by Roseanna White | Oct 30, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
Yes, this is posting way late. Because I kinda forgot it was Wednesday. Because I was kinda caught up in writing A Soft Breath of Wind. Which I kinda can’t apologize for. 😉 But here, belated, are some random historical thoughts, LOL.
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| Fresco of a Roman merchant boat |
We historical writers always run into some of the same problems, no matter what era we’re writing in. One of mine is “How long did it take to get from point A to point B?” By boat. Or horse. Or on foot. Or, eventually, by train. Where were the roads? The ports? Did they have docks? How did they get from boat to shore? How far would they have been from town?
These are the kinds of logistical questions that can drive me absolutely batty, because the answers can be hard to find.
Sometimes though, they come from the strangest places–like my daughter’s school books, for instance.
A couple weeks ago, we were reading through the assigned pages of The Awesome Book of Bible Facts, the pages about Roman travel. Xoe was not so interested–I, however, found it fascinating. Diagrams of their roads–details about their sea travel–time it took to sail from Jerusalem to Rome–BE STILL, MY HEART!
LOL.
Yes, we must take our information where we can find it, check it where we can, and run with it.
I’m running right now. Because, finally, Samuel and Benjamin and company are aboard one of Titus’s vessels, on their way from the port at Joppa to Ostia, the port near Rome. One month, give or take, it shall take them, and then they’re home.
I’ll get to write my reunion scene. Which also happens to be a pretty big explosion, my mid-point pivot. Of course, in the meantime I have a couple hearts to crush and character hopes to dash to set them up for this, so do excuse me. Much to do. 😉
by Roseanna White | Oct 9, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
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Medieval Miracles, from a 13th century abridgement
of the Domesday Book |
We live in a world of doubt. With special effects and computer graphics, folks can make pretty much anything look real. Look like it happened.
But we know better. Right? It’s all just show. Made up. Pretend.
We’ve been conditioned to doubt. Not just what we see on television, but everything. We’re hard pressed to ever accept anything that looks miraculous, because come on–it’s more likely a hoax. Sleight of hand. Misdirection.
I mean, sure, there were miracles in the Bible. Healing the blind. The lame. Feeding the five thousand. Walking on water. Sure. But that was Jesus. Maybe the apostles. That’s different. And that’s not weird. It’s an accepted kind of miracle, those ones in the Bible. Easy to accept, right?
Then I read it all more closely, and a line of Jim Rubart’s Soul’s Gate comes to mind. “What,” one of his characters says (I may be paraphrasing slightly), “have you only been reading the boring parts of the Bible?”
I mean, seriously. Look at the Old Testament. Saul goes to a medium and calls up Samuel–who appears!
Um…our comfy little spiritual boxes get a little chafing at that one.
On the day Jesus died, the graves opened, and the dead were seen walking about.
Um…that surely means something other than what it sounds like, right? (I included this in A Stray Drop of Blood, and apparently some folks thought I was getting weird and making it up–until they looked it up, LOL.)
In Acts, we read how Paul grew frustrated with a girl with a spirit of fortune-telling and turned around and cast out the demon. Okay. Nothing too worrisome there…until we read on that her master was furious because now he had no way of making money.
Which implies that it worked. She really could tell the future, at least in part. We don’t like that at all, do we? The other side shouldn’t have power like that.
This time of year, you can’t go out in public or turn on the TV without seeing a lot of Halloween stuff. My kids think it’s all grand fun, and they love to ask questions like “Is this real? Or is it pretend?”
And you know…sometimes it’s hard to know how to answer them. Is it real? Mostly no, the things on TV. Mostly not. But then, there’s so much that goes beyond our comprehension, largely, I think, because we’re so quick to doubt. We dismiss everything.
But maybe we shouldn’t. Because if we don’t pay attention to it, we can’t fight it–and a lot of these “weird” stories in the Bible are of God’s servants having to deal with this stuff.
The spiritual world is baffling…but it’s there. And sometimes I wonder what our faith would be like if we were a little more open to learning the truth about it…and a little less quick to ignore all we don’t understand.
I’m delving into some of this in A Soft Breath of Wind…nothing resembling the cartoon ghost, LOL, but I’m reading the Bible carefully and with a point of looking at we normally dismiss as too “weird.” I’m prayerfully asking the Lord for understanding of some of these bothersome parts. And it’s pretty fun to see what new “weirdness” springs up every day in my reading. 😉
by Roseanna White | Oct 2, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
As I’ve mentioned on here before, I’m in the midst of doing the Bible-in-a-year schedule…which I started in July. So I’m still in Kings and Chronicles (it’s the chronological Bible, so things are mixed up.)
I’ve read the Old Testament several times in my life, but it’s been a while since I read all the way through it, and this being me, I usually read a story and think, “But what about…?” which leads me to wondering. About things like the unnamed, unmentioned characters obviously present.
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| Samuel Blesses Saul – from Doré’s English Bible, 1866 |
Like when Samuel was a young man, not yet a prophet, a “righteous man of Israel” came and prophesied against Eli and his sons. Insert Roseanna going, “What, no name? Come on! Who was it?? Do we ever see him again? Had he been wronged by those evil sons? How?”
Then many chapters later, after Samuel is grown, we read that his sons weren’t so righteous either. At which point Roseanna goes, “So…when did Samuel get married? To whom??”
I know, I know–those little details aren’t often important in the Old Testament. But still, they make me ask questions. And sometimes surprise me with what information they do offer. (Like how many wives Gideon had–yowza! So didn’t remember that part from my previous reads…)
And since these are the kids of things that inspire me to write, we’ll just keep the questions coming. 😉
Are there any biblical stories that made you pause to wonder about the people missing in the account, but who were obviously there?
by Roseanna White | Sep 18, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
Posting late this morning because, er, I totally spaced that it was Wednesday, LOL. We’re in the middle of a move, and my schedule is all weird. So as I dried my hair and realized I’d completely neglected my blog, I scoured my mind for a topic. Any topic.
So this is what you’re getting today. 😉
Back in New Testament times, houses in Israel usually featured some traditional chambers like you might expect. Windows were few, and those there were, were often covered in lattice. Many homes abutted courtyards, or had one all to themselves. But another key feature of the home was the roof.
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Herod’s Temple – not exactly your typical Israelite house,
but it at least shows the flat top, LOL. |
When I first wrote
A Stray Drop of Blood, I had no clue about how important rooftops were in the day-to-day life of an average family. But when I rewrote it back in 2009, I figured it out. Which, you know, made sense with Jesus’s warning about the end days and, “Those who are on the rooftops…”
These roofs were flat, with a small ledge for protection. They had no stairs to them from inside the house–the only staircase would be built against an exterior wall, so you’d have to go outside to get up there. Hence why Jesus’s warning about those on the rooftops is that they won’t take the time to go back inside.
Now, sometimes folks would start with the usual rooftop, but would then build up walls and put on a secondary roof. This, as you may already know, is what they would term an “upper room.” Sound familiar? 😉 These upper rooms would therefore be completely separate apartments, so if someone needed to take in a boarder to make ends meet, it would provide the perfect setup. Tradition holds that the upper room Jesus and the disciples met in for the Last Supper was in the house of John Mark, who wrote the gospel of Mark.
As I’m working on
A Soft Breath of Wind, I just included one of these rooms in Jerusalem. =) Not the same one Jesus was in, LOL, but I
do also have John Mark in my story, given that his Gospel was written for the church of Rome during the same period my book takes place in. I haven’t yet found anything telling me
where he wrote the book, so I’m at the moment taking the liberty of putting him
in Rome during its creation, which works well with my plot. He’s reading the stories of Jesus’s life to my characters as he writes them. =)
Meanwhile, my heroes are in Jerusalem, in that upper room, about to unwittingly bring calamity upon them all… (dun dun duuuuuuuuuuu.)
by Roseanna White | Sep 11, 2013 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
Occasionally people say to me something along the lines of “I could never write historical fiction. It requires too much research!”
Well, it does, but a lot of it is small. And seemingly random, LOL. I thought it might be fun today to just share some of the crazy-ish Google searches that have come up for me recently as I work on A Soft Breath of Wind. Let’s see if you can figure out what’s going on in the story. 😉
- Latin for no
- History of rivets
- Mediterranean sharks
- Latin for dove
- Money in the New Testament
- Ancient Roman names
- Behind the Name: Hadrian
- Romans 15
- “Foot” measurement history
- Ancient Rome witch
- Legal age in Ancient Rome
- How old was John Mark when he wrote the Gospel of Mark?
- Apostle Paul timeline
- New Testament marriage customs
- The armor of God
- Are there wolves in Italy?
- Trees native to Rome
- History of the caesarean section
Just a few. I could spend longer sifting through my search history, but it’s taking a surprisingly long time, LOL. So that’s it for today. 😉
What are some random things you’ve looked up recently?
by Roseanna White | Nov 14, 2012 | Ancient World, Remember When Wednesdays
I’ve always been intrigued by Egyptology, so including Egypt in my new biblical idea I’m toying with is a lot of fun. Of course, trying to pinpoint an exact year to set this thing in is more complicated than it sounds. I want my characters to interact with Abram and Sarai, but scholars can’t agree on when, exactly they lived. There’s quite a range of possible years given, as much as a thousand years apart depending on which school you belong to.
Picking one randomly didn’t seem fun, so I instead decided to pick my date based on the history of the pharaohs. And when I was reminded of the missing pharaoh, I decided that would be oh-so-much-fun to explore!
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| Mentuhotep III, father of the missing pharaoh |
See, in the Middle Kingdom, there’s this seven year stretch when records of the pharaoh have been obliterated, giving rise to the idea that he was assassinated, overthrown, and his predecessor had his records removed to make himself more legitimate. Archaeologists did eventually find mention of a Mentuhotep IV that seems to fit in that seven-year period…especially when they realized that his vizier (second in command) had a name only one vowel off from the next pharaoh. Obviously, the theory is that the vizier overthrew his pharaoh, seized the crown, and so began the twelfth dynasty.
I love this! Not just because of the intrigue, but because that lack of record gives me freedom to create this pharaoh however I please. =) The other theory (about the change of dynasty) is that Mentuhotep just died without heirs, but I don’t know why he would have been erased from the records in that case…so I decided he has daughters. That’ll work. And a sister. A sister named Aziza…
And working from this theory also gives me a great character in the vizier, Amenemhet. (I’m calling him Nem. I can only go so far with this unpronouncable-to-English-speaker names, LOL.) What kind of guy would be a king’s dedicated right hand, only to kill him and take his crown after seven years? The same kind I need for my story, mwa ha ha ha. And of course, I always explain the motivation through my totally-fictional characters.
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| Relief of Amenemhet from his mortuary temple |
This is going to be fun! Disappearing kings, usurping viziers, undiscovered history…oh yeah. Just my speed.
Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary.