Word: jewish
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...bull for Yom Kippur, two doves--"the poor woman's sacrifice"--to celebrate a child's birth. Before buying an animal, visitors changed their Roman denarii (the dollar of the day) for shekels, or Temple coins, that had no portraits on them and so did not violate the Jewish prohibition of graven images. Herod appears to have allowed the money changers onto the Temple platform, which may have spurred Jesus' scourging of them in "my father's house." Joshua Schwartz, a professor of historical geography at Israel's Bar Ilan University, styles the stairway as a Judean version of London...
...ancient world's 5 million Jews lived in the region, all were expected to pay a yearly half-shekel Temple tax. Historians have not definitively established a shekel's worth, but certainly the total earnings were great. At the three pilgrimage holidays, the economy shifted into overdrive. Jewish law required that sacrificial animals and grain offerings be "unblemished." Rather than risk spoilage along the way, most pilgrims raised the sacrificial goods at home, sold them and used the proceeds to buy fresh items in the holy city, supporting farmers for miles around...
...excavation under what is now the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City reveals the way the town's elite lived. Two-story houses, built around stone-paved inner courts, had separate baths for regular and ritual cleansing. Floors boasted fine mosaics; on the walls were frescoes or trompe l'oeil stucco that mimicked masonry. Archaeologists have uncovered finely crafted glass goblets and delicate perfume flasks. Experts are divided as to whether such prosperity was shared. Says Reich: "There weren't any real poor people in Jerusalem then. There were the rich and the less rich." Argues Fabian Udoh, professor...
...their early teens and would generally undergo seven or eight pregnancies in hopes of having three or four surviving children. They often managed the household and exerted considerable influence in the synagogue. The family would have observed religious laws regarding food and ritual purity, although many aspects of Jewish law were not formalized until later...
...gave their children Greek names; intellectuals were conversant in classical philosophy. Greek had become along with Hebrew and Aramaic one of the area's main languages, and one of the most commonly used versions of the Torah was in Greek. (Jesus presumably spoke all three languages.) The interaction of Jewish and classical thought would lend the Christian Bible much of its strength...