St. John's locusts

[Lammers]

Hmm.  Well, shows you can't trust everything you read in your textbooks,
children.  For the record, my assertion that the locusts were leguminous
and not orthopterous stems from: A. F. Hill, Economic Botany, McGraw-Hill,
1952 (second edition), page 346 (where the Prodigal Son is also mentioned
as dining on them).  I guess I bought it because (not knowing much about
Jewish dietary law), I assumed insects wouldn't be kosher.  It would be
interesting to know the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek or other Middle Eastern
names for the carob; if it was so important to them, they surely had a
name for it.  Perhaps they, too, saw the same similarity as later people,
and dubbed in akris?

Thomas G. Lammers
Dept. Botany
Field Museum of Natural History
Chicago
lammers at fmnh.org