11 Sep 13
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
11 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseIt's there. Look in the book of the Exodus.
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
The Instructor
11 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseWell there was a "son" and a "house"...
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
11 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhousehttp://www.redhotpawn.com/board/showthread.php?threadid=154844&page=2
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
11 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhousePharaoh uses the word in Exodus:
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
Went chasin' after Moses,
Got dem Red Sea blues.
Yeah, went chasin' after Moses,
Got dem Red Sea blues.
Even though my heart was hardened,
Still had free will to choose.
11 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseThe relationship of language to colour is an interesting one.
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
No Blue, no godly inspiration. Why would a GOD leave out the color blue?
Was your god a BLUEAPHOBE?
I know some (all?) of the bible has come to English via Greek
and the Ancient Greeks had no distinct word for blue. Homer
I believe described the sky as 'Bronze' and uses the same word
to describe Achilles hair (which paradoxically is sometimes
translated as blue!!)
Didn't you (Sonhouse) give a link some time ago to a documentary
about a North African tribe who had a different interpretation of colour
than the majority of us?
I also know that 'Blue" is the last colour to be named in most languages
and that many Asian languages do not have a distinct word for blue - instead
describing it as a shade of green.
All very curious - and perhaps a factor in the bible?
12 Sep 13
Originally posted by wolfgang59Interesting. Thanks. The following is what I wrote on the other thread, where sonhouse first raised the issue. In light of your comments here, I would have written it somewhat differently—giving more weight to the idea that how we translate such terms is determined by our interpretation of color (for example, yereq below).
The relationship of language to colour is an interesting one.
I know some (all?) of the bible has come to English via Greek
and the Ancient Greeks had no distinct word for blue. Homer
I believe described the sky as 'Bronze' and uses the same word
to describe Achilles hair (which paradoxically is sometimes
translated as blue!!)
Didn't you (Sonh ...[text shortened]... describing it as a shade of green.
All very curious - and perhaps a factor in the bible?
________________________________________________
The Hebrew word conventionally translated as “blue” is t’kelet. argaman is translated as “purple”, and likely includes shades from deep red-black to violet; karmil can be translated as “crimson” or “carmine”. All of these can come from dyes in ancient times, particularly blues and purples from the secretions of various mollusks. Because of the crude dyeing processes, specific hues were likely hard to produce.
The word t’kelet first appears in Exodus where it appears 34 times (out of an approximate 50 in the Hebrew scriptures). There seems no reason to assume that the Israelites could not have taken various dyeing agents with them when they left Egypt—however, the Exodus seems generally viewed as happening (if it did happen) around 1250 BCE, and the written account is generally dated to the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century. It may be a mythic account of a much more mundane event;* and the references to dyed colors could be an interpolation from when the account was written.
So far as I can determine, t’kelet always refers to a dye, and never a color simply occurring in nature—the same for karmil and argaman. yereq, “green” refers to various plant life, and is related to yaraq, “herb” or “herbage”. adom is “red”, and can refer to such things as skin tone, blood and wine (“Red” Sea is, however, a mistranslation: the Hebrew word is suf which means “reed” ). I didn’t bother to research other colors.
Although I really don’t know any modern Hebrew, from my small exposure, it is a language capable of far more precision than its ancient ancestor language. The power of classical Hebrew comes precisely from its rich polysemy, rather than from linguistic precision.
_________________________________________________________
*American author and rabbi Chaim Potok, in his historical account of the Jews, Wanderings, came to this conclusion. The best introduction to Judaism that I have read, David S. Ariel’s What Do Jews Believe refers to the stories in the Torah/Tanach as Israel’s “sacred myths”. Myth, like poetry, only becomes invalid when it is taken for something else; a myth might certainly refer to some historical events and personages, but that does not make it literal history.
12 Sep 13
Originally posted by wolfgang59Bob Dylan described the sky as being embarrassed and I think Tom Waits used the excellent description, Halloween orange 😀
The relationship of language to colour is an interesting one.
I know some (all?) of the bible has come to English via Greek
and the Ancient Greeks had no distinct word for blue. Homer
I believe described the sky as 'Bronze' and uses the same word
to describe Achilles hair (which paradoxically is sometimes
translated as blue!!)
Didn't you (Sonh ...[text shortened]... describing it as a shade of green.
All very curious - and perhaps a factor in the bible?
