WHAT DID THE ANCIENT

ISRAELITES EAT?

Diet in Biblical Times

Nathan MacDonald

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

© 2008 Nathan MacDonald

All rights reserved

Published 2008 by

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacDonald, Nathan, 1975–

What did the ancient Israelites eat? Diet in biblical times /

Nathan MacDonald.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-8028-6298-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Food in the Bible. 2. Food—Religious aspects—Judaism. 3. Jews—Dietary laws. 4. Bible. O.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title.

BS680.F6M33 2008

221.8′6413—dc22

2008012451

www.eerdmans.com

For my siblings:

Joel, Naomi, Hannah, Esther, Jethro, Miriam and Aaron

Contents

preface

maps

archaeological time line

I: Introduction

1. A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey

2. Reconstructing the Israelite Diet

II: What Did the Israelites Eat?

3. The Mediterranean Triad: Bread, Wine, and Oil

4. Vegetables, Pulses, and Fruit

5. Meat, Milk, Birds, and Fish

6. Condiments and Other Foods

III: How Well Did the Israelites Eat?

7. Modeling the Israelite Diet

8. Environment and Climate

9. Food Shortage and Famine

10. The Consumption of Meat: Archaeological Evidence

11. The Consumption of Meat: Anthropological Evidence

12. Food Distribution

13. Nutritional Deficiencies

IV: Conclusion

14. The Diet of the Ancient Israelites

15. Biblical Diets

bibliography

index of modern names

index of select place names, authors, and subjects

index of scripture references

Preface

As surprising as it may seem, this book was written by accident. It began as a brief introductory chapter to a book on some of the ways food is used as a symbol in the Old Testament (since published as Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008]). The purpose of this chapter was to set out what we can know about the Israelite diet from the Old Testament and archaeological sources as necessary background for the interpretative work on the Old Testament. To familiarize myself with the archaeological material, I spent the summer of 2005 in Jerusalem working in the wonderful libraries of the Hebrew University, the Israeli Antiquities Authority, the Albright Institute, and the Centre for British Research in the Levant and meeting Israeli archaeologists and scholars such as Profs. Amnon Ben-Tor, Israel Finkelstein, Amihai Mazar, Mordechai Kislev, Patricia Smith, and Mr. Baruch Rosen. At the end of the summer I discovered that what I had written was far larger than an introductory chapter and too big for a journal.

I shelved what I had written for quite some time, not only because I had a book to write, but also because I was unsure of what to do with it. It seemed to me that, since I am not an archaeologist nor the son of an archaeologist, it was not my ...