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What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times
What food did the ancient Israelites eat, and how much of it did they consume? That's a seemingly simple question, but it's actually a complex topic. In this fascinating book Nathan MacDonald carefully sifts through all the relevant evidence -- biblical, archaeological, anthropological, environmental -- to uncover what the people of biblical times really ate and how healthy (or unhealthy) it was. Engagingly written for general readers, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat? is nonetheless the fruit of extensive scholarly research; the book's substantial bibliography and endnotes point interested readers to a host of original sources. Including an archaeological timeline and three detailed maps, the book concludes by analyzing a number of contemporary books that advocate a return to “biblical” eating. Anyone who reads MacDonald's responsible study will never read a “biblical diet” book in the same way again.
- GenresFood HistoryNonfiction
172 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2008
11 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
Nathan MacDonald
13 books2 followersNathan MacDonald is a Scottish biblical scholar who currently serves as reader in Hebrew Bible at Cambridge University and fellow and college lecturer in theology at St John's College, Cambridge. Much of his work has concentrated on the historical conception of monotheism in ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible.
MacDonald studied theology and Hebrew at Cambridge before going to Durham to complete a doctorate on the book of Deuteronomy. He taught Old Testament at the University of St Andrews from 2001–12. In 2007 he spent 8 months as a Humboldt research fellow at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München. In 2008 he was awarded a Sofja-Kovalevskaja Prize which enabled him to lead a research team on Early Jewish Monotheisms at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 2009–14. In 2013 he took up an appointment at the University of Cambridge.
MacDonald studied theology and Hebrew at Cambridge before going to Durham to complete a doctorate on the book of Deuteronomy. He taught Old Testament at the University of St Andrews from 2001–12. In 2007 he spent 8 months as a Humboldt research fellow at the Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität München. In 2008 he was awarded a Sofja-Kovalevskaja Prize which enabled him to lead a research team on Early Jewish Monotheisms at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen from 2009–14. In 2013 he took up an appointment at the University of Cambridge.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 21, 2025
A helpful attempt to synthesize the biblical, archaeological, and nutritional data in order to answer the question of the title. It’s not groundbreaking, but MacDonald doesn’t attempt to do something totally new and mostly just presents the data, drawing some brief conclusions about the Israelite diet and its modern implications. It helps that this is a very short book!
Long story short of MacDonald’s conclusions: the biblical descriptions (mostly) match up with other evidence, but overall their diet was probably lacking nutritionally, although there were different diets among the people based on geography, social location, etc. And “biblical diets” are pretty much scams.
Long story short of MacDonald’s conclusions: the biblical descriptions (mostly) match up with other evidence, but overall their diet was probably lacking nutritionally, although there were different diets among the people based on geography, social location, etc. And “biblical diets” are pretty much scams.
August 2, 2025
A super helpful and enlightening book. Macdonald definitely has all the caveats and nuances you’d expect in an academic text but he still comes to good conclusions about the eating habits of the ancient Israelites. It is impressive how interdisciplinary this study is (studying texts, archeology, history. Etc.).
September 10, 2013
"What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?" is a Bible backgrounds book focused on what an average person in Israel ate during the Iron Age. The book is written in an scholarly style. If you want a fast read that shows the foods mentioned in the Bible and how they were used, you'll probably find "Food at the Time of the Bible" by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh a more useful book. However, if you want an idea of how healthy the average person's diet was at that time, this book will help.
The author places the Israelite occupation of the land (from Judges until the Babylonian Exile) during the Iron Age, so he focused on the archaeological evidence from the Iron Age. However, I agree with the group that thinks the evidence shows that the Israelites entered the land much earlier. I still found the information interesting, and he sometimes gave information about Bronze Age findings.
He also believes that the Old Testament is not a reliable historical record due to later politically- or theologically-motivated editing. I also don't agree with this, but it didn't seem to significantly affect his conclusions about what the Israelites ate based on the Biblical record.
