BOIIAX DAOOES.
(By kind permission of Messrs. VIeveg u. Sohn).
• Of. Bab. Taliu. lii'rukhoth ^a, ' R. Isaac said. Every one who recites the Sh^ma (lit o-") upon his bed (P» 1495) ia aa if he held a two-edged sword in bis hand.'
LiTKRATrRB.— Sir Richard Burton's Bookof the Stvord (Lonion, 1884) is a work of j,'reat but unequal merit, with many helpful illustrations ; pp. 183-lSti are on The Jewish Sword. Schlie* uiann's MyceiuK (London, 1S73) contains a good deal of in- formation about ancient Greek swords. For other works sea
ARMS. -vv. Emery Baknes.
SYCAMINE (avKi^voi, Lk 17'). — As St. Luke alludes by name to the siji-omore (avKoiiopia), it is l)rob. [but see Plummer, ad loc.'\ that he discrimin- ates between it and the sycamine. By consent of scholars, ijvKaij.ivot is the Black Mulberry, Moras nigra, L., the strict signification of the word. Yet a-vudfiivos undoubtedly signifies also the sycomore. In all the passages in the OT where cofv* and nrp-,;' occur (1 K lu-', 1 Ch 27-'*, 2 Ch 1" 9", Ps 78-', Is 9'^ Am 7'''), the LXX tr. it by <rvKdpA.voi (or -av). As it is undoubted that shikmim and shikniuth refer to the sycomore, we conclude that the LXX so understood avKdixiPos. The true sycamine is therefore mentioned but once in the canonical books of the Bible and once in Apocr. (1 Mac 6" iMopoi, AV and RV ' mulberry '). It is a fine tree of the order Urticacem, with a hemispherical comus, 20-30 ft. high. Its leaves are cordate - ovate, undivided or more or less lobed and toothed. They are too tough to be suitable food for the silk- worm, like those of the White Mulberry, Moms alba, L. The fruit resembles in size and shape the larger varieties of blackberries. It really consists of an aggregation of flowers, in an oblong spike, the succulent part of the fruit being the fleshy sepals. It has a pleasant acid taste, and is sold in all Oriental fruit markets. It is so abundant in Damascus as to be known as tiit- s/((J/nj = Damascus Mulberry. Neither it nor the white mulberry is to be confounded with the 'mulberry trees' of 2 S 5'^-'", 1 Ch 14"- »; see Mulberry. G. E. Post.
SYCAMORE, SYCOMORE.— As pointed out under Sycamine, the Heb. c-jfr and mci;-.:' refer to the sycomore, which must not be confused with the tree known by that name in England and America — Acer pseudo-platanus, L., the false plane tree. The reference is to a tree of the same order, Urticacem, as the sycamine. It is of the same genus as the fio;, and known in botany as Ficus Sycomoni^,\j.,Axa,\i.juinmeiz. It has a flattened spherical comus, from 15-50 ft. high, often one- sided, as in the illustration, and sometimes shading
8YC0M0RE TKEE u\ h MVMnMJ A ROADWAT.
(The hedfce Co the right is Indian FigX
an area 60-80 ft. in diameter. As it is very fre- quently planted by roadsides, its long, nearly horizontal branches jjroject over the road. It was therefore eminently a suitable tree for Zaccheua to climb (Lk 19^) in order to see Jesus pas.sing. Seated on its lowest branch, he would be within easy speaking distance of the Savioiu. The
SYCHAR
SYMiMACHUS
635
foliage also is not usually dense, esp. in the old trees by waysides. The trunks often attain a ver3' lar''e size, sometimes 3ti— JO ft. in circumfer- ence. The leaves are ovatesubcordate. The fruit is a small, not very jjalatable lig, about 1 in. long, growing thick together on curious little leafless twigs on the trunk or large branches. Whatever may have been the custom in ancient times in re- gard to puncturing the ligs of the sycomore to cause them to ripen, or to improve their flavour, this is no longer done in Palestine. The fruit is either shaken down or plucked as it ripens, and eaten without any preparation. It ripens in suc- cessive instalments almost throughout the year. The wood of the sycomore, although light and porous, is durable. It was used in Egypt for mummy cases. It is not now so common in the Holy Land as to furnish much available timber, but it was formerly very plentiful, esp. in the low- lands (1 K 10-'', 1 Ch 27-"). It occurred, however, in the hill-country also. Amos, a Jud;ean shep- herd, collected {?)* its fruit (7"). The destroying of sycomore trees by frost (Ps78'") was phenomenal, as frost is exceedingly rare in Egypt. At the same time it w as a great disaster, as the sycomore was much cultivated there for the industrial uses of its wood. Sycaminopolis (Haifa) derived its name from this tree. G. E. Post.
SYCHAR (ABk Siocip; Vulg. S'^/wr). — Jesus passini; through Samaria, on His way from Jud:ia to Galilee, came ' to a city of Samaria called Sychar,' which was ' near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph ' (Jn 4°) ; and Jacob's well was there (v.'). The identihcation of Sj'char has been the subject of much discus- sion. All commentators now agree that 'Sychar' is the correct reading, and not a copyist's error for ' Shechem ' as Jerome and Epiphanius held. But the question remains whether Sychar was Shechem or another place in the vicinity of Shecliem.
It has been urged that, in consequence of the hatred which existed between the Jews and tlie Samaritans, the Jewish common people ironically called Shechem SIdkkor, ' drunken, or Shehcr, 'falsehood.' But there is no evidence either in Joscphus, the Targum, or the Talmud of their ever having done so ; and the only support of the theory seems to be that Isaiah (28'-^), referring, apparently, to the city of Samaria, denounces the 'drunkards' (shihhurim) ol Ephraim ; and that the exjiression in Hab 2", a ' teacher of lies ' (laOrch shehcr), which refers to idolatry, contains an allusion to Moreh and Shechem. These interi)retations are too forced, and the suggestion of Trench (Studies in tite Gospels, p. 86), that St. John ' was himself the autlior of the nickname,' is too far-fetched. Another view is that m and r are often confounded in pronunciation (Olshausen and Liicke, Com. z. Ev. Joh. i. 512), and that Sychar comes from Sychem as pronounced bv the Greek residents (cf. Beliar for Bella/, 2 Co 6", Eph 2-). The change from e to a is not, however, explained. Jerome {Ep. Paul, and Quicst. Gen.) says that Sychar and Sychera are the same pl.ace, but he gives no evi- dence, and attributes the altered form to a coiiyist's error. This view has been adopted by Epiphanius and the pilgrims Arculf (A.U. 070), Tlieoderich (A.u. 1172), Maundeville (A.D. 1312), etc. ; and in modem times by Kobinson, Stanley, Gu6rin, and Kiehin (IIWB).