medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Nancy,
Yes, raw silk was known and had been for around 200 years at the time
of the KJV. Marco Polo brought back a huge amount of raw silk. He did
describe it in the book. Descriptions, if not the material
itself, circulated... it's not as if the silk road was unknown or
that translations of his travels into many European languages were
not available.
You are undoubtedly right about the material being byssus (busah in
the Hebrew).
I'm just suggesting that one of the men on the KJV Hebrew translation
team knew that the material referred to was (a) expensive) and (b)
golden-brown and figured that it referred to raw silk because of its
golden-brown color. OTOH, he could have just known that the material
was expensive and rare because it was paired with purple. Raw silk
would fit the "expensive" description.
Rochelle
At 06:49 20/05/2011, you wrote:
>medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
>
>Hm, Nancy, somebody on the KJV translator crew knew the color of
>the material was a golden brown -- his guess seems to be raw silk.
>
>Ah, but the question would be "Was raw silk known in the western
>Mediterranean at this time?" The Romans were importing silk by the
>time of the Vulgate, I believe, if not soon after, but it would have
>been in a finished state, i.e. woven or spun thread. There are
>whole tomes writen about this, and it sure doesn't help that byssus
>was often referred to as "sea silk". From what I've read and
>studied all these years, I would say that yes, it IS byssus being
>referred to, not raw silk. Not a bad suggestion, however. One to ponder upon.
>
>Nancy
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