Re: sweet thoughts
Posted by:
Gavin Smith (IP Logged)
Date: 31 March, 2002 11:32PM
Jim, I think I'd rather try and sneak something past a group of hard-headed Jews than attempt to pull the wool over your eyes. I saw this bit of speculation on a recent TV show about common food items in Bible times. Keep in mind here that what is being stated is that bee's honey was not a common food item on people's everyday table. Certainly there were bees, and people could get some of their honey, but that doesn't mean that just anyone could afford to eat it as a regular part of their diet. Things could be preserved in honey, and honey probably had special ceremonial uses. The question is really one of economy. Today, we can produce honey in bulk, but then people likely had to look for wild hives. The cost must have been enormous. If you know anything about the cost of fish at the time of Christ, either fresh or salted, you know that its cost was commensurate with the labor necessary to get it. Only the very rich could eat fish, something also to do with it being a "pure" food, like oil or wine. Most meat, as it rotted, was impure (these are Roman standards) and only pork, because it could be preserved, was considered pure. Consider the beautiful hams of Parma, a bit of salt and hanging in the cool breeze to dry for several months.
So, of course there was bee's honey, but it was very costly and when ancient texts speak about honey as a foodstuff, they actually mean something like cooked-down dates, something sweet you could dip your bread into, or could be baked into cakes. These references use the word "honey", but the TV show explained that it is not actual bee's honey. This distinction is like that involving ancient use of the word "corn", which could not have been the maize of the New World. When they said corn, they simply meant grain. I think this is like honey, they simply meant something sweet. We may like to imagine that honey is natural and in the old days everyone must have been eating it all the time, but the application of common sense and historical detective work can show that it could not have been as cheap and plentiful then as it is for us today.
Anyway, that's how they put it on the TV show. They could be all wet.
Main Entry: 1corn
Pronunciation: 'korn
Function: noun
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English; akin to Old High German & Old Norse korn grain, Latin granum
Date: before 12th century
1 chiefly dialect : a small hard particle : GRAIN
2 : a small hard seed
3 a : the seeds of a cereal grass and especially of the important cereal crop of a particular region (as wheat in Britain, oats in Scotland and Ireland, and Indian corn in the New World and Australia) b : the kernels of sweet corn served as a vegetable while still soft and milky
4 : a plant that produces corn