The playbook in this project folder set the ten original chapter themes. The pages you are reading add first-century voices that brief did not yet name in full — especially Celsus’s De Medicina, Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, Sirach 38, and recent work on biblical medicinal plants.
Ancient texts
- Celsus, De MedicinaLatin encyclopaedia of diet, pharmacy, and surgery, c. 30s AD. English at LacusCurtius (University of Chicago) and Perseus.
- Dioscorides, De Materia MedicaGreek pharmacopoeia, c. 50–70 AD, compiled by an army physician who travelled the eastern Mediterranean, including Petra.
- Pliny the Elder, Natural HistoryEspecially books on trees, spices, and medicines. Describes Judean balsam groves and Roman attitudes toward Greek doctors.
- Hippocratic CorpusGreek medical writings of the fifth–fourth centuries BC, still the prestige ancestry of first-century physicians.
- Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 38:1–15Poem on physicians and earth-born medicines. Widely read in Second Temple Judaism.
- Hebrew Bible and New TestamentLeviticus 13–15 (skin disease and flux); 2 Kings 20:7 (fig poultice); Jeremiah 8:22 (balm in Gilead); Luke 10:34; John 19:39; Colossians 4:14; 1 Timothy 5:23; James 5:14–15.
- JosephusAntiquities and Jewish War on balsam plantations, Essenes, and healing lore associated with Solomon.
Modern scholarship used for this site
- Amots Dafni & Barbara Böck, “Medicinal plants of the Bible — revisited”Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine (2019). Trims older “biblical plant” lists to species that fit language, archaeology, and Near Eastern pharmacy. Only five plants are named as medicines in the Bible itself.
- Lindsey A. Askin on Second Temple attitudes to medicineArgues that Judeans were not broadly hostile to physicians; balsam, Dead Sea bitumen, and lye were export medicines.
- “Cornelius Celsus — ancient encyclopedist, surgeon–scientist, or master of surgery?”Overview of De Medicina’s surgical books, ligature, and the inflammation tetrad.
- “The Surgery of Celsus’ De Medicina,” Annals of Surgery Open (2024)Modern surgical reading of Celsus on wound healing and elective operations.
- Fred Rosner, “The Physician in Ancient Israel”Medical History. Status of the rofe, Essenes, and later traditions.