Death in the pot

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Elisha makes the spoiled stew edible with flour ( Giorgio Vasari , 1566)
Detail of the title page of Accum's treatise against food adulteration (1820)

Death in the pot is an inedible dish mentioned in the Bible . It is proverbial, also in its Latin form (mors in olla) .

Biblical narration

In 2 Kings 4,38–41  LUT the search for food during a famine is told. The action takes place in the area of Gilgal , a place that is believed to be in the lower Jordan Valley, near Jericho . There a community has gathered around the prophet Elisha , which is united by a simple lifestyle. “In the wasteland of the lower Jordan Valley, the prophets have to gather their food.” Elisha has a large pot set up in which a vegetable stew is to be cooked for the whole group. A student collects ingredients and discovers a wild vine that he does not know and the fruits of which he considers edible. He brings them with him, cuts them into the stew and spoils the food for everyone because the fruits are inedible.

While eating together, the pupils react in horror to the bitter taste: “Man of God, death in the pot!” Elisha sprinkles flour into the stew, after which the meal is wonderfully enjoyable. The narrator's opinion is not that flour makes a poisoned stew edible, but that Elisha can work miracles and uses flour to do so. The poison is probably cucurbitacins .

Interpretation history

The Vulgate identified the inedible ingredient in Hebrew פַּקּוּעָה paḳḳu'ah with the melon-like, therefore attractive-looking fruit of the colocinth . David Kimchi wrote that the paḳḳu'ot were little bitter gourds, in Arabic they were called ḥānṭūl . This corresponds to the current Arabic name of the colocinth.

Martin Luther adopted this interpretation in his translation of the Bible: The student of the prophets "found wild butterflies / and read dauon Colochinten his dress and when he came / it snows into the pot for vegetables ..." (verse 39b in the Biblia Deudsch 1545)

Johann Arndt  offers a classic Pietistic interpretation - in the tradition of the fourfold sense of writing - : The hunger mentioned at the beginning is a hunger for the word of God . The "hungry souls" were looking for something nutritious, but they would only find "Colochinten / poisonous apples / human doctrine devised by people / which may well have a beautiful appearance ... but when you want to eat it / it is poisonous and bitter / and is not real food and comfort inside ... "

Proverbial use

Death in the harbor

The Upper German equivalent for pot is port. In the High German-speaking area, Latin mors in olla was first literally in the version: “Death is in the harbor, that is death can neither be seen nor grasped.” As early as 1494 in Sebastian Brant's ship of fools (30.28): “Worlich, der dot is in the port. "

The Zurich Bible of 1531 translated the phrase 2 Kings 4:40: "Death is in the harbor", and it was not until the 18th century that Hafen was replaced by Topf in this Bible edition. The Swiss German phrase “Bleich si n (usg'seh) wie de r Tod im Häfeli” is probably derived from this.

Death in pots

"Topf" is an East Central German word that was spread across regions thanks to Luther's translation of the Bible. Luther initially preferred the Thuringian form "pots" and also in 2 Kings 4:40 , while later he followed the Bohemian-Upper Saxon language norm when translating the books of the prophets and the apocrypha and wrote "pot".

As sermon motif of "Death in pots" Recording took place in church music, as in the recitative in Georg Philipp Telemann 's cantata for Easter "Down with Sodom gift'gen fruits" (TWV 1: 1534), Hamburg 1726: "How shall I as where hardship and death draw pleasure in pots? "

In the cantata Who only lets the dear God rule by Johann Sebastian Bach , it says in the recitative Think not in your heat of distress : “ Those who eat themselves with constant happiness, on all good days, often have to last, after enjoying vain lust, ' Death in pots' say. "

In this form, not as “death in a pot”, the formulation is also familiar to Goethe, for example, who was “darkened” by the heavy Merseburg beer: “I don't like the Merseburg beer. Bitter like death in pots. "

Cultural history

The old identification from Hebrew פַּקּוּעָה paḳḳu'ah with the colocinth (Citrullus colocynthis) is also common today. The pulp of the colocinth has a strong laxative effect. The bitter taste prevents accidental consumption of the colocinth, as the biblical story shows. The seeds are, however, edible and in times of need were ground to flour by Bedouins to be baked as hunger bread. In the modern state of Israel, the species is particularly common in the Jordan Valley near Bet Schean , in the southern Negev and the Arava .

