Cyclamen persicum
Cyclamen persicum, the Persian cyclamen, is a species of flowering herbaceous perennial plant growing from a tuber, native to rocky hillsides and woodland up to 1,200 m above sea level, from south-central Turkey to Lebanon-Syria and the Palestine region. It grows in Algeria and Tunisia and on the Greek islands of Rhodes and Crete, where it may have been introduced by monks. Cultivars of this species are the seen florist's cyclamen. Wild plants have heart-shaped leaves, up to 14 cm green with lighter marbling on the upper surface. Flowers bloom from winter to spring or in autumn and have 5 small sepals and 5 upswept petals white to pale pink with a band of deep pink to magenta at the base. After pollination, the flower stem curls downwards as the pod develops, but does not coil as in other cyclamens. Plants go dormant in summer. There are two natural varieties and several named forms, distinguished by flowering time and predominant petal color. C. persicum var. persicum C. persicum var. persicum f. persicum C. persicum var. persicum f. albidum C. persicum var. persicum f. roseum C. persicum var. persicum f. puniceum C. persicum var. autumnale The following is a selection of cultivars.
All are frost-tender, best grown under glass in temperate regions:- Cyclamen persicum has a dark-brown tuberous root, semi-poisonous. In some cultures, the tubers were used in making soap, as they generate a lather when mixed with water; the Bedouins of Mandate Palestine used to collect the root, after grating it, would mix it with lime and sprinkle it over the surface of lakes or other large bodies of water known to contain fish. These poisonous mixtures would stun fish, which would come to the surface and be collected by the fishermen; such methods, as well as fishing with explosives, which came into use in the early 20th century, were banned by the British Mandate authorities. Cyclamen Society "Cyclamen persicum". Germplasm Resources Information Network. Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture
Ceratonia siliqua
Ceratonia siliqua, known as carob, St John's bread, locust bean, locust-tree, or carob bush is a flowering evergreen tree or shrub in the pea family, Fabaceae. It is cultivated for its edible pods, as an ornamental tree in gardens and landscapes; the carob tree is native to the Mediterranean region, including Southern Europe, Northern Africa, the larger Mediterranean islands, the Levant and Middle-East of Western Asia into Iran, the Canary Islands and Macaronesia in the Atlantic Ocean. The ripe and sometimes toasted pod is ground into carob powder, sometimes used to replace cocoa powder. Carob bars, an alternative to chocolate bars, as well as carob treats, are available in health food stores. Carob pods are sweet, not bitter, contain no theobromine or caffeine; the carat, a unit of mass for gemstones, a measurement of purity for gold, takes its name from the Greek word for a carob seed, via the Arabic word, qīrāṭ. The word "carob" comes from Middle French carobe, which borrowed it from Arabic خَرُّوبٌ perhaps from Akkadian language kharubu or Aramaic kharubha, related to Hebrew harubh.
Ceratonia siliqua, the scientific name of the carob tree, derives from the Greek kerátiοn κεράτιον'fruit of the carob, Latin siliqua'pod, carob'. The unit "carat", used for weighing precious metal and stones comes from κεράτιον, as alluding to an ancient practice of weighing gold and gemstones against the seeds of the carob tree by people in the Middle East; the system was standardized, one carat was fixed at 0.2 grams. In late Roman times, the pure gold coin known as the solidus weighed 24 carat seeds; as a result, the carat became a measure of purity for gold. Thus, 24-carat gold means; the carob tree grows up to 15 m tall. The crown is broad and semispherical, supported by a thick trunk with rough brown bark and sturdy branches, its leaves are 10 to 20 cm long, alternate and may or may not have a terminal leaflet. It is frost-tolerant to 20 °F. Most carob trees are dioecious and some are hermaphroditic, so male trees do not produce fruit; when the trees blossom in autumn, the flowers are small and numerous, spirally arranged along the inflorescence axis in catkin-like racemes borne on spurs from old wood and on the trunk.
The male flowers smell like human semen, an odor, caused in part by amines. The fruit is a legume, elongated, straight, or curved, thickened at the sutures; the pods take a full year to ripen. When the sweet ripe pods fall to the ground, they are eaten by various mammals, such as swine, thereby dispersing the hard inner seed in the excrement; the seeds of the carob tree contain leucodelphinidin, a colourless flavanol precursor related to leucoanthocyanidins. Although cultivated extensively, carob can still be found growing wild in eastern Mediterranean regions, has become naturalized in the west; the tree is typical in the southern Portuguese region of the Algarve, where the tree is called alfarrobeira, the fruit alfarroba. It is seen in southern Spain and Valencia, Malta, on the Italian islands of Sicily and Sardinia, in Southern Croatia, in eastern Bulgaria, in Southern Greece, Cyprus, as well as on many Greek islands such as Crete and Samos; the common Greek name is χαρουπιά, or ξυλοκερατιά.
In Turkey, it is known as "goat's horn". The various trees known as algarrobo in Latin America belong to a different subfamily, Mimosoideae of the Fabaceae, they were named algarrobo after the carob tree by early Spanish settlers because they produce pods with sweet pulp. The carob genus, belongs to the legume family, is believed to be an archaic remnant of a part of this family now considered extinct, it grows well in warm temperate and subtropical areas, tolerates hot and humid coastal areas. As a xerophyte, carob is well adapted to the conditions of the Mediterranean region with just 250 to 500 millimetres of rainfall per year. Carob trees can survive long periods of drought, but to grow fruit, they need 500 to 550 millimetres of rainfall per year, they prefer well-drained, sandy loams and are intolerant of waterlogging, but the deep root systems can adapt to a wide variety of soil conditions and are salt-tolerant. After being irrigated with saline water in the summer, carob trees could recover during winter rainfalls.
In some experiments, young carob trees were capable of basic physiological functions under high salt conditions. Not all legume species can develop a symbiotic relationship with rhizobia to make use of atmospheric nitrogen, it remains unclear if carob trees have this ability: Some findings suggest that it is not able to form root nodules with rhizobia, while in another more recent study, trees have been identified with nodules containing bacteria believed to be from the genus Rhizobium. However, a study measuring the 15N-signal in the tissue of th
Khirbet Qeiyafa
Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley and dated to the first half of the 10th century BCE. The ruins of the fortress were uncovered in 2007, near the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, 30 km from Jerusalem, it covers nearly 2.5 ha and is encircled by a 700-meter-long city wall constructed of stones weighing up to eight tons each. Excavations at site continued in subsequent years. A number of archaeologists Yosef Garfinkel and Saar Ganor, have claimed that it might be the biblical city of Sha'arayim, because of the two gates discovered on the site, or Neta'im and that the large building at the center is an administrative building dating to the reign of King David, where he might have lodged at some point; this is based on their conclusions that the site ca. 1025–975 BCE, a range which includes the biblical date for the Kingdom of David. Others are sceptical, suggest it might represent either a North Israelite, Philistine or Canaanite fortress; the techniques and interpretations used to reach the conclusion that Khirbet Qeiyafa was a fortress of King David have been criticised.
This is Iron Age II for most findings The top layer of the fortress shows that the fortifications were renewed in the Hellenistic period. In the Byzantine period, a luxurious land villa was built on top of the Iron Age II palace and cut the older structure in two; the meaning of the Arabic name of the site, Khirbet Qeiyafa, is uncertain. Scholars suggest it may mean "the place with a wide view." In 1881, Palmer thought that Kh. Kîâfa meant "the ruin of tracking foot-steps"; the modern Hebrew name, מבצר האלה, or the Elah Fortress was suggested by Foundation Stone directors David Willner and Barnea Levi Selavan at a meeting with Garfinkel and Ganor in early 2008. Garfinkel accepted the idea and excavation t-shirts with that name were produced for the 2008 and 2009 seasons; the name derives from the location of the site on the northern bank of Nahal Elah, one of six brooks that flow from the Judean mountains to the coastal plain. The Elah Fortress lies just inside a north-south ridge of hills separating Philistia and Gath to the west from Judea to the east.
