Chickens first commercialized in Israel 2,300 years ago

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[url]ttp://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Chick ... say-409671[/url]

The link is from BibleInterp.

I've been curious about the lack of chicken references in the bible, for example, they are not listed on the inventory of animals the Israelites took from Egypt, nor are they noted on the animals involved in the famous animal plague.

The JPost link has numerous silly reader comments which is also interesting. I brought the chicken issue up at Shul and a friend there thought it was very amusing. Now this guy is a member of the modern relevance of the bible club, to each his own but talk about casting the first stone - it's painful to listen to his questions. I guess if you want to inject humor in bible discussions, mention chickens.

Anyway, chickens had to be around in first millennium BCE Judea, but they are a little problematic in the second millenium... so it's possibly a rare case of a reverse anachronism. That seems unlikely though.

I asked the Rabbi's son-in-law about the lack of chicken references and he mentioned some vague negativity about them.

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The abstract of the scientific paper is Earliest economic exploitation of chicken outside East Asia: Evidence from the Hellenistic Southern Levant

Chickens were originally domesticated in China. The authors say they have evidence they became commercially significant in Hellenic Palestine before commercial use in Europe.

I suppose the lack of mention in places like the narrative of the exodus or the patriarch cycles places the final version of these stories before the popularization of mass chicken farming. OTOH there is mention of poultry among sacrificial animals. Does that help date 'P'?

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Milgrom says that the bird sacrifices in Leviticus were added later, to make sacrifices affordable. I'm sure it was a nice profit center for the temple also.

The killing was done by the priest twisting the neck, which is not how chickens are currently Kosher slaughtered.

I'm not aware of the word for chicken עוף appearing in the bible except for the part about Yoshke.

I could be wrong about the lack of references.

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A quick google gives some 47 appearances of 'fowl' in the JPS version. I'll try to look in more detail later. Anyway, the fowl sacrifices are usually pigeons/doves, according to same quick search. The word תרנגל is definitely later.

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I see Leviticus 14 also mentions 'bird' sacrifices for the purification of leprosy. No mention what kind of bird. I am guessing these would be wild birds caught in snares. And of course we know of 2 instances, one in Exodus and one in Numbers where wild, migratory quail were consumed.

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I'm just sort of guessing but I think the domesticated chicken bones found from earlier times may suggest that chickens were not widely used for food.

Therefore, maybe the circa 400 BCE date given in the article is a reasonable time to date chicken consumption in Palestine.

That would at least clear up my little worry about why the writers didn't include them.

It might be noted that Exodus doesn't mention camels, although Abraham took them out of Egypt some hundreds of years earlier. The last mention in Genesis (in the sense of an animal) is -

Then they sat down to a meal. Looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, their camels bearing gum, balm, and ladanum to be taken to Egypt. (Gen 37:25 TNK)

This is the section with the famous confusion between the Ishmaelites and Midianites - the DH wet dream... by the end of the Joseph story nobody is riding camels anymore.

Anyway, it seems like a strong suggestion that the Exodus animals part was written before Abraham in Egypt.


It makes a cameo appearance in -

then the hand of the LORD will strike your livestock in the fields -- the horses, the asses, the camels, the cattle, and the sheep -- with a very severe pestilence. (Exo 9:3 TNK)

and then is mentioned in the kosher food laws.

גָּמַל (gamal) also means to deal fully or adequately with, deal out to, wean, ripen