Reddit mentions of Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus

There's a book by Jodi Magness entitled Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. In it an entire chapter is dedicated to this subject. I have the book in PDF format. If you'd like a copy send me a PM.

If you haven't already seen them, there are quite a few recommendations in the Wiki. If you've been lurking here for any length of time, you've probably already come across these, but just in case: James Kugel's How to read the Bible and Richard Friedman's "Who wrote the Bible are classic introductary texts. They are fantastically expensive, but I've also enjoyed an number of the Great Courses lectures.

As for your specific focus, I obviously don't have the background of the scholars here, but of the books I've read, [Thomas Romer's Invention of God*](https://www.amazon.com/Invention-God-Thomas-R%C3%B6mer/dp/0674504976/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1541389004&sr=1-1&keywords=invention+of+god) (IIRC it's a summary of these lectures) might scratch the early formation itch, and I have just a few days ago added van der Toorn's Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible to my reading list.

For my own focus, I kind of jump around, but pretty much stick to the OT. What really draws me, and I don't even know how to articulate this in academic terms, is trying to figure out what your average Israelite actually believed and how they practiced, which doesn't exactly line up with biblical precepts. In that vein, I really enjoyed William Dever's The Lives of Ordinary People, Kugel's The Great Shift, and Jodi Magness's Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. A book I bought but haven't read yet is A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible, and I just got a whim to study the military outpost in Elephantine.

I stay away from NT study for the most part, as I feel it either veers into theological discussion, which I don't have any interest in, or it get bogged down in the minutiae of translation, which I don't have any patience for.

So, yeah, you'll find a number of members here who approach the bible from a non-devotional perspective. In the years I've been lurking it is becoming a bit less rigid in that respect; there a couple of users in particular I used to rely on to call out comments that were theologically motivated (/u/brojangles, where are you?!?), but with time you just learn to recognize the red flags.

There are quite a few books like this. K. C. Hanson is very good, also consider Jodi Magness, Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit: Jewish Daily Life in the Time of Jesus. This is much more detailed than Hanson, but also a little more academic.

If you are interested in something a bit lighter, the "Week in the Life" series is fun. These are novels written by NT Scholars: A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion by Gary Burge (review here) or James L. Papandrea, A Week in the Life of Rome (review here), Witherington, A Week in the Life of Corinth and John Byron, A Week in the Life of a Slave. For each of these there is a bit of a story with numerous sidebars and pictures to illustrate practices. Or you can read A Day in the Life of Ancient Rome: Daily Life, Mysteries, and Curiosities by Alberto Angelo, a Roman historian writing short chapters on aspects of Roman life.