Bible Backgrounds/Church History 2012
Vern Peterman · Jun 10, 2012
Bible Bkgds/Church History, No. 24
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492631728782

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

We are just a few weeks away from finishing up the Bible background series, and today we'll cover essentially various occupations, work situations. And starting July 1, we'll be beginning the church history series. So anyway, we'll continue on with that. So just a few more weeks here.

There were certainly a variety of occupations, including some that don't exist now, because of technology in great part. The rate of change of technology then was much slower. That's the one thing, if you think about the rate of technology change in our culture, it is spectacular. They didn't have that greater rate of technology change. One of the things we'll look at, for example, glassblowing was invented just a few decades before the birth of Christ. But at the time, none of the glass was clear and it all had bubbles. But we live in a time when technology change is just constant.

My grandfather was born in 1890. He went home to be with the Lord in 87, so he lived 97 years. And we sat down one time and kind of went over the different pieces of technology changed during his lifetime. Things like the invention of the airplane. He didn't fight in World War I, but he drew up one of the howitzers, you know, with hand drafting tools that I still have. So different things have changed radically. We live in a time where, you know, can you imagine when I was growing up, you know, what's a smartphone, you know? We live in quite a time. Whoever heard of an iPad, you know?

So anyway, technology was much slower in biblical times. The population was involved basically with agriculture, and other occupations tended to be minor. Due to the low level of technology in use and available for agricultural production, you had to have most of the population, 90% plus, involved in agriculture. Family farms were the typical means for growing crops and animals in Israel in biblical times. Heavier farm work was typically done by the father and the son. Smaller farms couldn't afford to hire anyone, so the father and the son worked really hard. And actually the women pitched in a great deal too, especially on the family farms. They would use animals to help if they had any.

Do you ever see pictures? Usually you'll see it on Christmas cards. Here's Mary riding a donkey. with Joseph to Bethlehem? Probably not. Because it was, we don't know for sure, it doesn't say that she rode a donkey, but it was probably not affordable. And the manger was probably not made of wood because that would have been too expensive and wouldn't last long enough.

Larger farms had work animals and some additional farm equipment and perhaps hired servants. They could also hire some day laborers when needed for peak work periods. And so here we have a yoke. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. Being unequally yoked in the second Corinthians.

Olives. Olives were critical in a plentiful crop grown primarily for the oil pressed from the olives. This was big. Olive trees typically live a long time, such as these in the garden on the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem. These probably about 900 years old.

Olives had to be pressed to get the oil, which was used for lamps, medicine, cooking, lubrication, and cosmetics. That oil press that you see there is called a Gethsemane. So the Garden of Gethsemane is just simply the Garden of Olive Press. So that would be the typical way. Another way that they would do it is they would have a vertical stone, and they would drop that down on the olives.

Dates and pistachios were also common crops. Ah, figs. A biggie here. Here's James 3.12. Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Figs are referenced in both Old and New Testaments. Jesus makes reference.

We saw it in Matthew 24.32. Now learn the parable from the fig tree.

When its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. Plowing was required for annual crops, and it was done typically by some kind of a farm animal. And hopefully you could afford one. Here's Luke. Jesus said to him, no one after putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the kingdom of God.

So common crops, there would be wheat and barley. and typically hand broadcast. That would be the usual means of spreading it out. Grain products, just by random scattering of the seed, saved from prior years. Since bread was a staple, lots of grain crops were planted. Lots.

The typical way of eating is to have bread and then dip it in various kinds of sauces. Even among the Jews or the Gentiles, that was typical, because they didn't have forks and knives and spoons and all that. You used the bread to get whatever else you were going to eat into your mouth. So that was common, typical, and of course with the Jews during certain times of year it would be the unleavened bread, the thin stuff.

Meat was for a special event, in great part, or for the wealthy. But for the most part, meat was not a daily thing. They had rules about what you could or couldn't eat, but that didn't mean you had it because it was more costly. I mean, it's one thing to, you know, to shear the sheep and it's another thing to eat it. It's one thing to milk the cow, it's another thing to eat it. They just typically avoided that. Yeah, Tom?

