Farming In The Bible Days, Part III

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Remember Cain and Abel?  Cain was the oldest and our 1st farmer.  His offering of the fruits of the earth  to G-d was rejected, while Abel, his brother's offering of an animal sacrifice, was accepted.  Cain killed Abel, and was condemned to wander over the land of Nod. Maybe it was he who introduced farming to everyone he met.

 This is an example of the struggle between the nomadic shepherd and the settled agriculturalist.  According to genetics, humans were hunters first, and then went into farming. That would explain Cain's wandering as he was the farmer.    

Egyptian sources tell how Canaanites were raising corn, vines, olives, and livestock in ancient Israel before the Israelite conquest led by Moses and Joshua.                 

Abraham and son Isaac of Ur and Canaan are also portrayed in the Bible as owners of livestock, practicing a rotating cultivation of cereals.  The Bible pictured the domestication of animals and fruit-growing as having preceded crop-cultivation, which emerged separately.                                 

Directly after the conquest of Canaan, the agriculture of the Israelites was restricted to the hill country and was assisted by terracing, a new technique of lime-plastering cisterns, and from the 11th century BCE, by the use of iron tools.  

                                                   

The farm-unit was the family holding, a division of the tribal land.  The 10th century  Gezer Calendar already indicates a well-regulated agricultural year.    The Gezer calendar is the oldest known Hebrew inscription, it dates from the 10th century BC, therefore, from the time of the kings David and Solomon.

  It records the main agricultural activities of each month as the sowing, harvesting and grape harvest, offering a pattern of the everyday life of the Israelites, and is also a useful indication for modern scholars, of the script and language in that period.

  The text consists of seven lines plus the word Abijah on the margin, which is probably the name of the scribe, and means Yah is my Father. (יָה Yah stands for יָהוּה Yahúh, a name that God gave Himself in front of Moses).

  It is drafted like a popular song; its format and technique belong to the oral culture, showing that the sequence of the flax and barley corresponds to that in Exodus 9:31and 32, which read: “The flax and barley were destroyed, because the barley had gleaned and flax had sprouted, but the grain and spelt are belated and were not destroyed”.

                              Millet growing in field                                                                             

Millet, barley and wheat are known from Bronze Age deposits from the 4th millennium or 1100 BCE in Canaan and the Bible also records other crops, as well as a variety of vegetables and gourds.  Vines, figs, and olives were planted on the hillsides;  other cultivated trees were the walnut, citron, myrtle, pomegranate, almond, date, and apple.  While during the Exodus (1579 or1445 BCE) the Israelites remembered (Numbers 11:5) leaving the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic in Egypt.  They also missed the meat and fish.  Manna from heaven just wasn't that satisfying.  

Horses were introduced between the 17th and 15th centuries BCE and were bred by King Solomon (961-920 BCE).  Nasbal and Job were owners of livestock.  Poultry is evidenced from the early royal period.                                        

 In Judea's King Hezekiah's time  (720-692 BCE, the mixed farm for wheat, fruit, and livestock was typical, but the kings established the large multiple-branched estate with a specialist hierarchy.  

Stallfeeding and the use of dung for manure were known by the period of the kings.  Green-manuring and fallowing may have been introduced either under Philistine or later Greek influence. 

                    Oxen pulling plow

The plow was a two-beast implement with an iron point producing a shallow tilth;  sowing barley from October to November; and wheat from November to January.  It was frequently preceded by 2 plowings and followed by a 3rd, a 4th being given after harvest.  

The winter crop sequence was pre-Israelite, but in the 3rd century BCE, summer wheat was being introduced from Syria into Egypt. 

1. Low gluten flour is used for crumbly products such as cookies, matzah and pretzels. The source for this flour is winter wheat.
2. High gluten flour is used for chewy products such as bread, challah, pizza and bagels. It is produced from spring wheat.
3. Medium gluten flour is a mixture of spring and winter flour and is also used for bread, challah and pizza.
4. Durum wheat is needed for pasta products and it is usually a spring crop.                                
   
         Lemon tree farm in Israel 
5.                           

The hellenistic period witnessed a standardization of agriculture throughout the New East and the introduction into Eretz Yisrael of cotton, lemons, apricots, new tools, strains of stock, and other plants. The Hellenistic era in Israel is divided into four historical phases:. The conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great and its aftermath (332-296 B.C.E.), Ptolemaic rule (296-201 B.C.E.), Seleucid rule (200-104 B.C.E.), and Hasmonean rule (104-64/3 B.C.E.).                                       

In the later 2nd Temple and mishnaic period of 538 BCE, agriculture was still a principal Jewish occupation.  Tenant-farming increased and large units were the exception and the small holding was characteristic.                              

