Page 44 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Revised

Houses were not normally built or lived in by the Israelites during the conquests. Communities would
move around during the fighting to feed their flocks. As a result, they likely still lived in tents for a while.
The two dominant styles of mud-bricked one was a basic two-roomed structure. The other was a four-
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roomed house with a courtyard.

Other social factors that were problematic in the time included the importance of hospitality. A
community or household was completely responsible for the safety and comfort of a guest. As a result,
some of the most brutal and grotesque stories in the Bible come from the Old Testament. They make
little sense to us but made perfect sense at the time they were written. One story involves a group of
men who sexually abused the concubine and daughter of a man. That man gave them to the abusers
because they wanted to homosexually abuse his guest. The concubine was raped all night and killed. The
man who gave her to them cut her body to pieces and sent the pieces throughout the land. This aroused
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anger and led to a “civil war.” The tribe of the abusers came from; Benjamin would not give them up
to justice. To give them up would be to fail as hosts. This was unthinkable. The tribes who hosted the
man and his abused concubine could not let the evil go unpunished. That also was unthinkable. This
resulted in a war between that tribe and the others. The importance of hospitality in the Jewish
community would carry over into the New Testament times. It was the reason Jesus sent the 70 disciples
out without extra clothes and provisions. The communities they traveled through would never allow
them to go without hospitality in such a state. Such a failure would be a great shame to the community.
In that culture, shame was not something you could overcome easily, if at all.

Pottery and other textiles have been found from this era. In addition to these commercial trades, the
tending of livestock, fishing, farming, and trading have all come up as vehicles of commerce. Other
methods of earning a living likely included fabric making, carving idols for religious use, educating
students, and many other less well-known trades.

Important people groups to know about in this time period:

It is difficult to estimate the size of the populations of the cities and people inhabited by the Israelites.
th
Archaeological evidence suggests that the population of Palestine in the 14 century BC was not greater
than 250,000 in all. The site of ancient Jericho is only eight and a half acres in size, and most cities had
fewer than 1,000 inhabitants.

Egyptians:
The Egyptians had begun to lose power with the disaster at the Red Sea. In the midst of their decline,
other kingdoms began to rise.

Philistines:
The Philistines are best remembered in Scripture for their wars with Israel in the time of David. The cry
that David killed more of them than Saul led Saul to seek to kill David. The Philistines lived on the coast
of Canaan. They were a Canaanite people who inhabited many cities, but the most prominent cities
were Gath, Joppa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, and Gaza; as mentioned before, Goliath came from Gath. The
story of Samson in Judges recounts many battles with the Philistines as well.

Phoenicians:

83 Ibid., 133.
84 Voss, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs, 138.

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