The ridge includes the site identified as Tel Azekah. Past this ridge is a series of connecting valleys between two parallel groups of hills. Tel Sokho lies on the southern ridge with Tel Adullam behind it; the Elah Fortress is situated on the northern ridge, overlooking several valleys with a clear view of the Judean Mountains. Behind it to the northeast is Tel Yarmut. From the topography, archaeologists believe this was the location of the cities of Adullam, Sokho and Yarmut cited in Joshua 15:35; these valleys formed the border between Judea. The site of Khirbet Qeiyafa was surveyed in the 1860s by Victor Guérin who reported the presence of a village on the hilltop. In 1875, British surveyors noted only stone heaps at Kh. Kiafa. In 1932, Dimitri Baramki, reported the site to hold a 35 square metres watchtower associated with Khirbet Quleidiya, 200 metres east; the site was neglected in the 20th century and not mentioned by leading scholars. Yehuda Dagan documented the visible remains; the site raised curiosity in 2005 when Saar Ganor discovered impressive Iron Age structures under the remnants.
Excavations at Khirbet Qeiyafa began in 2007, directed by Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University and Saar Ganor of the Israel Antiquities Authority, continued in 2008. Nearly 600 square metres of an Iron Age IIA city were unearthed. Based on pottery styles and two burned olive pits tested for carbon-14 at Oxford University and Ganor have dated the site to 1050–970 BCE, although Israel Finkelstein contends evidence points to habitation between 1050 and 915 BCE; the initial excavation by Ganor and Garfinkel took place from August 12 to 26, 2007 on behalf of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Institute of Archaeology. In their preliminary report at the annual ASOR conference on November 15, they presented a theory that the site was the Biblical Azekah, which until had been associated with Tell Zakariya. In Sept. of 2008, Joseph Silver, the chief funder of the excavation, while walking around the exterior of the city wall in the SE part with Garfinkel and Ganor, identified features in the city wall similar to the features found by Garfinkel and Ganor in the western gate, stated that it was a second gate.
In November, with volunteers from the Bnai Akiva youth organization, the area was cleared and an excavation organized by Garfinkel and Ganor confirmed the architecture of the second gate. The identification provides a solid basis for identifying the site as biblical Sha'arayim. In 2015 a plan to build a neighborhood on the site was cancelled, to enable the archaeological dig to go forward. Discoveries at Khirbet Qeiyafa are significant to the debate on archaeological evidence and historicity of the biblical account of the United Monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II. Garfinkel said in 2010 that the Qeiyafa excavations support the idea "that the kingdom of Judah existed as a centrally organized state in the tenth century BCE". Nadav Na’aman and Ido Koch held that the ruins were Canaanite, based on strong similarities with the nearby Canaanite excavations at Beit Shemesh. Finkelstein and Alexander Fantalkin, maintained that the site shows affiliations with a North Israelite entity. In 2015 Finkelstein and Piasetsky criticised the previous statistical treatment of radio-carbon dating at Khirbet Qeiyafa and als
David
David is described in the Hebrew Bible as the second king of the United Kingdom of Israel and Judah after Saul and Ish-bosheth. In the biblical narrative, David is a young shepherd who gains fame first as a musician and by killing the enemy champion Goliath, he becomes a close friend of Saul's son Jonathan. Worried that David is trying to take his throne, Saul turns on David. After Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle, David is anointed as King. David conquers Jerusalem, taking the Ark of the Covenant into the city, establishing the kingdom founded by Saul; as king, David commits adultery with Bathsheba, leading him to arrange the death of her husband Uriah the Hittite. Because of this sin, God denies David the opportunity to build the temple, his son Absalom tries to overthrow him. David flees Jerusalem during Absalom's rebellion, but after Absalom's death he returns to the city to rule Israel. Before his peaceful death, he chooses his son Solomon as successor, he is honored in the prophetic literature as an ideal king and an ancestor of a future Messiah, many psalms are ascribed to him.
