What Did People Eat and Drink in Roman Palestine?īiblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelitesġ4,400-Year-Old Flatbreads Unearthed in Jordan More on food and dining in the Biblical world in Bible History Daily: ![]() More by David Moster in Bible History Daily:ġ0 Great Biblical Artifacts at the Bible Lands Museum Jerusalem He is the author of the upcoming book Etrog: How a Chinese Fruit Became a Jewish Symbol (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Moster, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Hebrew Bible at Brooklyn College and a Lecturer in Rabbinics at Nyack College. Discover why archaeologists believe this World Wonder was actually located at Assyrian Nineveh.ĭavid Z. The Biblical narrative provides a social and symbolic significance for these important foodstuffs, reminding archaeologists that there is much more to these seeds than meets the eye.įruit-producing gardens were some of the most luxurious parts of ancient palaces, yet there is no archaeological evidence of the most famous example–the Hanging Gardens–at Babylon. When archaeologists uncover seeds, they find much more than radiocarbon data. It was a symbol that appeared prominently in the culture’s names, laws, proverbs and traditions. Fruit was much more than a food for the ancient Israelites. While these eight categories are neither rigid nor mutually exclusive, they illustrate the diverse treatment of fruit in the Hebrew Bible. Seventh, fruits are used pedagogically in proverbs such as “He who tends to a fig tree will enjoy its fruit” in Proverbs 27:18 and “Parents eat sour grapes and their children’s teeth are blunted” in Ezekiel 18:2.Įighth, and perhaps most obvious, fruits appear as objects in narratives, such as in Numbers 13:23, where the spies of Moses examine the grapes, pomegranates and figs of the land, and in Genesis 3, where Eve eats the forbidden fruit and is cast from Eden. Read all about the experiment in “Biblical Bread: Baking Like the Ancient Israelites.” Sixth, fruits appear in curses and blessings such as “Your olives shall drop off ” in Deuteronomy 28:40 and “ land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey” in Deuteronomy 8:8.Ī team from the Tell Halif archaeological excavation made their own tannur, a traditional oven referenced in the Hebrew Bible, and baked bread in it. Third, images of fruit are used as decorations, e.g., the blue, purple, and crimson pomegranates on Aaron’s priestly garments (Exodus 28:33-34) and the engraved date palm trees in Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6:29).įourth, fruits are the subjects of laws, e.g., the law in Numbers 6:3 that a Nazirite may not eat or drink grape products or the law in Deuteronomy 24:20 that one may only beat an olive tree once (the remaining olives are for the poor).įifth, fruits are used in a number of metaphors and similes such as, “Your breath is like the fragrance of apples” in Song of Songs 7:9 and “I found Israel as grapes in the wilderness” in Hosea 9:10. ![]() Second, fruits are the namesake for a number of cities and towns, e.g., Anab in Joshua 11:21, which means “grape,” Rimmon (pomegranate) in Joshua 15:32 and Tappuah (apple) in Joshua 12:17. In this this anonymous 18th-century icon from the National Art Museum in Kiev, Ukraine, Joshua and Caleb carry grapes back from the Promised Land. First, many people are named after fruit, e.g., Tamar in Genesis 38:6, which means “date,” Tappuah in 1 Chronicles 2:43, which means “apple,” and Rimmon in 2 Samuel 4:2, which means “pomegranate.” In my view, these six fruits are used in eight different ways in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible mentions six types of tree fruit, many of which appear dozens of times: ![]() What do we know about the creative ways the Israelites used fruit in their writings and everyday culture? If Eve had not eaten the fruit in Genesis 3, the story of Eden would have looked drastically different. Not only do they provide clues about ancient agriculture and diets, they can also provide radiocarbon data to help date buried strata.įruit also plays an important role in the Biblical narrative. Seeds and fruit remains are exciting discoveries for archaeologists. Carbonized raisins from Iron Age I (12th to 11th centuries B.C.) Shiloh were published by Israel Finkelstein in BAR in 1986.
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