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Thanks for your comment. I learned a lot about how ubiquitous glass was in the first century. There was even a Roman glass blower named Ennion who signed his work and has now got his own wing at the Corning Glass Museum in New York state.
One of my friends read the 1 Corinthians 13:12 article (I sent him the link). His response about the glass was particularly interesting.
“The picture of 1st century Roman glass bowls reminds me of the Roman glass fragments that the kids and I used to pick up off the ground at archeological sites like Megiddo and especially at Caesarea since it was a Roman port. The blue and green fragments were often scattered on the gravel pathways among the gravel. . . I asked a caretaker once at one archeological site and he described how shattered glass and pottery is so common in the refuse piles that they dig through, and it is worthless from an archaeological perspective, so they use it on the gravel pathways.”
That was so interesting; thank you. The habit of using decorated thin stone that let through varying amounts of light first seemed strange to me – why use stone when you could use glass, or something easier to see through? If you could afford stone like that, I’m sure you could afford glass! Then I thought of stained-glass windows, used in churches for centuries (joining the decorative and spiritual purposes), and leadlight, a little more recently.
It also made the experience of the brother of Jared clearer, which has always puzzled me – why was it so remarkable that he saw the Lord’s finger, and why did seeing His finger mean he had to be shown His whole body? Reading this, especially bringing the cloud and the idea that prophets might have seen the Lord, or visions, through a stone (seer stones not being so unusual, after all) or some medium that protected them, rather than directly, makes it clearer how unusual that experience was.
You asked why the ancients didn’t use glass for the windows instead of obsidian. I don’t know the answer to that question for sure. The obsidian needed to to be nearly an inch thick for the decorative panels. That might have something to do with it. I’m not aware of any glass that thick at that time. I have a friend that is much more expert on ancient glass than I am. I’ll ask him and get back to you if he has anything of interest to share. All the glass objects from the time of Christ, to my knowledge, were blown or molded.