Other Biblical Cultures
Vern Peterman · Nov 14, 2004
Bible Backgrounds, No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262315281616

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

The period of time that this map covers is the time when the Israelites went into Israel initially under Joshua, and then following that in the Judges. And so this is in there. It shows some of the times when the different cultures' kingdoms had some sort of dominance over the Israelites and then were liberated by them.

So that gives you some sort of time frame to match up. One of the things you'll notice is like the Philistines, two different points. The Ammonites, a couple of different points. So they didn't just come in once and dominate, they dominated at more than one point in some cases, those two in particular. All right, start with the Amalekites, real interesting thing.

The Amalekites are mentioned as person genesis because Amalek, really what you look at the Middle East, it's a big family feud. It still is. And Amalek was a descendant of Esau. And all the descendants of Esau didn't stay in that area, but Amalek particularly did. We'll see where they were located here shortly.

They fought the Israelites, Exodus 17, and this is the incident when Moses held up his hands, they prevailed, and when he dropped down his hands, they started falling behind, and so Aaron and her held his hands up because that seemed to be the difference in the battle one way or the other. What's interesting is the Amalekites are last encountered during the time of Hezekiah, so they seem to drop off the scene after that. And so once you get into the time where the Assyrians drop off the scene, the Babylonians drop off the scene, the Amalekites also seem to disappear.

And one other thing, archaeology knows almost nothing of this tribe. Now, why would that be? Can you think of a reason why that would be? Why would archaeologists say, hey, we can't hardly find anything about these people? The Bible mentions them. How come? Is there a discrepancy or what's going on? No guesses? What's that? Ah, that's it. That's the problem when you pick up everything. When archaeologists find something, it's typically because there's a bunch of stones and people leave engravings.

All those tablets we saw, then you've got something to work with. The Malachites, they didn't have any tablets. They didn't bother with that because that's heavy and if you're a nomadic, you sure don't want to carry clay tablets around, right? So, and nomads typically, if there's anything reusable or usable, they'll keep using it for generations. And so there was simply nothing left. So when you have a nomadic tribe, that's a problem.

All right. Now, when you get into this map, which also should be in your handout, full page, what you see is the fath here at Rephidim and the This is kind of the site there, Rephidim. It's kind of an oasis out in the Sinai Desert. And then there's also, while I've got the map here, Midian.

Now one of the connections, the Midianites were one of the peoples that dominated Israel during the time of the judges. And this is also son of Abraham by Keturah. So there's the family connection again. So they're relatives of the Jews, but another family feud. and Moses' wife was from the tribe of the Midianites.

So, you know, there's some multiple biblical connections there. Here is the area of Midian, kind of a desert kind of terrain. You could almost find something like that up in the mountains here. So it's kind of interesting. Here's another shot of the area around where the Midianites were.

All right, Philistines. These are a major group. And we do have lots of Philistine archaeological leftovers, contrary to the Amalekites. The Philistines were known as the Sea People, and it's interesting, the Sea People phrase, it was used throughout the various cultures that encountered them.

Unlike the Amalekites, where you find almost nothing, these, you find lots of particular note because these people would come on boats in large numbers. They were an extremely mobile people by using boats and shipping and things of that sort. And so one of the things you find is they originally came from around Greece. This is about the best connection that the archaeologists have been able to make. Possibly via Crete and Cyprus, some evidence that they landed there. This is an Egyptian relief because the Egyptians encountered them.

And that's one of the reasons you see on the map here. And this map is on C1, which is your color sheet in the back of your section. You see the different places the Philistines showed up. They showed up in Egypt, and so the Egyptians have like murals of these battles with the Philistines.

And then you also see them showing up at other places along the eastern Mediterranean coastline there. And of course, part of that is in Israel. And so the Jews continued to encounter them, but they weren't native peoples. They came in, established a foothold, and seemed to hold it for centuries.

