Manna: Description, Taste, and Identification

Biblical Description of Manna

The Hebrew Bible provides two distinct descriptions of manna's physical properties that must be taken together. Exodus 16:31 gives the first description: 'It was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.' Numbers 11:7-8 provides a more detailed second account: 'The manna was like coriander seed, and its appearance was like that of bdellium. The people went about and gathered it and ground it in handmills or beat it in mortars and boiled it in pots and made cakes of it, and the taste of it was like the taste of cakes baked with oil.' The two flavor descriptions (honey and oil) are not contradictory - the rabbinic tradition reconciled them by suggesting the taste varied depending on preparation method.

Bdellium (Hebrew: bedolach) was a translucent, pale yellowish-white resin from Commiphora trees - aromatic, semi-transparent, and slightly waxy in appearance. The comparison places manna as small, white to pale-yellow, resinous-looking in consistency. The coriander seed comparison refers to size and possibly color: coriander seeds (Coriandrum sativum) are approximately 3-5 mm in diameter, round, and pale tan to white.

The name 'manna' (Hebrew: man) is almost certainly connected to the question the Israelites asked on first seeing it: 'man hu?' ('What is it?', Exodus 16:15). The Septuagint translates this as 'What is this?' and the Hebrew name stuck to the substance. The naming is significant: manna was by definition the substance that resisted classification within the Israelites' existing food categories.

The Cooking Versatility

Numbers 11:7-8's detail that manna could be ground, beaten, boiled, or baked into cakes demonstrates that it had grain-like starchy properties - it was not simply sweet candy that dissolved on contact but a food substance with the cooking versatility of grain. This suggests a starchy, coherent texture that could be processed mechanically and cooked multiple ways. The cooking methods listed are exactly those used for grain: grinding between millstones, pounding in mortars, boiling in pots, and baking in cakes - all normal grain-processing techniques applied to the novel substance.

Archaeological Evidence: Natural Candidates

Several natural substances found in the Sinai region have been proposed as natural parallels or candidates. The most extensively studied is the excretion of scale insects (Trabutina mannipara and Najacoccus serpentinus) that parasitize tamarisk trees (Tamarix mannifera) in the Sinai Peninsula. These insects ingest large quantities of tamarisk sap rich in sugars and amino acids, then excrete most of the carbohydrate content as tiny white or pale-yellow globules that fall from the tree and solidify in the cool morning air. The substance is sweet, granular to semi-liquid, and is collected by local Bedouin as a seasonal delicacy still called 'mann' in Arabic. Israeli zoologist F. S. Bodenheimer's 1947 study (Biblical Archaeologist 10) documented this substance and proposed it as the biblical manna.

However, the tamarisk-insect mann is available only from May to July in the southern Sinai, in quantities of a few kilograms per hectare per season - far below the scale required to feed a large population continuously for forty years. The biblical narrative's description of a substance appearing daily six days per week throughout the forty-year wilderness period, failing to appear on the Sabbath, doubling on the sixth day, tasting like honey and oil depending on preparation, and miraculously ceasing when Israel entered Canaan (Joshua 5:12) - cannot be accommodated by the natural tamarisk secretion, whatever its identity as a partial parallel.

Other proposed candidates include lichen species (particularly Lecanora esculenta, which detaches from rock surfaces and can be carried long distances by wind, accumulating in hollows), and various plant gums. None satisfactorily accounts for all the biblical properties.

Biblical Passages

Exodus 16:4-36 provides the foundational manna narrative. The structure is significant: manna appears in response to the people's complaint about hunger (v. 2-3), and God's response frames it as a 'test' of covenant obedience (v. 4): 'that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not.' The test has two specific components: gathering only the prescribed daily amount (not hoarding, except on the sixth day), and not going out to gather on the Sabbath. Both tests failed initially (vv. 20, 27), establishing the pattern of Exodus provision: God gives what is needed; Israel tests whether it can receive provision as gift rather than grasping at security beyond daily need.

Numbers 11:4-9 presents a different angle: the people complain about manna and crave meat. The manna is described in its cooking versatility in this passage, but the people have grown bored with it: 'there is nothing at all but this manna to look at' (v. 6). The abundance that was miraculous provision has become monotonous routine - a theological pattern about how divine gifts can become objects of ingratitude.

Deuteronomy 8:3 provides Moses's interpretive reflection on the manna: 'And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God.' Jesus quotes this verse directly when tempted to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4), connecting his own desert testing to Israel's wilderness provision and claiming that the same principle applies: dependence on God's word precedes and underlies dependence on physical food.

John 6:31-35 and 6:48-58 elaborate the manna typology at length. After the feeding of the five thousand, the crowd asks Jesus for a 'sign' like Moses giving manna (v. 31). Jesus corrects the typology: 'It was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven' (v. 32), and then declares 'I am the bread of life' (v. 35). The bread discourse culminates in the Eucharistic language of eating his flesh and drinking his blood - the ultimate extension of the manna typology from wilderness provision to eschatological participation.

Dead Sea Scrolls Evidence

The Qumran community's location in the Judean wilderness gave the manna narrative particular resonance as their paradigm of wilderness provision. The Community Rule (1QS) and the Hodayot reflect a self-understanding as the wilderness community awaiting the eschatological restoration - the wilderness period was not only historical memory but present reality. The Copper Scroll's references to hidden 'manna' in several locations have been interpreted as possibly referring to hidden community funds rather than literal food - but the metaphor's availability shows manna's continued significance as a symbol of divine provision.

Parallel Cultures

The concept of miraculous food provision from heaven appears across ancient Near Eastern mythologies. Egyptian texts describe the gods providing food for their favorites in wilderness or underworld contexts. Mesopotamian divine food (the ambrosia-like 'food of the gods' in Gilgamesh) carried connotations of immortality. Greek ambrosia and nektar, the divine food and drink, share the structural function of heavenly food sustaining life in ways ordinary food cannot.

The specific pattern of daily provision just sufficient for daily need (no hoarding possible) appears in various forms in ancient wisdom traditions as an ideal of trust-based provision rather than anxious accumulation - the philosophical background for Jesus's Lord's Prayer petition 'give us this day our daily bread.'

Scholarly Sources

F. S. Bodenheimer's 'The Manna of Sinai' (Biblical Archaeologist 10, 1947) launched the modern natural-candidate discussion. The ISBE article on 'Manna' surveys the natural and theological proposals. For the Johannine bread discourse, Raymond Brown's The Gospel According to John (Anchor Bible, 1966) remains standard. For the Deuteronomy 8 interpretation, Peter Craige's Deuteronomy commentary (NICOT, 1976) is useful.

Modern Misconceptions

The two most common misconceptions are complementary errors: either dismissing manna as mythology with no natural basis, or reducing it to the tamarisk-insect secretion as if natural identification fully explains the biblical account. The tamarisk secretion is a genuine natural phenomenon that provides limited illumination for the manna's properties, but the biblical narrative's specific supernatural features - the Sabbath cessation, the sixth-day doubling, the forty-year provision, the cessation upon entering Canaan - are not explained by any natural phenomenon and are presented by the text as the theologically significant aspects. The natural parallel illuminates the setting; the theological pattern is the point.

• Bodenheimer, The Manna of Sinai, Biblical Archaeologist 10 (1947)
• ISBE: Manna