This is just one case where reading ancient source material shows us that a concept—imprisonment, in this instance—which means one thing to us meant something quite different in antiquity. Yet misconceptions about this and other background matters persist among lay and clerical readers of the New Testament. Where do they come from? Many of them have been created by writers and artists who knew nothing of how people actually lived, ate, or died in the first century B.C. They read their own cultural