Food and Everyday Life in Bible Times: A Zondervan Digital Short

By John A. Beck

Derived from the Zondervan Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, this digital short contains dozens of illustrated entries on aspects of everyday life in Bible times—covering everything from food and housing to tools and transportation. Useful for better understanding the cultural context of Scripture passages and fascinating in its own right, this handy reference tool will find a place in the digital shelves of Bible students and teachers alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Sep 4, 2012
• ISBN: 9780310496151

John A. Beck

John A. Beck (PhD, Trinity International University) has taught courses in Hebrew, Old Testament, and the geography of Israel for more than 30 years, many of those years spent conducting field studies in Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Beck spends most of his year writing and is a permanent adjunct faculty member at Jerusalem University College in Israel. He is the author of many books, including The Holy Land for Christian Travelers, The Holy Land Devotional, and The Basic Bible Atlas. Learn more at JohnABeckAuthor.com.

Book preview

GENERAL BIBLICAL REFERENCE

FOOD AND

EVERYDAY LIFE IN

BIBLE TIMES

AN ILLUSTRATED MINI-DICTIONARY

JOHN A. BECK

AN EXCERPT FROM ZONDERVAN DICTIONARY OF BIBLICAL IMAGERY

For Marmy,

my soul mate and coadventurer

Contents

Cover

Title Page

PREFACE

B

C

F

G

H

L

M

N

O

P

S

T

V

W

Copyright

Dictionary of Biblical Prophecy and End Times

Encyclopedic Dictionary of Cults, Sects, and World Religions

Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary

About the Publisher

Share Your Thoughts

PREFACE

Why should you take the time to learn more about the culture and land of the biblical world when you find yourself overwhelmed by the increasing complexity of your own world? The answer is simple: doing so will revolutionize what you see when reading your Bible.

As the Holy Spirit led the inspired authors of the Bible to write, he also led them to fill the pages of the Bible with vibrant images drawn from the culture, natural history, and landscape around them. Using such vivid imagery as looms, donkeys, water cisterns, grapes, sackcloth, and shepherds makes what they say both more beautiful and more memorable. These images stimulate our imagination, animate our interest, and make the abstract clearer. In short, the biblical authors used the reality around them to enhance the rhetorical impact of what they wrote.

Unfortunately, the full impact of this imagery can be lost on modern readers. Just as the ancients knew nothing of iPhones and airplanes, modern readers are likely to know next to nothing about threshing sledges and desert locusts. What is more, we are in the dark about the connotations that attend such cultural images. What did a threshing floor look like, and how did it function? What habits of the fox distinguished it from other predators? What is it like at the Dead Sea or in the Jezreel Valley? The biblical authors knew the answers to such questions, and they presumed their readers did as well. To the degree that we have lost touch with the culture, natural history, and landscape of Bible times, we will miss some of what God wishes to share with us in his Word.

This dictionary attempts to fill that gap in our understanding. Each entry focuses on a particular biblical image, starting with the reality that lies behind the word. Appearance, distinctive characteristics, and cultural use are addressed, using clear descriptions, photographs, and maps. Each entry also investigates the cultural connotations linked to the image, recognizing that a particular image may arouse an emotional response from one who sees it or hears it mentioned. At times the connotation of a familiar image may solicit exactly the opposite response from us that it did from the ancients. For example, dogs, which are likely to stimulate very positive feelings in us, generated very negative feelings in ancient Israel. Once both the reality of an image and its connotations are presented, the entry then surveys the use of that image in the Bible to illustrate how it is put to work by the divine wordsmith.

As you take time to learn about ancient culture, your Bible reading will radically change. You will know why God’s people kept goats and why the goat became the symbol of the lost. You will know why Jesus called Herod a fox and how the Mount of Olives contributed to Jesus’ struggle in prayer. You will know why people mixed salt with manure and appreciate why Jesus called for us to become the salt of the earth. Expect new insights each time you turn the page in this book — insights that will forever change the way you interact with the pages of your Bible.

B

Barley. See Grain.

