the Week of Proper 11 / Ordinary 16
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Bible Dictionaries
Village
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or VILLAGE . For the OT villages and their relation to the ‘mother’ city, see City, and cf. Fortification and Siegecraft, ad init . In all periods of Heb. history the cultivators of the soil lived for greater security in villages, the cultivated and pasture land of which was held in common. Solitary homesteads were unknown. The NT writers and Josephus also distinguish between a city ( polis ) and a village ( kômç ), the distinction being primarily a difference not of size but of status. Thus in Mark 1:38 the word rendered ‘ towns ’ is literally ‘village-cities’ (others render ‘market-towns’), i.e. places which are cities as regards population but not as regards constitutional status. When Josephus tells us that ‘the very least of’ the villages of Galilee ‘contained above 15,000 inhabitants’ ( BJ III. iii. 2 [Niese, § 43]), he is, more suo , drawing a very long bow indeed!
A. R. S. Kennedy.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Village'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/v/village.html. 1909.