As stated in the book description, he examined the following areas: the biblical text, archaeological data, comparative evidence from the ancient world, comparative evidence from modern anthropological research, and modern scientific knowledge of geography and nutrition. The information in this book is useful if you want to know as accurately as possible what the average person in Israel ate during the Iron Ages and how healthful it was.
The author places the Israelite occupation of the land (from Judges until the Babylonian Exile) during the Iron Age, so he focused on the archaeological evidence from the Iron Age. However, I agree with the group that thinks the evidence shows that the Israelites entered the land much earlier. I still found the information interesting, and he sometimes gave information about Bronze Age findings.
He also believes that the Old Testament is not a reliable historical record due to later politically- or theologically-motivated editing. I also don't agree with this, but it didn't seem to significantly affect his conclusions about what the Israelites ate based on the Biblical record.
As stated in the book description, he examined the following areas: the biblical text, archaeological data, comparative evidence from the ancient world, comparative evidence from modern anthropological research, and modern scientific knowledge of geography and nutrition. The information in this book is useful if you want to know as accurately as possible what the average person in Israel ate during the Iron Ages and how healthful it was.
May 17, 2016
As much as I wanted to, I couldn't finish this book. Perhaps it just didn't hit me where I was when I was trying to read it. Perhaps it is just that uninteresting (I read plenty of material most people would consider dull).
January 19, 2019
I quite enjoyed the front end of this book in particular, especially the chapters that elaborated on particular biblical mentions of food and the broader context of those verses. I coincidentally was reading the cannibal passage (2 Kings 6:28-29) right before I encountered it in this book and also the poisonous plant mentioned in 2 Kings 4, which I was reading about shortly after finishing Michael Pollan’s very relevant Omnivore’s Dilemma.
There were some neat passages in this book about “milk and honey” (which might not necessarily translate to either milk nor honey as we use the terms today) as well as the biblical triad of bread, wine, and olive oil (those are foods that end up being central to later Christian imagery of the Eucharist, the apocalyptic parable of the ten virgins, and of course even finds itself etymologically within the term ‘Christian’ itself where Christ is the Greek rendering of Messiah or ‘Anointed One’). These bracketed observations are my own, MacDonald doesn’t spend much time on connecting the Ancient Israelite diet to later Christian history, but is focused primarily on the Hebrew Bible and the context during and preceding the periods in which its narratives are set.
What I found really interesting were certain things I could connect with James Scott’s observations that autonomous anarchist-inclined communities often lived in mountainous terrain to evade the orbit of state power. While I found lots of the archaeological chapters nearer to the end of the book drier and more difficult to get through, this connection with Scott’s work stoked my interest somewhat. MacDonald would actually conclude with this point, referencing Deuteronomy 11 (hills and valleys watered by rain from the sky in contrast to Egypt's centrally controlled engineering schemes).
My understanding is that cattle tended to be a lot more prevalent in the lowland and valley areas, which tended to be urban centres. The cattle were primarily used for traction as I understand it — that is ploughing more so than for their milk production (at least for some periods, I cannot recall all the details). Whereas the nomadic/pastoralist artifacts (which suggested higher proportions of caporvines — that is sheep and goats) were more common in highland regions with less rainfall. I sometimes wonder if I’m too neatly reading the Cain and Abel story, where God favours the sacrifice of the pastoralist brother over that of the agriculturalist brother, as a scribal critique of agricultural society, which people like Engels have never failed to associate agriculture with increased hierarchy and patriarchy. Another interesting dimension to this generalizing schema is that while people might assume pastoralists raising sheep and goats in the wilderness ate more meat, this does not seem to be the case archaeologically. The evidence seems to suggest that these animals were primarily used for their milk and wool, since animal bones tend towards the end of the animal’s lifespan. The animals that were primarily raised for food, were likely traded into the urban centres (fascinatingly a core-periphery dynamic). This is exactly the sort of thing I found in Ibrahim al-Koni's "The Bleeding of the Stone”. This possibility of trade deeply complicates the question of meat consumption for archaeologists. They tend to interpret the age at which animals died as indicators of whether they were primarily bred for their meat or for some other purpose (like wool or milk, both periphery goods traded into urban agricultural cores).
