It has been stated that the stacte ordered in the formula for incense
was probably a very fine kind of liquid myrrh (the flowing myrrh of
the holy oil formula). But myrrh (Heb. mur) is several times directly
mentioned. Esther purified herself for six months with oil of myrrh
(ii, 12); myrrh, aloes, and cassia are grouped as sweet odours in Ps.
xlv, 8; with cinnamon in the place of cassia in Prov., vii, 17, and in
numerous verses of the Song of Songs. In the New Testament it is named
among the gifts which the wise men brought to the Saviour. Nicodemus
brought myrrh and aloes to embalm the body of Jesus. On the cross St.
Matthew (xxvii, 34) names vinegar mixed with gall as a drink given
to Christ by the soldiers; in an apparently parallel passage in St.
Mark’s Gospel (xv, 23) wine with myrrh is the mixture described. It
is possible that Matthew writing in Syriac may have used the word mur
(myrrh) and that his translator into Greek read from his manuscript
Mar (gall). In Genesis, xxxvii, 25, and xliii, 11, the word translated
myrrh is Loth (not mur) in the Hebrew. The best opinion is that this
meant ladanum, the gum from the cistus labdaniferus which Dioscorides
states was scraped from the beards of goats which had fed on the leaves
of this shrub and had taken up some of the exuding gum.