Question: What is described in the OT as tasting like honey wafers?
Answer: Manna. (Exodus 16:31)
Comments: Manna was the food God provided to the Israelites during their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Its name is said to have originated in the question "What is it?" asked by the Israelites when they first saw it. (Exodus 16:15) Its modern equivalent might be "Whatchamacallit."
When the sons of Israel saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, "It is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat. (Exodus 16:15, NASB)
The German Egyptologist George Ebers (1837-1898) speculated that the name orginates with the Egyptian "mennu" ("food"). (Ebers, "Durch Gosen zum Sinai," p. 236). Many other scholars have identified manna with juice exuded by a variety of Tamarix gallica (Tamarix mannifera) when pricked by an insect (Coccus manniparus). The resulting product is known to the Arabs as mann es-sama ("gift of heaven" or "heavenly manna"). Although the Biblical description of manna fits part of this entity, it lacks some of its distinctive qualities.
Due to its ability to sustain in the wilderness, "manna" has come to mean "spiritual nourishment". This meaning is attested as early as 1382.
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