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Historical context

Home and family in the first century

Courtyard, bread, betrothal, mourning

Small houses around courtyards, large families, arranged betrothals, bread baked every day and grief shared by the community: the daily life behind many Gospel scenes.

A house around a courtyard

In a Galilean village the typical house was not a detached building but a cluster: two or three small rooms of stone and mud opening onto a shared courtyard that held the oven, the hand mill, the cistern and sometimes the animals. Around the same courtyard lived the father, the mother, the married sons with their wives, and the grandchildren. At Capernaum, excavations show exactly this pattern, with basalt walls. Windows were few and narrow; inside, the house was dark, and a clay oil lamp lit everything, as in the parable of the woman who lights a lamp and sweeps the house for a coin. The flat roof, made of beams, branches and packed mud, was used for drying fruit, sleeping in the heat and praying. It was also flimsy enough for four friends to open it up and lower a paralyzed man.

Our daily bread

The staple food was bread, made from wheat or, for the poorest, barley, and it may have supplied half or more of the day’s calories. Alongside came olive oil, olives, lentils and beans, figs, grapes, onions, cheese and, near the lake, fish. Meat was rare, kept for feasts and sacrifices. Bread was made every day, and morning began with the sound of the stone mill: two women grinding together is a scene Jesus uses. The Mishnah, listing the work a wife owed the household, includes grinding, baking, washing, cooking, nursing, making the bed and working wool. At night the family slept together on mats in the same room, and the door was barred with a beam. That is why, in the parable, the friend woken at midnight complains that he is already in bed with his children: getting up meant waking the whole house.

Betrothal, contract and celebration

Marriage was a family matter. Parents arranged the match, and girls usually married young, often in their teens, while men married some years older; ages varied and are estimates. There were two stages. Betrothal was already a legal bond: the bride was called a wife, and only a divorce could dissolve the commitment, as Joseph shows when he considers quietly setting Mary aside. After an interval, which the Mishnah sets at up to twelve months for a virgin, came the wedding proper: the groom fetched the bride in procession, often at night with lamps, and the celebration could last up to seven days. A contract, the ketubah, guaranteed the woman a sum in case of divorce or widowhood; contracts like these have been found in caves of the Judean desert. Running out of wine at a wedding brought shame on the whole family.

Children, women and men at work

Having children was both a blessing and a necessity. But death stalked childhood: demographers estimate that in the Roman world somewhere between a third and a half of children died before adulthood. Those who survived started helping early, tending animals, gathering firewood or scaring birds from the fields. Boys learned their father’s trade; Jesus is called the carpenter and the carpenter’s son. Josephus claims the Law required children to be taught to read and to know the commandments, but actual literacy was low, estimated by many at a small minority. Women handled bread, water, wool and children, and also worked the harvest and sold at market; some had their own means, like the women who supported Jesus and the Twelve. Men worked in the fields, in boats or in workshops. Public space was mostly male, which makes the place of women among the disciples all the more striking.

The open door: honor and hospitality

Welcoming guests well was a sacred duty and a matter of honor. A guest was to be received with water to wash dusty feet, a kiss of greeting and, on special occasions, perfumed oil for the head. Neglecting these gestures was a slight, as Jesus points out to Simon the Pharisee. At formal meals guests reclined, leaning on one elbow, and seats followed rank; that is why Jesus advises taking the lowest place. Purity lived in the house too: Jewish families used limestone vessels because, according to rabbinic tradition, stone did not contract impurity. The six stone jars at the wedding in Cana reflect this custom, and first-century stone-vessel workshops have been excavated in Galilee, one of them near Reina, a few kilometers from Cana. Home, table and faith were woven together in the same space.

Mourning together

Death, too, was lived in public. Because of the heat and the purity laws, burial usually took place the same day. The body was washed, anointed with oils and spices, and wrapped in linen cloths, as Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus did for Jesus. In the house the weeping was loud: professional mourners and flute players gave shape to the lament, and the Mishnah says even the poorest man had to hire at least two flutes and one wailing woman for his wife’s burial. Then came days of mourning when relatives and neighbors visited the family, like the many who came to comfort Martha and Mary in Bethany. Better-off families in the Jerusalem area laid their dead in rock-cut tombs and, about a year later, gathered the bones into stone ossuaries. It is in this setting of shared grief that Jesus weeps at Lazarus’ tomb.

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