The history of the grape-vine in the holy land

Abstract

The grape-vine (Vitis vinifera L.) is miienitioned in the Bible and all ancient Hebrew writings as 'gefen,' originating apparently from a verbal radical 'kafan' meaning to bend and curl, in reference to vine stems and tendrils; the Accadian follows with 'gufnu,' as the Aramaic does with 'gufna.' The fruit is, in Hebrew, 'anav,' and in Arabic 'enab.' The grape-vine, known also as the European vine, has been cultivated in the Holy Land for many centuries. Vines in the wild state have been found in Europe, Greece, Anatolia, Iran and northern Irldia, but in Palestine there is no evidence of wild vines. The Authorized Version of the Bible, translating Isaiah 5, 2, renders 'beoushim' as wild grapes; most Hebrew scholars, however, are of the opinion that the word means 'diseased grapes, mildewed or otherwise affected, and in decay.' There is a third opinion, that it means unripe grapes, or grapes that will never ripen, but in no case does it mean wild grapes. In France and Italy, fossil vines were discovered back as far as the beginning of the Quaternary Age. Leaves and seeds indicate the existence of another species, mainly Vitis silvestris, during the Tertiary in Switzerland, Italy, Britain and Iceland. Seeds found in the middens of lake-dwellings of southern-central Europe prove that the grape has been a human food from the earliest times. Not a few investigators have assumed that the origin of the European vine and of its culture should be placed in the Middle East at the northern tip of Southwest Asia in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea. The Bible refers to a vine-