What's the Poop on Ancient Toilets and Toilet Habits? by Jodi Magness

Every Roman by the 2nd century AD had free access to public baths and running water, which greatly improved Rome’s standard of living at the time. Private access to water was also common with a cost occurring to pipe water to houses and buildings. Sometimes water was tapped unknowingly or pipes were unlawfully connected to the aqueducts or widened. Some privately operated aqueducts were also used and pumped water directly to buildings.

Upon their return to Palestine after their release from exile, the Jews were struggling to “maintain their religious and social identity” (Wenham & Walton, 2011, p. 7) and found themselves in the midst of great military powers, first the Greeks, and then the Romans. Their influences on the Jews were remarkable. This essay will examine the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD by describing a typical Greco-Roman city, then discuss the various levels of Roman administrative structure, explain where local authority resided in the cities/villages of 1st-century Palestine, and finally support with Scripture the structure of authority within the Gospels and Acts.

Religious spaces, characterized by Thomas Tweed, are “differentiated,” “interrelated,” and “kinetic.” As a sacred city with spiritual significance in three major religions, Jerusalem is depicted thoroughly in the Hebrew Bible and illustrated as one of the spaces Tweed defines. The Bible emphasizes that Jerusalem was chosen by God and honored by Israelites, which differentiates it as a special, singular space; the description of Solomon’s Temple shows that the Holy City was interrelated to economic power and involved in the judgment of civil cases. Moreover, the conquest, development and destruction of Jerusalem illustrate the city as a kinetic space, reflecting the unsettled history of the Iron Age. These characteristics all make Jerusalem a religious and political center from the ancient Near East time to present day, guiding the footsteps of believers around the world.

In first century AD, the baths were a place of leisure time during many Romans daily routine.  People from almost every class, men and women ( but not children) could attend the public baths or thermaes3, which could be compared to modern day fitness clubs. Public baths were not only for cleaning purposes only, but in many ways, the baths were the ancient Roman equivalent of community centres. The baths were only part of what the thermae (large bath complex)

Two thousand years ago, the birth of Jesus, arguably the most influential man the world has ever seen, altered history forever. Christians know him as the Messiah, the son of God who came to save all of mankind, and for others, he may just be a great teacher and person of history. It is the latter that Reza Aslan attempts to shed an unbiased light on by comparing the Jesus that modern Christians believe in to the Jesus that Aslan believes would have fit into first-century Palestine: a violet revolutionary, dedicated to the eradication of the Roman government in Israel and the deposition of the rich priestly class. Aslan paints a portrayal of Jesus using knowledge of the time period, Scripture that has been taken out of context and misinterpreted, and most of all, the author’s imagination and powerful rhetoric to cover up his faulty argumentation. In his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reza Aslan recreates an interesting but purely speculative image of the historical Jesus through exploring the political and social history of first-century Palestine, the life and teachings of Jesus, and the development of early Christianity.

The Romans' everyday routines explain how funerary customs played a central role in society from the late Republic to early Empire. More importantly, examining the rituals will illustrate if there was a connection to the increasing popularity of inhumation at that time. There was a blurred line between life and death that made it appear as if there was a paradoxical attitude towards death. The observation can be made that death was an end to a person's physical life on earth but it did not stop the deceased from being a part of the Roman society.7 Keeping the memory of the deceased alive was vital in family homes. For this to occur the dead could not be cremated; the funerary rites to follow would not allow it because the physical body was necessary. The idea of honoring the recently deceased as an ancestor was stressed in society.8 The funerals of Roman aristocrats were quite extravagant and the deceased aristocrats were treated as if they were still a part of the living. This wouldn't be possible with a cremated body, so another option was to properly clean the body for the display in the atrium of the family household before the final disposal of the

The Roman Empire provided a healthier place to live than the Roman Republic because of its superior sanitation. According to the textbook, poor sanitation due to factors such as insufficient drainage had been a serious problem in Rome during the Republic but was reduced substantially during the Empire (164-165). At any time, public hygiene is an issue that affects the quality of life for everyone, including the “average” citizen. Poor sanitation can lead to the rapid spreading of diseases, which usually results in

Public spaces in Pompeii and Herculaneum had a range of uses, varying from entertainment centres, to meeting spaces, to political buildings. These public spaces also included centres that were used in everyday life for the Romans in Pompeii and Herculaneum, such as shops, restaurants, and public baths. Whilst there is a number of different sources relating to the uses of buildings, they are limited to physical artefacts, and consequently, some public spaces' use and purpose will remain unknown or guessed by historians and archaeologists.

Some of the more remarkable archaeological discoveries in the 20th century were made by Dame Kathleen Kenyon. Kathleen Kenyon was born into the heart of the English scholarly community and with all the help that influence and connections could provide became one of the foremost excavators in Great Britain. Even though Miss Kenyon was purported to be a Christian, she did not argue for the biblical account

Bathing played a major part in ancient Roman culture and society. Bathing was one of the most common daily activities in Roman culture, and was practiced across a wide variety of social classes. Though many contemporary cultures see bathing as a very private activity conducted in the home, bathing in Rome was a communal activity. Roman bathhouses offered amenities in addition to the bathing ritual. Ancillary spaces in the bathhouse proper housed food and perfume-selling booths, libraries, and reading rooms.

John H. Walton’s Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible is broken up into fourteen chapters. Those fourteen chapters are each part of one of five sections. This book also contains over twenty historical images. Before the introduction, the author gives readers a full appendix of all images used in this published work. The author then gives his acknowledgements followed by a list of abbreviations.

The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called the greatest archaeological find of the 20th century. One of the most intriguing manuscripts from Qumran is the Copper Scroll, a sort of ancient treasure map that lists dozens of gold and silver areas. While the other texts are written in ink on parchment or animal skins, this document features Hebrew and Greek letters chiseled onto metal sheets. In late 1946 or early 1947, Bedouin teenagers were tending their goats and sheep near the ancient settlement of Qumran, located on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in what is now known as the West Bank. One of the young shepherds tossed a rock into an opening on the side of a cliff and was surprised to hear a shattering sound. He and his friends later entered

Studying the religion of the Ancient Israelite People must be done in a careful manner. The ways in which biblical scholars frame significant ideas can have a major effect on how their point is received. Today’s ideas about the religious lives of Canaanites have been drawn on primarily from The Hebrew Bible and archaeological evidence. In their respective works, biblical scholars Benjamin Sommer and Carol Meyers choose to interpret these pieces of religious evidence is varying ways; Meyers takes a more cultural approach while Sommer’s has a theological leaning. Recognizing these different perspectives, I prefer the approach that Meyers takes because of its focus in anthropology.

The Peace Forest project began at the end of the Six-Day War in 1967 and unknown to those who embarked on the task, a marvelous archaeological discovery waited underneath newly planted trees. Many archaeological discoveries in Israel come from pure chance, someone starts to build a house, someone plows a field, somebody decides to remodel or workers begin to widen a road....in a forest! During a project to widen a road through the Peace Forest, workers stumbled across an unusually large burial site which yielded a bone box or

The finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Qumran Documents is the single most important religious find of the twentieth century. These manuscripts have revolutionized the entire field of biblical study and have the ability to destabilize the mass of western religious thought as we know it today. For the information contained in these scrolls, include books of the Hebrew Bible that predate the next earlier example by one thousand years. The data found in these scrolls enable us to form a historically accurate reconstruction of the time period formative of Rabbinic Judaism and of Christianity. By studying the customs and the religious practices of the Essene people we can put together a