You have in your handout there this Egyptian battle scene. And basically what they did was just lots of boats. As many as they could put into the picture. Boy, these people just overwhelmed us with boats. And that's what they did. Instead of coming in some small crew, a couple of boats, masses of boats. And so the Egyptian murals just show overwhelming numbers of boats. This is only a portion of the mural. So they just showed boats and boats and boats and boats.

Key Philistine conflicts. The Philistines continue to be mentioned into about the time of the Babylonian captivity. So this is well after the initial arrival of the Philistines. Samson defeated the Philistines, was then overcome by them, and then finally defeated them in a destruction of their temple.

And by the way, that particular temple design, archaeologists have excavated similar kinds of temples and they find these pillars next to each other And then it's like they cookie cutter, use the same temple design several different places, and they find these pillars right next to each other were in arms distance. It's a little bit closer than that was enough to push them apart. Those were the key support pillars, and the pillars were in sockets. And so it'd take great strength, but you'd have sections of pillar that would get pushed out. So the archaeological confirmation of how that occurred seems to be pretty solid. Okay, David opposed Goliath who fought for the Philistines. So there's another Philistine that you look at here. David's statement is, who is this uncircumcised Philistine? And then the Philistines at one time took the Ark of the Covenant. After that, they decided that wasn't a good idea. They said, this doesn't work.

Here, take it. So anyway, those are a couple of key biblical events that pop up with the Philistines' involvement. By the way, make sure you have a handout if you joined us here. All right. Here's the Valley of Elah where David slew Goliath of Gath. So there's the valley. Obviously there's some industrial processes going on there now, but that's the valley. Imagine David and the Israelite troops on one side and the Philistines on the other, lining up, and Goliath steps out and says with his, I'm sure, rather large voice, Hey, you wimps! You know? Okay. All right.

Jebusites, this is another one that gets referred to, especially around the time of David, but it's another group. Jebusites were the people who inhabited the area right around Jerusalem called Jebus. That was the name of Jerusalem at that point in time. They just named it after the people, right?

And so a couple of passages there. Temple Mount excavations, which were carried on just about 25 years ago. This is the area south of the Temple Mount, which would have been the city of David. So substantial excavations were carried on there. So in that little square that I've got bracketed, this is a little bit closer so you can get an idea what that looks like.

Lots to look at there. So the excavations took quite a bit. And related to that was also an underground tunnel, which they now have stairs and lights and all sorts of things so you can go take a look at it. But what also complicates is it's in a neighborhood. So it's one of those deals where you have people living tunnels and archaeological stuff, so it's a little bit of a challenge. Here's one of the things. This looks like it was something left over from the Jebusites and then some sort of touch-up and reconstruction under the time of David. But that's a part of that big scene that you saw from the air.

Oh, before I leave that, Bethlehem is just to the south, right? About seven miles south of Jerusalem. Bethlehem, okay, means house of bread. The name prior to that was Bethlehem, which is House of the God of War. Interesting. So the Jews, when they went in, changed it. Because Lehem would have been a pagan god, and that would have been unacceptable. So what the Jews do, they tweak the name just slightly to make it acceptable. House of Bread, we can call it that.

Hittites. The origin of these people is not certain, and the reason is because the Bible refers to them And so we're not sure, is this like a scout group that was set out in a particular area? And sometimes we know that that happened. Or was it another separate people and we don't have a separate name?

So that's something that archaeologists are still scratching their heads about. Nonetheless, this was the area of the Hittite kingdom. And it obviously doesn't go down into Israel, just to the north. So one of the things that archaeologists are trying to figure out is, is this kind of a scout group that was set out to establish a colony, as happened often in the ancient world, or is this a separate people and we just have the names so we can't identify the different group? So anyway, we'll let them scratch their heads, but that's the name there. If we're talking about this larger kingdom, this is some of the excavations up in Turkey, and it's fairly substantial. archaeological site there.

Okay, now the Hivites, and we talked about termites and satellites and everything else, these are the Hivites. So this Hivite group here, interesting, they were not a particularly warlike people, so when the Jews came, a lot of their response was, yeah, we'll be your servants, what do you want us to do? So it's real interesting, they were sort of friendly, naive, Really kind of surprising. Towards the end there was one kind of stiff opposition, but for a lot of the culture, from what we know of the culture and of what we read in the scripture, they square up. They're sort of friendly, passive, naive folks. Hi, how are you doing? You want us to serve you? Fine. What do you want?

