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Dictionary of Daily Life in Biblical and Post-Biblical Antiquity —Threshing & Winnowing (eBook edition)
© 2016 by Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
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Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473
eBook ISBN 978-1-61970-999-7
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Unless otherwise marked, Scripture references are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™
Due to technical issues, this eBook may not contain all of the images or diagrams in the original print edition of the work. In addition, adapting the print edition to the eBook format may require some other layout and feature changes to be made.
FirsteBookedition—November2016
CONTENTS
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
THRESHING & WINNOWING
ABBREVIATIONS
PERIODS, AGES, AND DATES
SELECT GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
EBOOKS FROM THEDICTIONARYOFDAILYLIFE
Dedicatedtoouresteemedcolleague, theeminentOldTestamentscholar
Roland K. Harrison
1920–1993
of rotary mills, housewives had to labor on hands and knees about four hours a day to grind wheat and barley for their daily bread. Most of the bread in the ancient world was flat (unleavened) bread, because the predominant emmer wheat and the barley in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece did not have the gluten necessary to cause bread to rise.
From the articles on CLOTHING, DYEING, LAUNDRY & FULLERS, and TEXTILES, one would learn that white linen was the preferred textile in Egypt, and was worn by Israelite priests and New Testament angels. How was Jesus dressed? Jesus’ sole garments, except for his burial shroud, were woolen. As wool was not easily laundered, his clothes would have been dirty except for the moment of his transfiguration.
How did Jesus appear? From the article on BARBERS & BEARDS, we can conclude with near certainty that Jesus had a beard. Why? Men in antiquity could not shave themselves. They had to resort either to slaves or to barbers for a shave. Moreover, beards were a symbol of masculinity and seniority. The Old Testament word for “elders” is literally “bearded ones.”
Where did people live? This would have varied from place to place and from one time period to another. From the article on DWELLINGS, one would learn that in the Old Testament era in Palestine most would have lived in houses with flat roofs and courtyards full of animals. In Rome, 95% of the people would have lived in insulae, crowded tenements without kitchens or bathrooms.
What about the relations between men and women? From the ar‐ticles on EDUCATION and MARRIAGE, one would learn a striking fact, which is missing from both the Old and the New Testaments— the average age of spouses. We learn from our extra-biblical evidence that the bride would have certainly been a young teenager, and the groom several years her senior. The early marriage of girls, to preserve their purity, meant that they had only at best a primary education, with the exception of those from wealthy Roman families, which could afford private tutors for their daughters.
The DDL is also quite unique in attempting to trace the developments of the features of the biblical world along what the
Computers in Jewish Life and Davka Corporation, 2008). Citations from the Old Testament Apocrypha are from the Revised Standard Version; those from the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are from James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Old TestamentPseudepigrapha (2 vols.; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983, 1985). The classical citations (including Philo and Josephus) are from the Loeb Classical Library. References to the Dead Sea Scrolls are from The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation by Michael Wise, Martin Abegg Jr., and Edward Cook (rev. ed., New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Citations from the Mishnah are from Herbert Danby, trans., The Mishnah(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). Citations from the Babylonian Talmud are from The Soncino Talmud (Institute for Computers in Jewish Life and Davka Corporation, 2007); those from the Jerusalem Talmud are from TheJerusalemTalmud, ATranslation and Commentary, ed. Jacob Neusner (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009). With the exception of citations from Michael W. Holmes, TheApostolicFathers:GreekTextsandEnglishTranslations (3rd. ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), patristic references are from the New Advent, Fathers of the Church (www. NewAdvent.org; 2007; © Kevin Knight). Citations from the Nag Hammadi texts are cited from Marvin Meyer, ed., TheNag Hammadi Scriptures(New York: HarperOne, 2007).
My deepest gratitude is first of all to Marvin R. Wilson, who has carefully examined all the essays and provided innumerable edits and corrections. I thank Graham Harrison for allowing us to update and expand his late father’s excellent entries. I wish to express my appreciation to all of the contributors, many of whom were my history PhD students at Miami University. My thanks go also to my wife, Kimi, who spent countless hours photocopying pages from books and journals. I am also grateful to Sue Cameron, who has checked the biblical and apocryphal references for me.
