American

A Dictionary All Bible Readers Need to Use

Screen Shot 2016-08-20 at 1.15.28 PMWe 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, and volume 2 is now out: Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity, volume 2 (De-H). This set is an amazing accomplishment, well-written, accessible, and the kind of information pastors and students want.

I gave volume one a Jesus Creed Book of the Year award, I can say the same for volume 2 and for volume 3 (I’ve seen an entry or two already). Again, an amazing accomplishment. Buy it.

I have read some of these articles closely and they are breathtakingly complete and helpful — and experts have been chosen and they have taken their work very seriously. Here are the entries for this volume:

Death & the Afterlife
Demons
Dentistry & Teeth
Diseases & Plagues
Divination & Sortition
Divorce
Dogs
Donkeys & Mules
Doors & Keys
Drama & Theaters
Dreams
Dwellings
Dyeing
Education
Eunuchs
Fish & Fishing
Food Consumption
Food Production
Furniture
Games & Gambling
Hair
Harbors
Heating & Lighting
Horses
Human Sacrifice

If this doesn’t whet your curiosity … well, it will. So much to think about here!

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