Jesus Christ and the World of the New Testament by Richard Neitzel Holzapfel & Eric D. Huntsman & Thomas A. Wayment

Author:Richard Neitzel Holzapfel & Eric D. Huntsman & Thomas A. Wayment [Holzapfel, Richard Neitzel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Jesus Christ, New Testament, Scripture Reference
Publisher: Deseret Book Company
Published: 2011-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Roman Housing

The Roman house (Latin domus and Greek oikos) is a variation of the traditional dwelling of extended families found throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Near East. The Roman familia or Greek oikia was more than simply a nuclear family; better translated as “household,” it often included several generations, a large number of slaves, other dependents, and even unrelated clients (see Acts 10:2; 16:15). A large Roman domus, the home of a wealthy family, was laid out around a central atrium. The public area generally included the owner’s library/study, a reception hall for visitors, and the triclinium (dining hall). Other wings of a large domus generally lay behind the atrium around an open courtyard or garden known as a peristyle. In one wing was the private area, containing relatively small sleeping chambers known as cubicula. Another wing consisted of the kitchen, storerooms, and slave quarters. Variations of this model were numerous, based on locations, wealth, and size of the family. However, features involving a layout around the atrium and a house that was closed toward the outside were virtually universal throughout the Roman Empire, both in the East and in the West. The New Testament suggests such a setting for some of the early house-church meetings mentioned in Acts and the Pauline letters (see Acts 1:13–15; compare Acts 18:8 and Romans 16:23).

Of course, most of the early Christians were neither wealthy nor famous. They found shelter in other types of homes throughout the cities of the Roman Empire. In large cities, the vast majority of nonwealthy people, including artisans, freedmen and women, various tradespeople, and professionals such as doctors, midwives, and scribes, lived in large blocks of tenements or apartments called insulae, an invention of the Romans. Built like the domus with four wings around a central courtyard, an insula, however, had several floors built on top of each other. These floors were divided into small apartments of one, two, or three rooms that were rented by separate families or parties. They were often noisy, filthy, hot in the summer, and cold in the winter, and they were always susceptible to the risk of fire.

Additionally, throughout the empire, artisans such as Aquila and Prisca utilized small shops that were scattered around the city but that generally were concentrated in the commercial districts, lining the busy streets for easy access. The shops discovered in Corinth, for example, were thirteen feet high and thirteen feet deep. Their width varied from eight feet to thirteen feet. A set of steps (stone or brick) was located in the back of the shop, and the steps led to a wooden ladder and then to a loft where the renter or owner lived. This upper room received light from an unglazed window centered above the shop entrance. Such an upper floor apartment may well have been the type of place where Paul wrote many of his letters as he stayed with fellow Christians.

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