People could wash the body using water poured from vessels, basins, simple bathing areas, pools, streams, springs, or more elaborate bathing facilities where those were available. The method depended heavily upon circumstances.
Bathing traditions were well established throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Greek and Roman communities developed increasingly elaborate bathing facilities, while domestic washing remained important. Jewish communities participated in the broader culture of washing while also maintaining their own religious practices concerning ritual purification.
Ordinary washing might involve pouring or applying water rather than filling a large tub. Because water was heavy and had to be transported, extensive bathing consumed valuable household labor and water supplies.
Domestic water installations, basins, cisterns, pools, and bathhouses demonstrate a range of bathing possibilities. Archaeology also shows that facilities differed greatly between wealthy residences, cities, villages, and rural settlements.
Ancient texts refer frequently to bathing after work, travel, illness, exercise, or other activities. Jewish texts also distinguish ordinary bathing from immersion undertaken for ritual purposes.
Biblical narratives regularly mention people washing or bathing. Bathing could simply clean the body, while washing prescribed by the Torah in other passages was associated with ritual purification.
The Gospel world assumes that washing the body was familiar, but it also distinguishes physical washing from deeper ideas of cleansing. This familiar everyday activity provided language that could easily carry religious meaning.
People washed their bodies in antiquity using a variety of methods, and more elaborate bathing facilities existed in parts of the Roman world.
The archaeological record does not allow us to specify how often an ordinary Galilean villager bathed or precisely how much water a household normally devoted to bathing.
Ancient bathing becomes easier to understand when we stop imagining a modern bathroom. Washing depended upon water sources, containers, household labor, and whatever facilities were locally available.