To: Biblical Hebrew <b-hebrew AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
Subject: RE: Alcoholic Beverages in BH
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 14:43:46 -0400
>===== 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.