Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Matthew 3:1-12, John at the Jordan
John preaches repentance in the Judean wilderness because the kingdom of heaven has come near. He calls Pharisees and Sadducees a brood of vipers and warns of the winnowing fork.
Matthew 3:1-12, in every translation this tool compares.
John appears in the wilderness in camel hair and a leather belt, eating locusts and wild honey, and crowds come to be baptized in the Jordan. When Pharisees and Sadducees come, he warns them not to rely on having Abraham as their father, since God can raise children for Abraham from stones. One is coming after him who will clear his threshing floor and burn the chaff.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/elijah-expected\/","n":"Elijah expected","s":"Malachi promised Elijah would come back before the great day of the Lord. By Jesus' time many were waiting for him, and the Gospels keep raising his name.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/kingdom-of-god\/","n":"God's kingdom","s":"Kingdom meant God's reign, God becoming king in fact. It was the good news Isaiah promised, and in Jesus' day it was also a slogan.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sowing-and-harvest\/","n":"Sowing, harvest and threshing","s":"The farming year every hearer lived by: seed scattered on thin and thorny ground, weeds that look like wheat, the harvest rush, and grain winnowed in the wind while the chaff burned.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/gehenna\/","n":"Gehenna","s":"The valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place with a dark history, whose name had become the word for the fiery place of the wicked after death.","r":""}
Many people believed vipers ate their way out of their mothers, so calling someone a brood of vipers was close to calling them parent-murderers (Keener). Children and stones sound alike in Hebrew and Aramaic, a wordplay of the kind the prophets used. Keener's notes add that real chaff burns too fast to be good fuel; this fire is unquenchable. Josephus spent three years with a desert teacher, Banus, who "used no other clothing than grew upon trees," and Keener compares John to him. Wilkins explains the brood of vipers another way, as the dozen or more small, dangerous snakes born at once from a mother snake. The cultural backgrounds article on Jesus' baptism notes that the Qumran sect taught repentance and washing too; Wilkins thinks it doubtful John was ever one of them, since he called the whole nation instead of withdrawing from it.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Matthew 3:1-2, 3:7, 3:9 and 3:12
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Matthew 3:1, 3:4, 3:7, 3:9 and 3:12
- Josephus, The Life of Flavius Josephus 2, trans. William Whiston
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.5.2, trans. William Whiston
- Michael J. Wilkins, Matthew, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Matthew 3:1 and 3:7
