Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Trevor Peterson <06PETERSON AT cua.edu>]

>===== Original Message From Yigal Levin <Yigal-Levin AT utc.edu> =====
>I somehow doubt that "casting bread on water" means beer.

If I remember right, wasn't the method rather to cast water on bread? I 
thought they somehow strained water through pieces of bread dough. I suppose 
the effect is that you'd end up with pieces of bread floating on the water, 
but it seems like a stretch to me.

>As far as I know,
>"shekhar", which often appears together with "yyn", is usually understood
>to mean beer, mead and other fermented beverages.

The cognate word in Akkadian means beer. The trend seems to have been that a 
wine culture like Israel would lump together other alcoholic beverages 
(anything but wine) under the alternate term, but the basic sense probably 
was 
still beer.

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics