Balm of Gilead trees produce a white, runny resin when cut or punctured. Notice the dried clumps of resin? This liquid resin is so aromatic. Gary Young’s newest oil. Image Source
The biblical story of the Queen of Sheba (Saba) taking expensive gifts to King Solomon is found in the Old Testament, 2 Chronicles 9:9. “Then she gave the king 120 talents of gold, large quantities of spices, and precious stones. There had never been such spices as those the Queen of Sheba gave to King Solomon.” NIV.
Solomon’s wealth was legendary! He had the very best of the world’s goods. Why were the “spices” given him by the Queen of Sheba so extraordinary?
The Jewish historian Josephus fills in the missing information for us in his Antiquities of the Jews. He relates that the Queen brought “several sorts of sweet spices” and also writes, “she gave [Solomon] twenty talents of gold, and an immense quantity of spices and precious stones. (They say also that we possess the root of that balsam which our country still bears by this gift.)” In speaking of Jericho, Josephus writes, “(where the palm-tree grows, and that balsam which is an ointment of all the most precious, which, upon any incision made in the wood with a sharp stone, distills out thence like a juice).”
We are also told by Josephus that the love-struck Marc Antony took away from King Herod the lucrative plantation of palm trees at Jericho “where also grows the balsam-tree, and bestowed them upon [Cleopatra].” Not only were the balsam trees rare (growing only around the Dead Sea region and in Southern Arabia), their perfume or ointment was worth double its weight in gold! The Greek historian Strabo wrote that a “balsam park” grew next to Herod’s royal palace in Jericho.
The Balsam of Judea were protected for their royal value. The branches were harvested once a year for their aroma. The gum/resin was collected in vessels for medical preparations. Image Source
While Josephus states the royal balsam plantations were in two locations: Jericho and Ein Gedi, others suggest balsam was also cultivated at Ein Feshka, Ein Boqeq, Callirrhoe, and possibly Zoara.
Some sources say that besides its natural habitat in Southern Arabia – Oman and Yemen, balsam grew also in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and in Egypt near Cairo at Matariyya.
Source: Karen Boren, April 6, 2015
Guy Erlich (left) shows Gary Young (center) his collection of aromatic plants and trees in Oct 2012. Young Living has been working with Guy ever since to bring back the Balm of Gilead tree and essential oil to the world.
Jericho is described in the Bible as the “City of Palms,” which were date palms. It was also an area where there were many springs to support agriculture.
King Herod’s summer palace was located at Jericho along with the largest of the royal balsam plantations. The Good Samaritan story found in the New Testament took place on the road going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. But that’s not the only New Testament scripture dealing with Jericho. Zaccaeus was a tax collector in Jericho who, because he was so short, had to climb a tree to see Jesus during a Jericho visit. [Perhaps there is a little pun for those who read Romans 3:23 in the NIV translation: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”]
Jericho was a crossroads city. More than 20 ancient roads were constructed in the Judean Desert, two of them that led from the northern shores of the Dead Sea to Jerusalem.
The Jericho area now boasts thousands of thriving balsam trees, brought back from extinction by Israeli journalist-turned-botanist Guy Erlich, owner of the Young Living Israel Cooperative farm. Participants on the World Peace Caravan will visit the balsam greenhouses at Kibbutz Almog this December. There is so much ancient history to discover in the Jericho region!
Source: Karen Boren, May 1, 2015
Gary Young with Dead Sea at his back
We will talk about ancient trade routes today. Dr. Menahem Har-El, was a senior lecturer in historical geography at Tel Aviv University and wrote that “The majority of these roads were built for military and political purposes, while the ‘Salt Route’ was built for economic ones: the transportation of salt, asphalt, sugar and possibly balsam from the Judean Desert and the Dead Sea shores to Jerusalem.
The route also served the Christian monks going to their monasteries in the Og and Kidron valleys, and the Moslem pilgrims visiting Nabi Musa Tomb [where they believe Moses was buried].”
Did he say asphalt? Oh yes! Since no fish can survive the deadly concentration of salt in the Dead Sea, enterprising “fishermen” went after the asphalt that bubbled up to the surface. There was a strong boating industry hauling goods on the Dead Sea, including the asphalt or tar that Egyptians used in embalming!
Map of Israel. Area indicated as #4 is Jericho. This is where the Balm of Gilead grew. Young Living and Guy Erlich is now bringing it back to the land of Jericho at the Young Living Israel Farm.
Josephus described this shipping enterprise on the Dead Sea where the seamen collected tar and clay floating on the sea: “The sailors approach these blocks and gather the sticky clods into their ships.” There is a famous mosaic map in Jordan called the Madaba Map, dated 542 CE, that shows ships on the Dead Sea with salt believed to be the cargo.
On the Madaba Map, you can see the Jordan River flowing into the Dead Sea which has two sailing ships probably carrying salt as cargo. The map is in the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in Madaba, Jordan.
Source: Karen Boren, May 4, 2015
The ancient ruins of Qumran are on the western shore of the Dead Sea. The first excavator of Qumran was the late Father Roland de Vaux of the École Archéologique Française de Jérusalem who began his archaeological work at Qumran in 1951.
In Father de Vaux’s Schweich Lectures (delivered in England in 1959 and updated in the 1971 third edition), he wrote that after the discovery of the first Dead Sea Scroll cave in 1947, subsequent explorations found pottery that was identical to pottery finds at Qumran, thus making the first connection between the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the site of Qumran.
Being Catholic, de Vaux and others of the original team used Christian terms in the language describing the people who lived and worked at Qumran. The Qumranites were called “monks,” the room where they ate their meals became the “refectory,” the area where inkwells were discovered became “the scriptorium,” and Qumran was termed a “monastery.”
Whoever it was that lived at Qumran (Pharisee, Sadducee, or Essene), they were Jewish. Ritual baths, called mikva’ot (plural), are necessary for Jews to follow purity laws. It is believed that there were seven mikva’ot at Qumran. de Vaux writes “One peculiar feature of the [water] system has been emphasized by certain authors as an indication that that they had a religious use.”
He describes all the water cisterns as having large flights of steps descending to the water and with the upper steps portioned (or divided) as to form parallel descents. This fits with ritual baths in ancient Jerusalem where one side is for the unpure going down to the water and the other for those coming up from being submerged in the water. That way they do not touch and transfer impurity.
Source: Karen Boren, May 9, 2015