MANNA, NECTAR, AND AMBROSIA. 



By PAUL HAUPT. 



(Read April 22, 1922.) 



The Biblical manna, which the ancestors of the Jews are said to 

 have eaten for forty years until they came to the borders of Canaan, 

 is not the manna of commerce, which is a saccharine exudation 

 obtained in Sicilian plantations, during July and August, by making 

 transverse incisions through the bark of flowering-ash trees {Fraxinus 

 ornns). This is employed as a gentle laxative for children and is 

 still largely consumed in South America. The Jews' manna is gen- 

 erally supposed to be the honey-like exudation of a species of tamarisk 

 on the Sinaitic peninsula. The flow of manna from the soft twigs of 

 the tamarix Gallica, which is due to their being punctured by a scale 

 insect, appears only during certain months (about the end of May 

 and in June). It could not have yielded the daily provision of more 

 than 300 tons ;^ the annual quantity produced on the Sinaitic peninsula 

 is only 500 or 600 lbs. Nor could it have been ground in querns, or 

 pounded in mortars, and baked- in baking-pots.^ It has the con- 

 sistency of wax in the early morning, but melts in the heat of the sun 

 (Exod. 16, 21). This Sinaitic manna is still collected by the Arabs 

 and sold to the monks of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, who supply 

 it to the pilgrims and tourists visiting the convent. 



I showed in my paper The Burning Bush and the Origin of 

 Judaism, which I presented at our General Meeting in 1909, that the 

 mountain whence the Law is said to have been given to Moses can 

 not have been situated on the Sinaitic peninsula ; it must have been a 



1 They are said to have collected an omer per day per person (Exod. 16, 

 16. 36). An omer is nearly a gallon (more accurately, 3.644 liters). Accord- 

 ing to Exod. 12, 2)7 (cf. 38, 26; Num. i, 46; 26, 51) there were more than 600,- 

 000 men not including Levites, women and children ; so there would have been 

 more than two million people. These numbers are, of course, impossible; see 

 Gray, Numbers (ICC) p. 12; contrast EB^i 25, 139 ^ below. 



2 For. Heb. bissel, to bake, cf. 2 S 13. 18; AJSL 26, 16; ZDMG 63, 517. 



3 See the cut on p. 64 of the translation of Leviticus in the Polychrome 

 Bible; cf. MLN 38, 433; also ZDMG 61, 714, 1- 10; JBL 36, 256. 



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