(OPINION) In the middle of Israel’s Arava Desert, a farming community is bringing trees back to life that’s bearing fruit from the time of the Bible. A little, young-looking palm tree named Judith was planted on Kibbutz Ketura recently.
And though she’s just nine years old, she carries an ancient heritage. “We’re talking about the resurrection of 2000-year-old plus ancient date seeds that come from the Judean Desert and from Masada and which are part of a scientific experiment,” said Sarah Sallon, Director and Founder of The Natural Medicine Research Center at Hadassah Medical Organization, Jerusalem.
Growing in a greenhouse for the last nine years, Judith was recently transplanted in what Kibbutz Ketura calls the Ancient Judean Date Orchard. She’s the fifth such tree to be planted there after Methuselah, Adam, Jonah, and Hannah.
“We are planting our second, female date tree, who was sprouted from an ancient seed. Actually, this one came from Qumran — was found in the caves — and much to our astonishment, she also sprouted,” said Elaine Solowey, the botanist who coaxed the seeds to grow.
Hannah was the first female tree. She was planted in 2019. Pollinated by Methuselah, Hannah had around 100 dates last year and this year she had more than 600 dates. Sallon, a medical doctor, started this project more than 15 years ago after becoming interested in natural medicine.
“I wanted to see how medicinal the flora of Israel was and what it had been used for and so on. And then I realized that many of these species had actually disappeared. And we knew what there was, because it’s mentioned in the Bible. The Bible is our guidebook of ancient species,” Sallon told CBN News.
One that disappeared centuries ago was the Judean date. It’s mentioned in the Bible as one of the seven species found in the ancient Land of Israel. “Now you say well, but we see dates all the way along here, palm trees and all the kibbutzim are growing plants. And I look at the plantations on Ketura.
Those date palms of modern-day Israel are modern and they were imported after the founding of the State in the 1950s. But they’re not the original date tree that grew here,” Sallon said. Years ago at Masada, archaeologists found a jar of those ancient date seeds. READ MORE
