‘The vine has followed the footsteps of man, and has been transplanted by him into all parts of the world.’

(Balfour, The Plants of the Bible)

I was interested to read in A Dictionary of Bible Plants that recent research is suggesting that grapes were first cultivated in the Zagros Mountains of eastern Iraq. Showing my ignorance, I have to admit that I’ve never thought of Iraq as a country known for its grapes. Once other countries began growing grapes, it developed much later into the huge commercial vineyards that are scattered across our modern world, and we lost sight of the origins of the grape.

The Bible is a valuable resource for taking us back to ancient times, and gives us quite a few details on how the grapes were grown. The people of those days relied upon a successful harvest of the humble grapes grown in their region – without the aid of the sophisticated methods of production that are employed today. However, recent natural disasters, such as floods and fire, have strikingly portrayed to us that modern agriculture is still vulnerable when humans cannot control the effects of calamity.

In Flowers and Trees of Palestine, its author saw in 1904:

     The vine, the emblem of the nation, is also very abundant, and in the same districts as of old. The hills about Jezreel, where was Naboth’s vine-yard, are still celebrated for their vines, and in the Valley of Eshcol may be seen to this day the great ‘clusters of grapes’ (Num. xiii. 23, 24).

​

In Rev. Henry S Osborn’s book Plants of the Holy Land, I came across an intriguing story about no grapes in Egypt during the time of the Biblical patriarchs, which proved that the text of the Bible was false. Osborn wrote:

… some skeptics discovered what they supposed to be the proof of an error in the books of Moses. The record there plainly speaks of the chief butler and the wine and grapes in Egypt. (Gen. xl.) But history and facts were against the statement. The Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote of Egypt more than four hundred years before the time of our Saviour, declares that no vines grew in Egypt; and the opinions of others added authority to that historian’s statement. The soil was examined and found to be wanting in the ingredients necessary to sustain the grape; and the conclusion was that here was an error in Scripture. For two thousand years the testimony of Moses stood alone in its contradiction to the testimony of historians and the voice of the soil. But a Frenchman, (M. Costaz,) during a visit to the catacombs and caverns of an ancient city on the Nile, discovered sculptures revealing the fact that, at a time long before the birth of the Greek historian, there lived men who planted vineyards and made wine in Egypt, and had carved in the rock the history of the whole process; and, as the curiosity of antiquaries was stimulated, other places were opened, and a certain sediment was found in ancient jars; and chemists knew this sediment to be the remains of ancient wines. The first discoveries were made at the present little Arab village of El Kâb, the ancient Elethyia, on the right bank of the Nile. But what shall we say of those examinations of the soil that led to the decision against the growth of the vine in ancient Egypt? They were doubtless correct. But, while they had reference only to the present state of the land, they merely proved that many centuries ago the soil of Egypt had undergone a change, and that the plants which once grew there had taken their departure, or had perished, long before the time of Herodotus.

​

I have not verified this story, although I did find some illustrations of the walls of El Kâb that showed images of agriculture. This is another rabbit hole beckoning me to explore another day.

In the New Testament Scriptures, they point to the importance of the vine to Jesus’ followers when He calls Himself the true vine in John 15:1, ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.’ When I first became a Christian, a colleague gave me a hymn book and on the first page he wrote: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.’ John 15:16.

May the humble grape continue to remind us of Jesus’ Words and His purpose for our life.

​