Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Finding Research

This is topic Finding Research in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

I have an idea for a historical fiction story taking place in Jesus's time. However, I'm having quite a problem finding good, informative sites on the time period. Historychannel.com is about the best I've come up with.

I'm specifically looking for information that tells about the customs, lifestyle, and general cultural information for that area during, oh, 10 BC-40/50 AD. (Try Googling 'Jesus'. It's not much help, although I did find an interesting 'Dress up Jesus' site and plenty of propaganda.)

Does anyone here know any good resources? I tend to lean towards historical fiction anyway, so any sites that can possibly be used to explore various geographical areas and time-frames would be especially helpful. I want to be authentic, but there's so much crap out there that it is fogging my way.

Thanks a bunch!

Posted by EricJamesStone (Member # 1681) on :

There's a book called Daily Life at the Time of Jesus.

In fact, for writing historical fiction or accurate fantasy in worlds with less technology than our own, books that have "Life in..." or "Daily Life..." in the title can be invaluable. Here are some titles listed on Amazon (I can't vouch for how good the books are, other than the first two.) Some are fairly expensive, so you might want to check local libraries.

Life in a Medieval Castle
Daily Life in Elizabethan England
Life in a Medieval Village
Life in a Medieval City
Daily Life in China, on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276.
Daily Life in Biblical Times
Daily Life of the Aztecs, on the Eve of the Spanish Conquest
Daily Life in a Covered Wagon
Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and the City at the Height of the Empire
Daily Life in Chaucer's England
Yin Yu Tang: The Architecture and Daily Life of a Chinese House
Daily Life in Johnson's London
Daily Life in Traditional China: The Tang Dynasty
Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940 : How Americans Lived During the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression
Daily Life in Early Canada
Daily Life of the Incas
Daily Life in the Middle Ages
Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne
Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia
Daily Life of the Aztecs
Daily Life in Russia Under the Last Tsar
Daily Life in Medieval Times : A Vivid, Detailed Account of Birth, Marriage and Death; Food, Clothing and Housing; Love and Labor in the Middle Ages
Daily Life on a Southern Plantation 1853
Daily Life in a Plains Indian Village 1868
Daily Life in Victorian England
A Taste of the Past: The Daily Life and Cooking of a Nineteenth-Century Hungarian Jewish Homemaker
Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation
Daily Life in the Roman City : Rome, Pompeii, and Ostia
Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt
Daily Life in Greece at the Time of Pericles
Daily Life on the Nineteenth Century American Frontier
Tales of the Yanomami : Daily Life in the Venezuelan Forest
Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holland
Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600-1868
Daily Life in Palestine at the Time of Christ
Daily Life in a Victorian House
Daily Life of the Jews in the Middle Ages
The Horizon book of daily life in Victorian England
Daily Life of the Nubians
Celtic Daily Life
A Pioneer Sampler : The Daily Life of a Pioneer Family in 1840
Daily life in Florence in the time of the Medici
Daily Life in Renaissance Italy
Spain's Men of the Sea : Daily Life on the Indies Fleets in the Sixteenth Century
Daily Life in Holland in the Year 1566
Daily Life in the Pilgrim Colony 1636
A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime
Daily Life in Ancient India: From Approximately 200 Bc to Ad 700
Mehinaku: The Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village
Yorkist Age: Daily Life During the Wars of the Roses
Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World
Subjects of the Sultan : Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-The Facts of Daily Life In Nineteenth-Century England

And there are a whole lot more.

I wish I'd read Life in a Medieval Castle before I wrote my fantasy novel, instead of after.

Posted by pixydust (Member # 2311) on :

I would do research on ancient Jewish culture and the Roman era. The time of Christ was an amazing section in Jewish history. There's plenty of information out there. I wouldn't focus your research on Jesus per say, but on the time in history and the different cultures involved--then add the personal aspect of religeon.

Posted by Minister (Member # 2213) on :

Read the works of Josephus, a Jewish historian living at the time of Christ. They're widely available. Extemely valuable resource. And if you have any specific questions, I might be able to help; I studied the history of the time period and setting a bit in seminary.

Posted by Gwalchmai (Member # 1807) on :

Josephus was the first historian who popped into my mind too. He was born in the fourth decade AD and you might find his Antiquities the more useful work since it is an explanation of Jewish history written for a non-Jewish audience. I've only dipped into it briefly myself for a comparison of some passages with those in his Jewish War. In using it for research purposes though, bear in mind that at this point in his life he had been declared a traitor by the Jewish people and granted Roman citizenship by the Emperor Vespasian. There are some biases in there but generally speaking, his information will be okay.

There is also, of course, the Bible. Often overlooked as a historical source because of its religious aspect, it nevertheless contains useful information regarding the aspects of history you wish to research.

