Knowledge Library

Biblical Customs and Culture

Marriage, mourning, harvest, hospitality, honour: the world the text assumes.

Scripture first

Ruth 4:7 · John 4:9

Ruth pauses to explain a custom that had already grown strange, and John explains that Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Scripture itself supplies background when its readers need it, which is warrant for supplying more.

What this shelf holds

  • Daily life in Israel and in the first century Mediterranean world: household, land, law, purity, food, clothing, debt and death.
  • The unspoken assumptions behind a parable or a command.

How to use it

  • Ask what the first hearers would not have needed explained. That is usually where a modern reader goes wrong.
  • Keep the custom as background. It explains the passage; it does not license a meaning the passage never states.

What this cannot settle

Much of what we know about first century Jewish practice comes from rabbinic writings compiled later. They show how teachers remembered practice, which is not the same as how it was.

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10 entries on these shelves

Reference works

Each of these is named so you can open it and check us. Each carries what it is good for and what it cannot decide.

Every entry below is labelled with the kind of evidence it is, so a lexicon is never mistaken for the text and a commentary is never mistaken for a conclusion Scripture has drawn.

  • The Temple: Its Ministry and Services

    Historical and cultural backgroundSupports the text, never settles it · Alfred Edersheim, 1874 · Public domain

    The daily round of temple sacrifice, priesthood and festival in the time of Christ.

    Use forPicturing what a worshipper actually saw, heard and carried to the altar.

    CautionDraws heavily on the Mishnah, which records practice as later rabbis remembered and idealised it.

  • The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

    Historical and cultural backgroundSupports the text, never settles it · Alfred Edersheim, 1883 · Public domain

    The Gospels set inside first century Jewish life, worship and expectation.

    Use forUnderstanding the world the Gospels assume rather than explain.

    CautionEdersheim harmonises freely and reconstructs where the sources are thin. Separate his narrative from the Gospel accounts themselves.

  • A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica

    Theological interpretationOffered for weighing, not for receiving · John Lightfoot, 1675 · Public domain

    Jewish parallels to the Gospels and Acts, gathered from rabbinic sources.

    Use forRecovering assumptions a first century Jewish hearer would have brought to a saying.

    CautionThe sources he quotes are often later than the New Testament, so a parallel shows possible background, not proven background.

  • The Mishnah

    Historical and cultural backgroundSupports the text, never settles it · Compiled around 200, English translation by Herbert Danby, 1933 · Primary source

    Rabbinic law on sabbath, purity, feasts, agriculture, courts and temple service.

    Use forHearing how Jewish teachers discussed the commandments Jesus was questioned about.

    CautionWritten down after the temple fell. It is Jewish tradition, not Scripture, and it must never be read as though it fixed the meaning of a biblical command.

Entries on this shelf

Audela's own entries for this kind of study. Each one is taught from the passages that use it and links into the chapter studies, topics and questions that go furthest with it.

  • King and kingship

    ScriptureFinal authority · Written and reviewed by Audela against the passages it cites · 2 named sources behind anything that is not the biblical text

    What Israel asked for, what it cost them, and the King God promised.

  • Oil and anointing

    ScriptureFinal authority · Written and reviewed by Audela against the passages it cites · 2 named sources behind anything that is not the biblical text

    Ordinary olive oil, and the act that set people apart for God.

  • Priest

    ScriptureFinal authority · Written and reviewed by Audela against the passages it cites · 2 named sources behind anything that is not the biblical text

    The man who stood between a holy God and a guilty people.

  • Shepherd

    ScriptureFinal authority · Written and reviewed by Audela against the passages it cites · 2 named sources behind anything that is not the biblical text

    The work David knew, and the picture God chose for Himself.

  • Vineyard and vine

    ScriptureFinal authority · Written and reviewed by Audela against the passages it cites · 2 named sources behind anything that is not the biblical text

    Years of patient work, and God's picture of the people He planted.

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