FRAGANCE AND AROMAS WHEN ISRAEL WAS AN EMPIRE

I have never been fond of bibles or their equivalent in other religions, faiths. They limit reason, leaving it in a straight jacket. I know, having lost me family to an avaricious sister and vegetarian Adventist cult. Beyond personal issues, if one check the BBC news, it seems that every cult is at each other throats.*

 Here an an excerpt

pages 221-222

taken from  

The Bible as History

by Werner Kelly

WILLIAM MORROW AND COMPANY INC.

New York

1981   

Sweet smelling perfumes have always been highly prized;

aromatic resins were not only primarily esteemed as incense in the ritual of the temple, but they had also their place in everyday life, in the home, in clothing, on the hair and in divans and beds. 

"I have decked my beds with coverings of tapestry...of Egypt. I have perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes and cinamon" (Prov. 7 16) runs the warning against the artful wiles of the adulteress.  "All my garments smell of myrrh, and aloes and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad" is the song of praise in Ps. 458.

Botanists have investigated these stories that often sound like fairy tales, and have hunted up the ingredients of perfumes and the suppliers of dyes.  They found them among delicate flowers and herbs, in the sap of shrubs and blossoms. Many came from foreign lands, but many still grow in Palestine today.

From India came cassia, Cinnamomun Cassia, a tree with a cinnamon like bark, and calamus, Andropogon aromaticus, also called ginger grass.  They came across the Indian Ocean in the course of foreign trade to the packing stations for spices in South Arabia and made their way from there by caravan to the Mediterranean countries.

Cinnamon had a world tour behind it.  Originally it came from  China, then on to Persia, thence to India, where it became indigenous and was exported to Arabia.

Incense was obtained from the Boswellia bush.  Its home is in Arabia and Somaliland, like the Commiphora myrrha, the myrrh tree. The cradle of the aloe is the island of Socotra at the lower end of the Red Sea, whence come its name Aloe soccotrina.

There was many a dispute about the origin of balsam. The Bible seemed to be really in error, the botanists know very well that the balsam bush, Commiphora opobalsamum, grows only in Arabia.  How could Ezequiel (27 17), claim that Judah and Israel had sent to Tyre "wax, honey and balsam" (Moffatt)?

The botanists and Ezekiel were both right. The botanists had merely forgotten to look up Josephus, the great Jewish historian, where he tells us that there has been balsam in Palestine since the time of Solomon. The bushes were cultivated principally in the neighbourhood of Jericho.  Josephus also answers the question as to how they got there. They were reared from seeds which had been found among the spices which the queen of Sheba brought as gifts.

That seems a daring assertion.

But there is a further bit of evidence. When the Romans entered Palestine, they actually found balsam plantations in the plain of Jericho.  The conqurerors prized the rare shrub so highly that they sent twigs of it to Rome as a sign of their victory over the Jews.  I A.D. 70 Titus Vespasian put an imperial guard in charge of the plantings to protect them from destruction. A thousand years later the Crusaders found no trace of the precious bushes. The turks had neglected them and allowed them to die.

 If you find this subject interesting go ahead and research. The book is amusing, but there are strange things impossible to believe. One example, in page 28:

For 2,000 years farms and plantations, as big as any large modern concern, had been exporting corn, vegetables and choice fruits from the artificially irrigated valleys of the Nile, the Euphrates and Tigris.....

Now, if anyjuan research the botanical for corn, Zea mays, it seems that its origin is among Olmecs and Mayans between 1250 and 1700 BCE...in America, how could this statement be true?   That would make any reader doubt any other statements, parts or wholes.  I leave it there. 

that is that 

 * The creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh and their irrational hatred towards India is a great example. When I think of those countries of the Christian Muslim and Jewish persuasion it makes no difference to yours truly if some attempt to differentiate between church and dogma, hierarchy, theory and practice.

The result everywhere is the same: war, intolerance and hate.

Dario apaga la luh.