Understanding the cultural context of the ancient world is essential for a proper understanding of scripture. But this is not an easy task and information on the ancient world is not always clear or easy to find. Background commentaries can often help explain a cultural practice or concept where it is important to a particular passage, but even commentaries have limitations on how much information they can provide. Furthermore, reference resources are useful for understanding the viewpoints of various scholars, while having an index of cultural practices in the Bible and other ancient literature offers the reader the opportunity to discover these practices for herself first.
“Understanding the cultural context of the ancient world is essential for a proper understanding of scripture.” (source)
“The Cultural Concepts dataset is not intended to be exhaustive—to do so would likely take many lifetimes.” (source)
“Bible passage, right-click and the context menu will display any Cultural Concepts for the verse.” (source)
“each having at least a master’s degree in an area of biblical studies” (source)