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Mysterious Deaths and Superstitions –
1) What about honey?
We live in an era when sciences prove so many things. Particularly when autopsies can reveal the true cause of death. No doubt many mysterious deaths in the Bible times aroused superstitions. Did you know eating honey could sometimes kill you? From “Food at the Time of the Bible,”
honey that bees manufactured from…rhododendron and oleander, can be poisonous. Those consuming this honey suffer from severe dizziness, muscle weakness, which can last a few hours, and may even die. In the early fifth century BCE, thousands of soldiers led by the Greek warrior Xenophon fell ill from consuming poisoned honey. The soldiers of Pompey, Roman conqueror of the Holy Land, found mysterious honey cakes placed along a road they traveled near the Black Sea. Unfortunately for them, they fell into temptation…. They never reached the battlefield.
I consulted my other books to verify if rhododendron and oleander were both found in Israel. Oleander was mentioned in “Desert and Shepherd in Our Biblical Heritage.” Also from “Food at the Time of the Bible,”
domesticated honey did not appear in the Bible lands until the Hellenistic period, biblical honey was aptly described as “honey from the rocks” (Deuteronomy 32:13) – honey that flowed accidentally into rock crevices or bushes, or where Jonathan found it “on the ground.” In the Bible, Samson ate honey when he found a beehive in the carcass of a lion (Judges 14:8-9)…. In the New Testament, John the Baptist (Matthew 3:4) ate honey as he moved through the wilderness…
Tracking where domesticated bees go is hard. But what about when they’re wild? From Wikipedia,
As a rule of thumb the foraging area around a beehive extends for two miles (3 km), although bees have been observed foraging twice and three times this distance from the hive.
So travelers eating wild honey would be even more vulnerable than locals, not knowing the area like if they lived there.
2) What about ancient diagnoses?
The New King James Version of Matthew 17:15 says, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.” The literal word for “moonstruck” translates to an epileptic in this context. The Merriam-Webster dictionary says lunacy means “intermittent insanity once believed to be related to phases of the moon.”
3) What about ancient attributions of God’s work, perhaps through angels?
In Acts 12:21-23,
On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, “The voice of a god, and not of a man!” Immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.
4) What about modern applications of God’s work in our lives AND in Bible-time lives?
Sometimes Christians get bothered to consider God may have used some scientifically-explained illnesses and phenomena to cause some Bible-times deaths and miracles, but I don’t see why they should. We as Christians know that God never changes and is the only one that created all the scientifically-explained illnesses and phenomena that ever existed (Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6; Exodus 15:26, the Book of Job, John 9:1-3). We should also know that now, in our enlightened age, there are many things even today we take for granted that science still can’t explain, like gravity, keeping all the planets rotating in orbit, and even what keeps us breathing (cp. Joshua 10:13, Job 26:7, Psalm 104:5, Isaiah 38:8, 40:22; Daniel 5:23 ESV).
Perhaps God did orchestrate many deaths and miracles in Bible times using many completely unnatural, unexplained processes, even if modern science was present back then to explore those causes. I suspect there are at least a few types of miracles that wouldn’t have any scientific explanation, like the turning of water into wine (John 2:1-12), the healing of lepers (Matthew 8:2-4, Mark 1:40-45 & Luke 5:12-16), giving sight to a person born blind (John 9), and particularly raising those that were dead a few days.
I personally just don’t feel a need to debate this, or to have it all figured out. God knows all the answers. And when there’s weird scientifically-unexplained phenomena today like rare-instances of demonic possessions that over-seas missionaries encounter, or “U.F.O’s,” or New Age “magic,” I leave all that with God, too. I just need to warn you that we can get distracted by these things, debating inconclusively when we should be using our time, research and mental energies more wisely (Titus 3:9). And we can thank God for the scientific knowledge we do have today, to eliminate much potential for the rampant superstitions that prevailed in Bible times.
The above pictures are from Food at the Time of the Bible
