BREAD IN PALESTINE.
Of the bread of the ancient Hebrews we know nothing, except from their
sacred books; but these contain a large store of knowledge. Their
cereals seem to have consisted only of wheat, barley, rye (or it may
be spelt), and millet, but they cultivated leguminous plants, such as
beans and lentils. It is impossible to say accurately when these books
were written, so that in the following notices respecting the bread
of the Hebrews I take the sequence in which I find them placed in the
Bible. It is impossible to do otherwise, as their chronology is such an
open question.
At first, in all probability, the normal course of pre-historic man was
followed—wheat and barley grew wild, were first eaten raw, and then
parched. Of this latter and primitive method of cooking cereals we have
several notices. It was used as a sacrifice, as we see in Leviticus ii.
16: ‘And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the beaten
corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense
thereof: it is an offering made by fire unto the Lord.’ That parched
corn was at that time a food we find in Levit. xxiii. 14: ‘And ye
shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the
self-same day that ye have brought an offering unto your God.’ We next
find it as the food of labouring people in Ruth ii. 14, when Boaz
‘reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.’
Mention is again made of it in I. Sam. xvii., when Goliath of Gath
challenged the men of Israel. Jesse’s three sons had followed Saul to
the battle, and the anxious father had sent his youngest son David,
with provisions for them, and a present to their commander, vv. 17,
18: ‘And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an
ephah[4] of this parched corn, and these ten loaves, and run to the
camp to thy brethren; and carry these ten cheeses unto the captain
of their thousand, and look how thy brethren fare, and take their
pledge.’ We see, I. Sam. xxv. 18, how Abigail, Nabal’s wife, in order
to propitiate David, ‘made haste, and took 200 loaves, and two bottles
of wine, and five sheep ready dressed, and five measures of parched
corn, and 100 clusters of raisins, and 200 cakes of figs, and laid
them on asses.’ The last we hear of parched corn as food is in II.
Sam. xvii. 27, 28, when David arrived at Mahanaim. Shobi, Machir, and
Barzillai ‘brought beds, and basons, and earthen vessels, and wheat,
and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and
parched pulse.’ In England this parching is sometimes applied to peas,
and, indeed, there is a saying comparing an extremely lively person ‘to
a parched pea in a frying pan,’ and in America ‘pop corn,’ or parched
maize, is very popular.
Threshing corn we first read of in Deut. xxv. 4, when we find the
following direction given: ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he
treadeth out the corn,’ a practice which the natives of Aleppo, and
some other Eastern places, still religiously observe.
How Gideon (Jud. vi. 11) or Oman (I. Chron. xxi. 20) threshed, whether
by oxen or by flail, we cannot tell, but in Isaiah xxviii. 27, 28, we
find five methods of threshing then in vogue. ‘For the fitches [this
is supposed to be the _Nigella sativa_, whose seeds are used as a
condiment, like coriander or caraway] are not threshed with a threshing
instrument, neither is a cart wheel turned about upon the cummin; but
the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin with a rod.
Bread corn is bruised; because he will not ever be threshing it, nor
break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen.’
In Lowth on _Isaiah_ we find this passage made somewhat clearer:
‘The dill is not beaten out with the _corn-drag_;
Nor is the _Wheel of the Wain_ made to turn upon the cummin.
But the dill is beaten out with _the Staff_,
And the cummin with the _Flail_, but
The bread corn with the _Threshing-Wain_;
And not for ever will he continue thus to thresh it,
Nor vex it with the Wheel of its Wain,
Nor to bruise it with the _Hoofs of his Cattle_.’
The _Staff_ and _Flail_ were used for that grain that was too tender
to be treated in any other method. The _Drag_ consisted of a sort of
frame of strong planks, made rough at the bottom with hard stones or
iron; it was drawn by horses or oxen over the corn sheaves spread on
the threshing floor, the driver sitting upon it. The _Wain_ was much
like the former, but had wheels with iron teeth, or edges like a saw;
the axle was armed with iron teeth or serrated wheels throughout; it
moved upon three rollers, armed with iron teeth, or wheels, to cut the
straw. In Syria they make use of the drag constructed in the very same
manner—and this not only forces out the grain, but cuts the straw in
pieces for fodder for the cattle; for in Eastern countries there is no
hay.
