Balsam of Mecca

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For other products called Balm of Gilead, see Balm of Gilead (disambiguation).

Balsam of Mecca (or balsam of Gilead or balm of Gilead) is a resinous gum of the tree Commiphora gileadensis (syn. Commiphora opobalsamum), native to southern Arabia and also naturalized, in ancient and again in modern times, in Palestine. The resin was valued in medicine and perfume in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. In Latin the resin was technically known as opobalsamum; the dried fruit was called carpobalsamum, and the wood xylobalsamum.

When "balm" or "balsam" is mentioned in translations of the Bible this is probably the product that is intended. Its literary connection with Gilead comes from Genesis chapter 37 and from Jeremiah chapters 8 and 46 (quoted below).

[edit] "Balm in Gilead" in literature, art, and popular culture

From the King James Version of the Bible:

"Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured." Jeremiah 46:11

"Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? Jeremiah 8:22

Both Jews and Christians believe that the "daughter of my people" and "my people" in the above passages means the Jews and the land of Israel in which they lived, more or less interchangeably. Both faiths (although some strains of modern Judaism no longer look for a messiah) also believe that the Jeremiah verses are prophesying about the presence in Gilead of a messiah, a word very similar in its origin to the meaning of balm, or purifier. Christians believe that the balm, the messiah, appeared in Gilead in the person of Jesus Christ and for that reason the term has come into spiritual meaning in the English language, including its songs and literature.

"Balm of Gilead" is mentioned in Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Raven". The character believes that the "balm of Gilead" can heal his broken heart, because he is lamenting for the death of his love, Lenore.

"There is a Balm in Gilead" is a well-known Negro spiritual.

Balm in Gilead is a play by Lanford Wilson (1965) about various junkies, criminals, prostitutes and other street characters in a New York City diner.

The phrase "There is balm in Gilead" also appears in a Roald Dahl short story, as words of consolation from one inmate of a mental asylum to another.

Balm of Gilead appears several times in Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Notion, usually as a euphemism for alcohol.

In Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul On Ice," the Balm of Gilead is the Omnipotent Administrator's consolation that he finds in the Supermasculine Menial (closer to the Power Source). It is a sexual consolation of bodily impotence, and a Freudian fetish.

Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer mentions Aunt Polly thinks of herself as "...the balm of Gilead in disguise," in Chapter XII: The Cat and the Pain-killer.

[edit] External links

[edit] Bibliography

Dalby, Andrew (2000), Dangerous Tastes: the story of spices, London: British Museum Press, ISBN 0714127205, especially pp. 33-35
Dalby, Andrew (2003), Food in the ancient world from A to Z, London, New York: Routledge, ISBN 0415232597