Fish, though, would be a little more easily obtainable. Fish more easily obtainable and more commonly around the Sea of Galilee or along the coast. That would be more typical there. Among, particularly among the Gentiles, one of the more common forms of fish would be fermented fish paste. And to us that may sound pretty repulsive. There are parts of Asia where that's still commonly eaten. It's fermented fish paste. Yeah, you take your bread, you know, and you dip it in their fermented fish paste. And especially desired was the oils that would rise to the top. You know, that was like butter.

Anyway, harvest time. Harvest was hard work done by hand, typically with relatively crude tools. In other words, I don't know, have any of you used like a sickle or a scythe? We had one on the farm that, you know, we would occasionally use and it was a lot of hard work. But that was with a nice metal blade. They didn't always have that.

They might even have something like this where they'd take a piece of bone and insert some sharp stone in a groove in the bone. Grain crops all had to be threshed to break away the grain from the stock and then winnowed. So you had to go and break it up to get the grain broken off from the stock and then you had to toss it up in the air to get the chaff peeled away from the seed. So it's a lot of work even once you've hauled it in. So you can imagine, this whole thing is very labor intensive, takes lots of time. The only way to get it done is to have people do the work. Lots of hard work.

So, here is Luke 3.17, his winnowing fork is in his hand to thoroughly clear his threshing floor and to gather the weed into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire so that the the wheat winnowing and getting rid of the chaff and getting everything into the barn and getting the other stuff out of the way, that's a picture of judgment.

Lentils, rather than beans, lentils would be a common crop. They were also broadcast harvested And in addition to that, they were threshed and winnowed, just like the grain. So they'd go through a lot of the same process to get the lentils. And then what would they do with the lentils? They would oftentimes kind of mash it up and make a sauce that you could dip your bread in, right? Because you don't have a spoon or a fork or something like that. So again, everything was put into some kind of a sauce or a paste type form in order to eat it with the bread.

2 Samuel 23.11, so now after him, David, was Shammah the son of Agi Aharorite, and the Philistines were gathered into a troop where there was a plot of ground full of lentils. So this would have been, this is a place where there's a bunch of crops and they're going to have a battle here. Here's lentils on a threshing floor. The threshing floor was often, like in this case, what you see is bare stone And if they didn't have bare stone, they would like to otherwise have soil that packed down hard so you don't get the soil mixing in with the crop.

So they would prefer the clean bare stone, but if not, then packed down soil would be something you'd opt for. Yeah? Yes. Yeah, so if you get something with a clay fraction in it, then you could get something that would pack down. Real sandy stuff or just silty, not good because then you get that mixed in with the food crop. Grape harvest. Grapes are a common crop required in care throughout the seasons. One of the things you have here is a tower. Of course, Jesus makes reference to a tower. Which of you builds a tower? Why would they have a tower? What would be the value in having a tower?

Is that just so you can have a nice viewpoint? Yeah, you can look for somebody taking the grapes. You can even look for animals that are coming in and, you know, hey, get those birds out of there. Or we got an animal coming over here and eating away at the grapes, right? So yeah. Yeah, Tom?

300-foot flame. They had one, something like that, that Jesus mentioned. The Great Exile had not killed our people. The Great Exile explosion and collapse, any more righteous than the others, you still ended up the same way. So you have that pattern.

And one of the things you also see in there is the women helping with the picking of the grapes, even one with a baby in arms. A lot of this was so labor intensive that if a child was old enough to help, if a woman, even if she had a baby, could hold the baby in one arm and go out and pick grape, anything you can do to help, they needed all the help they can get. It's very labor intensive.

So, this reference to the tower, Luke 14, 28. Now, here's something else, and this comes in very importantly in John chapter 15. Jesus says, I'm the vine, you are the branches. Very important point. Here's a vineyard in the off season. One of the things you find is that ground doesn't look very good, does it? But that often is some of the better ground for grapes. Grapes don't need real fertile ground. They can do quite well in ground that's off optimum. What do you see them holding up the grape vines with?

You see rock. Why would you choose rock? There's lots of it. That's part one. The other thing is with the rock is, you know, once you put it there, it's going to stay there probably longer than the vine. So it's permanent as opposed to, see this picture before shows actually wood stakes. That's probably unlikely. It would be expensive and wouldn't last long enough. So they'd lift it up with a rock.

John 15.2, every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he, and what do the translations commonly say? He cleanses or basically they look at it as cutting it off, right? But, I believe the proper translation there is he lifts up.

Because what do they do in the normal grape trellis arrangement in a modern vineyard, and I've worked in the vineyards, they'll have wires going at different levels to train up the branches that come off of the vine, right? Well, in biblical times they didn't have a bunch of wires and you couldn't have all the stakes and everything that they have. So what would they do is they would go along and put a stick, and it didn't have to be a big one, put a stick to lift up the bottom branches. So that they bear fruit and you don't have leaves and fruit down in the dirt. So every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he lifts up.

Yeah, of course. Made in Jerusalem. Anyway, I think that's a key insight because having worked in the vineyards, I know what it's like. They don't just go cutting off things. If you can get the lower branches up off the ground, you avoid getting the insects on them, you avoid the disease on the leaves and the rotting of the leaves, and you avoid having the grapes sitting on the ground. So every branch that does not bear fruit, he lifts up. Stomping grapes.

Juice flowing from the wine press is given as a picture of slaughter in Joel 3 and in two passages in the book of Revelation. That's from the grape stomping because they would stomp the grapes and then you'd see it, you know, coming out here and it would be, you know, especially you get a dark red grape, it would be splashed up, you know, up the legs and uses, again, a picture of judgment.

Then there was gleaning. What book of the Bible focuses on gleaning as a key theme? The book of Ruth, right. In the book of Ruth, Ruth is gleaning, having lost a spouse, and so she's going out there and trying to you know, make ends meet by doing this gleaning. Gleaning, imagine if it's hard work to harvest, gleaning is extra hard work, right?

Because you're getting the corners and you're getting the stuff left over after they've gone through the first time. So, the Mosaic Law, Leviticus 19, 9 and 10 says that Israel's not to harvest the corners of the fields, okay, so they're supposed to leave an unharvested So if you had a very complicated configuration on your land, you might have a number of corners. But they weren't supposed to harvest the corners and they weren't supposed to go back a second time to pick up any remaining crops. Those corners and the remaining crops after the first run through, those are to be left for gleaners. Others were to be permitted to glean those fields. So you're right, Ruth chapter 2 has that. Yeah, Tom? In biblical times, they didn't have irrigation systems and they didn't have pipes and all that. It's basically you got what you got.

Then there were the herdsmen. Flocks of sheep and goats were kept by shepherds. They stayed with the sheep. We had sheep, a few goats, we had sheep, but we didn't stay with them. Anyway, the shepherds would stay with them, and then nobody else wanted to be around the shepherds. But anyway, usually pasturing them in more hilly country less suitable for farming. So in other words, there wouldn't be this conflict between the farmers and the herders because the farmers would take the prime stuff and then the herders would be taking other areas up in the hill country and areas that were too rocky to farm, right?

So Luke 2.8, the announcement of the birth of Christ, how did that come? It came to shepherds there in the area around Bethlehem. Sheep and goats would sometimes be kept at night in a fenced-in area like this. Here they'd use the rocks for something, right? And with the shepherd sleeping in the doorway to keep out thieves and predators and to keep the sheep inside. So Jesus would say then, here it is, I am the door. If anyone enters through me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.

