There are probably two or three hundred species of flowering plants in the Bible lands, with 70 or 80 of them being thorny or prickly. Readers are reminded that this book is primarily directed to the needs of translators, so it focuses on the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words, what they meant, and how they can be translated in a way that preserves both accuracy (in prose contexts) and naturalness (in rhetorical contexts).
Our problems with identifying the flowers and thorns of the Bible are abundant and complex. First, there are a number of words that could refer to a single plant, to a whole class of plants, or to both. Secondly, we try to identify the Hebrew words for plants in the Old Testament and the Greek words in the New Testament, but the analytical picture is skewed by the fact that the New Testament writers, who quoted the Old Testament frequently, used the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), not the original Hebrew. Finally, there is a very human problem: many readers of the Bible, like the tourists who visit the Holy Land, want specifics. They want to hear that this is the plant that Isaiah, or Jesus, was talking about when they said “mustard” or “lily” or “hyssop.” And, of course, some authors, like tour guides, cheerfully tell readers and tourists what they want to hear. Freshly back from his pilgrimage, a man said to me once, “Now I know what the burning bush was.” Such certainty may strengthen faith, but it is academically unsound. We therefore issue a warning here to the reader: Beware of anything in this or any other book on Bible botany that makes it sound as though we know anything about Bible plants with certainty! The best we have (and that in only a few cases) is a general consensus of scholars. In one case, that of the famous “rose of Sharon,” most scholars would say that it is probably not a rose at all! And the “lilies of the valley” may not have been lilies.
An important fact to keep in mind is that the meanings of words change over time. The time that a book of the Bible was written will determine the interpretation of the words in it. Since we don’t know the date of writing of many books, this makes it difficult to pinpoint meanings of plant names.
Before we go to the Biblical languages, we must point out a potential stumbling block in English. The word “flower” has at least two senses: 1) a plant producing a conspicuous blossom, and 2) the blossom itself, that is, the part of the flowering plant that has the petals.