12 Sep 13
Originally posted by vistesdHave you read Edersheim? I have read the life and times of the Messiah, probably the best researched book i have ever read, generously peppered with references to the Talmud and other Rabbinic writings. My desire is to get a copy of his work on the temple arrangement, it surly would be awesome.
Interesting. Thanks. The following is what I wrote on the other thread, where sonhouse first raised the issue. In light of your comments here, I would have written it somewhat differently—giving more weight to the idea that how we translate such terms is determined by our interpretation of color (for example, yereq below).
______________________ ...[text shortened]... ainly refer to some historical events and personages, but that does not make it literal history.
12 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseBut there isn't a colour blue. The sky is either a light shade of purple, or a particular shade of green, depending on how you look at it.
Seems to me the lack of a reference to the color blue is just one more indication that the whole thing was just made up by men, who at the time didn't KNOW there was a color blue in spite of the fact all you had to do was to look up at the sky.
I find it ridiculous that you think that the speakers of languages that have a different colour scheme than English therefore do not know what colour something is. They simply have different words to describe a colours. If in some language there is a distinction between dark blue and light blue does that mean that sonhouse who doesn't have that distinction in his language is ignorant of the colour dark blue?
12 Sep 13
Originally posted by wolfgang59I only heard a small part of an NPR piece on color. Apparently there is good evidence that the ancient Greeks were all color blind, not just the men. They were very limited in the number of colors they could perceive.
The relationship of language to colour is an interesting one.
I know some (all?) of the bible has come to English via Greek
and the Ancient Greeks had no distinct word for blue. Homer
I believe described the sky as 'Bronze' and uses the same word
to describe Achilles hair (which paradoxically is sometimes
translated as blue!!)
Didn't you (Sonh ...[text shortened]... describing it as a shade of green.
All very curious - and perhaps a factor in the bible?
13 Sep 13
Originally posted by twhiteheadThe thing is, we humans can distinguish about 100 MILLION colors and then there are the ones they call PentaChromic, if I spelled that right, that have even more subtle colors they can distinguish. I doubt if there are 100 million words for all those colors! But blue is a biggie, the sky is mostly blue, the ocean can be blue, deep swimming pools are blue. I think it has to do with associating colors with what we can manufacture, like ocher, the original color, one of the first to get named, after black and white.
But there isn't a colour blue. The sky is either a light shade of purple, or a particular shade of green, depending on how you look at it.
I find it ridiculous that you think that the speakers of languages that have a different colour scheme than English therefore do not know what colour something is. They simply have different words to describe a colour ...[text shortened]... onhouse who doesn't have that distinction in his language is ignorant of the colour dark blue?
13 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseMaybe you should have read this:
The thing is, we humans can distinguish about 100 MILLION colors and then there are the ones they call PentaChromic, if I spelled that right, that have even more subtle colors they can distinguish. I doubt if there are 100 million words for all those colors! But blue is a biggie, the sky is mostly blue, the ocean can be blue, deep swimming pools are blue. I ...[text shortened]... nufacture, like ocher, the original color, one of the first to get named, after black and white.
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/
The Instructor
13 Sep 13
Originally posted by sonhouseSo are you ignorant of any colour you can't name?
The thing is, we humans can distinguish about 100 MILLION colors and then there are the ones they call PentaChromic, if I spelled that right, that have even more subtle colors they can distinguish.
I doubt if there are 100 million words for all those colors! But blue is a biggie, the sky is mostly blue, the ocean can be blue, deep swimming pools are blue.
They are blue in English. They are not blue in chineses. The chinese have their own word to describe the colour of the sky. The fact that they consider what we call blue and what we call green to be different shades of the same colour, doesn't make them ignorant of what colour the sky is, nor does it mean they do not have words to describe the colour of the sky
I think it has to do with associating colors with what we can manufacture, like ocher, the original color, one of the first to get named, after black and white.
Manufacturing increases our need to name colours. For example go to a paint store and you will almost certainly see some colour names you had never heard before. You will probably even find 'sky blue' which demonstrates the fact that English does not actually have a unique word to describe the exact shade of blue of the sky.
But your claim that because a colour is not named uniquely the speakers of the language are ignorant of it, is false.
To you, the sky is a shade of blue. To the Chinese the sky is shade of what we would call 'the blue/green spectrum'. Both you and they must use modifiers to specify exactly which shade.