Digital List Price: | $16.00 |
Kindle Price: | $15.72 Save $0.28 (2%) |
Sold by: | Amazon.com Services LLC |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
OK
What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times Kindle Edition
Engagingly written for general readers, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? is nonetheless the fruit of extensive scholarly research; the book's substantial bibliography and endnotes point interested readers to a host of original sources. Including an archaeological timeline and three detailed maps, the book concludes by analyzing a number of contemporary books that advocate a return to “biblical” eating. Anyone who reads MacDonald's responsible study will never read a “biblical diet” book in the same way again.
- Print length160 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherEerdmans
- Publication dateNovember 17, 2008
- File size1557 KB
Customers who bought this item also bought
Editorial Reviews
Review
--Jeremy Hutton, Princeton Seminary
MacDonald's book is a joy to read...It is a useful book, handy for students, scholars, and anyone interested in life in ancient periods, including the lives of the Israelites.'
--Raz Kletter, Helsinki University
It's not my intention to sound overly enthusiastic lest you think me to be exaggerating. But it isn't hyperbole to say that this is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I've read in a good while.
--Jim West, Quartz School of Theology
I heartily recommend it for three big reasons: a very readable book, careful in method and approach, and judicious in conclusion. There is nothing simplistic and grandiose about this book.
--Prof. Scot McKnight, North Park University, Chicago
The book would be an excellent catalyst for discussion of contemporary ethical concerns about food, such as its radically uneven availability, food safety and cost, and ecological problems of production. --Kathlyn O'Conner, Columbia TS
From the Back Cover
Engagingly written for general readers, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? is nonetheless the fruit of extensive scholarly research; the book's substantial bibliography and endnotes point interested readers to a host of original sources. Including an archaeological timeline and three detailed maps, the book concludes by analyzing a number of contemporary books that advocate a return to "biblical" eating. Anyone who reads MacDonald's responsible study will never read a "biblical diet" book in the same way again.
"What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? is a fascinating and eye-opening glimpse into the eating patterns and problems of the ancient Israelites. Judiciously using a variety of sources, MacDonald examines the culinary past, with results that challenge many scholarly and popular notions of the diet in biblical days. Complex scientific analyses are presented in a highly readable form, making this book an engaging and rewarding page-turner." Carol Meyers, Duke University
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B004GKM26A
- Publisher : Eerdmans (November 17, 2008)
- Publication date : November 17, 2008
- Language : English
- File size : 1557 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Not enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Not Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : Not Enabled
- Print length : 160 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,633,095 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #361 in Religious Antiquities & Archaeology
- #974 in Christian Old Testament Criticism
- #982 in Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
After reading the whole book (including endnotes), I realized how important understanding food, famine, and feasting factor into the formation of people groups since time immemorial, and particularly the Israelites.
The book itself is written in an approachable style, perhaps as a response to MacDonald’s thought expressed on page 131, that books about Biblical food may be written by lay people for lay people in “protest against the perceived priorities of the ordained profession.” If so, he has done a serviceable job of conveying the latest research in ways that do not challenge faith in God while still challenging false presuppositions about the experience of God’s people in the land.
MacDonald outlines early on the five areas of food research he concentrated on,
1. Production
2. Distribution
3. Preparation
4. Consumption
5. disposal
and five research resources he drew from:
1. Biblical text
2. Archaeological date
3. Comparative evidence from the ancient world
4. Comparative evidence from modern research in the field of anthropology
5. Modern scientific knowledge, particularly in geography and nutrition.
It was difficult to let go of the idea of Israel truly being a land “flowing with milk and honey,” (though it was in certain time periods). Mainly, the people of antiquity in this region ate what has been termed the Mediterranean triad of bread, wine, and olive oil. In fact, bread was such a daily staple that the word for “bread” – lechem in Hebrew – came to mean all food. As MacDonald points out, their menu was actually quite narrow, and many foods mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures were more luxuries than regular fare.
My own presuppositions—based on an unmindful reading of the Bible—were a mixed bag of false, true, and otherwise overly simplistic. Though I was familiar with all the foods mentioned, I did not realize malnutrition and sustained hunger were so prevalent throughout the time period represented by the books of Joshua, Judges, and the early years of the kings. I was right in viewing ancient Israel as largely agrarian, pastoral, and fairly egalitarian in the 10th century (Chapter 12), and the introduction of monarchy was actually pretty hard on the people. But, I had not thought about how different all the econiches were, and what a varied experience the people would have had.
