Extract

In the last decade a number of studies have appeared on food and foodways in ancient Israel, reflecting a surge in interest around all matters of eating and drinking in the academy more broadly. Foundational to any work on food in the Hebrew Bible is our understanding of the Hebrew vocabulary relating to the plants and animals eaten, the vessels used for cooking and eating, the verbs for preparing, cooking, and disposing of food, etc. Peters’s book, a revised version of his doctoral work completed at the University of Edinburgh under David Reimer, is a welcome contribution to this foundational task for it examines ten verbs related to cooking: אפה, בשל, עשה, בעה, זיד, לבב, עוג, צלה, קלה, רתח. The book brings together two academic areas that are not regular bed-fellows. On the one hand, Peters’s work is an example of lexical semantics, conducted within the framework of the Semantics of Ancient Hebrew Database project. On the other hand, Peters draws on archaeological evidence for Israelite daily life.

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