Sicko! Medicine and Health in Bible Times

By Timothy S. Wilkinson

www.timothywilkinson.net

    Ancient Egypt, famous to this day for its advances in architecture, astronomy, mathematics and art has no such claim in the field of medicine. In fact, ancient Middle Eastern cultures in general shared a basic view of disease: it was caused by some form of demonic possession. Whips, masks, and statuettes were used to frighten these spirits away.

                In Babylon (present day Iraq), doctors would remove the liver of a sheep and consult it to diagnose their patient’s disease; clay models of sheep’s livers have been found with diagrams explaining what the doctor should look for. Once the malevolent spirit had been identified, the physician/priest would perform an exorcism and then prescribe some sort of healing regimen to help the sufferer’s body recover from the damage the spirit had caused to his or her body.

                Although at times this regimen included ingredients now known to have some medicinal value—caper, mandrake, and garlic were common—records from the period make it clear that they were valued for the magical, rather than their medical, properties.  An ostraca from around 2000 B.C.E. instructs doctors to “pulverize…the dried vine, pine tree, and plum tree; pour beer over it, rub with oil, fasten as a poultice.”

                The Code of Hammurabi outlines some laws regarding medicine. If, for example, a doctor is operating on a patient’s eye using a copper lancet and the patient is blinded, then the doctor’s eye was also put out with the same copper lancet.

                As mentioned, Egypt did not build on the practice of the early Mesopotamians. We know many details of their medical practices from the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus, the Papyrus Ebers, and other papyri from medical schools.

Egyptians, too, believed healing to be a spiritual process, and relied on the gods of healing: Imhotep, Apis, and Isis. Unfortunately, the “medicines” they developed to aid this process were no benefit to their patients. Ground donkey teeth, worm’s blood, and other outlandish items were often prescribed. The Papyrus Ebers has a recipe for a poultice to treat skin conditions: mix human excrement with fresh milk and apply it to the wound after the scab has fallen off. Equally effective was the remedy for drawing out splinters: cook worms’ blood in oil; cook a mole in oil; crush the mole with the worm’s blood and mix in ass’s dung and fresh milk. Apply liberally to the wound.

It is these bizarre practices that make the medicinal practices of the ancient Israelites so striking. The Torah forbade them from touching corpses, so they could make no post-mortem examinations to develop their knowledge of anatomy. They believed in a connection between good health and a life of devotion to God.  But their practices indicate a thorough understanding of human health unequalled by any civilization of the time.

Leviticus chapter 11 speaks of disease being spread by insects, rodents, and even contaminated water—something that would have made no sense to people unfamiliar with the concept of germs. It ran contrary to the beliefs of every other culture at the time.

A person who did (inadvertently) touch a dead body was required to wash thoroughly afterward—something not widely practiced before the last century. Deuteronomy chapter 23 mandates the safe disposal of sewage, protecting the people against fly-borne salmonellosis, shigellosis, typhoid, and other diseases that continue to kill thousands of people every year who do not use such precautions.

In fact, personal and social hygiene were emphasized in all aspects of life, making the Israelites unique among all Bronze Age people. Leviticus chapter 11 details a number of sanitation laws, all of which make excellent medical sense.

The nations that lived around Israel in Canaan practiced incest, bestiality, and orgies as part of their worship—hardly healthy practices physically or psychologically. Laws regarding sexual conduct and forbidding intermarriage with those who practiced such things no doubt protected the Israelites from sexually transmitted diseases.

Circumcision of newborn boys was to be done on the 8^th day of the child’s life. Only in the past century have doctors discovered that the blood clotting element Vitamin K only reaches an adequate level by the 8^th day, and that the clotting agent prothrombin is typically higher on the 8^th day than on any other day of the child’s life.

The Sabbath law required all people to take a day every week for rest, relaxation and time with family and friends. While the Bible does not make any direct connection between observing the Sabbath and physical health, it is inarguably psychologically beneficial.

Poultices of dried figs and oil were used to treat boils—and are still used today to good effect. Oil and wine were poured onto wounds, wine was mixed with myrrh and other natural narcotics as a painkiller, and “balm of gilead” (likely an aromatic excretion from an evergreen tree) was effective in soothing irritated skin.