It was really interesting because it's very unlike a lot of the rest of the cultures in the area. The Hivites appeared to have occupied four principal cities. Gibeon, and I'll let you take a look at the other ones, a little more complicated names. This is the site of Gibeon today. So it's a site that's identifiable. Archaeologists go there, look at it, find the evidence of the Hivites and the subsequent development there.

Canaanites. This is one we tend to hear more of them. In truth, a lot of the peoples got generally called Canaanites. Just as a sort of a general name, even though We have specific names for subgroups that we've already touched on here. The handout from the first week, pages 3 and 4, reason being that was the one where we talked about the Canaanites' religion, and the Canaanites' religion being vile, wicked. One of the things that was real prominent that we pointed out was their habit of burning firstborn children to the god Molech. They'd have this huge kind of stove It was in the image of the God, big hands that were laid out to take an infant and the parents would take their baby after they got the stove all heated up and drop the baby, their first baby on the hands of this red hot stove. So, really sick.

Anyway, you can take a look at that if you want to dig back there. The Canaanites were some of the key warnings you find in Deuteronomy. You know, here's the warning, you know, you shall not behave thus toward the Lord your God for every abominable act which the Lord hates they have done for their gods and they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire for their gods. He says, God hates that, don't do it. Repeatedly you see in the, especially Deuteronomy, don't fall into the practices of the people, particularly the Canaanites, that you see when you get there. Don't do it. So what'd they do? They did it. Yes. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Dropped right into it.

Child sacrifice, summit and fire, incest was also real common. Bestiality. There's various records of them. I've got to go out and have intercourse with the farm animals first before I do this other thing. Really strange, even in the Canaanites' own records. Homosexuality, left and right. and male and female cultic prostitution. Lots of evidence of venereal disease because, of course, you've got all this sexual interactivity with no discernment or discretion whatsoever. And the thing we pointed out in that prior handout was even the other pagan cultures around them were disgusted. They said, this is gross.

This is an excavation of the Canaanite city of Hazor, sometimes called Hatzor. And you'll find some references there in Joshua 11 through Jeremiah 49. That's kind of the extent of time that you see the name showing up. Now the Amorites, just to the north there. And the Amorites were among a number of tribes there that established these city-states. Ashkelon is one of their primary cities. Frequently, time and again, you'll talk about this group, the Amorites, coming out of the hill country.

I mean, there's probably a dozen to two dozen places where it keeps talking about coming out of the hill country. So they would have a principal city, but then when it was time for battle or something, you see a large population pouring out of the hills. And the Jews repeatedly made reference to that. So it was a significant part of their culture to have people out in the hills as well as to have this kind of protective major city that they could come to.

The Sidonians. Now, you'll see the Bible call it the Sidonians. You may be more familiar with a different name, the Phoenicians. Last month, National Geographic had a whole article on who are the Phoenicians. And one of the things that they've begun doing is looking at some DNA studies to try to identify who's who. Basically, it's the area we now call Lebanon. The Phoenicians were phenomenal people. Now, it's the name from Hebrew. The Phoenician name is phoenikis.

It means red people who are having to do with their kind of reddish and purplish clothing. What they would do is they would gather myrrex shells by the thousands. It would take several thousand of these myrrex shells. They'd grind them up and they'd draw out from it a purple dye. And so it was expensive. So the purple became a symbol. That's what royalty, red or purple, for royalty to wear because it's so expensive to pull out out of these myrrh shells, thousands of shells, to get one ounce of dye. Lots of work, so very expensive. Anyway, Phoenicians is the name you'll very commonly hear. The Bible says Sidonians and it's because later on the Greeks gave the name Phoenicians.

