Hadassah University Medical Center solves biblical mystery with ancient seed

Dr. Sarah Sallon specialized as a pediatrician in London and practiced medicine for years in Jerusalem after her aliyah. However, she has devoted much of her professional life in Israel in recent years not on children but on studying the medicinal plants of Israel and reestablishing species that once grew here.

As part of the Middle East Medicinal Plant Project (MEMP), she has been intrigued by the challenge of reviving ancient seeds from millennia ago, found in archaeological digs, by germinating and growing them into bushes and trees.

Initially, Sallon – who, as a clinician at the Hadassah Medical Center, was always interested in research – conducted studies focusing on diarrhea and malnutrition in youngsters. In 1995, however, she established the Louis Borick Natural Medicine Research Center (NMRC) at the Hadassah University Hospital-Ein Kerem in Jerusalem to provide a multi-disciplinary research basis for the scientific investigation of natural and complementary medicines.

“I enjoy solving mysteries,” she said in a long interview with The Jerusalem Post. The connections between these dormant seeds recovered from local archaeological sites and plants mentioned in the Bible, Talmud, and other Jewish works are especially fascinating to her. Ancient date seeds were found during the excavations of Masada in the mid-1960s. In 2005, several of these ancient seeds were obtained by Sallon, who gave them to Dr. Elaine Solowey for germination and planting. Solowey, an expert on desert plants and sustainable agriculture at the Arava Institute of Environmental Science (AIES), lives on Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava.

The first 2,000-year-old date seedling was named Methuselah (after the longest-lived person in the Bible) and is now impressively tall at Ketura. Sallon named the ancient date trees that followed Adam, Jonah, Uriel, Boaz, Judith, and Hannah, and they are thriving at the kibbutz.

“The dates produced by Hannah, a female tree, are especially sweet – like honey,” Sallon enthused.

Previously, Sallon had also researched the actions of local medicinal plants for fighting cancer, fungi, and viruses, as well as conducting clinical trials on the benefits of Tibetan medicine. She was in close contact with the 14th Dalai Lama, whom she hosted at Hadassah on two occasions.

Sallon and Solowey are also involved in regional studies on “Forgotten Food Plants,” using Sallon’s extensive database and website (FloraPalestina) to identify and grow plants that were once an important source of nutrition. Both women believe that with the worldwide loss today of agricultural biodiversity and the increasing risk of biotic hazards, underexploited edible food plants present a unique opportunity for research and sustainable cultivation.

In Sallon’s latest project, she assembled an international team of leading experts in a variety of fields from Israel, France, the US, Switzerland, and Australia to contribute to the “queen” of all ancient seed germinations. With results  published earlier this month in the prestigious Nature Publishing Group’s journal, Communications Biology, scientists and laymen here and around the world have been riveted by a fascinating achievement, titled “Characterization and analysis of a Commiphora species germinated from an ancient seed suggests a possible connection to a species mentioned in the Bible.”

Sallon disclosed her belief that a single, approximately 1,000-year-old seed discovered in a Judean desert cave is the source of the biblical tsori, a resinous substance mentioned several times in Genesis and the Books of the Prophets. Associated in these writings with healing, the identity and source of tsori has always been contested. However, after using radiocarbon dating and genetic studies, including DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis, as well as chemical analysis and historical, botanical, and archaeological source material, Sallon believes that their germinated seedling is a “strong contestant for the source of the enigmatic tsori.”

SALLON’S STUDIES were not the first to revive ancient seeds. Some years ago, Dr. Judith Shen Miller at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) germinated 1,200-year-old lotus seeds, and more recently, Russian scientists have reported the growth of 30,000-year-old Arctic lupin seeds preserved in the extreme cold and dryness of Siberia. In Norway, Sallon noted, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides long-term storage of seeds from around the world.

“As for our germinated ancient seeds,“ Sallon continued, “their preservation and viability may have something to do with the unique environment at the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, with its unique pattern of solar radiation and a very dry desert climate.”

According to Sallon’s current study, the single seed was previously recovered during archaeological excavations of a cave in the Judean desert during the 1980s. There were also a few others, some of which were damaged and did not seem viable to Sallon when she selected them in 2010 from the archaeology department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where they had been stored. Radiocarbon analysis by Prof. Markus Egli at the University of Zurich assessed the age of the germinated seed as about 1,000 years old. DNA sequencing and phylogenetic analysis by Prof. Andrea Weeks and Dr. Morgan Gostell from George Mason University in Virginia identified the seedling as belonging to the genus Commiphora Jacq. but unique among all the other 109 species of this genus sampled to date. The germinated seedling was also not closely related to the Commiphora species commonly harvested for their fragrant resins, including Commiphora gileadensis, a candidate for the locally extinct “Judean Balsam” or “Balm of Gilead” – famous and valuable in antiquity as a perfume and incense.

