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FRANKINCENSE

A botanical product derived from a member of the Burseraceae family. Mentioned in both the OT (Heb. lĕḇōnâ) and NT (Gk. líbanos) as a highly desired and esteemed product, its enduring fame rests with the Magi account in Matt. 2:11.

Although several species of Boswellia produce an oleo-gum resin, Boswellia sacra is the only species in southwest Arabia and northern Somalia which produces the distinct resin mentioned in biblical and other historical accounts. Recent investigations clearly suggest that the plant grows in a fairly restricted habitat. Apparently never domesticated, it prefers the arid backslopes of created rain shadows beyond the reach of the summer southwest monsoon, but as a succulent it stores water derived from airborne moisture. The resin is obtained by cutting and incising the trunk, usually once a year in the winter. The exuded sap, white in color (hence Sem. lbn, “milk”), is left to drop to the base of the tree where it hardens and crystalizes.

Chemical analysis of frankincense suggests that the plant has certain unique characteristics of composition which may extend to discerning medicinal properties. Chemical fingerprinting of living and archaeological specimens may some day permit the detection of geographically specific groves. Frankincense may already have been traded locally as early as the Neolithic period (6th-4th millennium b.c.) and may have been known to the Sumerians by the 3rd millennium and the Egyptians sometime later. Its fame, however, derives from the greatly increased demand for the product in the late Iron Age, stimulated in part by the Israelites, the Greeks, Romans, and Persians who used it for various purposes. While harvested in Oman, Yemen, as well as Somalia, the ancient South Arabian city-states (e.g., Shabwa and Marib) were the primary beneficiaries of this trade as intermediaries. Both maritime and overland trade emanating from the southern Arabian peninsula have been documented by archaeological and literary records beginning with Herodotus. According to Levantine, Greek, Indian, and Roman texts, a very substantial price was paid for the resin. It would appear that the frankincense brought by the Magi (probably two different mixes and not gold and frankincense) came from Dhofar, which was controlled directly by the Parthians, or via northern Oman as a province of the Parthian Empire. The precipitous decline and collapse of the incense market in the 5th century a.d. coincided with the prohibition by the Christian church of lavish funerary rites involving incense.

Bibliography. N. Groom, Frankincense and Myrrh (London, 1981); F. N. Hepper, “Trees and Shrubs Yielding Gums and Resins in the Ancient Near East,” Bulletin on Sumerian Agriculture 3 (1987): 107-14; A. G. Miller and M. Morris, Plants of Dhofar (Muscat, 1988); M. Morris, “The Harvesting of Frankincense in Dhofar, Oman,” in Profumi d’Arabia, ed. A. Avanzini (Rome, 1997), 231-47; W. Müller, “Notes on the Use of Frankincense in South Arabia,” Seminar for Arabian Studies 6 (1976): 124-36; K. Nielsen, Incense in Ancient Israel. VTSup 38 (Leiden, 1986); G. Van Beek, “Frankincense and Myrrh,” BA 23 (1960): 70-95; “Frankincense and Myrrh in Ancient South Arabia,” JAOS 78 (1958): 141-52; J. Zarins, “Mesopotamia and Frankincense: The Early Evidence,” in Profumi d’Arabia, ed. A. Avanzini, 251-72; “Persia and Dhofar: Aspects of Iron Age International Politics and Trade,” in Crossing Boundaries and Linking Horizons, ed. G. D. Young, M. W. Chavalas, and R. E. Averbeck (Bethesda, 1997), 615-89.

Juris Zarins

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

FRANKINCENSE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)