Historians of the Ancient Near East agree that David existed around 1000 BCE, but that there is little that can be said about him as a historical figure. There is no direct evidence outside of the Bible concerning David, but the Tel Dan Stele, an inscribed stone erected by a king of Damascus in the late 9th/early 8th centuries BCE to commemorate his victory over two enemy kings, contains the phrase Hebrew: ביתדוד, consisting of the Hebrew words "house" and "David", which most scholars translate as "House of David". Ancient Near East historians doubt that the united monarchy as described in the Bible existed. David is richly represented in post-biblical Jewish written and oral tradition, is discussed in the New Testament. Early Christians interpreted the life of Jesus in light of the references to the Messiah and to David. David is written tradition as well; the biblical character of David has inspired many interpretations in art and literature over centuries. The first book of Samuel portrays David as the youngest of the eight sons of Jesse of Bethlehem.
His mother is not named in any book of the Bible, but the Talmud identifies her as Nitzevet daughter of Adael. When the story was retold in 1 Chronicles he was made the youngest of seven sons and given two sisters and Abigail; the Book of Ruth traces his ancestry back to Ruth the Moabite. David is described as cementing his relations with various political and national groups through marriage. King Saul offered David his oldest daughter Merab. David did not refuse the offer, but humbled himself in front of Saul to be considered among the King's family. Saul reneged and instead gave Merab in marriage to Adriel the Meholathite. Having been told that his younger daughter Michal was in love with David, Saul gave her in marriage to David upon David's payment in Philistine foreskins. Saul tried to have him killed. David escaped. Saul sent Michal to Galim to marry Palti, son of Laish. David took wives in Hebron, according to 2 Samuel 3. David wanted Michal back and Saul's son Ish-boshet delivered her to David, causing her husband great grief.
The Book of Chronicles lists his sons with his various concubines. In Hebron, David had six sons: Amnon, by Ahinoam. By Bathsheba, his sons were Shammua, Shobab and Solomon. David's sons born in Jerusalem of his other wives included Ibhar, Eliphelet, Nepheg, Japhia and Eliada. Jerimoth, not mentioned in any of the genealogies, is mentioned as another of his sons in 2 Chronicles 11:18, his daughter Tamar, by Maachah, is raped by her half-brother Amnon. God is angered when Saul, Israel's king, unlawfully offers a sacrifice and disobeys a divine command both to kill all of the Amalekites and to destroy their confiscated property. God sends the prophet Samuel to anoint a shepherd, the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem, to be king instead. After God sends an evil spirit to torment Saul, his courtiers recommend that he send for David, a man skilled in playing the lyre, wise in speech, brave in battle. David thus enters Saul's service as one of the royal armour-bearers and plays the lyre to soothe the king.
