"A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey"?

What exactly did God mean when he told Abraham's descendants  that they would inherit a land flowing with milk and honey?



There have been a number of explanations of this.Some of  have suggested that the refrence  was only  to a sweet syrup from dates, figs or grapes  or perhaps to the wild honey such as  Judge Samson on one occasion scooped from the carcass of a lion he had killed as described in Judges 14: 8, 9.


But fairly recently archaeologists have discovered an ancient apiary   at Tel Rehov in modern-day Israel which dates from the 10th to early 9th centuries B.C.E.  Here they found over 30 hives in three rows and scholars estimate that "as much as half a ton of honey could be culled each year from these hives.


This discovery proved that  that keeping busy was a highly developed industry by the time of Solomon. In addition to using the honey it itself  the Jews used the beeswax in both the manufacture of metal and leather products as well as for writing boards with panels filled with the beeswax which could be written down and then melted down and reused in other boards.


So the description of the land as a land" flowing with milk  (There was an abundant supply of wholesome milk from cows, sheep and goats as well.)and honey" was very true and and painted part of an accurate Biblical picture of The Promised Land.

Bricks Corroborate Accuracy of Moses' Writing

The making of bricks in the 15th-century  B.C.E. illustrates again the accuracy of the Biblical record.
Exodus 1 :14 and 5:10-14 Moses described the ancient making of bricks by the Egyptians using captive Hebrews  in the Nile River valley using clay mortar and straw is back. This account was accurate in all of its details.

 According to the International Standard Bible Encylopedia  the Israelite slaves in this case would have mixed water with this clay and then carried this to the spot where the brick maker was pouring this mixture into a mold on the ground.

When this had dried  to a consistency  where it would not run he would take this wooden mold or form away and leave the damp bricks to continue drying in the sun.

Further corroboration of both the Biblical account was found in two other sources, The first is  a wall painting of the 15th-century B.C.E. tomb of Reckhmire in Thebes illustrating the manufacture of bricks during the era covered in the Biblical account. The second is the papyrus documents from the second millennium B.C.E.  which describe the making of bricks in this way by slaves or serfs. including  the daily production quota that they  would have had to reach.

Esther Account Was Historically Accurate

Do you remember the story of Esther and how she was able to save her people from genocide as described in the Bible Book of Esther?


This account described how one of the King's princes, Haman the Agagite,  tried to have the Jews murdered  but he was thwarted by Mordecai and Esther who turned the tables on Haman by appealing her husband King Ahasuerus to pass an order arming the Jews so they could defend themselves against Haman's murderers as described in Esther chapter 8. In the end it was Haman and his cohorts who were destroyed.


But outside of the Bible is there any proof that this actually happened --  that this king actually existed? The Bible said he was Ahasuerus. But there is no King Ahasuerus of Persia. And this has caused  some to  question whether or not this Ahasuerus ever existed.


But eventually through their deciphering of Persian monuments  archaeologists found evidence that this Ahasuerus mentioned in Esther was Xerxes I the son of Darius the the Great. In their  transliteration of  Xerxes into Hebrew they found it  almost identical to the Ahasuerus mentioned in the book of Esther.


And everything  said in the book of Esther about Ahasuerus, his capital at Susa (Shusan) in Elam, his rule over Media and the extent of his empire from India to the island of the Mediterranean all agree with the facts about one Persian king: Xerxes.


Regarding this scholar Lewis Bayles Paton wrote, "The character of Ahasuerus, as portrayed in the Book of Esther also agrees well with the account of Xerxes given by  Herodotus and other Greek historians."


So yes, the Bible account was accurate -- further evidence of the accuracy and authenticity of the Bible.

What Time of Day Did It Happen?

 Like today descriptions of events or incidents during the Bible times included the time of day or evening -- although not always mentioning the actual hour.


The actual expression used varied depending on whether they were talking about something happening during the  daytime or night.  People in Israel  would often used such  expressions such as the "sixth hour but also described things as happening in the  "morning', at "noon", or  "midday", and in the "evening" if they were talking about something between sunrise and sunset.


They did not do this during the night however. Hebrews initially divided  the night into periods of four watches of about 4 hours each, and later using the Roman and Greek practice of dividing the night into four watches of 3 hours.


