Rice in Ancient Israel and Southeast Asia

Ralph Olsen in his Malay Peninsula Theory quotes Hunter and Ferguson that small grains of every kind from the Middle East would have included: “wheat, rye, barley, oats, millet, sorghum, and rice.”

However, this is misleading. In Hunter and Ferguson’s 1950 book, “Ancient America and the Book of Mormon,” p 306, the word “rice” is mentioned only once, on a list of Exclusive New World Crops shown alongside Exclusive Old World Crops. Rice is listed in the Old World list as the 9th item out of 80 shown (consequently, Olsen’s list contains only 9 items). Now for any of these Old World seeds to have been brought from Jerusalem by Nephi, who says, “we had gathered together all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every kind, and also of the seeds of fruit of every kind” (1 Nephi 8:1) and also “we did begin to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem” (1 Nephi 18:24), these seeds would have had to exist in Jerusalem no later than 600 B.C.

The problem is, according to Zohary and Hopf, rice was not introduced into the Middle East until Hellenistic (323-146 B.C.) and Parthian (320-100 B.C.) times—and then only in Iraq, Iran (100 A.D.), and eventually taken by the Muslims to Nisibin along the Caspian and to the Volga. Sometime after this, rice became grown in the Jordan Valley of Israel. The point is, rice was not known to Lehi and his contemporaries, was not even grown in all of Israel until some 300 to 400 years after Lehi left Jerusalem, and was basically known in 600 B.C. only in China (9000 B.C.), India (2000 B.C.), Nepal (1400 BC.), and is not even mentioned in any text until the Yajurveda, the third canonical texts of Hinduism sometime around 1000 B.C.

Thus, it is disingenuous for Olsen to try and link rice with the seeds the Nephites brought from Jerusalem. Nor is rice mentioned in the Book of Mormon and not referred to by Hunter and Ferguson as being grown by the Nephites. The only grains we know that the Nephites had for certain from the Old World were wheat and barley (Mosiah 9:9), and “all manner of seeds,” may mean more than this, but we do not know. Certainly, three grains not brought from the Old World mentioned in the scriptural record are: corn, neas and sheum (corn is considered a grain because it is a dry seed of a grass species—today, however it is botanically classified as a fruit).

Olsen makes the point that “the lack of evidence of any kind for any of these grains having been cultivated in ancient Mesoamerica creates a monumental problem for Meso.,” is not quite true, since corn grew in ancient in Mesoamerica, though wheat and barley did not anciently, and do not today to any degree because of the temperature and climate. Wheat and barley have not been found anciently in the Andean area, either, but corn, and two supergrains on a par with corn, wheat and barley (Mosiah 9:9), have been found there and was a staple food for millions of native inhabitants from as early as 3000 B.C.—however, the names (quinoa and kiwicha) were not known in Joseph Smith’s time and not even introduced into North America until late in the 20th century, thus he used the terms written in the record neas and sheum.

Therefore, where Nephi says, “all manner of seeds of every kind, both of grain of every kind, and also of the seeds of fruit of every kind” he does not mean every seed of every kind known in the world, or known to us today, but those known to Lehi and available around Jerusalem in 600 B.C.—barley, grapes, figs, olives, legumes (lentils & chick-peas), onions, cucumbers, melons, dates, pomegranates, almonds and spices. Flax was also grown for rope and linen and their seeds used to feed animals (compare with Deuteronomy 8:7-9). It is not likely that Lehi would have had any other seeds to bring with him, though the land is often described as having “every kind of fruit.” It should also be kept in mind that wheat and barley are mentioned frequently in connection with ancient Israel, and that wheat requires good soil and water, while barley can tolerate poor soil and drought better.

Thus, we cannot inject any old seed we want, like rice, into the Jerusalem agriculture in Lehi’s time, even if it does match and warrant our model. We have to take the scriptural record as it is and then see where it leads us, not find a location, then try to wriggle the scriptural record into it.

(See the next post, “Seeds in Ancient Asia,” for the continuing at this subject)