The History of Bread Author:John Ashton Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. BREAD IN PALESTINE. Of the bread of the ancient Hebrews we know nothing, except from their sacred books; but these contain a large store of kn... more »owledge. Their cereals seem to have consisted only of wheat, barley, rye (or it may be spelt), and millet, but they cultivated leguminous plants, such as beans and lentils. It is impossible to say accurately when these books were written, so that in the following notices respecting the bread of the Hebrews I take the sequence in which I find them placed in the Bible. It is impossible to do otherwise, as their chronology is such an open question. At first, in all probability, the normal course of pre-historic man was followed—wheat and barley grew wild, were first eaten raw, and then parched. Of this latter and primitive method of cooking cereals we have several notices. It was used as a sacrifice, as we see in Leviticus ii. 16: 'And the priest shall burn the memorial of it, part of the beaten corn thereof, and part of the oil thereof, with all the frankincense thereof: it is an offering made by fire unto the Lord.' That parched corn was at that time a food we find in Levit. xxiii. 14: 'And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God.' We next find it as the food of labouringpeople in Ruth ii. 14, when Boaz 'reached her parched corn, and she did eat, and was sufficed, and left.' Mention is again made of it in I. Sam. xvii., when Goliath of Gath challenged the men of Israel. Jesse's three sons had followed Saul to the battle, and the anxious father had sent his youngest son David, with provisions for them, and a present to their commander, vv. 17, 18: 'And Jesse said unto David his son, Take now for thy brethren an ephah1 of this pa...« less