I found it most interesting that MacDonald reads the biblical narrative as suggesting the united kingdom of Israel fell apart under the burden of Solomon’s excessively extravagant lifestyle generally, and in particular his luxurious dining table. And MacDonald goes on to cite Amos (chapter 6) as critiquing this sort of elite, even possibly retroactively implicating David in these luxuriating habits. MacDonald does mention Norman Gottwald, though claims his scholarship could very well be a romanticized reading of the pre-monarchic period. Even if it is, I have wanted to read Norman Gottwald for some time, and I should really get on it sometime.
Anyways, interesting book, though some chapters were more interesting than others. There’s an index at the back with various bible verses referenced, and I feel that will be very useful for future reference. It’s sitting on my shelf and anyone nearby is welcome to borrow it.
There were some neat passages in this book about “milk and honey” (which might not necessarily translate to either milk nor honey as we use the terms today) as well as the biblical triad of bread, wine, and olive oil (those are foods that end up being central to later Christian imagery of the Eucharist, the apocalyptic parable of the ten virgins, and of course even finds itself etymologically within the term ‘Christian’ itself where Christ is the Greek rendering of Messiah or ‘Anointed One’). These bracketed observations are my own, MacDonald doesn’t spend much time on connecting the Ancient Israelite diet to later Christian history, but is focused primarily on the Hebrew Bible and the context during and preceding the periods in which its narratives are set.
What I found really interesting were certain things I could connect with James Scott’s observations that autonomous anarchist-inclined communities often lived in mountainous terrain to evade the orbit of state power. While I found lots of the archaeological chapters nearer to the end of the book drier and more difficult to get through, this connection with Scott’s work stoked my interest somewhat. MacDonald would actually conclude with this point, referencing Deuteronomy 11 (hills and valleys watered by rain from the sky in contrast to Egypt's centrally controlled engineering schemes).
My understanding is that cattle tended to be a lot more prevalent in the lowland and valley areas, which tended to be urban centres. The cattle were primarily used for traction as I understand it — that is ploughing more so than for their milk production (at least for some periods, I cannot recall all the details). Whereas the nomadic/pastoralist artifacts (which suggested higher proportions of caporvines — that is sheep and goats) were more common in highland regions with less rainfall. I sometimes wonder if I’m too neatly reading the Cain and Abel story, where God favours the sacrifice of the pastoralist brother over that of the agriculturalist brother, as a scribal critique of agricultural society, which people like Engels have never failed to associate agriculture with increased hierarchy and patriarchy. Another interesting dimension to this generalizing schema is that while people might assume pastoralists raising sheep and goats in the wilderness ate more meat, this does not seem to be the case archaeologically. The evidence seems to suggest that these animals were primarily used for their milk and wool, since animal bones tend towards the end of the animal’s lifespan. The animals that were primarily raised for food, were likely traded into the urban centres (fascinatingly a core-periphery dynamic). This is exactly the sort of thing I found in Ibrahim al-Koni's "The Bleeding of the Stone”. This possibility of trade deeply complicates the question of meat consumption for archaeologists. They tend to interpret the age at which animals died as indicators of whether they were primarily bred for their meat or for some other purpose (like wool or milk, both periphery goods traded into urban agricultural cores).
I found it most interesting that MacDonald reads the biblical narrative as suggesting the united kingdom of Israel fell apart under the burden of Solomon’s excessively extravagant lifestyle generally, and in particular his luxurious dining table. And MacDonald goes on to cite Amos (chapter 6) as critiquing this sort of elite, even possibly retroactively implicating David in these luxuriating habits. MacDonald does mention Norman Gottwald, though claims his scholarship could very well be a romanticized reading of the pre-monarchic period. Even if it is, I have wanted to read Norman Gottwald for some time, and I should really get on it sometime.
Anyways, interesting book, though some chapters were more interesting than others. There’s an index at the back with various bible verses referenced, and I feel that will be very useful for future reference. It’s sitting on my shelf and anyone nearby is welcome to borrow it.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews