Manners & Customs
As it did everywhere else in the Ancient World, an Israeli woman's life was centered in the home. For the majority this was a small wattle-and-daub or baked clay and straw brick house in a village constructed around a spring or well. There were walled towns but apart from Jerusalem these were not that much bigger. An outside staircase to a flat roo...
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It is somewhat difficult for the average modern Catholic to transport himself back, in imagination, to the life of the Jewish race as it must have been lived in Old Testament times. Following the universal tendency of men to think that things must always have been as they are now in our own lives, we can only too easily think that the people of the...
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This house is representative of private houses in ancient Israel and Judah from about 1200-586 B.C.E. Such houses, called pillared houses, have been found in both urban and rural settlements. Their ground-floor plans have two or three parallel rooms, partially or completely separated by rows of pillars, extending forward from a broad room at the ba...
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Music permeates the culture of ancient Israel. In the Iron Age, the place of music in the life of the Israelites cannot be overestimated. The Bible is rich with references to music and the role that music played in the social, political, and religious aspects of ancient Israel. Festive choruses enriched marriage ceremonies with music and dancing, a...
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Though there are some cultures in the Ancient Near East which were matriarchal in structure, Israel's was not one of them. Israel's family life was dominated by the husband (Pedersen, p. 61). When a marriage occurred the husband took his wife from her home and "ruled" over her, following the pattern of Genesis 3:16: To the woman he said, "I will gr...
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The importance of marriage to the Ancient Israelites is clear enough in the Bible, but nowhere is there any information on the ceremony itself and it is likely that custom varied from one locale to another. In Leviticus 18 there is a list of prohibited relationships (a man cannot marry his sister, etc.). These appear less concerned with the dangers...
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In this groundbreaking new book, distinguished biblical scholar James L. Crenshaw investigates both the pragmatic hows and the philosophical whys of education in ancient Israel and its surroundings. Asking questions as basic as "Who were the teachers and students and from what segment of Israelite society did they come?" and "How did instructors in...
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The idea "Family" in ancient Israel was a more expansive concept than our modern conception of the idea. "Family" existed at three basic levels: First, there was the bayit, or the household. This was similar to our nuclear family of parents with probably two to four children, as well as multiple generations, but it also might include debt servants,...
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The importance of education in ancient Judaism is clearly seen in the attitude passed down in the rabbinic dictum that the world is poised on the breath of schoolchildren. Rabbinic law still obligates the father to teach his sons Torah, as well as a trade. The duty to instruct the people has its roots in the Torah with such precepts as Deuteronomy ...
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The Apostle Paul urged wives to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives. This simple exhortation neatly sums up the traditional idea of the family throughout Jewish history as pictured in the Bible. The man was the head of the house and the woman was the helpmate, but they were to work together for the benefit of each: the outcome was ...
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