Judah exported wine and olive oil, occasionally corn.  A number of vegetables and other plants were introduced from the Roman Empire.  

While the towns and villages remained as agricultural centers, and the Mishnah states that fields in the plains were unenclosed, implying an open-field system with communal features, the mishnaic and talmudic ir was a self-sufficient private estate with farm-buildings and slaves on the Roman model.  

Important in Jewish history because it was to be a congregational sacrifice whose ashes, when mixed with water, removed impurity created by contact with the dead.  The heifer, a young female cow that has not borne a calf,  was to be unblemished and never used with the yoke, was to be burnt outside the camp of Jerusalem, on the Mt. of Olives.  In the talmudic epoch, 70 to 500 CE, large tenant-estates under the control of the Patriarchate emerged in Galilee and Transjordan, and a labor shortage created a reaction in favor of stockbreeding.                        

To get a red cow, Many breeds of beef cattle have a fixed color pattern for that breed because selection has been placed on the color to maintain these characteristics. For example, all Hereford cattle have a red body color with a white face, all Charolais are white, and all Red Poll are red. Red Poll cattle are a dual‑purpose breed developed in eastern England in the early 1800s. Red Polls resulted from the combination of the Norfolk and Suffolk cattle breeds. The Norfolk was a small, hardy, red and white horned breed known for the high quality of its beef. The origin of the Red Poll must have been in Israel.                                   

In Babylonia, where Jews were forcibly taken in 597 BCE and again in 586 BCE, elaborate irrigation was practiced.  Jews  had become the peasant class and were numerous, no doubt many were working on it.                                          

                              Date Palm trees in oasis

In the Arab countries, Jews continued their agricultural pursuits, wherever toleration permitted,, until the 15th century CE. 

1.                            The famous Jaffa oranges 
   
                 Jaffa oranges shown on rare old postcard

The first citrus that arrived in the region around the second century BCE was citron, and it was grown strictly for ritual purposes. Sour oranges arrived some 800 years later with Arab conquerors, but became pervasive in the 15th-16th centuries, when Portuguese merchants introduced sweet varieties to the Mediterranean region. This is why in Arabic oranges are called burtaqal. By the end of the 18th century, oranges and lemons grew in many locations around Palestine, and those that came from the ancient town of Jaffa were considered especially tasty. In the middle of the 19th century, a wealthy orange grower, Anton Ayub, noticed that on one of his trees grew curious looking fruit: large, oval shaped, with few seeds, and—most importantly—thick skins, which made them well suited for travel.                                       

He grafted the tree with other local varieties and called the new breed shamouti. An export firm owned by Templers, members of a German Christian society who settled in Palestine in the 19th century, was the first to use the brand name “Jaffa” in 1870. In a span of a few decades, Jaffa oranges achieved global fame and even made their way to Queen Victoria’s table. They started their journey in the ancient Jaffa port, initially in burlap sacks and later in wooden crates, with each fruit carefully wrapped in tissue paper to prevent spoilage.

In Europe, Jewish agriculturists are recorded almost universally in the 1st century CE, but generally, the Christian Church and the feudal system made Jewish landholding virtually impossible, the changed becoming pronounced by the end of the 10th century (in the 900s).

                         fields of the Jezreel Valley 
 

Agriculture in Israel today  is a highly developed industry. Israel is a major exporter of fresh produce and a world-leader in agricultural technologies despite the fact that the geography of the country is not naturally conducive to agriculture. More than half of the land area is desert, and the climate and lack of water resources do not favor farming. Only 20% of the land area is naturally arable. In 2008 agriculture represented 2.5% of total GDP and 3.6% of exports. While farmworkers made up only 3.7% of the work force, Israel produced 95% of its own food requirements, supplementing this with imports of grain, oilseeds, meat, coffee, cocoa and sugar.

Tel Aviv University’s Nitsan Sustainable Development Lab staff showing Indian farmers how to use Israeli Tal-Ya trays to reduce water usage dramatically. Photo by Dr. Ram Fishman.   

“Many farmers around the world look to Israel as a model of how to manage and flourish in conditions of water scarcity and a hotter, drier climate,” Fishman tells ISRAEL21c.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia pp. 23-24; 186

https://www.lavia.org/english/Archivo/GezerEN.html

https://oukosher.org/blog/consumer-kosher/yoshon/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Israel