Often we are in conversation with someone uses certain idioms, the origin of which is not even guess.However, a very large number of them come to us from the Bible.They are distinguished by the imagery of thought, and today we will talk about the phrase "manna from heaven."Idiom this is generally used to mean "wonderful care" or "windfall".
Why so?Because, according to the Bible, this fabulous food every morning, God sent starved Jews throughout the forty years that they followed Moses across the desert in search of the Promised Land - Palestine.They saw one on the surface sand is something white, small and round thing, like a frost.Not knowing what it was, the Jews asked of each other perplexed, and Moses said to them that it is bread, the Lord sent down to them for food.They delighted the children of Israel, and he called this bread, "manna from heaven": it was like coriander seed, white color, and the taste - like honey cakes.
Maybe it all was, but scientists believe that this bread was actually ... edible lichen, which is in the desert a lot.This assumption has appeared in the 18th century, when the famous Russian academician and traveler PS Pallas, being in the expedition in what is now Kyrgyzstan, watched the following scene: the local people during the famine were collected across the desert so-called "bread of earth."Academica are interested in this product, and it is carefully studying it, found that it is not just the lichen, and a whole new science of its kind.The same "manna from heaven" was found by other travelers in the vicinity of Orenburg.
Today, this kind of lichen called "aspitsiliya edible."Why is it so much in the wilderness?Because it's a tumbleweed.This lichen grows in the mountains of the Carpathians, the Crimea and the Caucasus, Central Asia, Algeria, Greece, Kurdistan, and so on. D. At an altitude of 1,500 to 3,500 meters, attached to the soil or rocks.Over time, the edge of the blades sloevischnyh lichen bent down, and gradually entering into inward clay or other substrate, coalesce.After that "manna from heaven" completely off, shrinking and takes the shape of a ball, which then takes the wind.But, despite the fact that this lichen is edible, the taste of it a little reminiscent of bread, cereals, or any other product.Simply put, such food can only eat very, very hungry man who is willing to eat anything, just to survive.Therefore, it is possible that the Jews, wandering through the Egyptian desert as much as 40 years, it is this lichen ate, because the other food in the area was not.However, this theory there are some inconsistencies.The fact that the lichen can not grow overnight and Jews manna appeared each morning.Long eat lichen is also not possible, because it is very bitter taste, as opposed to "honey cake", and the nutrients in it very little.And probably the most important discrepancy: aspitsiliya neither in Palestine nor in the Arabian and Sinai practically does not occur.
Whatever it was, but the term "manna from heaven" has a value of one "unexpected good things of life, inherited just like that, for no reason, as if fallen from the sky."