Sir R. K. Porter, in his _Travels in Georgia_,[5] speaks of this method
of threshing, which he saw in the early part of the last century.
‘The threshing operation is managed by a machine composed of a large
square frame of wood, which contains two wooden cylinders placed
parallel to each other, and which have a turning motion. They are
stuck full of splinters, with sharp square points, but not all of a
length. These barrels have the appearance of the barrels in an organ,
and their projections, when brought in contact with the corn, break
the stalk and disengage the ear. They are put in motion by a couple of
cows or oxen, yoked to the frame, and guided by a man sitting on the
plank that covers the frame which contains the cylinders. He drives
this agricultural equipage in a circle round any great accumulation
of just-gathered harvest, keeping at a certain distance from the
verge of the heap, close to which a second peasant stands, holding
a long-handled 20-pronged fork, shaped like the spread sticks of a
fan, and with which he throws the unbound sheaves forward to meet the
rotary motion of the machine. He has a shovel also ready, with which he
removes to a considerable distance the corn that has already passed
the wheel. Other men are on the spot with the like implement, which
they fill with the broken material, and throw it aloft in the air,
where the wind blows away the chaff, and the grain falls to the ground.
The latter process is repeated till the corn is completely winnowed
from its refuse, when it is gathered up, carried home, and deposited
for use in large earthen jars. The straw is preserved with care, being
the sole winter food of the horses and mules. But while I looked on
at the patriarchal style of husbandry, and at the strong yet docile
animal, which for so many ages had been the right hand of man in his
business of tilling and reaping the ground, I could not but revere the
beneficent law which pronounced, “Muzzle not the ox when he treadeth
out the corn.”’
It was probably one of these that Araunah meant (II. Sam. xxiv. 22)
when he said unto David: ‘Let my lord the king take and offer up what
seemeth good unto him: behold, here be oxen for burnt sacrifice, and
threshing instruments and other instruments of the oxen for wood.’ And
it is certainly mentioned in Isaiah xli. 15: ‘Behold, I will make thee
a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth.’
The threshing-floor is many times mentioned in the Bible. There were
those of Atad, Nachon, and Araunah (or Ornan), the value of whose
floor, etc., is variously stated in II. Sam. xxiv. 24, where it says
that David bought the flour and oxen for 50 shekels of silver, or about
6_l_ of our money; whilst in I. Chron. xxi. 25, he gave him 600 shekels
of gold in weight, or 1200_l_ of our currency, which seems a large sum
for a small level piece of ground; for the floors, so-called, were out
of doors, so that the wind might carry away the chaff, as we read in
Hosea xiii. 3: ‘They shall be ... as the chaff that is driven with the
whirlwind out of the floor.’ See also Psalm i. 4.
These floors were used for other purposes than threshings, as we read
in I. Kings xxii. 10: ‘And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat the king
of Judah sat each on his throne, having put on their robes, in a void
place (_or floor_) in the entrance of the gate of Samaria; and all the
prophets prophesied before them,’ a statement which is repeated in II.
Chron. xviii. 9.
Harvest-time was appointed by Moses as one of the great
festivals—Exodus xxiii. 14, etc.: ‘Three times thou shalt keep a feast
unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread:
(thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee,
in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out
from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty). And the feast of
harvest, the first-fruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the
field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year,
when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.’ And again, in
Exodus xxxiv., this is repeated, with the addition (v. 21): ‘Six days
thou shalt work, but on the seventh day thou shalt rest: in earing time
and in harvest thou shalt rest.’ This holiday was, and is, called the
feast of tabernacles, and we read in Deut. xvi. 13, etc.: ‘Thou shalt
observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast
gathered in thy corn and thy wine: and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast,
thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy man-servant, and thy
maid-servant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the
widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn
feast unto the Lord thy God in the place which the Lord shall choose:
because the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in
all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice.’
In the story of Ruth we get an idyllic picture of a Hebrew harvest
field, with its kindly greetings between master and man, and its
gleaners. Naomi, a native of Bethlehem, returned thither from Moab,
after the death of her husband, Elimelech, accompanied by her
daughter-in-law Ruth, who was also a widow, ‘and they came to Bethlehem
in the beginning of barley harvest.’
