Video Transcript: Housing

In this segment, we're going to look at the the physical reality of houses in the early Roman period,  how what kinds of houses did people actually live in? And we're not going to talk this time about house churches. We'll do that a little bit later. But this is part of setting the whole context of physical and  social context for the house church meetings, which then we will take up. So first of all, in terms of  meeting Christian meetings, they're there is the question Did they meet in houses in private houses, or  sometimes in halls, and there's some element, there's some evidence that sometimes they will rent a hall or something like that, and we'll talk about that later. So just to understand that here, we're focusing on  the option of houses, not only for church meetings for what people lived in, you know, the real, the real  thing, the real reality. And we have to look at the Mediterranean pattern of of house design with a  central courtyard, which you still see today, in in many Mediterranean countries, and it's the way even  businesses are built, sometimes you walk along the street, and all you see are walls and doors. And, and no front yards or anything like that. And then when you open the door, you walk in, and you see this  lovely courtyard. And the buildings, the rooms are built around it, you see. So here is an example.  These are two floor plans. The one on the left, is from the very thing this house of the Vettii at Pompeii. And you you see the the layout in terms of the way that the courtyard is structured, not right in the  middle there, but but with walls around it. So I'll show you this. The entrance is here. And then you  have and this is a particular design of a Roman house and is not to everywhere in the Mediterranean.  But it but it often is of the impluvium, which is an area with an open space here. And this is this is  covered. But this is open and the rainwater comes in. And that's their source of water supply.  Originally, that was it. By the time of the first of the New Testament, most of these places have  sophisticated aqueduct designs, and they're bringing fresh water from springs somewhere sometimes  miles away, and right into a central water system. And so they the houses, if they still have this, it's  additional water, it's water to water, the plants or whatever, but they're getting a drink, supply drinking  water elsewhere. But the original way is that this is your water source. And then these little buildings  right around or little rooms rather right around the entrance. One of them would be occupied by by a  slave who is called an Ostiarius. the doorkeeper, the person who is responsible to see who goes in and  out. And so you would, there would be side building side rooms over here. And these would actually be bedrooms in this area. And then you walk in and down here is a kitchen. Because then you go out into  this, this very large peristyle courtyard here in this case, and the main dining room is here. So the from  the dining room, you're looking out into the courtyard, which had plants in the center, and this is  covered, and all of the center is open. So you have a room for garden there. And there are a couple of  alternate dining rooms over here. This one is much simpler. And it's some a little earlier, that's a couple  of centuries BC and at a place near Corinth. But it again shows you this basic design of walking into a  place that's this is covered, this is open. And so you have the light coming in, in the center of the house  and it then illuminates everything else. So in this particular design, these are this is living rooms where  that's really that's really bedroom kitchen here. And this particular one is labeled dining room here and  ante rooms here I would have said that this was the dining room actually, but who knows I've never  actually been on the site of this house. But the dining room is always located we get the best view of  the garden. So So those are some ideas of structure. Now the next one the next picture that you're going to see is actually this house looking in from that direction, so you walk in the front door. And you get a  sense here of what the beauty of this house, how it actually was, what they're doing. This is a house in  Pompeii. And what they're doing now in some of these houses is sinking cement into the empty holes in the ground, which contained building a contain plant. And by the shape of the plant roots that can tell  what kind of plants were there in there in the replanting, so, so this is a rather luxurious house, and  we're going from the luxurious down to the simple here. Now, these are two other house designs, also,  luxurious houses, from Pompeii. In this case, they were originally two different houses and, and they  one of them brought up the other and open the, the wall here. So you have two entrances, they're in  there, and then access to this lovely peristyle. And then this one had a big orchard, even back here. So  raising lots of vegetables, etc. And now here you see this characteristic. Also, that is that you would see

