Copyright © 1963 Andrews
University Press, cited with permission;
digitally prepared for use at
A LAND FLOWING WITH MILK
AND HONEY
S. DOUGLAS
WATERHOUSE
It is today difficult to imagine the
most beauteous of all nations" (Jer
nature's more richly verdant landscapes, as are
to be found,
for example, within the temperate zones of
Covered
with degraded vegetation and brush, or consisting
simply of bare rocks, denuded hillsides and exposed
gullies,
modern-day Palestine-Syria2 seems far
removed from what
Bible
writers designated as a Promised Land. This is particu-
larly true during the dry
summer months when it appears as
if all vegetation has been obliterated. The hillcountry, with
its conspicuously bare, limestone outcropping, then
seemingly
emerges as the bleak skeleton of a barren land.
True, the
dryness is only relative, but the ruins of proud
cities which
flourished hundreds and thousands of years ago are
to be seen
today where Bedouins of the desert live as nomadic
tribes.
Could
it be possible that this was the land described in the
Old Testament as "flowing with milk and
honey?"3 Is it
1 The Biblical texts used
in this paper are taken from either the
RSV or the KJV.
2 The bounds of ancient
of
Early
History of the West Semitic Peoples," JCS,
XV (1961), 42;
John.
C. L. Gibson, "Observations on Some Important Ethnic Terms
in the Pentateuch," JNES, XX (1961), 217-218; B. Mazar,
"Geshur
and Maacah," JBL, LXXX (1961), 17-18.
3 A proverbial expression
for a land of plenty which is paralleled
in Canaanite (Ugaritic)
literature in the passage: "The skies were rain-
ing fatness, the wadies were running with honey," Theodor
H. Gaster,
Thespis (New York, 1950), p.
22; cf. James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient
Near Eastern Texts (2d edition;
A
possible that this was the country which boasted
of inhabitants
as strong as oaks and as tall as cedars?4
A perusal of the literature bearing
on the history of this
region reveals that
nean lands which in times
past were reknown for their former
prosperous productivity, but which are today
blighted by
want.5 One is left,
nevertheless, to wonder how Biblical
--areas
like the
there was a comparison--how did the land reach such a
low
ebb as is evident today?
It must be confessed that certain
archaeological findings
have not enhanced the notion that
of fabulous natural endowments. Excavations, for
example,
have produced a disproportionately small amount of
gold
and silver in the Israelite strata when compared to
contempo-
after ANET). Ancient religious philosophy was obsessed
with finding
a means to prevent the corrosive influences of
time and restore the
primeval, mythical golden age of plenty. The
concept underlying the
Biblical
description of the Promised Land likens
age when all was once prosperous; see Gaster, loc. cit.;
Mircea Eliade,
Cosmos and History (New York, 1959). .
4 Amos 2:9. The Old
Testament speaks of the land as being so pro-
ductive that a single cluster
of grapes was too large for one man to
5 But note, for instance,
the Israeli reclamation work which is now
succeeding in establishing a flourishing
agricultural population in the
low-lying plains and valleys of
6 As a sample of the
astounding productivity of these areas in ancient
times, see particularly the article of Waldo H. Dubberstein: "Compara-
tive Prices in Later
Babylonia. (625-400 B.C.)," AJSL,
LVI (1939),
20-43.
He writes: "Mass production was. . . the style in
later
(625-400
B.C.). Contracts show as many as forty thousand bushels
grown on one tract. . . Barley, the most common grain
in
(was produced on a scale rivaling grain production on
present-day farms
and ranches. Nearly fifty thousand bushels of
barley were measured
into Eanna, the
Glimpses
of great flocks and herds are given. . . A temple income list
of wool shows over ten thousand pounds of sheep wool
and several
hundred pounds of goat 'wool' being weighed in,
etc. (Ibid., pp.
25-29).
154
DOUGLAS
WATERHOUSE
rary strata of
gold and silver have not been so meager in the
earlier Canaanite
levels, the question persists as to whether or not
deserves its lustrous fame as a bounteous land of
wealth.8
Some
have even suggested that the Biblical outlook was
colored from the standpoint of a nomadic desert
people
inured to the waste lands prior to their entry into
Canaan.9
The
purpose of this article is especially directed to deal with
this claim.
