What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Time. By NATHAN MACDONALD.

Abstract

Nathan MacDonald’s book What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? Diet in Biblical Times was, in his words, ‘written by accident’. While writing a chapter in a book on the symbolism of food in the Hebrew Bible (since published in 2008 by Oxford University Press as Not Bread Alone: The Uses of Food in the Old Testament), MacDonald delved into the realm of the ancient Israelite diet from archaeological and anthropological perspectives. The material he gleaned was more than a chapter could hold and was indeed enough for a book devoted to this topic alone. However, MacDonald’s lack of expertise and experience in archaeology and anthropology discouraged him from doing so. He readily admits in his introduction that he is not an archaeologist; he states he later came to the realization that ‘not only was I not equal to the task, but neither was anyone else (p. x)’. His expertise in one of the areas (the Hebrew Bible) and professional interest in the others (archaeology and anthropology) encouraged him to publish his research. Whether or not anyone else was equal to the task (or more so) is not the purpose of this review; I will focus solely on MacDonald’s endeavour.