in a lot of places, and you still see in some Mediterranean places today. And that is that on the first  floor, you have shops, I've seen that in Chicago, as a matter of fact, you know, a tall building, apartment building, and the first floor is all retail, we do that a lot. So here, these would be bedrooms and smaller  rooms. But then the entertainment areas really back here and the dining room is here. Now, the where  the dining room is is going to be important when we talk about the arrangement of what we think goes  on in a house church meeting, not going to get into that. Now, this one again, very large. And the same  kind of a design with the peristyle here and then this, this was actually a garden out there. So you get  the sense of the entry, the open space, and everything sort of grouped around open spaces. Now we get  a little simpler here. And this is a again a floorplan of some houses in Ostia, which was the seaport of  Rome, for most of its time. And I call these prefabs because they are all in the same design, these are  four houses that you're looking at here. And we've now lost the sense of the open garden space. Okay.  So here is one of them. Okay, there's a second, and then the same thing on the other side, and a  staircase going up. So we know that there was a second floor, even though they're not, it's not preserved anymore. So you have very simple, like an apartment, Here's the entrance. And then you've got one  room there, one, and then 2, 3, 4. And then the larger one at the end, and probably this might have been  the dining room because it would it's the biggest one and these would be bedrooms, so much smaller,  much more modest. Maybe not a place where you could have a group of people, but a place where  people are living. And that is also important, okay. These are called the Garden houses by the  excavators because they were in an area that was surrounded by by gardens. So even though this would be like an apartment building, maybe with at least two floors, maybe a third. Still, we think that the the  general atmosphere was was fairly pleasant and even simpler, are these what makes the excavator  called the kosetetipo the sort of typical houses or ordinary houses. So, you have a design here,  they L means latrine. These, for sure had their own latrines in the in the apartment house. I'm not going  to go into great detail but these latrines did not flush, you know you had to clean them up. But again,  this time there's a walkway in between but this is one apartment right here. So, so small, was just a few  rooms very modest. And again, there were others on top. Now here's the picture of the actual thing.  What you're looking at here, this is so you get a sense of The the walls are still preserved up to about  here. And here's the walkway in between and the the access right in the middle and into these other  rooms sorry I went back instead of forward there. Now, we also know that there were these extended  apartment buildings we would have some archaeological evidence of them and and more literary  evidence of people making remarks about what it was like to live in them. They were called insulae  insula, singular means island. But it's the word that was used for these large apartment buildings that  could go up five, six stories, no elevators, remember. And they were often built with very poor  materials. And what you hear about from writers sometimes is the danger of fire and of collapse. So  living above, in one of these apartment houses, was probably no fun. But some of them seem to have  been better than others. And this is a case of one that it was certainly the one in Ostia, that that was  better. And it's called the House of Diana, and I'll explain that in a minute with the next slide. But here's the ground floor. And again, you have shops opening up to the street on the outside okay. And then you  have in this case, a complex of two shops with three back rooms. And that is probably a place where a  family lived, the people who operated the shops and lived in the back rooms, I mean, we have other  examples of that. So that that would be very modest and very confined kind of living. And these are  individual rooms these would be rental rooms. In in this case, what they found is is in this back room in here in H evidence of a gathering of people worshipping the God mistress, the Persian god Mithras.  And that is a really interesting example, when I said that we think sometimes house churches met in  halls or rented rooms of some kind, well, here was a case of another religious group meeting in a rented room in the in the back, okay, so sometimes Christian groups may have done that as well. The second  floor, this is a lightwell okay, this is this is open on the second floor it is as well because it's, it's the  same idea of the central place with with that's open with light and rainwater falling in etc. And, and the  whole design of that is it's not only for for light putting light into the rooms around but it's also for 

cooling in very hot weather in the at night the cool air would descend in the center and then it would  move out to the, to the rooms, so here you have again, here's here's a two bedroom or three actually  complex then individual these are all individual rooms people just renting rooms. This one is from is  Rome, and I'll show you a photo of that too. Later this is this is all that's left of it the from the second  floor and third floor fourth floor this fourth floor existing and you can see that these are small rooms  and complexes with rooms. So these are two of the best preserved examples of this kind of apartment  living now this is the this is that one the big one and it's called the House of Diana because there was  also some evidence of the wooden statue of the goddess Diana found in it and we have no idea what  what people actually called it then but it as you as you look down the street, you can you can get a  sense there of of neighborhood no because right on the other side of it was right across the street was  another house of the same size. And down across the side street another one and just near there. a  taverna a place where you get fast food and that kind of thing. So it's a place in Ostia that I like very  much, because you can stand there on the street and really get a sense of what a neighborhood was like, with the kids playing in the street and everybody, knowing everybody and you know, very, very public  kind of, of life, because especially because of heat to no air conditioning, no fans, and, and people  spent time outside whenever they could. And this is the, the other picture, and this, this is the one with a model now at the top of that, that apartment, house in Rome that is preserved. And you see, again, the  model of shops, staircase, going up from the back into the second floor, there's a third floor, and a piece of the fourth floor as well. So that's, that's all it is preserved. And here's the actual thing. This is the that insula, that apartment house that is preserved right up against the if any of you have been to Rome, one  of the things that just stands out all the time is this monument to King Victor Emanuel. Some people  call it the wedding cake of Rome, it's this enormous turn of, like 1900 or so, monument, and that's this,  that's this wall. So it's right up against that, just at the bottom of the hill here, and people drive by it all  the time. And, and are not aware of what a valuable thing that is one of the few remnants of how  ordinary people lived. You've seen now this, this whole gamut from from very wealthy, to very modest, and people are living and raising their families and you know, trying to make a go of it in, in all of  these kinds of houses. They there was no zoning, or there were no zoning laws. And so you could have  one of these apartments, right next to a row of very wealthy houses. And it has to have been that  everybody rubbed shoulders with everybody else. They in in some of our our western cities today, you  know, the the rich live in the suburbs and the poor live in the city or whichever. And they seldom  encounter each other. I don't think it was like that. I think they were encountering each other from  different social levels all the time. And one of the things when we think about the the Christian house  churches, what we have to think of is how did they handle that in in their churches when they were  trying to say that they were all one in Christ Jesus. Okay. So, more to come on all of that.