And we capitalize, I am, because that's where Jesus also says, as he says a number of times in the Gospel of John, it's ego eimi, which is essentially redundant, I am. But that's an expression that, for example, in the Greek Old Testament, God says to Moses, Moses says, who should I say has sent me? And the response in the Greek Old Testament, God says, ego eimi. That's what Jesus says. I am. I am. He uses the form of the words there that declare his deity.

Shepherding is a varied role, leading to good food and water, protecting from dangers and theft, and dealing with disease and injury, and finding the lost sheep. And it's one other thing, it would have periods that would be periods of extreme boredom, interspersed with periods of terror, because you'd have, as we had on the farm there, you'd have mountain lions come in.

And they are fast. They are really fast. I've seen a mountain lion twice, and both times the lion was so fast, I didn't realize that I saw one until afterwards. It was there and gone. And I said, oh, I just saw a mountain lion. So they are very fast.

And so a shepherd, in order to be effective at driving off the mountain lion, has to be looking constantly for that one moment when the mountain lion shows up and then act quickly, very quickly. Yes? Special safety precaution for anybody hiking that hike. Yes. You be sure to look for the lion. Yes. And then when you spot one, they're Yeah, they are extremely fast and that's the thing, they don't want to be seen. So they hide, they're fast, they're not moving and then they'll move quickly.

You know, going out and finding lost sheep and bringing those in, right? Jesus said in Matthew 15, and he also told the disciples this in Matthew 10, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And he told the disciples when he sent them out two by two, go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And that's a quote out of several places in the Old Testament. Here's Paul to the elders at Ephesus.

Be on your guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

What's interesting, is shepherd here, is it a title? It's not a title, is it? It's a verb. One more. Here's 1 Peter 5, 1-4, a portion of which says, Shepherd the flock of God among you, exercising oversight, proving to be examples to the flock. It's interesting. Shepherd is used as a noun for a guy who shepherds a church once.

Once. The only place it's used as a title in the New Testament is for Christ. Not for the guy who's leading a church. Never. But, in both of these passages, shepherd is used as a verb. God is more interested in action and reality than titles. It's very interesting. Both passages, shepherd is a verb, not a title. The word pastor is a Latinized form of shepherd.

Now, the boats. I mentioned that previously here. Aside from long hours in the boats, there were a number of onshore tasks involved in fishing. Mending nets, preparing the fish, and taking them to market. So here would be a Galilean fishing scene during the daytime. And one of the things you'd see is what is going on here. They're mending the nets.

And Matthew 4 is one of those places that talks about mending the nets, and the same word for mending the nets is used in Galatians 6.1. This is where Paul says, if any of you is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual should mend such a one.

And then similarly, 1 Peter 5.10, the word is used there as well. Fishermen used nets, which they could catch many fish at a time, but required mending and maintenance. There was one other thing that made the nets necessary.

Fishing with nets was done at night. Because you had no material, up until recent decades, no material that was invisible to the fish, you had to fish at night. So fishermen, and it talks about fishing in the Sea of Galilee, was done at night. They worked all night.

And then you'd get up, and then you'd have to go mend the nets, because they had gotten ripped up. John 21, 3 and 4 talks about fishing all night. And then here's Luke 5, 4, and 5. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Simon answered and said, Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as you say and let down the nets. Here's the circumstance with that passage.

The guys The guys had been working all night, throwing the nets out, pulling them back in, throwing the nets out, pulling them back in, working all night. They were dead tired. And then the sun comes up and Jesus said, let me preach from your boats. And the guys, you can imagine, they're, oh. We have worked all night and we're dead tired. So, so, but they said, okay, that's what Jesus wants. We'll let him do it. And so he preached from the boats and when they were all done, he said, okay, now let down your nets in the daytime. And this was like crazy. And he said, look, we've worked all night when we should have and caught nothing. But because you say so, we'll do it.

And they caught a huge amount of fish, which you don't do in the daytime, unless it's a miracle. Unless it's a miracle. Now, the other thing, of course, among Jewish fishermen is, do I have legal fish? Because you can't just sell and eat all the fish, right? It has to have scales and fins. An eel doesn't count. So what would they do? The Jewish fishermen would sort out legal and non-legal fish.

And the non-legal stuff they would then sell to the Gentiles. And the legal stuff then they would sell to the Jews. Now, it just so happened, where did Jesus center his ministry and where did Peter live? In Capernaum at the very north end. Capernaum had to the east a group of houses there for Roman soldiers. And so there at Capernaum, you could sort it out, take the illegal fish and sell it to the Romans. and then take the legal fish and sell it to the Jews. Well, and with Jews they had all sorts of particular requirements.

Now, one thing we don't have in here, three forms of fish. Fresh fish, which unless you live right near the water, you didn't get. When Jesus fed the crowd, and you remember he had the loaves and the fish, that was dried fish, most likely. And those would either be hung on racks, or they would lay down a layer of fish, put down rock salt, and then another layer of fish, and then another layer of rock salt, etc. So you'd have dried fish, and then you could break it up. Jesus wasn't breaking up fresh fish, right? So it dried fish and then you could break it up in pieces.

And then the third form, which we mentioned before, was fermented fish paste. And the Romans actually, that was a staple for the Roman army, is the fermented fish paste. And they had different grades of it for different officers, you know, for example, who would get finer ground fish paste.

Yes? Oh no, they would have chickens. Yeah, they would have chickens, but again, consuming a chicken would not be, you know, the best way to use it from their standpoint. You know, the eating of the meat. To them, laying eggs would be the value of the chicken. So again, for a lot of these animals, it isn't, boy, we're going to take this thing and butcher it. We're going to squeeze the life out of it and get the eggs, milk. Yeah, and the priority would be milk it as long as you can. Get the eggs as long as you can. Get what you can off the animals that way.

And then the larger ones, you make them work. Metal workers, a rare skill among the Jews in earlier times. So this was a skill that developed later. The need for metal tools made this craftsman very valuable. Imagine going out to plow and not having a metal blade. I mean, whatever you try to do with that, That's going to be tough work. But if you could get a metal blade, and of course in the earlier times, it wasn't going to be iron. You might have some bronze blade, but that would be better than just a piece of wood.

Better farm tools had metal blades and joints. And this is one of the sources for our word baptized. They would heat a sword or something else you wanted to harden. And they would heat it white hot, drop it into a vat of cold water to case harden the metal. And that would end up then being the sword or other hard implement.

So when Paul would write about you would be baptized into Christ, this would be one of the things that they would have in their mind. Oh, okay, I know what baptism is, is to be completely immersed and radically changed by the immersion. OK? Completely immersed and radically changed by the immersion.

Another one would be dyeing. These dyes would be very expensive for, say, red or purple, very expensive, more costly per ounce than gold. Because, you see these shells? Those shells were collected, for example, in the Eastern Mediterranean, you might use 10,000 shells to get an ounce of dye. So a lot of work. The other thing that they would do is collect these crimson worms because those also had a red coloring that they could make use of. So both of those took a lot of work to collect and that's one of the main reasons why red or purple fabric was just very expensive.

But they would take the material they were going to dye, dip it into the dye, and it would be radically changed as a result of the immersion. So that was another place where the word baptism was used. So when you're baptized into Christ, you're radically changed by being immersed into him. Right?

And this would be one of the things they would picture out of the occupations. A carpenter shop such as Jesus and Joseph would have, right? They would typically operate as single proprietors with several hand tools. Starting out in smaller towns, carpenters would often operate out of their home.

That's the place you got. And so then carpenters in biblical times could not go to a lumber yard. There was no Nazareth lumber yard, right? So, what you would do is you would look for, here is the kind of wood that I need, and maybe the configuration of it, so you minimize the shaping, and now I have to go out into the forest and cut it.

So, a carpenter was also a logger. In addition to that, carpenters were often also stone masons on medium to smaller projects. So a carpenter was a stonemason and a logger as well as being a carpenter. So a range of different skills would be required there.