Marvin and I express our profound thanks to Allan Emery, senior editor at Hendrickson, for spending much of the final two years before his retirement overseeing the first volume of this project, and also to Carl Nellis for his work on that volume. We are also deeply grateful to Jonathan Kline, our new editor at Hendrickson, for his
painstaking and meticulous supervision of the work on Volumes 2, 3, and 4, and to Hannah Brown for her assistance with all four volumes. Our appreciation also goes to John F. Kutsko, who assisted with some of the research in the earliest stages of this dictionary project. Special thanks are also due to Foy D. Scalf, Chief Archivist of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, for supplying us with the sources of many Near Eastern quotations.
For their assistance in providing some of the photographs for this dictionary, we are grateful to Rami Arav (University of Nebraska at Omaha), Michal Artzy (University of Haifa), Rozenn Baileul LeSeuer (University of Chicago), Thomas E. Levy (University of California at San Diego), Daniel Master (Wheaton College), Amihai Mazar (Hebrew University), Foy Scalf (University of Chicago), Steven L. Tuck (Miami University), and Alain Zivie (Centre national de la recherche scientifique).
Finally, our profound gratitude goes to Andrew Pottorf for his valuable assistance with this project. A very gifted young scholar with unusual talent for writing and editing, Andrew is currently pursuing his doctorate in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. The authors of this dictionary and the editors at Hendrickson Publishers appreciate Andrew’s superb scholarship, dedicated work ethic, and great flexibility.
Edwin M. Yamauchi
April 2016
and in Canaan (Gen 37:7). From early on, the Hebrews pulled plants out by hand, or cut them low with flint-edged sickles, and gathered them in bound sheaves (’ălummîm). Shocking (the process of stacking several sheaves upright to dry) indicates that the grain was picked green so as to reduce grain loss. This strategy produced more work when removing straw at the threshing floor (gōren).
The determination that Canaanean blades were employed in the bottom of wooden threshing sledges that were dragged over piles of grain crops heaped on threshing floors confirms the early utilization of these devices throughout the Levant. An early second-millennium BC Sumerian text suggests the possibility of such patriarchal-era threshing sledges. Later, Isaiah alludes to such a sledge: “See, I will make you into a threshing sledge, new and sharp, with many teeth. You will thresh the mountains and crush them, and reduce the hills to chaff” (Isa 41:15). When Jacob’s sons and an Egyptian entourage take his body back to Canaan for burial, they mourn for a week at a threshing floor near the frontier at Atad, which came to be known as Abel-Mizraim (Gen 50:10–11).
Grain production and processing is a central part of the background of the sojourn in Egypt (ca. 1850–1450 BC) in the Bible. Threshing and winnowing would have been one of the varieties of hard labor that the Hebrew foreigners were compelled to perform alongside brick-making for which the chaff and straw, by-products of grain processing, were utilized (Exod 5:7). The Mosaic Law associated with the wilderness wanderings anticipates Israelite settlement in the grain-producing land of Canaan, where they would give offerings of the firstfruits of their threshing floors (Num 15:20).
During the period of the judges (ca. 1400–1050 BC), the Israelite tribes engaged in grain production in Canaan. Gideon is introduced as furtively beating out (hābat) wheat at a winepress to keep the food from Midianite marauders (Judg 6:11). He probably performed his small-scale threshing operation with a stick. Later, at an open-air threshing floor used as a rallying point, Gideon twice spreads a fleece in order to seek divine reassurance based upon unusual dewfall patterns (Judg 6:36–40). The story of Ruth, which takes place in Bethlehem during the period of the judges, shows the
threshing floors were located in the open area adjacent to city gates and served as venues for rulers to hold court. This was an old Canaanite custom, attested in Ugaritic texts (Aqhati 5.6–8; iii 1.23–25; ANET, 149–55), that continued for centuries (1 Kgs 22:10). The most prominent example of a threshing floor taking on a greater significance is the threshing floor of Araunah at Jebus (Jerusalem), which King David purchases and establishes as the location for a national worship center with an altar (1 Chr 21:18). When David proposes the purchase, Araunah offers his threshing sleds (sing. môrag) as fuel and his draft animals as sacrifices (1 Chr 21:23). In texts relating to the period of the united monarchy (1050–930 BC), references to threshing sledges and threshing carts (sing. ‘ăgālâ) increase.
