Kim Bowes: belief

Transcript context

…Can you? Not easily. The best way you’re probably going to do it is excavate houses in places that we know are majority Jewish populations. Now, there is one thing that you might use in such areas, which is the presence or absence of a mikveh, a ritual bath. There’s a lot of controversy about how you differentiate one of these ritual baths versus, say, a bath in general or some sort of foot pool or whatever. Jewish houses, I would say, are distinguished mostly by the presence or absence of one of those ritual baths. Again, if you’re a poor or working Jewish family, you probably don’t have one of those anyway. Other than that, they’re pretty much indistinguishable as far as we can tell. When it comes to Roman Empire Christianity, say after Constantine, what would surprise us most about their practices?…

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