The period between Passover/Easter and the Feast of Weeks, in ancient times, marked the beginning and end of the grain harvesting season, starting with the early-ripening barley, and ending with the wheat.  For the ancient agriculturalists, however, this seven-week period was fraught with anxiety.  The weather at the end of winter and beginning of spring is highly unpredictable.  Even now, in late April, I never know if the following day I'll be bundling up in a sweater or out in shorts and a t-shirt.  Farmers in ancient times - and even the farmers of today - can expect anything from rain and hail to scorching heat waves - and any of these extreme weather conditions could ruin his crop. 

But in ancient times, for months, the farmer had toiled to plow the hard earth - praying for an early rain to soften the soil, sowed the seeds and then prayed for the later rains that would water his crops. And if everything went well, and the grain grew to maturity, the prospect of losing it all just before the harvest was maddening.  With this in mind, we can truly understand the importance to the ancient Israelites of the promise of the covenant: 

"It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love the LORD your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul, that He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil."  Deuteronomy 11:13-14

Note:  References in certain translations of the Bible to corn, actually refer to grain.  Corn was not an agricultural product in ancient Israel.

I recently received a question from a reader of my blog which was particularly timely. He referred to a passage from the Book of Matthew that goes something like:

At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry and began to pick some heads of grain and eat them. Matthew 12:1

The questioner wanted to know if I could tell him what kind of grain this could have been and during which months this might have occurred. After spending so much time investigating the history of grains and particularly wheat here in the Galilee, I was so pleased to be able to give him a coherent answer.

We are now approaching Passover and Easter - a time when the grain fields are still ripening, and when this particular state of ripening of barley and wheat, during the time of Matthew, determined when Passover would be celebrated. Wheat is usually harvested around the beginning of June - historically corresponding with the holiday of Shavuoth - Feast of the Pentacost. But sometime in April, when the heads of the wheat are still green  and haven't turned golden and dry yet, the wheat kernels become plump and soft, full of protein and sugar, and this is the only time that they can be eaten raw. After that, when the kernels are fully ripe and dry, they must be cooked - roasted, ground, boiled, whatever, to be comestible.

And about which grain it was, my guess would be wheat, since barley in antiquity was considered less palatable than wheat, and bread made from it was considered inferior eating.

So, in answer to my reader's questions, we are rapidly approaching the time for collecting green wheat. Which, by the way, is still done today by a few local Arab farmers here in the Galilee. They pick the green wheat, then roast it and it becomes a local delicacy called farike. So when you read about parched corn in the Bible, this is what is actually being referred to - because corn is a New World product that wasn't known in this region during antiquity.

For visitors to Nazareth and the surrounding Galilee, I will be conducting tours focusing on wheat and cooking in the Galilee.  For more information, contact www.galileecuisine.co.il - info@galileecuisine.co.il.