The Gezer Calendar (10th c. BC) points to April as the month of the barley harvest and May as the month of the wheat harvest and measuring once the grains were processed. Israelites understood along threshing season that lasted until the grape harvest to be a sign of divine approval (Lev 26:5). Weighted threshing sledges pulled by animals and carrying drivers crushed piles of grain. The wheels of threshing carts and teeth of sledges broke the hard stems and crushed the hulls of grains against the floor. Proverbs 20:26 instructs wise kings to winnow out the wicked and crush them with the threshing wheel. Prophetic writers embraced the processes of threshing and winnowing as metaphors both for divine judgment against unfaithful Israelites (Isa 21:10) and for the condemnation of their enemies (Jer 51:2; Mic 4:12–13; Hab 3:12).
During the early divided monarchy, as iron became abundant, the prophet Amos condemned the Arameans of Damascus for having threshed Gilead with iron-toothed sledges (Amos 1:3). While chert flakes, which provided sharp edges, were available in lands rich with limestone, such as the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, iron was useful for making teeth because pieces of recycled iron were more easily driven into the wooden planks of threshing sledges. Amos later refers to the shaking and sifting of grain through a uniform-gauge sieve (kĕbārâ) as a part of the winnowing process that the people of the kingdom of Israel would experience (Amos 9:9). This process
was long employed in Canaan and is seen in the religious texts of Ugarit (Baal and Anat, Tablet H, I AB 2.33; ANET, 129–42). In this primary winnowing process, the desired grains would fall through the grid as the sieve was shaken side to side, leaving straw and larger pebbles that might look like cereal grains in the sifter. As grains fell through, some of the remaining hulls were also loosened and blown away before the grain fell into a container below. One of the injustices that Amos condemns is the sale of sweepings with the wheat instead of a pure winnowed product (Amos 8:6). Obtaining a pure product required a secondary winnowing with a fine sieve that allowed the material smaller than a grain kernel to shake out. This left the remaining grains for winnowers to inspect, which would produce a high-quality product.
In the period of Assyrian dominance, prophets considered that oppressing nation to be the “rod of my [God’s] anger” (Isa 10:5). While wooden rods could be walking sticks that could serve as weapons, they could also be employed in threshing. Such wooden sticks were used to thresh cumin and caraway since, in these cases, toothed sledges and crushing-wheels were too hard on the spicy seeds and would release their aromatic oils (Isa 28:27). The impact of single-piece wooden rods depended upon their length and diameter and the velocity with which they were used. Two-piece rods joined by a leather thong or chain offered the benefit of increased velocity while reducing the impact on the joints of the worker. Like Isaiah, Hosea predicted the Assyrian domination of the kingdom of Israel. He describes the tribe of Ephraim as a trained heifer that had previously enjoyed the task of trampling out grain but which would soon be put to the more onerous task of plowing (Hos 10:11). Trampling out grain was a preferred task for cattle because they did not have to bear a heavy yoke, and they could eat some of the grain if they were not muzzled, which was a Mosaic commandment (Deut 25:4). Tined implements (sing. mizrê) and shovels (sing. rahat) for winnowing were known earlier in the biblical period, but they are rarely mentioned in prophetic texts (Isa 30:24; Jer 15:7).
The OT writers were aware of contemporaneous developments in threshing and winnowing techniques and equipment. When the hard work of processing grain was completed, the Israelites celebrated. The Torah established the Feast of Unleavened Bread in conjunction with Passover. At this time of year, farmers took the first sheaf of their barley harvest to the priests as a wave offering, prior to their consumption of any parched grain or bread made from the new crop (Lev 23:10–11). The next pilgrimage festival, the Feast of Weeks, took place fifty days later and coincided with the main wheat harvest (Exod 23:16). Observant worshippers of Yahweh regularly brought the produce of their threshing and winnowing, after it had been ground into flour, to their religious center to present it as a grain offering, and bread was prepared weekly for the Holy Place (Lev 2:1–10; 24:5–9).
