Posted on 05/04/2019 7:41:11 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
In a land flowing with milk and honey, what kinds of food made up the ancient Jewish diet? What did people eat and drink in Roman Palestine?
Susan Weingarten guides readers through a menu of the first millennium C.E. in her article "Biblical Archaeology 101: The Ancient Diet of Roman Palestine," published in the March/April 2019 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. Although it is difficult to reconstruct the diet of the average person in Palestine during the Roman and Late Antique periods, Weingarten, as both a food historian and an archaeologist, is well equipped for the task. Using archaeological remains and ancient texts, such as the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmuds, she pieces together the ancient Jewish diet.
A passage of the Mishnah details the minimum diet for a woman, who is separated from her husband: "Not less than two qabs of wheat or four qabs of barley [a week] … He must also give her half a qab of pulse and half a log of oil and a qab of dried figs or a mina of fig-cake, and if he has none of these, he must give her other produce instead." This passage shows that the ancient Jewish diet included grains, pulses (e.g., beans, peas, chickpeas, and lentils), oil, and figs...
From this passage, we also see that grains comprise the majority of the woman's food. In fact, scholars estimate that bread made up 50–75 percent of the average person's diet. It was the food staple of the ancient world.
(Excerpt) Read more at biblicalarchaeology.org ...
How many qabs in a cubit?
I suspect the qubit is divided into, say, ten parts, in three dimensions, making a qab 1/1000th of a qubic qubit.
It didn’t become Roman Palestine until the second century AD.
Interesting. No vegies. etc., for a year.
Wonder if it made a difference in production 5,775 years ago???
Did it rejuvenate the soil? Maybe.
Now we just spray them with stuff from Monsanto.
Yup, the name was changed after the Romans quelled the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 AD.
Thanks SunkenCiv. I’ll check it out.
Hmmm, just be cause they couldn’t cultivate veggies doesn’t mean they didn’t eat them. Strays probably grew. Also, they could have had wild roots and herbs.
It does sound like it would sort of work as a form of crop rotation, although the relationship between leguminous crops and soil enrichment was recognized in ancient Greece, and it's not unlikely (just unattested) that it was recognized by anyone growing them over generations of time. Be aware that there are those who claim that a sabbatical year is the next big thing in response to climate change. My view is, it was just another way to put the boot on the necks.
My pleasure. I suspect that it would make a population vulnerable to outside conquest and such.
Pioneers in this country who were in places where trees were scarce cooked many a meal over a buffalo chip fire. I have read that many times, not once was it mentioned how that made the food taste...
A roasted grasshopper tastes like almonds. From personal experience.
Roman Palestine. Isn’t that Israel?
CC
That’s new to me.
What did they eat? Whatever the Romans let them.
I ate ‘em in survival school. High in protein, greasy, relatively flavorless. But certainly edible.
CC
It’s also called ‘St. John’s Bread’. I’ve used it a lot - to make brownies, and as a milkshake or in candy. Not exactly like chocolate; different but somewhat similar:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceratonia_siliqua
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