By Isaiah’s time, the Israelites had developed some forms of surgery. Skulls and diagrams found in the area of Jerusalem show clear evidence of trepanning: removing a section of bone from the skull to relieve pressure on the brain. This could be life-saving—although the number of skulls found with holes still in them seem to indicate the procedure was rarely successful. (Patients who healed would have the piece of skull replaced and the skin sewn back over it).

The conclusion many have drawn from such unusual medical practices (for the time) is that the Israelites had access to medical, biological, and physiological knowledge far ahead of their time.

For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.

Death of a Hebrew: Ancient Israelite Burial Customs

 Death of A Hebrew:

Ancient Israelite Burial Customs

by Timothy S. Wilkinson

www.timothywilkinson.net

                Ancient Israelite practices surrounding death were different from the Canaanites or Egyptians, who believed the dead lived on in another world, and different from modern Western funerals and wakes, which are quiet, somber affairs. They were probably most similar to the mourning rituals of the modern people of North Africa and the rural parts of the Middle East.

                When a person died (usually surrounded by family), everyone gathered began to wail—making a sound that Micah compared to the howling of jackals and the hooting of owls (Micah 1:8). This wailing would quickly spread outside the home and into the neighborhood. Incense was lit (sometimes in huge quantities that could be smelled outside the city walls), and the people would remove their shoes, tear their clothes, dress in coarse goat’s-hair garments, beat their breasts, and throw dust or ashes on their heads. Some would even cut themselves in grief, or shave off a portion of their beard or the tops of their heads (Jeremiah 48:37 and Micah 1:16), even though these practices were forbidden by the Torah (Leviticus 19:28 and Deuteronomy 14:1).

                Wealthy families would hire professional mourners—usually women—who would orchestrate the wailing and marching and help to raise the overall volume of the occasion. The “cup of consolation” might be passed among the family: a large cup of wine symbolizing the shared experience of grief. For about a week afterward the mourning would continue, and family and friends would fast (probably just during daylight hours) and neither wash nor anoint themselves with perfume or oil. This period of fasting was followed by a large funeral meal.

                Within a day or so of death, though (but not on a Sabbath or a holiday), the body was buried. To be left unburied was considered one of the worst possible fates, suitable only for the most notorious of criminals. (In the hot Palestinian climate, it would also have created a terrible stench and attracted all manner of vermin). The family would wash the body and wrap it in linen. (Egyptians, of course, embalmed their dead by removing the internal organs and storing them in canopic jars, filling the body with spices and paste, and wrapping it with bandages treated with preservatives). Sometimes they would place a cap on the deceased and wrap the jaw closed with a bandage around the head.

                A parade of mourners would follow the family members who bore the body on a stretcher from their home to the burial site. Very poor people were simply laid in a trench and then covered with dirt and stones—remains of many of these bodies have been found in the Kidron Valley east of Jerusalem.

                A group of burial caves or sepulchers has been found at Ketef Hinnom, west of Jerusalem. They apparently belonged to aristocrats of the seventh century B.C.E. The caves were cut from the limestone hills. Each had a low, round entrance that led into a larger room. Within this room were benches carved from the rock, each of which had been slightly hollowed out to accommodate the shape of a body.

                Along with the remains at Ketef Hinnom were found items that had been buried with their previous owners, the most significant of which were probably two plaques of silver beaten into a thin sheet and then rolled up. On the plaques had been carved the Priestly Benediction:

May Jehovah bless you and keep you;

May Jehovah make his face shine down upon you, and may he favor you;

May Jehovah lift up his face toward you, and assign peace to you.

                One of the remarkable things about these plaques is the evidence they provide that the divine name (written as the Hebrew letters YHWH) was in common use at the time.

                The mouth of the tomb was sealed with a large disc-shaped stone or a round boulder to keep out animals, and then the entrance was painted white so that travelers would not accidentally come too near it, thereby rendering themselves ceremonially unclean.

                After the bodies had been given time to decompose, the family entered the tomb and collected the bones and any personal items from the benches and placed them in jars called ossuaries. These were placed in hollows under the benches to make room for more bodies to come. Such tombs were used over and over for many years—the Ketef Hinnom sepulcher had remains from at least 95 different individuals. This may account for the common Hebrew expression for death: that a person had been “gathered to his forefathers.”

For more information about life in Bible times, check out my novels Prophet of Israel and Judge of Israel, available from www.timothywilkinson.net.