milk

• use of cows’ and goats’ m. reduced infant mortality

84:3.9The pro­vi­sion of milk for the young led to ear­lier wean­ing of ba­bies, hence to the bear­ing of more chil­dren by the moth­ers thus re­lieved of their some­times tem­po­rary bar­ren­ness, while the use of cow’s milk and goat’s milk greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity. Be­fore the herd­ing stage of so­ci­ety, moth­ers used to nurse their ba­bies un­til they were four and five years old.

• of black cow highly magical

88:5.4The milk of a black cow was highly mag­i­cal; so also were black cats. The staff or wand was mag­i­cal, along with drums, bells, and knots. All an­cient ob­jects were mag­i­cal charms. The prac­tices of a new or higher civ­i­liza­tion were looked upon with dis­fa­vor be­cause of their sup­pos­edly evil mag­i­cal na­ture. Writ­ing, print­ing, and pic­tures were long so re­garded.

• Miriam sister of Jesus sold

126:3.12Be­fore the end of this year Mary saw the fam­ily funds di­min­ish­ing. She turned the sale of doves over to James. Pres­ently they bought a sec­ond cow, and with the aid of Miriam they be­gan the sale of milk to their Naz­a­reth neigh­bors.

• Miriam sister of Jesus sold

128:3.1This year the fi­nan­cial pres­sure was slightly re­laxed as four were at work. Miriam earned con­sid­er­able by the sale of milk and but­ter; Martha had be­come an ex­pert weaver. The pur­chase price of the re­pair shop was over one third paid. The sit­u­a­tion was such that Je­sus stopped work for three weeks to take Si­mon to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and this was the longest pe­riod away from daily toil he had en­joyed since the death of his fa­ther.