Review: Bread of Angels

Bread of Angels by Tessa Afshar
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was a good fiction read, but biblical details are not exactly correct. Let me get that off my chest first. It would help her story a lot if Tessa had studied a good bit of Jewish tradition and factored that in. The reason the women gathered at the riverside to worship, pray, and teaching (the Greek word means oratory), is because it takes 10 Jewish men to create a synagogue. There weren't 10 Jewish men to do that. Paul, in all his journeys, sought out the synagogue first to preach, and then took the Gospel to the Gentiles.

Philippi was a Roman outpost/colony, but it had myriad peoples there.

And it had Jewish women who worshiped God, not Roman idols, and they came together on the Sabbath day, not just any day of the week. This is where Paul went first. While it is possible that Lydia was a proselyte, I think she was actually Jewish because of the way the text reads.

Except for the few other biblical inaccuracies, the book was finely researched and well depicted. I enjoyed the fictional depiction of Lydia especially the way Tessa described life in Thyatria with the dominant Romans and Roman customs. I also appreciate the way Tessa manipulated it so a Roman woman could own and run businesses. Sadly, that isn't how it was. Female babies were often given the name Oncia (born 1st), Secundia (second born), Tertia (as you've guessed, third born) and so on down the line. Female babies were often put outside the gates of Roman cities as unwanted because they were not regarded as worthy. Although Roman women had a lot more freedom and worth than did Greek women who were considered property and were never allowed in public, in their own dining rooms when male guests were there, nor anywhere that they could be seen by any male person other than papa or husband.



View all my reviews