Locusts as food

[Albertine C. Ellis - Adam]

Robert Mill wrote:
Also, JTB was in the Desert of Judaea (Matthew 3: 1); the carob is
more a plant of the coastal plain of Israel and in Galilee and
Samaria. It is unlikely there would have been many carob trees there....

Thank you, I was just going to look for data on the distribution.

>The Hebrew words for carob and locust (insect) are very similar:
>haruv, haruvim (with dot under the h) for Ceratonia siliqua, hagavim
>(with dot under h) for locust insects (source: Zohary op. cit.; yes,
>I am aware that there are at least 4 words for locust in the Old
>Testament, to denote juvenile and adult stages etc, but do not
>have them to hand!).

Moldenke & Moldenke in the paragraph on Ceratonia siliqua (pg 72) write:
"Many commentators believe that the "locusts" eaten by John the Baptist
(CF. Matthew 3:4) were not actually the insects, locusts, but were the
fruits of the carob. HENSLOW, for instance, says (172a): " 'Husks' were the
carob, as the Greek word implies but also the fruit that the Baptist ate;
the error appears to have arisen from a transcriber substituting the Hebrew
G for the R in cherev, which turns the word from 'carob' to locust." "

But I do not understand what that matters, as to my best knowledge Matthew
was not written in Hebrew; am I malinformed?

Moldenke HN & Moldenke AL, 1952. Plants of the Bible. Waltham, Mass,
xx+328; Chronica Botanica vol. 28.

(172a) Henslow G, 1908. The plants of the Bible. - The Gardeners' Chronicle
[3] 43: 53-

Albertine

 *  Albertine C. Ellis - Adam                            *
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