MANNA (Hebrew: mān; Septuagint: Mánna). - Food with which the Hebrew people were nourished for 40 years in the desert (Ex. 16:35). The Bible presents the manna as something tiny, granular, fine as hoarfrost, like white coriander seed and with a taste like a cake with honey (Ex. 16:14, 31). "The people scattered to gather it and, having ground it into flour at the mill or pounded it in the mortar, cooked it in a pot and made cakes of it" (Num. 11:8). Night fell and it was gathered every morning, except on the Sabbath, for which it was gathered the previous day. The manna gathered beyond need went bad, bred worms, except that kept in the ark, as a testimony to the goodness of the Lord (Ex. 16:9-36).
There exists in the Sinai peninsula a manna produced by certain insects, especially of the species nebutina mannipara and nasacoccus serpentinus, which produce it by a labor similar to that of bees. The plant on which they deposit the manna is classified as tamarix mannifera and by the Arabs is called tarfa. This manna presents roughly the qualities described in the Bible, though with various differences: it is produced only in a short time of the year, from the end of May to July, in a very limited quantity, it does not go bad if preserved, although it is surrounded by certain ants. If, for these reasons, one wishes to identify this Sinaitic manna with the biblical one, one must admit an intervention of the Lord especially regarding the manner in which it was given to the Israelites. The supporters of this identification point out that the manna was not the only food of the Hebrews and that there could have been a greater production than today, and furthermore that the disappearance of the manna can be described by the Bible only because it appeared thus. This theory seems supported by ancient authorities such as Flavius Josephus (Antiq. Jud., III, 1, 6), Origen (Selecta in Numeros: PG 12, 576), St. Ambrose (Epist., 64: PL 16, 1271).
At present, by the name of manna is meant the juice that comes out from incisions made in the bark of the "fraxinus ornus": it consists of about 50% mannite (a hexahydric alcohol) and for the rest of various sugars, water and a small quantity of other substances: it serves as a mild purgative and for extracting mannite, which has the same use.
Bibliography2 works
Bellarmino Bagatti
ARCHAEOLOGY
Only once in the catacomb frescoes (in St. Lawrence on the Tiburtina) is the scene of the falling of the manna in the desert depicted.
Four Israelites, two men and two women, gather in the fold of their traveling garment (penula) the manna that descends from heaven (4th century, reproduced in Wilpert, Pitture, pl. 242, 2). The same episode was later painted in a basilica in Spain (Saragossa), illustrated by a distich of the poet Prudentius (Dittochaeon, no. 11). G. B. De Rossi (Altri monumenti di sacro vergini nell'Agro Verano, in Bull. arch. crist., 1863, pp. 76 and 80) and R. Garrucci (Storia dell'arte cristiana, II, Prato 1873-80, p. 64) held that the manna was a symbol of the Eucharist; Wilpert preferred to interpret it in the sense expressed in a pseudo-Cyprianic prayer: "protect, O Lord, the soul of the deceased as you freed the Israelites from death by hunger in the desert."
Bibliography
Enrico Josi