Plants of the Bible: Mastic tree

Pistacia, pistacium (Latin), “pistachio nut”, from Greek pistakion, from pistakē, the Greek name for the nut, perhaps from Middle Persian *pistak. “Pistacium” was the basis of Linnaeus’ name Pistacia for the genus.

lentiscus, refers to mastic.
Mastic derives either from a Phoenician word or from the Greek verb mastichein, (“to gnash the teeth” – root of the english word masticate), or massein (to chew).
The Hebrew name: אלה, elâh, used for the Pistacia is and like that of the oak, stems from the Hebrew el (God), associated with strenght and sturdiness. The Valley of “Elah”, where David went and killed the giant Goliath (I Samuel 17:2-49), received its name from the Pistacia trees growing there.

The Hebrew words “êl, “êlâh”, and “êlîm”, refer to the Pistacia, but, “âllâh”, “allôn”, and “êlôn” to the Quercus.

• The standard author abbreviation L. is used to indicate Carl Linnaeus (1707 – 1778), a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, the father of modern taxonomy.

See the list of Medicinal herbs in Israel, the parts used and their medical uses to treat various diseases.

Mastic is a resin from the Pistacia lentiscus, cultivated for its resin on Chios, a Greek island situated in the Aegean Sea seven kilometres (five miles) off the Turkish coast.(see: Pistacia palaestina)

Dioscorides reports that Chios mastic was sweet-smelling when white and clear and was chewed for a sweet breath. The mastic tree, Pistacia lenticus, is mentioned only once, in the Book of Daniel 13, recounting the story of Susanna or Shoshana, שׁוֹשַׁנָּה, a fair Hebrew wife who is falsely accused by lecherous voyeurs.

As she bathes in her garden, having sent her attendants away, two lusty elders secretly observe the lovely Susanna. When she makes her way back to her house, they accost her, threatening to claim that she was meeting a young man in the garden unless she agrees to make love to them. She refuses to be blackmailed, and is arrested and about to be put to death when a young man named Daniel interrupts the proceedings. After separating the two men, they are questioned about details of what they saw, but disagree about the tree under which Susanna supposedly met her lover. In the Greek text, the names of the trees cited by the elders form puns with the sentence given by Daniel.

• Daniel 13:54-55
  Now then, if thou sawest her, tell me under what tree thou sawest them conversing together. He said: Under a mastic tree (υπο σχινον, hupo schinon). “And Daniel said: Well hast thou lied against thy own head: for behold the angel of God having received the sentence of him, shall cut (σχισει, schisei) thee in two”.

The second says they were under an evergreen oak tree / holm tree (υπο πρινον, hupo prinon),

• Daniel 13:59
  “And Daniel said to him: Well hast thou also lied against thy own head: for the angel of the Lord waiteth with a sword to cut (πρισαι, prisai) thee in two, and to destroy you”.

The great difference in size between a mastic and an oak makes the elders’ lie plain to all the observers. The false accusers are put to death, and virtue triumphs.

Terebinth Tree Resins