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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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Excavations of Ancient Israel

Artifacts appearing in the Museum's Canaan and Ancient Israel Gallery were drawn from the Museum's Syro-Palestinian collection of over 15,000 artifacts which came from these archaeological excavations. [University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology]...

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Religion of Ancient Israel and Canaan

Includes BronzeAge | IronAge | Death | Bible | Glossary | Bibliography | Activities. Religion in the ancient Near East was closely tied to place and politics. Deities were associated with particular places, such as cities and eventually nations. Temples functioned quite literally as the god's house, where the god resided in the form of a cult statu...

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Archaeological Excavations

Tel Beth Shemesh (1928-1933) Tel Beth Shean (1921-1933) Gibeon (1956-1962) Tell es-Sa'idiyeh (1964-1967) Sarepta (1969-1974) the Baq'ah Valley (1977-1981) Artifacts appearing in the Museum's Canaan and Ancient Israel Gallery were drawn from the Museum's Syro-Palestinian collection of over 15,000 artifacts which came from these archaeological ...

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High Priests in the First Century A.D.

As in ancient times, the high priest was the head of the priesthood. After the time of Herod the Great the high priest was no longer the political leader of the people. However, he did remain president of the Sanhedrin. This function, and the fact that the high priest was always chosen from one of the leading aristocratic families in Jerusalem, mea...

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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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