B. THE NEW TESTAMENT
The NT texts continue to assume readers’ familiarity with the processes of threshing and winnowing, using them as a metaphor for judgment. John the Baptist uses the images of the winnowing fork/shovel (ptyon) and the practice of clearing threshing floors (sing. halōn) and burning chaff to preach the coming judgment of the Messiah, in which a separation would be made between the righteous and the wicked (Matt 3:12; Luke 3:17). The sweeping of threshing floors is a possible reflection of Jewish fastidiousness in maintaining an unmixed product, especially given that animals used for threshing often dropped foreign matter on the floor. Jesus alludes frequently to the harvest, including in a scene in his Parable of the Weeds (Matt 13:24–30) in which there is separation of contaminating materials (weeds) from the desired harvest (wheat). But Jesus does not expound on the threshing or winnowing processes in further accounts of his preaching. He addresses Peter, the small-town Galilean, with both warning and reassurance as he tells him in the Upper Room that Satan has wanted “to sift all of you [pl.] as wheat” (Luke 22:31), but that he has prayed for Peter’s faith and future leadership (Luke 22:31–32). This shaking in a sieve was
an exacting, final winnowing process that occurred before small batches of grains would be ground into flour.
The Apostle Paul, whose ministry was focused on urban settings, speaks in terms meaningful to his audiences, using imagery from the realm of sports, for example, rather than that of grain processing. He does, however, refer to threshing and the benefits of participants in harvests (1 Cor 9:8–11; 1 Tim 5:17–18) when addressing congregations and individuals familiar with the Torah (Deut 25:4), in order to argue for the appropriateness of paying Christian workers.
C. THE NEAR EASTERN WORLD
Grains were a key source of calories in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Anatolia. Effective grain cultivation, processing, and preservation were crucial for the early development of urbanization and craft specialization. Well-processed grains could be preserved better, were more easily ground into flour, and damaged fewer teeth.
Mesopotamia
Material remains and cuneiform texts testify to the processes by which grain was processed in Mesopotamia. A fragment of a cylinder seal from the Early Bronze age site Malatya in Eastern Anatolia provides the earliest depiction of a threshing sledge. Through microscopic analysis, heavy Canaanean blades have been determined to have been employed as teeth in threshing sledges. Ancient Near Eastern texts include a mid-second-millennium BC “Farmer’s Almanac.” This Sumerian text concludes with directions for the threshing and winnowing of grains that took place in April and May and that employed advanced techniques. In conjunction with the specified techniques, the text calls for ritual prayers at key stages in the process. The ripened harvested material, which was processed in bulk, was cut by reapers, tied into sheaves by binders, collected by other workers into shocks, and then transported to prepared threshing floors. First, wagon wheels and draft animals trampled down the mountains of harvested material. Second,
crops. At circular threshing floors, animals were driven over harvested materials to separate the spikelets of emmer and hulled barley kernels from the heads. Egyptians of the pharaonic period did not use the threshing sledge. Spikelets of emmer and hulled barley that had been trampled out could be stored in their husks. After primary winnowing using the wind and coarse sieves to remove straw, these crops required secondary threshing and winnowing operations. The partially processed crops were beaten with flails, winnowed again, and then sieved using fine sieves that retained the kernels while letting the chaff and dust fall away. Models of granaries found in tombs from the Middle Kingdom (1980–1760 BC) show that grain processing and storage was closely supervised. Contaminated and wet grain from the threshing floor could ruin the grain in a silo.
