Tuesday, December 20, 2011

What Time of Day Did It Happen?

 Like today descriptions of events or incidents during the Bible times included the time of day or evening -- although not always mentioning the actual hour.


The actual expression used varied depending on whether they were talking about something happening during the  daytime or night.  People in Israel  would often used such  expressions such as the "sixth hour but also described things as happening in the  "morning', at "noon", or  "midday", and in the "evening" if they were talking about something between sunrise and sunset.


They did not do this during the night however. Hebrews initially divided  the night into periods of four watches of about 4 hours each, and later using the Roman and Greek practice of dividing the night into four watches of 3 hours.


These "watches"  ran between sunset and sunrise. The first "watch" ran from sunset to 9:00 p.m., the second between 9:00 p.m. and midnight, the third ended three hours later at 3:00 a.m. with the "cockcrowing" and the fourth ran from that time to sunrise or "early in the morning." It was during this fourth watch that Jesus walked on the Sea of the Sea of Galilee.


The actual passing of time was kept track of by two devices. The first was the sun dial during  daylight hours when the sun  or the clepsydra or water clock during overcast days or during the night. These were clay vessels  with sloped sides and a small hole in the bottom that allowed measured drops of water to flow from one bowl to another one stacked underneath. Both of these could be marked with degrees of measusre according to the Jewish Encycyclopedia



Wednesday, December 14, 2011

What Was In Their Wallet?

The use of coins  in the Bible lands had become quite common by the Seventh Century B.C.E. Although many purchases during the times of Abraham were paid for either by bartering  or through the exchange of gold and jewelry, such as when Abraham purchased Sarah's burial plot,  by 700 B.C.E. coins made with furnaces, molds, and stamps, became increasingly common in everyday commerce.


 By Jesus time in Palestine four of these had become popular.The least valuable of  these was the lepton or mite. The widow likely dropped two of these into the contribution box in the temple mentioned in Mark 12:42. (A worker could earn 2 of these in about 15 minutes.)


A little more valuable was  the silver drachma  which would have taken about a full day to earn. Two of these had to be paid in the yearly temple tax mentioned in Matthew 17:24


 The silver denarius was still more valuable and among other things was used by business owners to pay their workers who earned one of these for every 12 hour shift. (During the Roman occupation Jews had to use part of these earnings to pay the tribute tax mentioned in Romans 13:7.)


Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, was paid off using the third popular type of coin, the silver shekel. These pure silver coins  were made in the city of Tyre and circulated in Palestine during Jesus' time.


The use of such  coins to conduct commerce was not a Jewish idea however. The earliest use of coins in the Middle was in Lydia (modern day Turkey)  sometime before 700 B.C.E. and their use quickly spread throughout the Middle-East in various styles and values as well as the ones Jewish people commonly kept in their money pouches to  cover expenses during Jesus' day.