Special favour was accorded to Ruth. She might glean ‘among the
sheaves’—_i.e._, following the reapers, instead of waiting until the
corn had been carried; but the Jews were enjoined to be liberal in the
matter of gleaning, as we see by Lev. xix. 9: ‘And when ye reap the
harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy
field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest’; and in
Deut. xxiv. 19, ‘When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and
hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it;
it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow:
that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.’
There were no public mills at which flour could be ground, but, as
now, in the unchangeable East, every family ground their own corn, and
this task, as well as the making and baking of bread, was left to the
women. See Matt. xxiv. 41: ‘Two women shall be grinding at the mill;
the one shall be taken, and the other left.’ Again we find that it
was a woman who was grinding corn on a housetop in Thebez who (Judges
ix. 53) ‘cast a piece of a millstone upon Abimelech’s head, and all
to brake his skull.’ An Eastern flour mill consists of two stones,
the upper one rotating on the lower. In Shaw’s _Travels_, p. 297, he
says: ‘Most families grind their wheat and barley at home, having two
portable millstones for that purpose. The uppermost is turned round
by a small handle of wood or iron placed in the edge of it. When this
stone is large, or expedition is required, then a second person is
called in to assist. It is usual for the women alone to be concerned in
this employ, setting themselves down over against each other, with the
millstones between them.’
[Illustration: A PALESTINE HAND-MILL.]
And Dr. Clarke, in his _Travels_,[6] says, that at Nazareth: ‘Scarcely
had we reached the apartment prepared for our reception, when, looking
into the courtyard belonging to the house, we beheld _two women_
grinding at the mill in a manner most forcibly illustrating the saying
of our Saviour. They were preparing flour to make our bread, as it
is always customary in the country when strangers arrive. The two
women, seated upon the ground opposite to each other, held between
them two round, flat stones, such as are seen in Lapland, and such as
in Scotland are called querns. In the centre of the upper stone was
a cavity for pouring in the corn, and by the side of this an upright
wooden handle for moving the stone. As the operation began, one of the
women with her right hand pushed this handle to the woman opposite, who
again sent it to her companion, thus communicating a rotary and very
rapid motion to the upper stone, their left hands being all the while
employed in supplying fresh corn as fast as the bran and flour escaped
from the sides of the machine.’
Of such importance among the household treasures of the Hebrews was the
flour mill esteemed that Moses laid it down (Deut. xxiv. 6): ‘No man
shall take the nether or the upper millstone to pledge: for he taketh a
man’s life to pledge.’
The first mention of bread in the Bible, with the exception of Adam’s
curse, is in Gen. xiv. 18: ‘And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought
forth bread and wine’; but it is pre-supposed, in Chap. xii. 10: ‘And
there was a famine in the land: and Abram went down into Egypt to
sojourn there; for the famine was grievous in the land.’ When the three
angels visited him on the plains of Mamre, he offered them hospitality
(Gen. xviii. 5, 6): ‘I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye
your hearts; after that ye shall pass on: for therefore are ye come
to your servant. And they said, So do, as thou hast said. And Abraham
hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three
measures of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth.’ And
to this day in Syria cakes are made upon the hearth, and the breaking
of bread together is a token of amity and protection extended by the
stronger to the weaker.
Of what shape the Hebrew bread was we do not know, for no
representation of it has come down to us. As a rule it was possibly in
the form of thin flat round cakes—similar to those unleavened biscuits
now used by the Jews during their Passover, and the form and dimensions
of which are probably traditional—but they also had _loaves_ of bread,
as we read in many places. The Shew, or Presence bread, must have been
loaves, because of the quantity of flour in each—between five and six
pints. The directions for making it, etc., are plain enough (Lev. xxiv.
5-9): ‘And thou shalt take fine flour, and bake twelve cakes thereof:
two tenth deals shall be in one cake. And thou shalt set them in two
rows, six on a row, upon the pure table before the Lord. And thou shalt
put pure frankincense upon each row, that it may be on the bread for a
memorial, even an offering made by fire unto the Lord. Every Sabbath he
shall set it in order before the Lord continually, being taken from the
children of Israel by an everlasting covenant. And it shall be Aaron’s
and his sons’; and they shall eat it in the holy place: for it is most
holy unto him of the offerings of the Lord made by fire by a perpetual
statute.’