Main port is Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. By the way, you have your Bible in the pew. Byblos is the name we get our Bible from. Why? The people in Byblos, because Phoenicians were really into shipping, they did a lot of the shipping and marketing, if you will, of papyrus that books were printed on. So now that's how we have our name Bible. So Holly Hills Byblos Church?

Not quite, but that's where the name came from. and the Sidonians refer to themselves by the city from which they came. It's interesting. The Bible calls them Sidonians, when in fact they're really a people of a larger area. The Phoenicians themselves always referred to the city that they came from, and the Greeks called them the Phoenicians, or their equivalent of it. So everybody had a different habit, but you can make that connection there. Alright, here's some sarcophagus Ahiram, the 13th century BC biblos, so that would be one of the Sidonians or Phoenician cities.

This is the Crusader area castle at Sidon. The reason I showed that is because a nearby port that the Phoenicians use is silted up, so this is something nearby. They think that some of the Phoenicians' works are underneath this Crusader area castle, so that's the best we can show right now.

And then here is the modern port city of Tyre. Now, about Tyre. When Alexander the Great, 322 BC, came to Tyre, here he is, he's got this great, well-trained army on the mainland. The people of Tyre do what? They go out to the island. They all have a bunch of boats, they go out to the island, and you know, and so Alexander the Great, he's saying, hmm, these people have the boats, we don't have the boats, we don't have any boats, we've got lots of troops, I know what we'll do. We'll take everything that's on the mainland, scrape it off the land, and throw it out into the sea.

And that's what he did. He made a bridge out to the island. And I don't know offhand what the distance is, but it was quite a project. He made a bridge out to the island and took over the island that way. He was looking at his calendar and looking at all the stuff he had to do, and he said, no, we've got to get this done. We can't wait around for these people. So that's what they did. And so now, look at this. That's the way it looks now. And these maps are old ones. These maps were made in like 1873, but that was one example showing both that I had.

The Greeks, we showed before when Craig was teaching here, the Greeks had lots of different colonies around Mediterranean. And that same map shows, and we'll include here, and this is what shows on your handout on C1, the red dots are the Phoenician colonies and ports.

So the Phoenicians also went to other places, but there are places that actually had colonies in here, including up in the southern tip of England. The Phoenicians circumnavigated Africa. The Phoenicians used the North Star to navigate. There's just a whole long list of things the Phoenicians did that were phenomenal, substantial, and in some cases, firsts.

So amazing people. We've talked about the Mesopotamians substantially with Assyria, but this is actually a lot of the people group just off to the west end of the area around Assyria. And so these are the people that were involved in suppressing Israel. Okay, the Ammonites and the Moabites.

These people are descendants of Lot. Lot had escaped from Remember the conflagration that was Sodom and Gomorrah? So his wife wasn't around, right? And remember the priority of the patriarchs? Must have heirs. Well, the daughters said, well, we've got to make heirs for our father. So they got the father drunk.

And so Moab and Ammon are the offspring of Lot through his daughters because of that incident. And by the way, archaeologists have just recently found a cave of Lot. And even his name written on some of the things on the walls and the pottery dates from about that time. And if you look at the biblical account, Lot and his daughters were living in the cave.

And the description seems to fit. Is it absolutely tied together certain? No. Circumstantially, though, it seems to fit. Interesting. OK. There's the present plains of Moab. It basically is the land of Jordan. It's the area where they settled. The history of the area is more complicated than to be able to simply say Moab and Ammon are the people of Jordan. There's too much scrambling.

But nonetheless, there's some background there. Edomites. Those are descendants, aside from Amalek, descendants of Esau, brother of Jacob. You find references there in Genesis. And again, a desert land. Here's a couple of shots, a few different shots. Petra is one of the cities that went into Roman times that's in that land and one of the more famous places that stuck around.

All right. Now we shift into kind of the New Testament era. Hmm. All right. This is surprising me a little bit, but we'll go through it. We got four groups actually. Ah, there we go. You've got four groups. You've got the Barbarians, the Scythians, the Parthians, and the Cretans. Those are the four groups that we'll be looking at here. And it's looking like this. You've got the Barbarians, which is a group, you notice here's the Roman Empire.