Several categories I had spent little to no time thinking about:
• How taxing the simple act of grinding grain would be. Largely a woman’s work, women had to dedicate hours daily to grind enough grain for their families, and the toll on their bodies is seen in their skeletal remains.
• How the Levitical descriptions of sacrifices did not accurately represent how seldom people ate meat.
• The sheer time and resource consumption growing and preparing food would take.
• That wine and oil may have flowed more plentifully than either milk or honey.
• That “honey” may far more often have been a substance made from boiling dates than the honey taken from hives.
I had not considered how devastating the levies and taxes on the people would have been, particularly when colonizing and/or imperial nations were involved, or how the stress of warfare and famine would physically affect generations of people.
I was not prepared to view the Israelites as a slowly starving people, dying in their forties. Psalm 90:10 speaks of living to seventy or eighty years. That was my impression of the average lifespan for people living in the Ancient Near East.
Chapters 3-6 on the actual food eaten were appreciated, giving a sense of what was available, and for whom.
Chapter 7 needed to rely on anachronistic data, so I appreciated the tentative language, while still gaining from the model presented.
Chapters 8-9, dealing with microenvirnoments and the distinction of food shortage and famine helped me see the more complex situation. Drought was not the only – or even chief – reason people experienced long-term hunger and malnutrition. Social pressures and political conflicts, particularly warfare, applied stressors to subsistence living. Armies plundering food; burning and salting enemy fields; destroying orchards, flocks, and herds; laying siege to walled cities; and cutting off water supply starved nations into submission.
Chapter 10 taught me that Israelites used sheep and goat milk, and seldom ate or milked their cattle.
I was still fighting the notion that Israelites were malnourished, in Chapter 13, but after more extensive research I have had to reluctantly and very sadly accept the truth of how grim survival was. The people lived at a subsistence level with such little margin that even one year of drought would press many into starvation.
The Biblical diets chapter was fascinating and underscores the importance of academics making their knowledge accessible to the people in the pews. To that end, including how a typical agrarian and pastoral year flowed would be helpful, as well as the time and effort it took to produce and store food.
There were some fascinating tidbits along the way, however. For example, the land of Israel was uniquely capable of providing salt for themselves and for export because of the dead Sea, as well as the Mediterranean coastline. Macdonald also relates in his section on wine that Nebuchadnezzar exempted vinedressers from exile, as documented in in the Bible.
But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest people of the land to be vinedressers and tillers of the soil.
2 Kings 25:12 (NRSV)
More than likely, though the nation of Israel was no more, the region was still retained as a wine-production colony to serve the Assyrian and Babylonian royal courts.
Towards the end of his book, MacDonald shows the Jubilee Laws outlined in Leviticus 17-26 were as much about ecological health of the land as they were about faith in God. God is as interested in care of the earth as the Lord is interested in caring for God’s people.
For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sow your seed and irrigate by foot like a vegetable garden.
But the land that you are crossing over to occupy is a land of hills and valleys watered by rain from the sky, a land that the Lord your God looks after.
The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Deuteronomy 11:10-12 (NRSV)
That felt especially validating to me as one deeply and passionately committed to the health and wise care of the earth. I have long seen this as both God’s mandate to all humankind, and God’s call specifically to those who have put their faith in the Lord. MacDonald helped me to see it has been God’s point of view from the beginning.
The author places the Israelite occupation of the land (from Judges until the Babylonian Exile) during the Iron Age, so he focused on the archaeological evidence from the Iron Age. However, I agree with the group that thinks the evidence shows that the Israelites entered the land much earlier. I still found the information interesting, and he sometimes gave information about Bronze Age findings.
He also believes that the Old Testament is not a reliable historical record due to later politically- or theologically-motivated editing. I also don't agree with this, but it didn't seem to significantly affect his conclusions about what the Israelites ate based on the Biblical record.
As stated in the book description, he examined the following areas: the biblical text, archaeological data, comparative evidence from the ancient world, comparative evidence from modern anthropological research, and modern scientific knowledge of geography and nutrition. The information in this book is useful if you want to know as accurately as possible what the average person in Israel ate during the Iron Ages and how healthful it was. As a hobby farmer who has researched ancient daily life, I didn't find his conclusions very surprising even though I didn't agree with some of his starting assumptions.