THE HOLY BIBLE

 “Merciful Father, as you have sent the Holy Spirit on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to write all that You wished and wanted, we pray You, send the same Holy Spirit on us, so that we may understand, appreciate Your Word, and make it our plan of life. This we ask for the merits of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

15….This is the beauty of studying the Scripture in detail, having an amount of  background knowledge and History of the era. This is why, if possible we should visit the Land, where Jesus lived, to breathe, to live for a number of days, the atmosphere of the narrow, noisy streets of Jerusalem, see and hear the street hawkers, shouting out to sell their ware, to see old houses, walk up and down flights of steps, pass under arches, smell the strong smell of cumin. You feel you are being mentally and physically transported in the days when Jesus used to walk those alleys and streets. I admit, these are not the same streets slabs, Jesus walked upon, not the same Temple nor even the same Synagogue. But, once there, you have a flashback to the days when Jesus used to roam the country-side, you can see and ride the boat, similar to Peter’s.

When you go back home, and take up the Holy Bible to read or study, it’s amazing the new sensation you feel; every word you read seems to take a different shade of meaning, it seems to come to life, and realise how different the message strikes you now, so different from when you read it last, before visiting the Holy Place.

Life in the Times of Jesus..Customs and Culture

As we all know, Joshua, after the death of Moses, led the Israelites into the Land of Canaan. After years of leading a nomadic life they started tilling the land and settled as an agricultural society. Simple houses replaced the ‘tents’.

Unlike us, they did not spend their day in the house, they used it only for the night, to sleep in. It was mostly a one-room house. They spent the days in the fields with the sky as their natural roof. The Arabic word for house is ‘bait’, which means ‘a place of shelter’. If we refer to the Psalms, we do meet often with the word “shelter” or “refuge”, and this sense was applied often to God. We read in Psalm 61: “You have been my shelter,” and “I find my shelter under the cover of your wings”.

So we can see that for them the refuge and shelter was not their house, unlike us, but for them God was their shelter. Their houses had one specific role, that of sleeping in during the night. ....16