The area there that you see that is in the green is the area that was during Augustus, that is during the time of Christ up to about the first half of his life. And then the time right after the New Testament is shown in purple when the Roman Empire expanded to there. What you see is there's a line right across the middle of Europe where the Romans, they just kind of had to hold the line. It was the barbarians that they were constantly battling on that line. And where you see the purple, up in the middle of Europe, they kind of moved against the barbarians and took more land, but that was after the New Testament era. The taking over of England took place during the New Testament era, the southern part of England. It happened about 40 AD, so it was right during the time, here's the apostles, doing what you see recorded in Acts, that's another group there that the Romans would have just called barbarians. I'll give you a quick account.

The Romans took their ships up there. The Roman soldiers were scared. Because England was like the edge of the world, right? Britain was like the edge of the world. The Roman soldiers went up there. They moved all the soldiers on the land. The soldiers began to mutiny. And so the general in charge of the invasion gave the order, burn the ships. He burned the ships, took the soldiers over to see the burning ships, and said, see that? You're going to fight. There's no going back, guys. And so they did. And they won, because they had to, right? So real interesting.

Anyway, the barbarians are a group that were always tough for the Romans to get on top of and really hold it. So for the most part, other than small areas like you see, they would just hold the line. Barbarians are actually several different groups under one name. We say barbarians, but the truth is there were a number of different groups that would have just you know, called themselves this name or that name. The summary term was barbarians.

This is a map, and I've circled up, it's up in the corner. This is several centuries later, after the Roman Empire started falling apart, it was these barbarians that moved into the Roman Empire. So the barbarians were always a challenge. When the Roman Empire started stumbling, they moved in. And it was a number of these groups that took over the area that Rome had in portions of southern and middle Europe. Okay, how many of you have seen the movie Gladiator? Okay, it is so far as representing Roman military culture and also slavery, the gladiators, pretty good historically.

Historians will nitpick it for things that are rather minor to most of us, and there are some flaws in it that way. Have you ever seen any of these folks who are nitpicking movies where they make mistakes? Yes, there are a few mistakes in it. But nonetheless, it does, if you can stomach the military violence, and it's there, it does represent the culture of the Roman military combat pretty well.

And, you see, in the initial opening scenes, battles with barbarians, and they show that. And again, I'd recommend it only if, you know, don't have your kids in the room, don't, you know, have grandkids in the room, whatever status you're at. And I would say only if it's something that you feel you wouldn't be offended by or stumbled by. But nonetheless, it does fairly accurately represent the military culture, as well as the barbarians at that time. These are some scenes from it that aren't particularly gory, other than you can see they started the forest on fire. I tried to capture other shots, but they're even harder to see than this, so I figured I'd pass on it.

Now, the next group we see is the Sissians. That's moving off towards the east. Basically, this is kind of the people who are in the southern part of the Soviet Union between the Black Sea and the Caspian over to the east there. And this is another group that, you see, Paul actually mentions them.

Mentioned by Paul in Colossians 3.11. So we'll encounter the name. That's the only place where he mentions them.

The barbarians and the Scythians were often used as descriptors of people like, these are the craziest scum of the earth you could imagine. I mean, these people were nuts. They'd paint themselves all blue and just, you know, They would dress very oddly, oftentimes wild appearance. And the Scythians were no different. They were, however, a fairly highly developed culture in spite of the stereotype. See some of the gold work off to the left there? And this is a piece of pottery depicting some Scythian archers. So we include that.

Now, the two places that you find both the barbarians and the Scythians is, one, the Roman soldiers did encounter them. in battle from time to time. And two, when they encountered them and captured them, they'd be made slaves. So that's where people elsewhere in the Roman Empire would have contact with these people. You think, where's Paul getting in contact with barbarians and Scythians? Slave capture. And when they would capture a slave, the typical thing was not to leave them in the same area, but to move them away so that there wasn't any tendency to just run back and that kind of thing. So that's where you'd encounter these groups.

