Mind your language
Dot Wordsworth on why locust may sometimes not mean 'locust'.
When the Bible says that John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey, what does it mean by locusts? The question may be a chestnut, but I’ve found some jolly new material in seeking the answer.
Jews are forbidden to eat winged insects that walk around, but locusts are excepted. Leviticus (xi 22) says: ‘Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.’ Beetle seems a bad translation.
So why think that locust does not mean ‘locust’? The OED explains: ‘The Greek name akris, properly denoting the insect, is applied in the Levant to the carob-pod, from some resemblance in form; and from very early times it has been believed by many that the “locusts” eaten by John the Baptist were these.’
Others say that akris should read enkris. Good old Dr Peter Jones tells me there was in ancient Greek culture a cake called enkris boiled in oil and soaked in honey. In Exodus (xvi 31), manna is described, in the Greek version, as like enkris en meliti ‘cake in honey’. But, despite the desert antecedents, enkris seems too much of a delicacy for a camel-haired hermit.
Thomas Browne in his Vulgar Errors rounds up the authorities on either side of the argument, but comes down upon the insects as the more probable.
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Peter.
March 29th, 2008 5:12pmWhen I was a child in the North of England,long ago, we used to buy a sort of sweet, sticky nut callad a 'locust bean'.I haven't seen any for a long time.Can they still be bought?