War comes between Israel and the Philistines, the giant Goliath challenges the Israelites to send out a champion to face him in single combat. David, sent by his father to bring provisions to his brothers serving in Saul's army, declares that he can defeat Goliath. Refusing the king's offer of the royal armour, he kills Goliath with his sling. Saul inquires the name of the young hero's father. Saul sets David over his army. All Israel loves David. Saul plots his death, but Saul's son Jonathan, one of those who loves David, warns him of his father's schemes and David flees, he goes first to Nob, where he is fed by the priest Ahimelech and given Goliath's sword, to Gath, the Philistine city of Goliath, intending to seek refuge with King Achish there. Achish's servants or officials question his loyalty, David sees that he is in danger there, he goes next to the cave of Adullam. From there he goes to seek refuge with the king of
Asphodelus aestivus
Asphodelus aestivus, the summer asphodel, is a species of asphodel, a common Western Mediterranean geophyte with a short vertical rhizome and basal leaves. Its flowers are actinomorphic, pinkish-white, with six perianth segments, 14–19 mm long and six stamens of the same length, in two whorls, its distribution is limited to the Western Mediterranean found in Portugal and Spain on the European mainland. There has been a lot of confusion over the nomenclature and taxonomy of the species in confusion with Asphodelus ramosus, it grows on rocky or sandy ground. The Asphodelus aestivus is a geophyte, having an underground storage organ which enables the plant to survive adverse conditions, such as excessive heat and drought, its leaves, growing to a height of 60 centimetres –80 centimetres, contain alkaloids that are harmful to sheep and goats in the wet, winter months, but during the summer when their leaves dry out, they lose their toxicity. In the Iberian Peninsula it flowers from June to September, although in the Algarve it may flower in May or at the end of April.
There, the leaves are withered by the time the plants flower. Some traditional folk usages of the plant have been to make a glue from the plant's root. A remedy against warts is derived from its root. According to Dioscorides, a concoction made from its roots induces vomiting; the entire plant was used in treating poisonous snake bites
Tribe of Judah
According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Judah was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel. The Tribe of Judah, its conquests, the centrality of its capital in Jerusalem for the worship of the god Yahweh figure prominently in the Deuteronomistic history, encompassing the books of Deuteronomy through II Kings, which most scholars agree was reduced to written form, although subject to exilic and post-exilic alterations and emendations, during the reign of the Judahist reformer Josiah from 641–609 BCE. According to the account in the Book of Joshua, following a partial conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes, Joshua allocated the land among the twelve tribes. Judah's divinely ordained portion is described in Joshua 15 as encompassing most of the southern portion of the Land of Israel, including the Negev, the Wilderness of Zin and Jerusalem. However, the consensus of modern scholars is. Other scholars point to extra-biblical references to Israel and Canaan as evidence for the potential historicity of the conquest.
In the opening words of the Book of Judges, following the death of Joshua, the Israelites "asked the Lord" which tribe should be first to go to occupy its allotted territory, the tribe of Judah was identified as the first tribe. According to the narrative in the Book of Judges, the tribe of Judah invited the tribe of Simeon to fight with them in alliance to secure each of their allotted territories; as is the case with Joshua, most scholars do not believe that the book of Judges contains reliable history. The Book of Samuel describes God's repudiation of a monarchic line arising from the northern Tribe of Benjamin due to the sinfulness of King Saul, bestowed onto the Tribe of Judah for all time in the person of King David. In Samuel's account, after the death of Saul, all the tribes other than Judah remained loyal to the House of Saul, while Judah chose David as its king. However, after the death of Ish-bosheth, Saul's son and successor to the throne of Israel, all the other Israelite tribes made David, the king of Judah, king of a re-united Kingdom of Israel.
The Book of Kings follows the expansion and unparalleled glory of the United Monarchy under King Solomon. A majority of scholars believe that the accounts concerning David and Solomon's territory in the "united monarchy" are exaggerated, a minority believe that the "united monarchy" never existed at all. Disagreeing with the latter view, Old Testament scholar Walter Dietrich contends that the biblical stories of circa 10th-century BCE monarchs contain a significant historical kernel and are not late fictions. On the accession of Rehoboam, Solomon's son, in c. 930 BCE, the ten northern tribes under the leadership of Jeroboam from the Tribe of Ephraim split from the House of David to create the Northern Kingdom in Samaria. The Book of Kings is uncompromising in its low opinion of its larger and richer neighbor to the north, understands its conquest by Assyria in 722 BCE as divine retribution for the Kingdom's return to idolatry; the tribes of Judah and Benjamin remained loyal to the House of David.
