Alcoholic Beverages
Animal Husbandry
Aphrodisiacs & Erotic Spells
Aqueducts & Water Supply
Archives
Armies
Art
Astrology
Athletics
Banks & Loans
Banquets
Barbers & Beards
Baths & Bathing
Beggars & Alms
Bellows & Furnaces
Birds
Boats & Ships
Bones & Objects of Bone Bottles & Glass
Bribery
Butchers & Meat
Calendars
Camels
Celibacy
Census
Ceramics & Pottery
Childbirth & Children
Cities Citizens & Aliens
Clothing
Communications & Messengers
Contraception & Control of Births
Cosmetics
Dance

An amazing accomplishment, well-written, accessible, and the kind of information pastors and students want.