Another one is the Parthians. We mentioned them before. The only slight mention of the Parthians is in Acts 2. They're one of the languages that's listed as being there on the Day of Pentecost. Other than that, the mentions of the Parthians are kind of incidental. A couple of places are, one, the Magi. that you see mentioned, these are often called the wise men. They are likely from Parthia. The name and the location and what they did seems to fit.

And Revelation 9.19 talks about tails like snakes. And the Parthians used to do that to their horses. They would take the tail and wrap it all up in such a way that it looked like a serpent. And some of the Parthian art shows here's a horse with a tail like a snake and then they'd show a snake underneath the horse just to kind of reinforce that idea.

The Romans battled the Parthians substantially at one point right after the New Testament era but in general didn't like to go against them because they fought weird. It was something the Romans had a tough time with because I'd mentioned before they were really good horsemen. They could ride backwards, shooting arrows while they're riding backwards. I mean it was just very strange. for the Romans to try to contend with. The Romans were used to people that came at them, but the Parthians would kind of swing by on their horses, shoot backwards while they're riding on the horse at full gallop, and hit accurately. It was really phenomenal. So anyway, an uncomfortable bunch to try to fight.

And then finally, the Cretans. I mention Crete, even though it's a little tiny island, because they're an island people, they developed a different culture. And the main place we see them showing up not the only, but the main place we see him showing up is the book of Titus. Paul sent Titus to Crete to appoint elders there and provide a direction to them about how to lead a church. Here's also how you need to deal with these Cretans.

The Cretans made heroes of those who lied and betrayed others for personal gain. Somebody in the Cretan culture would befriend someone and then trick them and after they'd done the tricking, the rest of the Cretans would hooray and they'd pat them on the back and they'd throw a party and they'd just, hey, you tricked them, that's great. So they thought that was wonderful. Identity theft, oh, they would just think that's the most fantastic thing you could imagine. They would just love that. Oh, man, they'd just really slap them on the back.

Here's Paul writing to the Cretans and he says something he doesn't say in any other New Testament book. He writes to Titus in verse 2, in the hope of eternal life, which God who cannot lie. Why does he say that? Substantially in contrast with the Cretan culture. God cannot lie, as opposed to these Cretans here.

And then we go farther down, and I'm skipping over the section where he gives the qualifications of elders, because he just jumps right into that. He says, I sent you there for that, here's the qualifications for elders. And then he says, right after that, here's why you need to look for those qualifications for elders. There in Crete, there are many rebellious men, empty talkers and deceivers.

These are characteristic of them. A great many of them are that way. Into verse 11 and into verse 12, for the sake of sordid gain. Of course, that was one of the things. Always trying to trick people, not just because you want to trick them, but if you can possibly get money out of it, then that's the best deal. Trick people, get money out of it, hey, it doesn't get any better than that. That's the Cretan's motto, right? One of themselves, a prophet of their own, this is Epimenides, 6th century BC, said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons. So this is a centuries-old tradition Paul is writing about, okay? Even, you know, here's half a millennia before, and this fellow is saying that, 500, 600 years goes by, Paul can quote it and say, yep, still fits. This testimony is true, he says. And then farther on there, several places.

Now all this in Titus chapter 2, 1 through 8 is all positive. That is, it's not talking, it doesn't say tell them not to do this, it doesn't say the Cretans are like this. It's all teach them this and it's all positive statement. But look at what's implied, I guess is the best word.

But as for you speak the things which are fitting for sound doctrine, you get into verse 2, older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith. And then in verse 8, sound in speech. That word that is translated sound, hygieno, is where we get our word hygiene, healthy. So sound is the opposite of sick.

So what is he implying? He says when you're teaching them the positive things of the faith, what you're teaching them is healthy, because the culture is sick. It's all in contrast to the culture. The culture is sick, sick, sick. But what you are to teach them is sound, healthy, solid. Good hygiene, spiritually.