The tombs of Menna, Nakht, and Sennedjem at Thebes provide vivid images of threshing and winnowing as practiced in the New Kingdom (1540–1075 BC). The grain was cut in the upper stalk, near the head, using sickles, which left little for the gleaners. Laborers carried the harvested material in large hampers to the threshing floors. At the floors, workers moved harvested material with threetined forks to promote drying and to raise unbroken heads to the top as cattle trampled the grain heads. At the end of the threshing process, workers shoveled the threshed material on the floor into a heap. Teams of male laborers using lightweight wooden winnowing fans then winnowed the threshed material. These fans resembled enlarged hands that came together to lift up a portion of grain high into the air. The grain then passed through the gap opened between the two fans and fell to the ground as the chaff blew downwind. These fans helped to make up for inconsistent winds in Egypt. The move in the New Kingdom to harvesting grain crops at the head of the grain may reflect either a greater desire for efficiency at the threshing floor or the increased value the Egyptians of this period placed upon straw. Later Egyptian wisdom literature encourages individuals to be satisfied with the produce of their own fields and threshing floors rather than seek illicitly gained wealth (Instructionof Amen-em-Opet18).
sickles had knapped-flint microliths hafted in curved wooden handles. Memory of such jagged flint-edged harvesting equipment is preserved in Hesiod’s colorful story of Cronos’s revengeful act of castrating his faithless father, Heaven (Theog. 160–190). Reaping sickles (sing. falx messoria) made with curved metal blades were a standard piece of Roman farm equipment. They generally had longer and thinner blades than pruning hooks used in grape production (see Cato, Agr . 11). A whetstone and a horn of oil kept such sickles effectively sharp and served as standard equipment for reapers (Pliny, Nat. 18.67.261). Varro observes that some Romans used wooden-handled sickles with serrated iron blades (Rust. 1.50), and Columella notes that some sickles worked like combs, cutting away heads (Rust.2.20.3).
Sickles were used to sever the stalks of grain plants in the field. Varro describes three strategies that were employed. The first, practiced by the Umbrians in central Italy, involved grasping and cutting bunches of grain stalks at the base of the plant and placing them on the ground. These bunches were subsequently picked up and the ears were cut off into baskets to be taken to the threshing floor while the straw was collected in the field. The second approach, used in Picenum in eastern Italy, was to cut away handfuls of heads, leaving the tall straw stalks standing, to be cut later and collected as hay or used for thatching roofs. The third technique, used around Rome, was to grab bunches of grain with the left hand and to cut the stalks in the middle, leaving some to be collected later and some material to be worked through at the threshing floor (Varro, Rust.1.50).
In the first century AD, Pliny described the vallus, a mechanical harvester (Nat. 18.296). This machine, operating on the same principle as a serrated sickle blade, was a low, two-wheeled cart (carpentum) pushed by donkeys. The bed of the cart was open at the side opposite the pushing animal. Along the bottom edge of the open side, sharp, triangularly shaped iron blades were set pointing forward and close together. As the donkeys pushed forward, the stalks of grain were concentrated and pushed along the knife edges back to where adjacent blades came together. There the brittle, dry
straw was cut or broken, the heads fell back into the hopper created by the cart bed, and the standing straw passed beneath the cart. This device combed out the grain heads. Palladius (4th c. AD) provides a more complete description of such a harvesting vehiculum that had an adjustable-height cutting edge (Rust. 7.2.2–3). The Roman mechanical harvester was used for centuries and is depicted in several pieces of artwork. The availability of cheap labor, the expense of investment, and low crop yields limited the adoption of this device.
Greek and Roman threshing floors, like those of other cultures, were deliberately constructed with the objective of being as productive as possible. Hesiod (Op. 597, 805) describes the early Greek custom of employing rollers to compact smooth threshing floors (alōē).
Temporary threshing sites, described by Columella in the first century, did not receive the investment of more permanent sites (Rust. 2.19). Varro identifies the ideal locations as elevated places that were open to the wind and well drained. The circular floor of the threshing installation was to be hard, slightly convex, smooth, and free of vegetation. Soil floors were cleared, tamped, and trampled by animals. Stone drums were rolled to achieve optimum compaction and treated with amurca, a concentrated by-product of olive oil processing that was perceived to reduce pests. Stonecobbled and paved floors were installed at long-term facilities. Such superior floors were more efficient and produced a cleaner product. Threshing facilities in northern Italy, where it was more prone to rain, were roofed. In the sunny, hot south of Italy, threshing floors were open to take full advantage of the wind. Adjacent shelters were constructed for laborers to find respite from the midday sun, to protect the product, and for the stationing of security guards (Varro, Rust.1.51).