This shew bread must have been leavened, for a cake containing nearly
three quarts of flour, and unleavened, could hardly be. We have no
certainty as to the shape of these twelve loaves, typical of the tribes
of Israel; for, although the gold table on which it was placed figures
in a _bas relief_ on the Arch of Titus at Rome, there is no bread upon
it. The Rabbis say that the loaves were square, and covered with leaves
of gold; and that they were placed in two piles of six each, one upon
another, on the opposite ends of the table; and that between every two
loaves were laid three semi-tubes, like slit canes, of gold, for the
purpose of keeping the cakes the better from mouldiness and corruption
by admitting the air between them; and it is also said, but upon what
authority I know not, that each end of the table was furnished with
a tall, three-pronged fork of gold, one at each corner, standing
perpendicularly, for the purpose of keeping the loaves in their proper
places.
The new bread was set on the table with much ceremony every Sabbath,
and it was so ordered that the new bread should be set on one end of
the table before the old was taken away from the other, in order that
the table might not be for a moment without bread. Jewish tradition
states that, to render the bread more peculiar and consecrated from
its origin, the priests themselves performed all the operations of
sowing, reaping and grinding the corn for the shew bread, as well as of
kneading and baking the bread itself. On the table was, probably, some
salt, as we read in Lev. ii. 13: ‘With all thine offerings thou shalt
offer salt.’
There seems to be little doubt but that the Israelites knew nothing
about leavened bread until they went into Egypt, and that they obtained
that knowledge from the civilised Egyptians. That they did leaven their
bread we learn from Exodus xii. 34-39: ‘And the people took their dough
before it was leavened, their kneading-troughs being bound up in their
clothes upon their shoulders.... And they baked unleavened cakes of the
dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened;
because they were thrust out of Egypt, and could not tarry, neither had
they prepared for themselves any victual.’
Bread was sometimes dipped in oil as a relish, and in this state
it was also used in sacrifice. Lev. viii. 26: ‘And out of the
basket of unleavened bread, that was before the Lord, he took one
unleavened cake, and a cake of oiled bread, and one wafer,’ etc.; and,
occasionally, as we see in Ruth, it was dipped in vinegar. The Jew
thanked God for all His good gifts, and with his bread, he took it
in his hands, and pronounced the following benediction: ‘Blessed art
Thou, O Lord our God, the King of the world, that produceth bread out
of the earth.’ If there were many at table, one asked a blessing for
the rest. The blessing always preceded the breaking of the bread. The
rules concerning the breaking of bread were—the master of the house
recited and finished the blessing, and after that he broke the bread;
he did not break a small piece, lest he should seem to be sparing;
nor a large piece, lest he should be thought to be famished; it was
a principal command to break a whole loaf. He that broke the bread
put a piece before everyone, and the other took it into his hand. The
master of the family ate first of the bread after blessing. Maimonides,
writing on _Halacoth_, or legal formulæ (_Beracoth_, c. 7), says the
guests were not to eat or taste anything till he who broke had tasted
first, nor was it permitted at festivals for any of the guests to drink
of the cup till the master of the family had done so.
There are several unleavened bread bakeries in London, and one each in
Birmingham and Leeds, to supply the Jews resident in the neighbourhood
with Passover cakes, or _Matzos_. Of course, there is an enormous
demand for this sort of unleavened bread, and to meet it these bakeries
begin baking two months before the commencement of the Passover. These
_Matzos_ look like ordinary large water biscuits, except that they
are a foot or more in diameter. They are made of flour and water, and
contain no other ingredient.
After the flour has been kneaded into a very stiff dough, a lump of it,
weighing about 50 lb., is placed on a great block of wood and pressed
into a thick sheet by a heavy beam, which is fastened to the block at
one end by an iron link and staple. This sheet is next placed under an
iron roller, from which it emerges in a long ribbon. It passes under
another roller, and another, and then it is thin enough for baking. It
is now stamped and cut into the unbaked _Matzos_, which are placed upon
a large peel, or wooden tray, having a long handle, and deposited in
an oven. Three minutes later they are taken out, white, but crisp. From
the oven they are conveyed to the packing room, where they are allowed
to cool, after which they are put up in stacks, and thus kept ready for
delivery. Of course, during the whole of Passover week the Jews eat no
other bread.