Carl von Linné named another pumpkin plant, which was also traditionally identified with the biblical plant, as Cucumis prophetarum (prophet cucumber). This species is common in the Lower Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the Arava.

  • Colocinths

  • Prophet cucumber

The chemist Friedrich Accum fought against food adulteration in the early 19th century. His treatise on adulterations of food and culinary poisons (1820) adorned a cover picture with "Death in the Pot."

Trivia

"Death in the Pot" was the title of a special exhibition in the Memmingen City Museum in 2001 , which was dedicated to the excavations (urn graves) in the Roman burial ground of Oberpeiching .

Web links

Commons : Death in the Pot  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Ernst Würthwein : The Books of Kings. 1 Kings 17-2. Kings 25.2 . (= The Old Testament German . Volume 11/2) Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1984. ISBN 3-525-51152-3 . P. 295.
  • F. Nigel Hepper: flora of the Bible. An illustrated encyclopedia . German Bible Society, Stuttgart 1992. ISBN 3-438-04478-1 . P. 152.
  • Coloquin is "Medicinal Plant of the Year 2012." In: Deutsche Apothekerzeitung No. 44 (2011), p. 50 ( online )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Würthwein: The books of the kings. 1 Kings 17-2. Kings 25.2 . Göttingen 1984, p. 368 .
  2. ↑ a b c Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Zurich (Ed.): Explained - The Commentary on the Zurich Bible . TVZ, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-290-17425-5 , p. 819 .
  3. ↑ James A. Duke: Duke's Handbook of Medicinal Plants of the Bible . CRC Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8493-8203-1 . P. 183.
  4. ↑ Gustaf Dalman: Work and Customs in Palestine . tape 1 . Gütersloh 1928, p. 343-344 .
  5. ↑ Martin Luther: The Whole Holy Scripture Deudsch . Ed .: Hans Volz. tape 1 . Rogner & Bernhard, Munich 1972, ISBN 3-920802-83-7 , p. 690 .
  6. ↑ Johann Arndt: Postilla, that is: ingenious explanation / the evangelical texts / throughout the year ... Ed .: Philipp Jacob Spener. Johann David Zunner, Frankfurt am Main 1625, p. 442 .
  7. ↑ a b Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Art. Hafen, in: German dictionary . 1st edition. (www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/Hafen).
  8. ↑ Ludwig Tobler: Schweizerisches Idiotikon . tape 2 . Frauenfeld 1885, Sp. 1010 .
  9. ↑ a b Friedrich Kluge: Etymological dictionary of the German language . 21st edition. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1975, p. 782 .
  10. ^ Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm: Art. Topf, in: German dictionary . 1st edition. (www.dwds.de/wb/dwb/Topf).
  11. ↑ Frank Nager: The healing poet. Goethe and medicine. Artemis, Zurich / Munich 1990; 4th edition, ibid. 1992, ISBN 3-7608-1043-8 , p. 79.
  12. ^ Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler: The Jewish Study Bible . Ed .: Jewish Publication Society of America. Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-529751-5 , pp. 734 .
  13. ↑ Avinoam Danin: Citrullus colocynthis (L.) Schrad. In: Flora of Israel Online. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Avinoam Danin: Cucumis prophetarum L. In: Flora of Israel Online. Retrieved September 30, 2018 .
  15. ↑ Death in the Pot (April 29, 2001 to July 22, 2001). In: City of Memmingen. Retrieved September 29, 2018 .