Threshing sleds, known as tribulato the Romans, may have been introduced prior to the third century BC, through contact with either the grain-producing colonists of Magna Graecia or the Carthaginians. The Punic civilization knew of this implement through its Phoenician connections in the Levant. Traditionally, the Romans had used
particulates smaller than the size of the grain to fall away when the material was bounced or agitated. Columella recognized that this technique enabled crops to be preserved that might deteriorate if they were left until an appropriately windy day (Rust. 2.20.5). Lightweight woven baskets were employed in transferring grain during and after the threshing and winnowing processes. When threshed material was thrown into the air above baskets, the grain would fall into the baskets and the lighter detritus would be blown away from the threshing floor (Varro, Rust. 1.52). The processed grain could then be easily reprocessed to achieve an even cleaner product, and it could be transferred to storage receptacles like silos, ceramic jars, and textile bags. Winnowing fans or scoops were specialty baskets woven in an asymmetrical design, with one side of the shallow basket having a sturdy lip but no side. Workers pushed such baskets into piles of threshed material and lifted the contents. They then lofted the material into the air or allowed it to gradually spill out above a catchment vessel.
The Greeks and Romans found grain processing to be sweaty work. But they also found threshing to be most effective when the sun was hot and the heads most brittle. They employed slaves and large numbers of seasonal laborers for this onerous task (Hes. Op. 597). They sang songs, such as the “Lityerses Song” to Demeter, as they winnowed (Theocritus, Id. 10.41). A convention employed by the Roman army during the Third Macedonian War was to use their sickles to harvest only the heads of wheat, since they had no need of the straw and this made threshing easier (Livy, Rom.Hist.42.64).
E. THE JEWISH WORLD
In the OT Apocrypha, threshing and winnowing continued to be employed in scenes of judgment (Wis 5:23). In a discussion regarding salvation, 2 Esdras compares the relationship that exists between the essential character of the farmer and the product of his threshing floor with the relationship that exists between a righteous person and his deeds (2 Esd 9:17). The book of Sirach, a wisdom composition from the same era, encourages people to maintain their
integrity by advising, “Do not winnow with every wind, nor follow every path” (Sir 5:9). Winnowing with shifting winds created contamination and was counterproductive.
The Mishnah promotes fastidiousness in producing uncontaminated crops. Monoculture was the norm, and the same concern for maintaining pure crops was continued at threshing. Observant Jews swept after the barley threshing and before wheat processing. Workers cleared temporary threshing floors in the fields of disparate crops, and weeds prior to threshing (m. Kil. 2:5). Potentially contaminated crops were carefully processed. In fields where workers discovered a grave, they took care to keep the grain from that field separate. They double-sieved it to ensure the removal of any bone fragments (m.’Ohol.18:2).
Jews took great care to keep grain crops from getting wet and becoming more prone to mildew. The rabbis concluded that the practice of sprinkling threshing floors to allay dust did not involve enough water to constitute a defiling of the grain, which might absorb some moisture as a result (m. Makš. 3:5). Another area of possible ritual contamination concerned broken and contaminated tools. The rabbis determined that workers could use and repair wooden winnowing forks that had lost a wooden tine but that they could not continue to use tools with broken metal tines (m. Kelim 13:7; 15:5; m. T . Yom 4:6). Worn-out woven basketry employed in winnowing and transporting grain (m.Kelim16:3) and leather gloves used to protect the hands of winnowers as they worked in granaries could also become sources of defilement for the grain (m. Kelim 16:6).