These "watches"  ran between sunset and sunrise. The first "watch" ran from sunset to 9:00 p.m., the second between 9:00 p.m. and midnight, the third ended three hours later at 3:00 a.m. with the "cockcrowing" and the fourth ran from that time to sunrise or "early in the morning." It was during this fourth watch that Jesus walked on the Sea of the Sea of Galilee.


The actual passing of time was kept track of by two devices. The first was the sun dial during  daylight hours when the sun  or the clepsydra or water clock during overcast days or during the night. These were clay vessels  with sloped sides and a small hole in the bottom that allowed measured drops of water to flow from one bowl to another one stacked underneath. Both of these could be marked with degrees of measusre according to the Jewish Encycyclopedia

What Was In Their Wallet?

The use of coins  in the Bible lands had become quite common by the Seventh Century B.C.E. Although many purchases during the times of Abraham were paid for either by bartering  or through the exchange of gold and jewelry, such as when Abraham purchased Sarah's burial plot,  by 700 B.C.E. coins made with furnaces, molds, and stamps, became increasingly common in everyday commerce.


 By Jesus time in Palestine four of these had become popular.The least valuable of  these was the lepton or mite. The widow likely dropped two of these into the contribution box in the temple mentioned in Mark 12:42. (A worker could earn 2 of these in about 15 minutes.)


A little more valuable was  the silver drachma  which would have taken about a full day to earn. Two of these had to be paid in the yearly temple tax mentioned in Matthew 17:24


 The silver denarius was still more valuable and among other things was used by business owners to pay their workers who earned one of these for every 12 hour shift. (During the Roman occupation Jews had to use part of these earnings to pay the tribute tax mentioned in Romans 13:7.)


Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus, was paid off using the third popular type of coin, the silver shekel. These pure silver coins  were made in the city of Tyre and circulated in Palestine during Jesus' time.


The use of such  coins to conduct commerce was not a Jewish idea however. The earliest use of coins in the Middle was in Lydia (modern day Turkey)  sometime before 700 B.C.E. and their use quickly spread throughout the Middle-East in various styles and values as well as the ones Jewish people commonly kept in their money pouches to  cover expenses during Jesus' day.

The scribes and Pharisees Were Quite a Superstitious Lot

The idea of priests wearing  clothing or items to make them stand out from the common person had early beginnings, in the far eastern as well middle Mediterranean areas of the world.


Jewish scribes and Pharisees, for instance,   wore small leather boxes on their foreheads and upper left arm. This was promoted by their literal interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament.


These small small leather square or rectangular  black boxes, called, phylacteries,  contantained a scripture passage in response to the command from  God, who said,  "These words that I am commanding you today must prove to be on your heart...And you must tie them as a sign upon your hand" and "as a frontlet band between your eyes."


Scholars think that the scribes and Pharisees had succumbed to this practice  by the third or second century B.C.E. And not for good reasons. 


Many of them made these little boxes extra large to impress the common people by their supposed piety. And many also thought that these phylacteries or black boxes were amulets that could protect them --a common superstition of the people of other nations, such as the Greeks. The Greeks called such black boxes "phylakterion and were a "means of protection".

How Far Could You Walk on a Sabbath Day?

How far can you walk in a day?   How far could you have walked on a Sabbath day during the time of Jesus and his apostles?


The answer to the first question would be, "about 20 to 30 miles" walking at a rate of about 2 miles per hour for eight hours, but if you  were a Jew living in or around  Jerusalem during and shortly after the time of Jesus you wouldn't be able to cover anywhere near that much ground.


Under Mosaic Law on the seventh day of the week Israelites -- and even foreigners -- were not stop all strenuous work and other activity in order to rest and have time to focus on religious matters -- such as the reading and meditating on the Scriptures.  God instructed them: "Let nobody go out from his [or her]locality."


The rabbis, as they did with many other aspects of the Law, carried this to an extreme putting a 2,000 cubic limit on how far anybody could walk. They called this a "Sabbath Day's Journey".  The actual distance was somewhere between 0.8 and 1 kilometer.


After witnessing Jesus' ascension to the heavens after his resurrection, his apostles made such a trip from the Mount of Olives back to nearby  Jerusalem.