Climatic theorists, the most notable
of which was Ellsworth
arid landscape of Syro-Palestine,
explained the apparent
desiccation of the land as due to drastic recurring
climatic cycles
--a
notion which was freely drawn upon in explaining the
fall and rise of past civilizations.10
There is, however, no real
evidence to support those who attribute the
present com-
parative poverty of the
Mediterranean area to either cyclic
changes in rainfall and temperature or to a
gradual change in
climate.11 After all, it was no
climatic change that turned
7 W. F. Albright, The Archaeology of Palestine (Revised
edition;
Pelican Book, 196o), p. 252 (hereafter AP).
8 It is, of course, a
well-known archaeological fact that
enjoyed a material wealth unmatched by later
Israelite strata. Cf.
James
L. Kelso, "Excavations at
9 Cf., for example, Cyrus
H. Gordon, Introduction to Old Testament
Times
(Ventnor, N. J., 1953), pp. 131-132.
10 Ellsworth Huntington,
1911).
For a scholarly appraisal of
A.
T. Olmstead, "Climatic Changes in the Nearest East,
" Bulletin of
the American Geographical Society, XLIV (1912), 432-440;
Albright,
From the Stone Age to
Christianity
(2d edition;
pp.
71-74; Denis Baly, The Geography of the Bible (New York, 1957),
pp.
70-74.
11 Baly
leans toward the view that though there was no different
climatic regime during the Biblical period from
the present, the balance
of that regime has varied from time to time. In a
logical argument,
Baly points out that any slight variation of the
climate at all must in
some way affect the position of the marginal frontierland lying between
the desert and the sown; Baly;
loc. cit. F. S. Bodenheimer
follows the
same thought: "We do not suppose that any
important fluctuations
A
Happily for the historical
investigator,
most complete and continuous picture of human
history that
is at present available in any part of the
world. Past theories,
built to explain the obviously drastic changes (dealt
with
more fully below), which
its long history, have had to face an ever
relentless increase
of knowledge. It was for some years assumed, for
example,
that the prehistoric fauna of the
littoral reflected a real cold-period of
"glacial age"
Such
fossil flora (found in
large-leaved oak were taken as
indicators of a northern
boreal invasion caused by a southward moving cold
front.
Subsequent
discovery, however, has revealed that these
same plants, far from having any bearing on historical
interpretation, are still thriving
today in
tion of certain biotypes--was
taken as one of the main
evidences for distinguishing between "the
Upper and Lower
Levaloiso-Mousterian
levels" in
investigation, however, has
demonstrated that such "warm"
species, as the hippopotamus, did not disappear
by a sudden,
prehistoric shift in climate but survived in
historical times.13 The case against
climatic changes, even in
the remote past, has therefore been strengthened.14
of temperature occurred since the mesolithic era. But even relatively
small changes in the field of precipitations, slight
increases of rain
from 100 to 200 mm per annum, combined with a
greater stability
of annual and seasonal rain distribution, must
have had far-reaching
consequences, changing wide areas
and patches of desert into steppes
and savannas, permitting passage and penetration of
animals from the
east, west and south." Animal and Man in Bible Lands (
p. 129.
12 Bodenehimer,
op. cit., p. 18.
13 Georg
Haas, "On the Occurrence of Hippopotamus in the Iron
Age
of the Coastal Area of
(1953),
30-34.
14 It is still generally
held, however, that a past age of tropical
conditions prevailed when the land was "raw
and damp and hot."
This
condition is said to have been changed "at the beginning of the
156
S. DOUGLAS WATERHOUSE
Direct evidences against any drastic
climatic changes are
not wanting. A type of terrestrial mollusc, sensitive to
variations in humidity, thrives today in the
region much as it did when men first settled in that
locality.11
Even
in such an exotic milieu as that of the prehistoric cave
remains of
much like that of the present, e.g., the lack of
fossilization
among the early vertebrate-remains from Geulah Cave B
(in the proximity of
conditions of humidity did not change significantly
(within
the cave) since the deposition of the bones there.16
In past millennia rain was certainly
more effective in
roots would hold back the water and prevent the
drying up
of springs.17 At the dawn of recorded
history, when the Syro-
Palestinian
littoral enjoyed a pristine state, this was especially
true. The land was then extremely lush.18
At a time prior
Mesolithic Natufian
period" by the advent of a cooler, drier climate; cf.
Nelson
Glueck, Rivers
in the Desert (New York, 1957), pp. 2-3; Boden-
heimer, op. cit., p. 32; Haas, loc.
cit.