Next time we go into the case studies, it's a family tradition. What we'll do, starting that series through the end of the year basically, we'll be looking at particular passages of scripture and looking at how they raised families, how people got married, how the food preparation was done and things of that sort. Farther on there, never talk about religion and politics except we'll get into what the Bible says about that. Slaves in the third week and on down to going through the seven churches of Revelation So anyway, we'll continue on with with those next time Someone I mean I mean to announce and that is if you have contributed to the gift for Amy that's for afterwards There's a card down there to sign. Okay, just want to bring that up here questions.

I Did Lydia live in that area? Interesting. Lydia was in Philippi and she however may have been and gotten the name from the area of Lydia which was in the southwest portion of Turkey. that the dye that they often used was the same Myrax shells. Yeah, interesting. And here's a curious point. The section that she moved into, Philippi and Thessalonica, was an area of the Roman Empire where women were allowed to speak in public, to vote, and to own businesses, and to inherit things, which is radically different from most of the Roman Empire. She appears to be of Jewish background because Paul meets her alongside the river at Philippi.

She may have moved up to that area in order to be able to carry on that business, possibly from the area down more to the southwest part of Turkey, what is now Turkey, where that cloth would be one of the areas it would originate from. So those are some combination of things we know and speculations, but real interesting. Again, it was the Murex shell was what they ended up using. And the cloth, one of the cloth types that we had was a wool that was dyed that color, Colossinus, from the Murex shell. Yeah, it's a good point. You're making a good point.

Because what happened is that what the Phoenicians started there did get carried over in some other areas where they had good materials. No, she was probably Jewish, possibly a Gentile convert, but probably Jewish and had probably moved in that area and maybe had connections out of the area around Colossae and Laodicea and had moved having had those connections. By the way, the fact that she's of Jewish background, we know from our prior studies It had been about two and a half centuries since the Jews had been asked to move into that area around Colossae and Philippi, excuse me, Colossae and Ephesus. So the historical connection seems to fit. She would have been one who moved out of an area with Jewish background, out of an area where they had that cloth, and would have been kind of a marketing transplant into an area where she, because she invited Paul and the others to stay with her at her house It indicates she had some kind of wealth, which she would have been more likely to have had because women in that area had more rights.

And that's one of the reasons why in Act 16 and around there, you'll see mention of prominent women because that's the character of the culture in that area. Anyway, there's lots connected to your question. Sorry, I hope that isn't too much. Other questions? All right. All right, let's pray. We'll go ahead and start in.

Oh, last week I offered these Greek Old Testament and New Testament, and a couple people picked it up. This is a CD copy of the Greek New Testament and Old Testament. It's Greek, Strong's numbers, and English, interlinear, and you can search by it. Anyway, if you're interested, I have a few copies. There were some people expressing interest last week. Let's pray. Thank you, Lord, for this time. And we just pray, Lord, that we would learn all that you have for us in your rich and marvelous word. Thank you for the depth that is there. In Jesus' name, Amen. I did want to show you one more thing. You got a moment? This guy. This is Bendall Jones, who is the inspiration for the Indiana Jones series that doesn't look anything like Harrison Ford. But this is the actual fellow who inspired it.

He was a Baptist pastor during the 50s and then he moved into archaeology and still he's got one research center in Arlington, Texas and he's got another research center over in the Dead Sea area. He is looking for the ark. He's found a number of things. He's had as many as 300 people at a dig at once. Anyway, this is the inspiration for the Indiana Jones movies. And he did find, for example, a vial of the anointing oil that was used. And he's found a number of interesting things.

Archaeologists sort of grimace because he tends to be sort of a prize hunter. instead of being sort of the objective academic archaeologist that sifts through things carefully. He does do his documentation, does do his work, but he tends to be looking for those things.

Nonetheless, that's the guy. I thought you might find that interesting. The inspiration for this... I mean, the movies portray him as Superman. I'm not sure he's that. He also, by the way, is the only American who fought for the Israelis during the Six-Day War. interesting background for the fellow. And that's one of the reasons why he has this sort of larger-than-life image. Here he's out fighting with the Israelis and traveling around the world and looking for these artifacts and things of that sort. One of his crew started writing these stories about him and that developed into the movie. So, okay, great fun.