And to add to this inconclusive identity of the lily are the original languages used in the books of the Bible. Does the Old Testament Hebrew word for lily have the same meaning as the Greek New Testament word?

 

The mystery grows!

 

Not being a botanist, plant specialist or student of ancient Hebrew and Greek, I am far from being able to say which plant has the most evidence to be the Biblical lily. However, I do find the evidence gathering to be interesting and appreciate the opportunity to study God’s Word from another perspective.

 

One of the earliest handbooks for travellers to the Holy Land was Flowers & Trees of Palestine by Augusta A Temple, which was published in 1908. It came from the author’s realisation that ‘no portable handbook containing a general list of Palestine flowers and trees existed’ when he toured Palestine in 1904. What he saw on that tour formed the foundation for a book of trees and flowers that ‘might be of use to future travellers in the Holy Land’, and he gave ‘special reference to those mentioned in the Bible’.

 

As this tour took place before modern agricultural practices would have been used across the country, it gives us a better picture of how the wildflowers may have looked in Jesus’ day.

 

In chapter one, ‘Characteristic Flowers of Palestine’, Temple says of the wildflowers he saw:

The flower that first strikes the eye in travelling through Palestine is the Anemone coronaria. It grows by the wayside, on the hills, and in every part of the country in bright profusion. In the plain of Gennesaret the anemone covers great stretches of land with its beautiful scarlet and white blossoms, and these are now generally identified with the ‘lilies of the field’ (Matt. vi. 28). Red is the prevailing colour, but white, blue, and purple are also abundant. The Arabs use the word susan (Hebrew shisan, translated ‘lily’ in the Bible) as a general term for flowers of the lily kind, such as tulip, iris, anemone, ranunculus, etc., and hence the references in the Old Testament—as, for instance, the ‘flowers of lilies’ used in the decoration of the temple built by Solomon (x Kings vii. 26), the ‘lily of the valleys’ of the Song of Solomon, the ‘lily’ of Hos. xiv. 5 (‘He shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon’), etc.—probably signified any or all of these.

 

He goes on to briefly describe various flowers in Palestine called lilies, and how they could all be candidates for the ‘lilies of the field’.

 

When my anemones flower, I won’t be able to describe them in the same manner as Temple because they won’t be spread across the fields, hills and plains of Palestine but, instead, just in a small pocket in a little garden in suburban Melbourne. Nonetheless, once I plant the corms, I’m looking forward to seeing my Anemone coronaria flowers as I cannot recall seeing any in the Holy Land when I visited in September 2019. This was during early autumn in the northern hemisphere, and it was between the flowering periods of the anemones. It was also only weeks before Covid-19 began transforming the whole world into a ‘no-go’ travel zone. Now, once again, travellers to the Holy Land can see the wildflowers that compete with one another for the title of ‘lilies of the field’.