Botanical identification of ancient hebrew phytonym bonim. On domestication history of pistachio (Pistacia vera L., Anacardiaceae)

The article examines the Hebrew phytonym boṭnîm, which is traditionally interpreted as pistachio (Pistacia vera). The word boṭnîm occurs throughout the corpus of the surviving Old Hebrew texts only once in the book of Genesis (43:11), which had been formed by the beginning of the IV century BC. Reliable identification of the phytonym could shed light on the history of the pistachio cultivation. In the course of the research, two main hypotheses were formulated about the meaning of the word boṭnîm. The first: boṭnîm is a terebinth (common name for wild species of the Pistachio genus native to Palestine). The second: boṭnîm is a domesticated P. vera. Our analysis showed that independent linguistic, archaeological and botanical data is rather convincing in favor of the first hypothesis (boṭnîm = terebinth). Consequently, there is no reason to consider the mentioning of boṭnîm in the text of Genesis as an indication of pistachio cultivation in Palestine before IV century BC.