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September 4, 2007
“ He reached out the end of the staff that was in his hand and dipped it into the honeycomb. He raised his hand to his mouth, and his eyes brightened.” (1 Sam. 14:27-28) (Judges 14:18) “ What is sweeter than honey.”
Scientists tell us that virtually from birth, babies have a natural preference for sweets. It is therefore not surprising to find that sweet foods have played a part in the human diet as far back in history as the evidence can stretch. And as human culture advanced, culinary ingenuity added more and more sweets to diets
Sugarcane, our major modern-day source of sugar, does not appear in the Bible (notwithstanding the “fragrant cane” of (Jeremiah 6:20), which was a perfume plant and not sugarcane). Sugarcane probably came to the Holy Land around the first century BCE, when Roman historian Strabo reports that “a reed in India brings forth honey without the help of bees, from which an intoxicating drink is made though the plant bears no fruit.” Interestingly, in its earliest form, sugar cane was used as a medicine and not as a sweetener.
The first evidence of honey production comes from the Caucasus Mountains and northern Turkey, where the openings in tree trunks where wild hives were located were widened by human effort to allow for easier access to the honey. As time went on, people began to use logs they themselves had hollowed out to house bees. Normally logs do not survive through time to provide historical evidence, but Carbon-14 testing on two such lone logs that did survive showed one to date from the first century BCE, and the other from the third millennium BCE Bronze Age.
The first evidence of truly domesticated bees comes from an Egyptian bas-relief dating from 2400 BCE. In a clay vessel manufactured around 1900BCE, a hunk of beeswax and the leg of a bee were discovered. The ancient Greeks created artificial hives as early as the eight century BCE. Biblical Sweets
Since domesticated honey did not appear in the Bible lands until the Hellenistic period, biblical honey was aptly described as “honey from the rocks” (Deuteronomy 32:31) honey that flowed accidentally into rock crevices or bushes, or where Jonathan found it “on the ground.” In the Bible Samson ate honey when he found a beehive in the carcass of a lion (Judges 14:8-9). He later used this incident to tease his friends with a riddle: “Out of the eater, something to eat; out of the strong, something sweet.” (Judges 14:14). When Jonathan ate the honey he found, he broke an oath his father Saul had made that the entire army should fast until the battle against the Philistines had been won. But Jonathan excused his behavior by describing the quick jolt of energy, the “brightening his eyes,” which he implied the entire army could have used to win the battle (1 Samuel 14:25). In the New Testament, John the Baptist (Matthew 3:4) ate honey as he moved through the wilderness preaching. The New Testament book of the Revelation also uses honey in the same context as the Hebrew Scriptures, as the ultimate sweet: “I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and I tasted it, and it was as honey in my mouth.” (Revelation 10:9), a verse that echoes (Psalm 119:103), “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”
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Land of Milk and Honey |