Now here is Nazareth right here and right nearby, just a few miles away, was a city that was being built during the time of Joseph and Jesus, and may have been the place where Joseph and where Jesus was employed in building. Newly constructed place. There's an aerial view of Sepphoris. You can see an amphitheater here, and the remains of some buildings. So it's quite possible that Joseph and or Jesus was involved in constructing the city of Sepphoris during this time. Glassblowing.

We mentioned glassblowing being invented just before the time of Christ by a few decades. It was a newer craft but it had become well established by the New Testament era. So it is possible, we don't know, that for example during the Last Supper that they might have used a glass container to take the wine from. So that would have been a new technology introduced just decades before the time of Christ. Tent making. Paul is a tent maker by trade. Acts 18 lays that out. With portable tools and tent patterns, a tent maker could travel. So you can imagine, here's the Apostle Paul. He said, well, you know, I'm going to keep supporting myself.

All I need is a few little cutting tools and, you know, something to sew together these pieces and my patterns. My patterns are going to be really important. Right? And so I'm going to take my patterns and my tools with me and then I can go to this next town or this next city and I can buy up some material and then I can lay out the patterns and then use my cutting tools because I didn't have scissors, right? Use my cutting tools to cut out the pattern and then sew together a tent and I can sell those tents. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I sew it by hand. Yep. Absolutely. And so you can imagine, Paul spent a lot of time with Timothy, right? So he talks to Timothy about handling God's word correctly. And King James talks about dividing.

Well, that word that he used was the word that was used by tent makers. And what they would do is they'd lay out the pattern and they'd cut along the edge of the pattern in order that when you put the pieces together you don't get gaps where it doesn't connect and you don't get flaps, a bunch of extra. So he used the tent maker's term with Timothy, who I'm sure had seen him put together a lot of tents and probably helped.

He says, when you're handling the Word of God, you'll cut along the pattern lines carefully. Cut along the pattern lines carefully so that it all comes together. Yes. Looking at these occupations, what you find as you go through the whole Bible, and it's all over in there, and these little insights, you wonder, okay, what was Paul trying to tell Timothy?

Well, he used a term that he had probably used with them a whole bunch of times when they were making tents. No doubt, like Craig made reference to, here's Timothy getting instruction from Paul and talking through some different things and Paul passing on some wisdom as they're doing this. And so Paul uses an illustration from tent making to make this point clear.

Tanners. Tanners were needed for leather, but they were also looked down upon by the Jews because you were handling parts of a dead animal, right? So often only other outcasts would work with them. So if a Tanner hired people, often times the people they hired might be prostitutes or something else because a lot of the Jews wouldn't go there. But Peter stayed with Simon the Tanner in Acts 9 and 10.

Soldiers. There were Roman soldiers of various rank in Israel. We read about standard foot soldier positions and centurions in the Gospels and in Acts. Interesting that centurions were always portrayed positively in the Gospels and Acts. No exceptions. We find no exceptions. Every centurion was portrayed positively. Jews were exempt from serving as Roman soldiers but could serve in the Temple Guard and likely it's those, the ones who are Temple Guards, were the ones that were part of the cohort that came to arrest Jesus.

Tom? I was thinking especially about the centurions. Yeah, and they had to be people who were culturally sensitive, who were level-headed, keep their cool, adapt to a different culture. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Here are Roman soldiers. They could force others into service. There was a set of rules that allowed them to do that.

Jesus talked about, you know, if you are forced to carry the stuff for the soldier for one mile, he said, go the second. So that was one of the rules. A soldier could force you to carry his stuff for a mile. The other thing is there when Jesus collapsed under the weight of the cross, They came to Simon of Cyrene and said, you, carry the cross.

You're going to do it. They could force you to do it. And if you refused, guess what you got? A sword between your ribs. So it wasn't just sort of, please do this. This was a, you're going to do it. Here's soldiers approaching John the Baptist. Some soldiers were questioning him saying, and what about us? What shall we do?

