CHEESE. The most important passage in which this preparation from milk is mentioned in Scripture is that where Job, figuratively describing the formation of the fetus in the womb, says ' Hast thou not poured me out like milk, And curdled (condensed, solidified) me like cheese?' (x. io).
We know not how our biblical illustrators have deduced from this that the cheese used in the East necessarily was in a semi-fluid state. It rather alludes to that progressive solidification which is common to all cheese, which is always soft when new, though it hardens when it becomes old. But for the tendency to seek remote and recondite explanations of plain things, it must seem perfectly obvious that to curdle like cheese' does not mean that curdled milk was cheese ; but that milk was curdled to form eventually the hardened cheese. If the text proves anything as to the condition of cheese, it would rattier spew that, when considered fit for use, it was hard, than that it was soft or fluid ; the process of solidification being the sub ject of allusion, of which curdling the milk is, in the case of cheese, only the first though the most essential operation. Undoubtedly the Orientals do eat curds, or curdled milk ; but that therefore their cheese consists of curdled milk is not the correct inference. We also eat curds, but do not regard curds as cheese—neither do they. The other pas sages describe ' cheese' in the plural, as parts of military provision, for which the most solid and compact substances are always preferred. Persons on a march would not like to encumber themselves with curdled milk (2 Sam. xvii. 29).
There is much reason to conclude that the cheese used by the Jews differed in no respect from that still common in the East ; which is usually ex. hibited in small cakes about the size of a tea saucer, white in colour, and excessively salt. It has no rind, and soon becomes excessively hard and dry—being, indeed, not made for long keep ing. It is best when new and comparatively soft ; and, in this state, large quantities are consumed in lumps or crumbs not made up into cakes. All cheese in the East is of very indifferent quality ; and it is within the writer's own knowledge that the natives infinitely prefer English or Dutch cheese when they can obtain it. In making cheese the common rennet is either butter-milk or a decoction of the great-headed thistle, or wild artichoke. The curds are afterwards put into small baskets made of rushes or palm leaves, which are then tied up close, and the necessary pressure applied.
There are several decisions in the Mishna rela tive to the pressure by which cheese was made (Cholim, viii. 2). This proves that, as observed before, no preparation of milk was regarded as cheese while in a fluid state, or before being sub jected to pressure. In another place (Anode Sara, ii. 5) it is decided that cheese made by foreigners could not be eaten, from the fear that it might pos sibly he derived from the milk of some animal which had been offered in sacrifice to idols.