These tribes formed the Kingdom of Judah, which existed until Judah was conquered by Babylon in c. 586 BCE and the population deported. When the Jews returned from Babylonian exile, residual tribal affiliations were abandoned because of the impossibility of reestablishing previous tribal land holdings. However, the special religious roles decreed for the Levites and Kohanim were preserved, but Jerusalem became the sole place of worship and sacrifice among the returning exiles and southerners alike. According to the biblical account, at its height, the Tribe of Judah was the leading tribe of the Kingdom of Judah, occupied most of the territory of the kingdom, except for a small region in the north east occupied by Benjamin, an enclave towards the south west, occupied by Simeon. Bethlehem and Hebron were the main cities within the territory of the tribe; the size of the territory of the tribe of Judah meant that in practice it had four distinct regions: The Negev – the southern portion of the land, suitable for pasture The Shephelah – the coastal region, between the highlands and the Mediterranean sea, used for agriculture, in particular for grains The wilderness – the barren region next to the Dead Sea, below sea level.
In biblical times, this region was further subdivided into three sections – the wilderness of En Gedi, the wilderness of Judah, the wilderness of Maon. The hill country – the elevated plateau situated between the Shephelah and the wilderness, with rocky slopes but fertile soil; this region was used for the production of grain, olives and other fruit, hence produced oil and wine. According to the Torah, the tribe consisted of descendants of Judah, the fourth son of Jacob and of Leah; some Biblical scholars view this as an etiological myth created in hindsight to explain the tribe's name and connect it to the other tribes in the Israelite confederation. With Leah as a matriarch, Biblical scholars regard the tribe as having been believed by the text's authors to have been part of the original Israelite confederation. Like the other tribes of the kingdom of Judah, the tribe of Judah is absent from the ancient Song of Deborah, rather than present but described as unwilling to assist in the battle between Israelites and their enemy.
Traditionally, this has been explained as being due to the southern kingdom being too f
Origanum syriacum
Origanum syriacum. Majorana syriaca, bible hyssop, Biblical-hyssop, Lebanese oregano or Syrian oregano, is an aromatic perennial herb in the mint family, Lamiaceae; the plant may be called za'atar by association with its use in a spice mixture. In Modern Hebrew, it is called ezob, it may have been the ezob of Classical Hebrew. In many English translations of the Bible, ezov is rendered as hyssop, hence the common name for bible hyssop, believed to be a different plant identified with Hyssopus officinalis; the problems with identification arise from Jewish oral tradition where it expressly prohibits Greek hyssop, where the biblical plant is said to have been identical to the Arabic word and which word is not to be associated with other ezobs that bear an additional epithet, such as zaatar farsi = Persian-hyssop and zaatar rumi = Roman-hyssop and zaatar mani = Calamint. Origanum syriacum grows to a height of 1 meter; the plant is pollinated by bees. Flowers are pale pink. Origanum syriacum is native to the Middle East.
In Egypt, Origanum syriacum subsp. Sinaicum is a rare plant that grows on stony ground in Sinai Peninsula including the coastal Mediterranean strip. From the conservation point of view it is an endangered plant, it is a preferred primary ingredient in the spice mixture za'atar. So precious is this herb. Origanum syriacum is harvested in the wild for use in preparing za'atar, a mixture of dried herbs and sumac for flavoring and garnish. However, it has entered cultivation due to high levels of demand. A study of the agronomic and chemical potential of O. syriacum subsp. Sinaicum showed it to be superior to O. vulgare subsp. Hirtum in herb and oil yields per acre, it identified the major constituents of the essential oil of O. syriacum subsp. Sinaicum as thymol, gamma-terpinene and p-cymene, in descending order. In Israel, it is very common to put its stalks inside of a grilled fish with olive oil and lemon juice. Media related to Origanum syriacum at Wikimedia Commons Data related to Origanum syriacum at Wikispecies
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