Barn

The function of a barn in the Bible is much closer to the function of a modern silo than that of a modern barn. It is not a place to keep one’s animals but chiefly a place in which to store grain. The physical appearance of such a barn is not provided for us in the Bible, but archaeology in Egypt and Israel has produced examples that allow us to see what a barn looked like. These grain storage units began as round pits lined with field-stones or brick. Brick superstructures might then be built over the top of these underground pits, rising above ground level to form conical domes that covered the granaries. The size of such a barn depended on the size of the population using it. Some barns, like the one discovered at Megiddo, were over thirty-five feet in diameter and twenty feet deep. The Megiddo barn was so large that stairs were constructed around the perimeter of this underground silo so that one could simply walk to the level of the grain as the stored grain was consumed. In contrast Tel el-Hesi contains examples of granaries that were considerably smaller, only a bit over six feet wide and six feet deep. No matter what the size, the goal of the barn was the same — to protect the harvested crop against loss to moisture or animals.

The best way to appreciate the importance of such a barn is to appreciate the importance of grain in the ancient diet as well as the risks associated with the harvest itself. Wheat was a staple in the diet during Bible times. It provided a significant portion of the protein and calories that were consumed on any day. Consequently, the risk of drought and foreign invasion required the residents of this land to design a grain-consumption strategy. Given the uncertainty of future harvests, one always ate the grain that was harvested the previous year, while the grain harvested during the current growing season was stored away as a buffer against future crop loss. This reality reveals how critical the grain storage barns were to the people of Bible times.

The public barn, a grain-storage silo at Megiddo.

www.HolyLandPhotos.org

The barn appears in the symbolic language of both the Old and New Testaments; full barns are contrasted with empty barns. The invasion of enemy soldiers could cause barns to be emptied; consequently, the king prayed for deliverance from those enemies so that our barns will be filled with every kind of provision (Ps. 144:13). Full barns are also linked with the obedience of God’s people. Once he laid out the directives of Deuteronomy, Moses conditioned a successful harvest on covenant faithfulness: The Lord will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to (Deut. 28:8). Similarly, the giving of firstfruits, which might at first appear to compromise the status of the harvest, would instead produce barns filled to overflowing (Prov. 3:10). In contrast an empty barn summoned one to reflection. When those returning from the Babylonian captivity gave their first attention to rebuilding their own homes rather than the temple, the Lord expressed his displeasure by allowing a drought to strike the region (Hag. 1:7–11). Haggai called attention to the misplaced priorities of God’s people with this rhetorical question: Is there yet any seed left in the barn? (2:19).

In the New Testament, the image of the barn is associated with the final judgment. When Pharisees and Sadducees approached John the Baptist, seeking baptism for themselves, John unleashed a powerful call to repentance, a call that clearly laid bare the consequences of the coming judgment. One would either be gathered like wheat into the barn or burned up like chaff (Matt. 3:12). Exactly the same image appears just ten chapters later in Matthew as Jesus tells the parable of the weeds, which, too, is designed to teach about the final judgment. In this parable the servants are told to allow the wheat and the weeds to grow together until the harvest. At that time the weeds will be tied in bundles and burned while the wheat will be brought into the barn (13:30). In both cases the image of the grain being stored securely in barns presents the comforting picture of God’s children safely preserved with him for eternity.

The image of the barn also appears in back-to-back discourses in Luke 12 that address the twin topics of wealth and worry. The first encounter with a barn in this chapter is found in the parable of the rich fool. Here we meet a wealthy man whose fields produced a bumper crop, so much in fact he would have to replace his older storage silos with new ones (Luke 12:18). Full barns in the Old Testament typically symbolize godly attitudes and actions, but not so here. The blessing of the full barn is used to illustrate this man’s shortsightedness. His barns were a symbol of his misplaced priorities. He had built barns rather than building a relationship with his God; true wealth is defined by the latter rather than by the former. The fact of the matter is that security may well be found in having no barns! That part of the lesson comes quickly as we move to Jesus’ discourse on worry, which immediately follows the parable of the rich fool. The rich man had failed to be concerned about his

Reviews for Food and Everyday Life in Bible Times

[temsmail · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Looking at things from a different perspective than other dictionaries, this is concerned with the word pictures used in the Bible, and their meaning and application in sermonic materails.

[davemac_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I was disappointed by this book. I found it to say a little about a lot - it seemed to me, to quote Howard Hendricks' words regarding the modern church in general, "100 miles wide and an eighth of an inch deep." Already I have sought out insights into several examples of Biblical imagery and found either nothing, or nothing of substance. It tries, valiantly even, but to my mind it fails in the attempt.