[This message has been edited by Gwalchmai (edited September 10, 2005).]

Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

Thanks, everyone. Eric, that list was very helpful. My library has a number of those titles, and I'm headed out now. I was hoping maybe there were some good websites, but I guess I'll have to keep Googling and see what I can find.

I'm definitely planning on using my bible. Honestly, I read it less often than I should, so that will keep me busy with plenty of research as well.

Thanks to everyone for your help!

Of course, if anyone else has any good tips, keep them coming. I definitely appreciate the wealth of knowledge all you folks share so willingly.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

There is a book called "The Gnostic Gospels" written by Elaine Pagels, who is Professor of Religion at Princeton University. She's also written a book called "The Origin of Satan." Both books do an excellent job of overlaying biblical text against the political and cultural influences at the time. It certainly gives the reader a "big picture." Both books are available in paperback.

Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

Hey, Minister! thanks for your offer. I may take you up on it. Right now, I am so overwhelmingly ignorant on the subject that I wouldn't even know what questions to ask. I've picked up a few books that will hopefully give me a general overview. I'm going to be doing some mad reading til Nov, when hopefully I'll have a decent enough clue to try nanowrimo.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Make sure to use more than one of those "daily life" books (preferably from different publishers), and make note of places they disagree.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I think writers aren't supposed to admit this, but I read other stories set in a period to get an overview of the culture. I might get errors, to be sure. But nonfiction books usually take me to great events, when I want to see how they cook or build houses.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

A lot of times historical fiction authors are proud of the amount of research they've done to get that realistic feel, and they often site their resources in an appendix or bibliography at the back. It could be a good source of references.

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I was going to mention looking at other historical novels of the period, but I see somebody beat me to it. It's a good idea even if I wasn't quick enough to post it.

Quite by chance, last week I picked up a book dealing with this period, by one Bart D. Ehrman, "Lost Scriptures," a collection of, as the subtitle says, "Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament." It's supposed to be a companion volume to another book, "Lost Christianities," which I hope to pick up tomorrow. I don't know whether either would be of help in this line of research, but it makes for fascinating reading...

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

Just as a FYI, the book "The Gnostic Gospels" are about that exact topic. They discuss the discovery of the writings now known as the Nag Hammadi Library, which was discovered in 1945 by an Arab peasant.

For a review of their discovery, and the content of the ancient scrolls, you can check out the article on the PBS website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/pagels.html

Posted by J (Member # 2197) on :

I was just at B&N picking up some hermeneutical books and I noticed that the religion shelves were crammed with books useful to your purpose. A quick visit to the bookstore with a pen and notepad might give you all the sources you need.

Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

Thanks, everyone! I have found a number of the books listed at my library. I'll have to stick with those, unfortunately, as our budget is extremely limited now with baby #2 and various other things.

My mom has an encyclopedia-type series that goes through pretty much every major culture in history. I've borrowed one on the Roman Empire, Greece, and Christianity & Byzantium. Also proving very helpful.

Still searching the websites. Gotta love the web as a relatively free resource, but it's sometimes hard to determine what is accurate or not. It's great for bookmarking different maps and stuff, though, and the books will give me a better idea on what to search for.

Thanks again for all your help!

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Yeah, those kinds of things are great, since they help you see the larger context of how (and why) lifestyles and customs were evolving from one culture to another.

Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

I'm loving them already. I've FINALLY figured out what the Pharisees & Sadducees were. Sort of.

Posted by thexmedic (Member # 2844) on :

Just as a very general source www.wikipedia.org is pretty good at a basic level.

Posted by Ahavah (Member # 2599) on :

You know, when I went to see what they said about Jesus, it said "He's dead". Then I wondered why everyone always linked to them.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Well, one problem with any wiki is that they're very easy to vandalize, you don't even need any computer skills beyond that needed for simple browsing. So for a lot of entries, if there are enough people determined to waste enough of their lives doing malicious edits to those entries, the entry will frequently contain something malicious (for the purposes of wikipedia, "Jesus saves" is just as malicious as "He's dead already, give it up").

Card's entry also shows some signs of this sort of thing at times. While it is much easier for an administrator of the wiki to fix a malicious edit than for an ordinary user to make such an edit, there are millions of users, and at least thousands of them are the sort of doofus that thinks malicious edits on a wiki are somehow something other than stupidity. So for many high profile, contraversial topics, there is a significant chance of a malicious edit being up.

I just tried it and got the standard (rather lenthy and dry) entry on Jesus and Card. If you do get a malicious edit, then the best solution is probably to wait a while and then hit refresh (or just come back an hour or so later). Or you could be a good citizen and report the malicious edit. You might even be the first to do so