Home & Family Life in the Bible
The Bible claims to be a record of the way God showed Himself to man - at a paticular time and in a paticular place.
 The fact that the events happened in one particular area creates problems of understanding for people living in a totally different enviroment. But it has the great advantage of giving the Bible story a real location. A real history needs a real setting. It says, more clearly than any words, that the Bible is not a series of folk myths that relate only to some legendary country. The land and the people were real, and so, says the Bible, the coming of God to that particular place was real, too.
But why did God select the land of Israel for His 'chosen people'? It was a small, unimportant corridor-land. The national capital, Jerusalem, was third-rate trade center in a world which already, even then, possessed some great cities. But the very fact that Israel was a land to pass through, rather than to stop in, made it an ideal place from which new ideas - or new revelations - could spread. It lay between two of the great cultural centers of the early world, Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was a land through which many people passed on the great trade-routes.
It also provided a good enviroment in which to learn lessons about God, the Creator and Provider. The land depended on Him sending the all-important rains, and keeping away locusts and famine. And the landscape quickly showed up any folly or greed on the part of the people who occupied it. Soil erosion, the loss of trees and shrubs, wells drying up, or fields losing their fertility, all showed things were going wrong among the people in a land that was supposed to 'flow with milk and honey'. Whatever the reasons for God's choice, the geography of the land of Israel is always relevant to the story of the Bible.
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| A real history needs a real setting. The land and the people were real, and so, says the Bible, the coming of God to that paticular place was real, too. MORE ... |
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| The Bible is a collection of ancient books. The cultures in which those books were written have perished long ago. Much is being found again. MORE . . . |
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| How did these various books come to be written? Who wrote them? When? And how did they come together to make the book we now know as the Bible? MORE . . |
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The Bible may be an ancient book but it is part of an unfinished story. The story begins, continues - and will end - with God's love. MORE . . .
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| From earliest times, men and women have felt the need to worship, or pay respect to, someone or something greater than themselves. For the Israelites and their neighbors religion was an essential part of life.MORE . . . |
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| It is hard enough to imagine life fifty years ago. How much more difficult, then, to get a true picture of home and family life in Bible times.MORE . . . |
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| The story of ancient Israel, the major theme of the Old Testament begins with the Patriarchs and covers a people of promise but of disobedience as well. Great powers arose surrounding this tiny stretch of land...MORE . . . |
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