15 J. Perrot,
"The Excavations at Tell Abu Matar, near
IEJ, V (1955), 83, n. 10.
The shell remains of Sphincterochila boissieri
Charp. are
dated to the Ghassulean (Chalcolithic)
era.
16 The remains of the
Mousterian, e.g.,
Middle Palaeolithicum. It is also of significance
that
"this skeletal assemblage appears in situ and has not been washed in
hither," S. Angress,
"The Vertebrate Remains from Geulah Cave
B,"
IEJ, X (1960), 84-89. The
biotype remains from the
(dated to the Mesolithic-Natufian)
point toward the same climatic
conditions then as found today, M. Stekelis and G. Haas, "The Abu
17 Baly,
op. cit., p. 76.
18 The modern Near East
with the aridity of its present climate
hardly prepares one in imagining its early history
when there were
many more rivers, much more vegetation, and a land
replete with
various forms of animal life. A brief survey of
conditions as they then
appeared is given in Henri Frankfort, The Birth of Civilization in the
of his approach to field research dealing with the
prehistory of western
able to find data from that early a period in
A
to that of the Egyptian. Fifth Dynasty (e.g.,
prior to about
2400
B.C.),19 Syro-Palestine
was purportedly clothed with
greenery; an abundance of herbage supported what
must
have been a veritable parkland teeming with wild
life.
Scholarly research has make it possible to catch
a snatching
glimpse of that primeval setting. Although rain
was distribut-
ed, in all likelihood, in a manner similar to that
of today,20
permanent, sizable rivers were not uncommon.21
Along the
coastal low country, open grassy plains and
perennial pools
existed inland from the dune belt.22
Houses (Chalcolithic)
were of necessity raised on piles above what was
evidently
an extremely marshy land.23 A glimpse
is also afforded of the
watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord,
like the land
of
not only made it reasonably certain that at that
time many
more lateral streams flowed in the
today, but also that it was intensively developed, in
spite
of its present summer heat and mosquito-breeding
swamps.25
This
primeval picture did not last long into historical times.
Toward
the end of the third millennium B.C., there was a
marked desiccation in the amount of available
moisture.26
lay much of a bet on the lush Syro-Palestinian
littoral: I've a hunch
it was too lush," "
Antiquity, XXXI (1957), 80.
19 Cf. John.A:
p. 20,
Kenyon, Digging
Up
20 Stekelis
and Haas, loc. cit.
21 Dorothy A. E. Garrod, "The Stone Age of
VIII (1934), 146.
22 Stekelis and Haas, loc.
cit.
23 Albright, AP, p. 68.
24 Both Biblical and
extra-Biblical sources attest the former beauty
and productiveness of the Jordan-enriched plains;
see Albright, "The
Mowry, "Settlements in the
Period
(63 B.C.-A.D. 34)," BA, XV
(1952), 26-42.
25 Albright, AP, p. 69; AASOR, VI (1926), 67-68.
26 See
above, n. 19.
158
S. DOUGLAS
WATERHOUSE
In
the environs of ancient
occurred concomitantly with a severe erosion
which removed
at least three feet of the overlying, soft,
limestone rock.
Consequently,
underground tombs of
to the Egyptian Sixth Dynasty, were left roofless.27
At the
same time, settlements may have been abandoned along
the
Mediterranean
coastal plain.28 Presumably, with the
drying
up of the marshes, the Philistian-Sharon
coastal inhabitants
were affected by the growing shortage of water.
An increase in population and a
decrease in forests and top
soil were evidently already joining hands with the
corrosive
influence of passing time! The trend toward
contemporary
conditions of aridity, however, was never again to
bite so
deeply into
As
world, its natural endowments were far from abated.
Dense
woodlands covered districts which are now largely,
or even
entirely, bereft of tree growth. Today, meager
remnants of
these once extensive forests are found in the Judean
and
upper Galilean hill country. While the
wooded, even these regions are poor reminders of the
towering
thickets of tree growth found in former
centuries. The Meri-ka-
Re texts of the Egyptian Ninth or Tenth
Dynasties (cir.
2100
B.C.) speak of southern
and made inaccessible by many trees.30
Interestingly, in the
27
Kenyon, loc. cit.
28 Cf. Yeivin, op. cit.,
p. 191.
29 Since the second
millennium B.C. the water-level of
remained roughly the same as it is today;
Albright, AP, pp. 250-251;
w. C. Lowdermilk,
pp.