And he said to them, do not take money from anyone by force or accuse anyone falsely and be content with your wages. Foot soldiers were only paid the same wage as farm laborers. And so what you find is the foot soldiers were tempted to take kickbacks from the tax collectors. And in those kickbacks, they might need to make false accusations. And if you need to make extra money, you know, you have to lie and that's what you do.

And don't take money from anyone by force. Well, they were called upon regularly to do that. So what they're saying is, you know, all this financial pressure, live with it, deal with it. Don't use your position in ways that extort money out of people. Taking money by force and bearing false witness was common in order to supplement their income.

Here's Jesus. He's on the cross. What are the soldiers doing with his garment? They're gambling for it, right? It's because they don't get much money and they're trying to supplement their income. And so instead of tearing this thing in pieces, let's gamble for it and one of us will get it.

Many other occupations as well. Matter of fact, what are some other occupations we haven't talked about? Can you think of any? Pardon? Yeah, medicine. Here's Dr. Luke, right? So Dr. Luke, and apparently a Gentile, wrote over a quarter, I think it's about 27-28%, wrote over a quarter of the New Testament. Gentile medical doctor.

And he also writes some very unique things, too. He is the one gospel author that makes note several times that a person, this was their only child. And none of the other gospel authors make note of that, but he does. He also uses some medical terminology here and there. As you go through the book of Acts, he's very careful about the particular term that each political or judge, you know, might have gone by as a title. So, right, medicine. Matter of fact, we talked about mending the nets. The same word was used for setting the bones so that they could heal. OK, good one.

Any others? Essentially, you would have not necessarily veterinarians that were studied, but a lot of people who do various things, just like we did on the family farm, if an animal got injured. And of course, the Law of Moses also dealt with if somebody else's animal injures your animal or injures a person, how are we going to deal with this animal? So a lot of times it would be, you know, they do the best they can, but they didn't necessarily have people that were experts in this sense that we do now.

How about a Levite or a priest? You have a whole tribe in Israel that's designated for carrying out this duty, and they did not have an inheritance in land to be able to raise crops and such, and so the rest of the tribes contribute the tithe, one-tenth, to support these priests and Levites. Yes, people who are building boats, you've got to have people doing that. And that would be a kind of a special application of the carpentry, right? They had lawyers. Yes, they had lawyers. They had Law of Moses lawyers. Actually, they did have guys who would represent you in court, and we see a little bit of that in the Roman legal system. Joseph Pappas, was he part of the Levites? What was that? Here's the deal. Starting from around the time of Nehemiah, let me back up.

Paul said about the Holy Spirit, do not put out the Spirit's fire, right? And that comes from the temple service in which the requirement of the Law of Moses was to always keep a fire burning in the temple. So what they did in the time of Nehemiah is they set up for rotation among the different tribes. You would go and cut wood to keep the temple in supply. And so what would Joseph do? He would, since his family's from Bethlehem, he'd go to the area of Bethlehem with the rest of his family during their time allotment and cut firewood for And that would be a part of his family's service to the temple.

I'm not sure how they handled it prior to that, and it may have been something that kept the Levites awful busy. And I imagine they have the younger Levites doing that. decided they would live life under the Jews, and they were told, okay, you're going to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.

So that's a job that was right there. So you've got that. Another one is a scribe. A scribe, because you not only just have people copying scriptures, certainly there was that, but they would document things in the Then in the north side of the temple is an area where they would keep the records of genealogies. So that's why in the book of Hebrews it says, present tense, it is evident that Jesus was descended from Judah. It is present tense, evident. Here the scribes are keeping track of genealogies. They're keeping track of recording this marriage, this divorce, etc. So, another occupation there. At any rate, we've run out of time. So, let me pray.

Lord, as we look at this subject of occupations, we see where there are a number of different insights into Your Word, and we thank You for these insights. We thank You for how You have laid out things in Your Word and given us the tools to better understand what You've revealed because You love us. We thank You for this, in Jesus' name, Amen.