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Comment by duck2 | Hacker News Reader

My grandma has an olive grove. When I last visited her, she offered me a jug of cured olive. I told her I find cured olives still bitter. She seemed very surprised and said she can't taste anything but olives recently. Maybe she leaves them a little bitter, because the bitterness is very "tasteable".

I find it interesting how olive is praised in places it's planted. It's not just my grandma who adores olive. If you chat with anyone from her town for enough time, they will surely bring the subject to olives, cured olives or olive oil.

What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books.

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As other people have mentioned, olive trees are native to the Canaanite region so they strongly feature there because that's what people were used to seeing. But to add to that, you'll also see a lot of mentions of Cedar trees (with some psalms and songs describing how the "voice of god" shakes the cedars in the mountains of Lebanon). Lebanon cedar was incredibly famous in antiquity for its resilience. Egyptians had it imported for buildings because they didn't have naturally growing trees that were as sturdy as Cedars.

It's interesting to note that Yahweh in the bible still holds that old thunder association that the original canaanite deity had, and that cedar seems to be to him what oak is to european thunder deities (oak is very much associated with Jupiter/Zeus/Tarannis).

Fun fact: The cedar is mentioned 75 times in the Old and New testament of the Bible.

> What's even more weird is all abrahamic religions mention olive in their books.

Not weird at all. After all they all originate roughly from the same region.

Exactly, and they mention pretty much every other major food item from the area too.

Also, being direct influences on one another, it would be enough for the old testament to make a big deal out of olives, to make the conditional probability of the others doing so very high.

It does, doesn't it? I'm fairly sure there's an olive branch mentioned at the end of the deluge story.

That's right, the dove brought an olive leaf. And another significant mention is as part of the anointing oil - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_anointing_oil

Right, it would be weird if they mentioned potatoes or tomatoes in their texts.

Although a lot of Americans get confused when "corn" is mentioned in various translations of the bible, not understanding that maize is not being referenced (which would be very weird indeed) but that the word "corn" used to (and still does to some extant) be used to refer to grains in general and wheat was probably being referred to.

Also, even more archaically, to grains of salt - for example, those used to cure corned beef.

Most brits still picture wheat fields if you say 'cornfield', even though maize is grown here too these days.

> Although a lot of Americans get confused when "corn" is mentioned in various translations of the bible, not understanding that maize is not being referenced (which would be very weird indeed)

A lot of people even in the Old World have forgotten that maize is an import. For example, for several centuries now the staple food of the poor in Romania was mamaligă, mush from ground maize like Italy’s polenta. (Mamaligă still remains popular as a quick and convenient dish, made tasty with cheese and sour cream). If you wonder out loud among Romanians what mamaligă was originally made from, a lot of people will tell you that it must have always been made from maize; they aren’t even aware that maize was brought to Europe after 1492.

> Tomatoes and potatoes in the Bible? Was it aliens?

Please delete this before the history channel finds it.

Joseph Smith would like to have a word with you...

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