63-64. That boundary between the desert and the sown has remain-
ed the same since Biblical times is shown by
archaeological investiga-
tion and such Biblical
passages as 2 Ki 3:9 where
with the same dry, climatic conditions as is found
there today. Cf.
Albright,
Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (2d
edition; Baltimore,
1946),
p. 100.
30 Sir Alan Gardiner,
An
Egyptian literary text from the second half of the thirteenth
A
environs of the Judean hill country, there
existed a large
coniferous forest of pine and cypress where now
there is
scarcely a tree substantial enough to be used for
the building
of houses or furniture!31
If one considers the fuel
requirements of the early metallur-
gical industries and the
considerable amount of trees utilized
for the walls and houses of such ancient cities as
that of
rich supply of timber, a stately legacy of
pre-Israelite
was to wane rapidly with the coming of the Hebrews.33
By
the twelfth century B.C., the coniferous forest had largely
disappeared from the hillcountry,34 and
by Solomon's reign,
in the tenth century B.C., Hiram, king of
called upon to supply wood for the building of the
temple in
Of the wild life which in former
times filled the land, an
amazing number show strong affinities to
animal-forms
presently associated only with the African savanna
country.
Lions
once roamed in the forested sections of the land and
century B.C. describes Palestinian roads as
being darkened with an
overgrowth of cypresses, oaks, and cedars; ANET, p. 477. On the
former forestation of
"Forests
in
LXXXVII
(1955), 87-88; Siegfried H. Horn, Seventh-day
Adventist
Bible Dictionary (Washington, D. C.,
1960), pp. 804, 806.
31 Albright,
AASOR, IV (1942), 7-8, 20.
32 Perrot,
op. cit., p. 84; Kenyon, op. cit., pp. 183-184.
33 Note, for example,
that Joshua told the men of the Joseph tribes
to make room for themselves in
(Jos 17:15). In making the land habitable, the Hebrews
undoubtedly
pushed back the forested areas to much smaller
perimeters; see below,
note 34.
34 Evidence from the
excavations at Gibeah indicate the apparent
disappearance of pine and cypress in
that locality sometime between
the thirteenth and the eleventh centuries B.C.;
Albright, AASOR, IV
(1942), 7-8, 20. Originally, a very
extensive coniferous forest may have
formed a more or less continuous belt from the heights
of
down through the entire length of the Palestinian hillcountry. The soil
and climate of the hillcountry
is said to be "admirably adapted" to
this type of forest.
160
S. DOUGLAS
WATERHOUSE
had their lairs in rocky caves. An Egyptian
literary document
dated from the second half of the thirteenth century
B.C.
states that: “the soldier, when he goeth
up to Retenu (Pales-
tine) hath no staff and no sandals. He knoweth not whether he
be dead or alive, by reason of the fierce
lions." Another
document from the same period complains that
more lions than panthers or hyenas!35 It
may be recalled
that the Old Testament speaks of actual encounters
with
lions--Samson tore a young lion “and he had nothing
in his
hand" (Jugs 14:5-6); even the youthful David
attacked
lions and bears and killed them (I Sa
the lion was still to be seen in
The hippopotamus was once found in the rivers of
the coas-
tal plain, (until at least
the fourth century B.C.), possibly in
the
swamp flora, such as water lilies and papyrus, served
as an
ideal habitat for these great beasts. Remnants of
this flora
were still surviving as recently as a hundred years
ago along
the upper
man hippo is spoken of by Job as lying under “the
lotus
plants. . . in the covert of the reeds and in
the marsh. . . .
Behold,
if the river is turbulent he is not frightened; he is
confident though
35 Bodenheimer,
op. cit., p. 169; ANET, p. 477.
36 Ludwig Kohler, Hebrew Man (Nashville, Tenn., 1953), p.
26.
Layard reports that in the 1840's lions were
frequently caught "in the
Sinjar, [in
by the Arabs." The lion, at that time, was
still well known along the
and Its Remains (
37 Haas, BASOR, No. 132 (1953), 30-34.
Excavations at Tell Qasileh
near Tel-Aviv have unearthed hippopotamus remains
from the 12th-
4th
century B.C.; elsewhere, hippo remains are dated to the 13th-14th
century B.C. from Ras Shamra (
the
far been dredged up from the
they persisted in this river way into historic times
(cf. Job 40:23;
although behemoth
is a general expression for beasts, Job undoubtedly
is here referring to the hippo).
A