History

Daily Life in ancient Canaan

Includes Home and Family | Bread | Weaving | Animals | Storage | Personal Identity | Writing | Warfare | Glossary | Bibliography | Activities [University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology]...

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Warfare

The maintenance of armies and the defense of cities were of the highest concern for the Canaanites and Israelites. Over the course of time, styles of warfare and weaponry evolved in the southern Levant. Fortified cities were built for defense against marauding bands and enemy armies as early as 3000 BCE. Most of the evidence for early warfare comes...

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The Tax Collectors

The Jewish people were under the yoke of foreign oppressors ever since the Babylonian captivity. During the New Testament times the land of Israel was within the province of Syria and the tax collectors were collectors of Roman taxes, they were extortioners, and very despised. The Jews detested these tax collectors not only on account of their ab...

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Archaeology of Ancient Israel

Archaeology is the study of people and things from the past. Archaeologists try to discover how a group of people lived, what was important to them, what sort of religious beliefs they had, and how they interacted with their environment and with other groups of people. [University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology]...

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Economy of Ancient Israel and Canaan

Includes Labor+Crafts | Trade | Phoenicians | Glossary | Bibliography | Activities. Field labor and craft production was of central importance in the lives of ancient Canaanites and Israelites. The economy of both the Bronze and Iron Age populations was dependent on the harvest and the production of valuable trade goods such as metals worked into j...

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Writing in Ancient Canaan

The maintenance of armies and the defense of cities were of the highest concern for the Canaanites and Israelites. Over the course of time, styles of warfare and weaponry evolved in the southern Levant. The alphabet is the singlemost important and enduring contribution the Canaanite culture has given to later civilization. The simple phonetic alpha...

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Jewish Literature in the First Century A.D.

Rabbinical Writings, Midrash, Tosefta, Palestinian Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Mishnah and the Gemara and lots more. [Bible History Online]...

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The Pharisees

"Pharisee" is from a Greek word (pharisaios) taken from the Heb/Aramaic "Perisha" meaning "Separated one." In the first century A.D. the Pharisees were one of the three chief Jewish sects, the others were the Sadducees and the Essenes. Of the three, the Pharisees were the most separated from the ways of the foreign influences that were invading Jud...

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The Scribes of the First Century A.D.

The Scribes were also called "lawyers" and the "doctors of the law". They were all highly educated from a young age, and at an appropriate time (some say by the age of 30) they were elected to office. They were not only copyists of the law, but they were also the preservers of the oral tradition, which included the commentaries and additions to the...

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The Samaritans

In later Hebrew writings the word Samaritan speaks of the people of the district of Samaria in central Israel. They came from intermarriages of certain Israelites with the colonists from Babylon and other parts of Mesopotamia and Syria. These colonists had been placed there by the Assyrian kings Sargon II and Esarhaddon, after the Northern Kingdom ...

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