The pentateuchal directive that draft animals should not be prevented from eating from the grain that they were employed in threshing was discussed frequently by the rabbis and their contemporaries (Jos. Ant. 4.233; Philo, Virt. 125–127; m. Ter. 9:3, m. B. Qam. 5:7). Discouraging animals from eating by putting a thorn in their mouths, for example, or by distracting them was equated by the rabbis with muzzling (b. B. Mets. 90), which is prohibited by the Torah. The Talmud extrapolates principles underlying this law, which is for animals, and applies them to
clerical writers had little interest in discussing threshing and winnowing unless they related to the explanation of Scripture or served as metaphors in sermons. An example of the latter is found in the following comment by Clement of Alexandria: “We must then often, as in winnowing sieves, shake and toss up this the great mixture of seeds, in order to separate the wheat” (Strom.4. 2). Most references to the subject discuss the Mosaic mandate regarding the muzzling of threshing oxen (Deut 25:4; cf. 1 Cor 9:9; 1 Tim 5:18). Origen, for example, expounds the application of Deut 25:4 in 1 Cor 9:9–10 as follows:
“Does God take care for oxen? Or says he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written, that he that ploughs should plough in hope, and he that threshes in hope of partaking of the fruits.” By which he manifestly shows that God, who gave the law on our account, i.e., on account of the apostles, says, “You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain;” whose care was not for oxen, but for the apostles, who were preaching the Gospel of Christ. (Prin. 2. 4. 2; cf. Chrysostom, Hom. 1 Cor. 9:9–10; Hom 2Cor. 7:12)
John Chrysostom’s preaching on Matt 3 reflects the threshing technology of northern Syria known to him when he explains that the saw-toothed wheels of threshing vehicles do not break hard wheat kernels (Hom.Matt.3:12).
The Geoponika, a tenth-century compilation of texts on agriculture, stands out among preserved Byzantine literature because of its focus on farming. It discusses the attributes of a good threshing floor and advises that reaped material should be dried at the threshing floor for two days prior to threshing (Geoponika, 2.26).
Christians used the donkey in their grain-threshing operations, unlike Jews, who considered this animal unclean.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. C. Anderson, J. Chabot, and A. van Gijn, “The Functional Riddle of ‘Glossy’ Canaanean Blades and the Near Eastern Threshing Sledge,” JMA 17. 1 (2004), 87–130; M. M. Aranov, The Biblical Threshing-Floor in the Light of the Ancient Near Eastern Evidence: Evolution of an Institution (1982); O. Borowski, Agriculture in Iron Age Israel (1987); L. Cheetham, “Threshing and
Winnowing—An Ethnographic Study,” Antiq 56 (1982),127–30; J. Gray, “The Gorenat the City Gate: Justice and the Royal Office in the Ugaritic Text ’AQHT,” PEQ85 (1953), 118–23; S. Hodel-Hoenes, Life and Death in Ancient Egypt: Scenes from Private Tombs in New KingdomThebes, trans. D. Warburton (2000); J. W. Humphrey, J. P. Oleson, and A. N. Sherwood, ed., Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook. (1998); M. A. Littauer and J. H. Crouwel, “Ceremonial Threshing in the Ancient Near East I: Archaeological Evidence,” Iraq 52 (1990), 15–19; M. A. Murray, “Cereal Production and Processing,” in Ancient Egyptian Materials and Technology, ed. P. T. Nicholson and I. Shaw (2000), 505–36; B. D. Shaw, Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy andMetaphor in the Roman World (2013); S. Smith, “On the Meaning of Goren,” PEQ 85 (1953), 42–45; S. Smith, “The Threshing Floor at the City Gate,” PEQ 78 (1946), 5–14; P. Steinkeller, “Ceremonial Threshing in the Ancient Near East II: Threshing Implements in Ancient Mesopotamia: Cuneiform Sources,” Iraq 52 (1990), 19–23; K. D. White, Agricultural Implements of the RomanWorld(1967).
CONTRIBUTORS: Robert W. Smith, PhD (Professor of Bible and History, Mid-Atlantic Christian University); and Marvin R. Wilson, PhD (Harold J. Ockenga Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies, Gordon College).
See also AGRICULTURE and FOOD PRODUCTION.
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