Recommendation for favorite or best resource for learning customs of New Testament times

I will be teaching on this topic to high school students and am looking for a resource that is descriptive and engaging to students of this age group. I welcome your ideas.

Thanks!

EDIT: Ideally this would be a resource I have or can get through Logos. If not, any other recommendations, too.

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Brother Mark

Edershiem's "Sketches of Jewish Social Life in the Days of Christ" is very good, but not excitingly conducive to keeping younger students eager to plunge in. Then again, my assumption is that you are interested in Jewish customs in the New Testament era.... Perhaps you want Grecko-Roman customs? Something more Old Testament perhaps?

EDIT: Logos offers a Edershiem collection HERE that includes the title above.

Juanita

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your response. I do have Edersheim and agree it is not the most interesting reading material. Yes, I am interested in Jewish customs in the New Testament era so from the beginning of the first century and inclusive of that century. My objective is to motivate them to think of how life would be for them if they lived in that era of time. I may have to write my own booklet. [:D]

Maybe I should look at home schooling material. ??

Rosie Perera

One that is presented in an engaging manner and might be interesting to high school students is A Time Travel to the World of Jesus.

Here's an example of one of the 26 "windows" through which the book introduces what first century life was like:

WINDOW
7

I do not know you, but make yourself at
home

Jack and Joy were impressed. They
had not been in Judea long, and already their friend, Joachim, was doing his
best to make them feel at home.

They were even
more impressed one night, after a knock on the door. At first they thought the
visitors were friends of Joachim, because Joachim invited them in and gave them
lodging. Their son was ill and Joachim called the doctor over, and payed him
into the bargain. But during the conversation it sounded to Joy as if Joachim
did not really know the people. She was right. Later she asked Joachim who they
were, and he told her that he had never laid eyes on them before, but that they
knew one of the families who had lived in his neighbourhood years ago.

It really seemed
as if the trouble Joachim went to for strangers
was to him the most natural thing in the world.

Was it?

MEANING OF THE WINDOW

Hospitality and boarding houses!

Hospitality played a large role
in the ancient world, and did not only revolve around family and friends, for
whom you had to care anyway. Hospitality meant to receive strangers also and to
accept responsibility for them while they were under your roof (Mt 25:35; the
Greek word for hospitality that is
used in Rom 12:13, Heb 13:2 or 1 Pet 4:9, implies, among other things,
hospitality towards strangers). After his stay a stranger could leave either as
a friend or as an enemy (cf Acts 28:7–10 where Paul leaves the island of
Publius as a friend). But while the stranger stayed with host, he was embedded
into the host’s group. The host had to cater to the guest’s needs in every way,
as Joachim did when the boy was ill. Sometimes the host even had to defend his
guest’s life with his own. The early Christians were bidden to show this kind
of hospitality. In Romans 12:13 Paul lists hospitality along with the aid that
believers owe their brothers. Peter mentions hospitality in connection with
love (1 Pet 4:8–9).

This is
understandable. There was no system of hotels or boarding houses where people
could stay (in The New Testament we read of an inn only in Lk 10:34). In Mark 14:14, Luke 2:7 and 22:11 a word is
used that we can translate as room or
guest room. If we keep in mind how
many journeys we read of in the New Testament, the few references to inns are
probably a sign that there were not so many of them. The inns were mostly of
dubious character, and more care went into tending donkeys and camels, than
into lodging people. An interesting apocryphal account of Paul’s night in such
an inn tells of a great many bedbugs in the mattress. When the bedbugs
discovered that Paul was their bedfellow, they all left. It goes without saying
that Paul was not disturbed again that night!

Travellers
depended on friends, or even strangers, for lodging. (In our own history, when
people still went on horseback, they often, at dusk, asked for lodging at a
farmhouse on their way).

But you could
not simply travel, like a tramp, from one house to another. There were rules for guests as well as for hosts,
and the rules were a safeguard against abuse. A Christian document of the first
century, Didache, states, for
example, that a stranger who calls himself a fellow-Christian and a preacher is
a false prophet if he stays with you for longer than three days. In 2 John the
elder says that no hospitality should be extended towards people who can harm
the group. Believers should not show hospitality towards people who preach a
false gospel (2 Jn 10–11). (Think, too, of Paul’s argument in favour of an
apostle’s right to be cared for by the congregation as long as he stays with
them.)

We cannot go
into these rules any further. What is important, is that the early Christians
made good use of this system of hospitality when it came to Christian missions.
Christian travellers or itinerant preachers could journey from one Christian
group to another in the ancient world and always be certain that a local group
would welcome and house them (cf Acts 14:28; 16:15,40; 17:7; 18:1–3, 26–27;
21:16; note also the implication in Acts 15:3–4).

Elders had to
show hospitality to be good elders (1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:8; see also 1 Tim 5:10).
This is, of course, the core of the problem in the Johannine congregation in 3
John. Diotrephes (who was probably some kind of elder or leader) refused to
receive brothers sent by the elder. Gaius, however, does receive them, and so
the elder praises him. John is very critical of Diotrephes and regards his
refusal to receive the brothers as a break with the elder’s group, and
therefore a break with the truth.^{^[1]}

^{^[1]}
Bruce Malina and Stephan Joubert, A Time
Travel to the World of Jesus (Halfway House: Orion, 1997).

Juanita

One that is presented in an engaging manner and might be interesting to high school students is A Time Travel to the World of Jesus.

Rosie, that is right on! I have it and am perusing it. Perfectamundo. [:P]

Thanks!

Allen Browne

I will be teaching on this topic to high school students and am looking for a resource that is descriptive and engaging to students of this age group.

Most current commentaries now include the socio-rhetorical background for specific texts you are studying.

To look up a specific term, consider this (which I think is part of the IVP Reference library):

Porter, Stanley E. and Craig A. Evans. Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000.

For more general resources, search Logos site for "second temple". That should give the Judaistic background. Example:

Helyer, Larry R. Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period : A Guide for New Testament Students. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.

The Greco-Roman background also matters, e.g.:

Jeffers, James S. The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era : Exploring the Background of Early Christianity. Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Press, 1999.

Other suggestions:

Packer, J.I., Merrill Chapin Tenney and William White, Jr. Nelson's Illustrated Manners and Customs of the Bible. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997.
deSilva, David Arthur. An Introduction to the New Testament : Contexts, Methods and Ministry Formation. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2004.
Vos, Howard Frederic. Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners & Customs : How the People of the Bible Really Lived. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999.
du Toit, A. B., J. L. de Villiers, I. J. du Plessis et al. Vol. 2, The New Testament Milieu. Guide to the New Testament. Halfway House: Orion Publishers, 1998.

All those are available in Logos. Some (like the IVP and the Nelson resources) may be available in collections.

Juanita

Allen,

Thanks for the list. A lot of helpful resources.