In fact, chemical analysis revealed only minimal fragrant compounds, but an abundance of those with medical properties. 

Sallon explained how Solowey originally soaked the ancient seed in water for 24 hours with the addition of various chemicals and fertilizers to encourage growth.  It was then planted in the greenhouse facility of AIES and after only about five weeks germinated with the emergence of the seedling. 

“I called it Sheba,” said Sallon, because at first, I thought it might be the Judean balsam known as balm, or afarsimon (from the Hebrew bosem, or perfume), that was famous during the Greek and Roman periods because of its fragrant resin. However, commentators 2,000 years ago, including (the not-always-accurate historian) Josephus Flavius, didn’t believe the Judean balsam was native to Judea. Instead, Josephus described how this valuable tree was originally brought from “The Land of Sheba,” an ancient kingdom stretching along the eastern coast of Africa and southern Arabia as a gift to King Solomon from the Queen of Sheba.

“But the story about Judean balsam, which has been locally extinct in Israel for more than 1,000 years, gets a bit more complicated,” said Sallon. In the 18th century in Sweden, Linnaeus, the father of modern botany, trying to identify the Judean balsam of antiquity, sent two pupils, one to the Holy Land and the other to Arabia, to try and find it; both died in the process. However, Peter Forskall, who had been sent to Arabia, managed to send a specimen of what he thought was Judean balsam back to Sweden. Linnaeus called this Arabian tree Commiphora, meaning “giver of resin.” However, because of the biblical mention of tsori, the resinous product of a tree that once grew in Gilead (on the eastern bank of the Jordan River), he took this biblical reference and called his Arabian tree Commiphora gileadensis” (from Gilead).

Sallon, thinking that their germinated seedling identified as a Commiphora species might be the Judean balsam, waited a long time for the tree to develop a fragrance. “But it never did, so I sent samples (leaves, bark resin, and more) to Dr. Gavin Flamatti at the University of Western Australia, who is an expert on identifying fragrant compounds released by burning. “No fragrant aromatic compounds were released,” Sallon continued, “but they did find an abundance of very medicinal substances.” Further analysis of the resin, which was difficult to dissolve by Profs. Phillipe Scahaeffer and Pierre Adam at the University of Strasbourg in France – both experts in archaeological chemistry – confirmed these findings as well as the discovery of a new, very large compound, which they believe is also bioactive.

Based on all these findings, Sallon concluded that “the germinated Commiphora seed was not Judean balsam but something completely different.”

Attacking the problem as if it were a jigsaw puzzle, Sallon studied biblical and Talmudic references together with phytogeography (the geographical distribution of plants) to see what could have grown in the Dead Sea region and Gilead thousands of years ago.

THE TSORI of the Bible was never described as having a fragrance but, rather, was used for healing, “so I wondered if what we had germinated was in fact its source,” Sallon said. “It must have been valuable in biblical times because Jacob sent tsori with his sons as a gift to Pharoah (Genesis 43:11), and it’s also mentioned in connection with healing in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. I concluded, therefore, that our ‘Sheba’ could have been a native tree, now extinct, and that, with its unique genetic signature and medicinal compounds, it could be a remnant of the Commiphora that once grew in this region and, therefore, a candidate for the biblical tsori.”

She believes that these findings connect our germinated ancient seedling with the Pentateuch and the Prophets and that the idea that tsori was the balm of Gilead was due to misinterpretation. “So, I think with this unique study, we have gone a long way in solving a biblical mystery.”

Sheba is now three meters high, sheds its leaves in the winter, and, to date, has not flowered.

Sallon believes that the unique seed was deposited in the cave by a bird or mammal. “We don’t think it was brought by a human. The cave was a burial site and not inhabited.

“We are increasingly convinced that it’s the original Commiphora that once grew here in the Bronze Age (around 1,800 BCE), a native plant well adapted to the Dead Sea area and source of this valuable resin, tsori. Maybe 1,000 years ago, a few of these trees were still left. But when we realized that there was nothing (genetically) like it, I had a eureka moment,” Sallon concluded.