Life in Year One: What the World Was Like in First-Century Palestine

by Scott Korb

Overview

For anyone who's ever pondered what everyday life was like during the time of Jesus comes a lively and illuminating portrait of the nearly unknown world of daily life in first-century Palestine.

What was it like to live during the time of Jesus?

Where did people live?

Who did they marry?

And what was family life like?

How did people survive?

These are just some of the questions that Scott Korb answers in this engaging new book, which explores what everyday life entailed two thousand years ago in first-century Palestine, that tumultuous era when the Roman Empire was at its zenith and a new religion-Christianity-was born.

Culling information from primary sources, scholarly research, and his own travels and observations, Korb explores the nitty-gritty of real life back then-from how people fed, housed, and groomed themselves to how they kept themselves healthy. He guides the contemporary reader through the maze of customs and traditions that dictated life under the numerous groups, tribes, and peoples in the eastern Mediterranean that Rome governed two thousand years ago, and he illuminates the intriguing details of marriage, family life, health, and a host of other aspects of first-century life. The result is a book for everyone, from the armchair traveler to the amateur historian. With surprising revelations about politics and medicine, crime and personal hygiene, this book is smart and accessible popular history at its very best.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101186015
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/18/2010
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	310 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Scott Korb is the co-author of The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin and graduate degrees from Union Seminary and Columbia University. He has written for Harper's, Gastronomica, the Revealer, and Commonweal. He lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note: On the Epigraphs for Life in Year One 1

Author's Note: On Writing Life in Year One 5

Introduction: This is Not a Book About Jesus 9

I The World in Year One 25

II Money in Year One 39

III Home in Year One 57

IV Food in Year One 77

V Baths in Year One 93

VI Health in Year One 111

VII R-E-S-P-E-C-T in Year One 127

VIII Religion in Year One 145

IX War in Year One 159

X Death in Year One 177

Epilogue: We've Nearly Reached the End of Our Journey 195

Acknowledgments 209

Notes 211

Bibliography 225

Index 233

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Easygoing in pace, Morey's narration is more conversational than dramatic, a style that makes this detailed work accessible and interesting from the beginning." —-AudioFile

Editorial Reviews

A generally historical, fun look at life during the time of Jesus. Scholars, Korb (co-author: The Faith Between Us: A Jew and a Catholic Search for the Meaning of God, 2007) fairly notes, have differing theories about first-century Palestine, and he keeps the simmering debates and minutiae within long-winded footnotes. Well-versed in biblical studies-he spouts Josephus and Garry Wills with equal fluency-the author features folksy translations from the Gospels in koine Greek, a kind of "lowest common denominator" of the time that was nothing like Homer's language but allowed the illiterate peasants to communicate in the agora. The Jewish revolt would gear up by 66 CE, but between Jesus' birth and mid-first-century CE, when nationalist groups began to agitate against the Roman authorities, life was pretty quiet in Palestine. Korb notes that inhabitants of Palestine were God-fearing Jews and that the tight, humming economy kept tiny villages like Nazareth oriented toward the Roman capital-yet the coins they used were aniconic, or without graven images. The people were observant of Sabbath and religious practices and kept kosher, and most were illiterate. Families valued boys over girls, who were a burden if unmarried; marriages were arranged, and divorces were tolerated. People used ritual baths for purification as part of their godliness, although after 70 CE, with the destruction of the Second Temple, no more baths were built in Palestine. Another intriguing tidbit: Leprosy as we now know it, in its bacterial form, has never been discovered in human bones in Palestine, thus it was probably a catchall in the biblical era for psoriasis or eczema. As for miracles, Korb skirts the issuealtogether ("I find the ground rather shaky myself"). An accessible, light-pedaling survey. Agent: Jim Rutman/Sterling Lord Literistic

Kirkus Reviews

Easygoing in pace, Morey’s narration is more conversational than dramatic, a style that makes this detailed work accessible and interesting from the beginning.”

AudioFile

"Easygoing in pace, Morey's narration is more conversational than dramatic, a style that makes this detailed work accessible and interesting from the beginning." ---AudioFile

From the Publisher