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The New Manners & Customs of Bible Times

Why Do We Recommend This Book? 

Our time and culture is in many ways so different from biblical times and cultures, that it is often hard to get a clear picture of what life in Biblical times actually looked like. The New Manners & Customs of Bible Times helps filling the gaps in our knowledge and experience by providing us a ton of cultural background information.

Topics are arranged in two sections. The first part focuses on family life and includes the following topics:

  • Clothing
  • Dwellings
  • Domestic activities
  • Food and meals
  • The family
  • Education
  • Agriculture
  • Collecting food
  • Shepherding
  • Craftsmen and traders

Part two focuses on institutions and customs and includes the following topics:

  • Towns and villages
  • Journeys and travel
  • Hospitality
  • Social and political groupings
  • Government and society
  • Warfare
  • Leisure
  • Religion

You can read the book from cover to cover, or choose to use it as a reference book. For the purpose of the latter the book has a topical index and a Scripture index at the back. The book is rich of full color pictures, photos, maps and illustrations, that helps bring to life this ancient culture of Biblical times.

Note: the Logos edition is a previous version of the one offered on Amazon and ChristianBook.com.

NIV Study Bible

Why Do We Recommend This Book? 
Users of the NIV will find this Study Bible extremely helpful because of the many study tools included in this edition. Many study notes help the user understand the details of the Bible text, while tons of cross-references assist you as you compare Scripture with Scripture. This Study Bible also has a modest concordance in the back, as well as a topical index that enables you to easily and quickly find Bible passages that relate to the topic you are studying. Moreover, each book of the Bible is preceded by a thorough Introduction with lots of background information that helps you better understand that particular Bible book in its original context.

A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion

Why Do We Recommend This Book? 

A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion is a well written story of historical fiction with an engaging plot, following the life of a Jewish slave in the household of a Roman centurion in the first century AD. While entertaining the modern reader with an interesting story, as a New Testament scholar Gary M. Burge exposes the reader to a lot of historical background of New Testament times. Throughout the story the reader learns a great deal about the Roman army, Roman and Jewish values, Jewish life, certain biblical places, the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and much more. All this background information helps place the Gospel narratives in their original cultural setting. Moreover, the Logos edition has many full-color images that trigger our imaginations about ancient life in New Testament times. 

As a matter of course choices have to be made in fictional stories and as such this book gives a perspective on ancient life in biblical times. Read this book as a snapshot of what the life of a Jewish slave and a Roman centurion could have looked like, allowing for other perspectives as well.

Below is a video interview with professor Burge:

If you are interested in similar historical fiction, see also from the same series: