The Greek and Hebrew hat is translated as “purple” in English is translated as “blue-red” in Ojitlán Chinantec (source: M. Larson in Notes on Translation 1970, p. 1ff.) and in Elhomwe (source: project-specific translation notes in Paratext). In Silimo it is translated with a local reference: “the colour of the wipegen berry” (source: Buzz and Myrna Maxey ).
“The Kasua people of Western Province have no word for the color purple. They have words for many other colors: black, red, white, yellow, green, and blue, but not for the color of royalty.
“About nine New Testament passages mention people placing a purple robe on Jesus. The Kasua translation team always wanted to use the word ‘red,’ or keyalo, to describe the robe. Tommy, one of the translation team helpers, disagreed because this is not historically accurate or signifies the royalty of Jesus.
“One of the main rules of translation is that the team must stick to the historical facts when they translate a passage. If they don’t, then how can the readers trust what they’re reading is true? Other questions about truth could bubble in the reader’s minds about the Scriptures. For this reason, Tommy was not willing to change the word purple. So the team hung up the problem, hoping to revisit it later with more inspiration.
“God did not disappoint.
“Years later, Tommy hiked with some of the men near their village. They saw a tree that possessed bulbous growths growing on the side of it like fruit. These growths were ‘the most beautiful color of purple I’d ever seen,’ explained Tommy.
“’What is the name of this tree?’ Tommy asked the men.
“’This is an Okani tree,’ they replied.
“Tommy suggested, ‘Why don’t you, in those passages where we’ve been struggling to translate the color purple, use ‘they put a robe on Jesus the color of the fruit of the Okani tree’?
“’Yeah. We know exactly what color that is,’ the men said enthusiastically.
“Everyone in their village would also visualize this phrase accurately, as the Okani tree is the only tree in that area that produces this kind of purple growth. So now, among the Kasua people, in his royal purple robe, Jesus is shown to be the king that he is.”
In Numbers 4:13, Gbaya uses the ideophone soi-soi to emphasize the purple color. Ideophones are a class of sound symbolic words expressing human sensation and soi-soi designates something that has a red or purple color, or a thing with a clear or clean appearance. (Source: Philip Noss)
Flax Linum usitatissimum, from which linen cloth is made, was cultivated in the Middle East, including Canaan, at least as early as 5000 B.C. A document from Gezer (in Israel) from around King Saul’s time (1000 B.C.) refers to the cultivation of flax and states that flax and wool were the main materials for making cloth. According to Joshua 2:6, the Israelite spies were hidden under flax stalks by Rahab. Flax was grown extensively in Egypt and made into cloth and mats.
Pesheth and pishtah are probably the original Hebrew words for flax, if indeed the plant was domesticated in the Holy Land, as Zohary (Plants of the Bible. Cambridge University Press, 1982) proposes. They may be related to the word pashat, meaning “to strip off” or “to flay,” or to the word pasas, meaning “to disintegrate.” Pesheth and pishtah are used twenty times in the Old Testament, twice referring clearly to the plant itself (Exodus 9:31; Joshua 2:6). Other references are to the processed flax (Judges 15:14 et al.). A few cases refer to finished products, namely wicks (Isaiah 42:3 et al.), cords (Ezekiel 40:3), and items of clothing (Jeremiah 13:1 et al.).
It is likely that the Hebrews acquired the word shesh from the Egyptians during their sojourn in Egypt, since flax was cultivated there also. The Egyptian word for flax was shent (via shen-suten). Shesh is used thirty-eight times in the Old Testament: for the material that Pharaoh put on Joseph, for the Tabernacle curtains and hangings in Exodus, for the ephod, and for the priests’ tunics. The wise woman of Proverbs 31:22 wears it. In Ezekiel 16:10 et al. it is paired with silk, and in Ezekiel 27:7 “shesh from Egypt” is spoken of as material for the sails of ships.
Several references to linen use the Hebrew word bad. In Exodus 28:42 the priests’ underwear are made from bad, and it is used thereafter in Leviticus to describe various items of clothing—coat, breeches, girdle, and turban. It turns up again in Samuel’s and King David’s “ephods” and then again in Ezekiel and Daniel, where we see visions of “a man clothed in bad.”
Linen is referred by the Hebrew word buts in 1‑2 Chronicles, Esther, and Ezekiel, where the robes of the Temple choir, kings, and rich men are described.
The Old Testament has some references to the Hebrew word sadin (“linen garment”): Judges 14:12 (Samson promises them to his opponents), Proverbs 31:24 (the wise woman makes them), and Isaiah 3:23 (the rich women of Jerusalem wear them). The Septuagint uses the Greek word bussos or sindōn in these passages.
The Hebrew word ’etun occurs only in Proverbs 7:16, where it refers to a linen bedspread from Egypt.
In the New Testament there are three primary Greek words for linen: linon/linous, sindōn, and othonē/othonion. Linon is used to refer to garments of the angels in Revelation 15:6 as well as to the “smoldering wick” in Matthew 12:20. The synoptic Gospel writers refer to the linen cloth that Joseph and Nicodemus used to wrap Jesus’ body as a sindōn. Mark uses the same word to refer to the cloth that was worn by the unidentified young man at the time of Jesus’ arrest (Mark 14:51f.). John uses a different Greek word for Jesus’ burial cloths: othonion.
The rich man referred to in the Lazarus story (Luke 16:19) is clothed in “fine linen” (bussos). The Greek word bussos is the root word for bussinos, which refers to tunics, robes and turbans made from linen fabric (Revelation 18:12 et al.).
Flax is a little taller than a sesame plant, about a meter (3 feet) tall. Its leaves are narrow and the flowers are bright blue with five petals. The seed capsule contains oil that is used for cooking and also for thinning paint. After flax ripens, the plants are uprooted and the stalks are left to dry for a while. The stalks are then soaked, dried, and beaten to separate the fibers, which are then combed and woven into cloth.
Linen cloth was relatively costly in Israel, and being light and easy to dye it was highly valued. Their priests wore linen garments to combat sweating (see Ezekiel 44:18). They had to remove these holy garments when they left the Temple, “lest they communicate holiness to the people” (Ezekiel 44:19). The high esteem given to linen by the Jews is shown also by the fact that they used it for burying the dead, and we are told that the Dead Sea Scrolls were wrapped in linen cloths. However, the flax plant was special in other ways. The crushed stalks of flax plants were also used for making rope and lamp wicks. The seed was used for oil.
Today flax is raised more for the oil that comes from the seeds (called linseed oil) than for the fibers, although flax stalks are also made into special kinds of paper.
Metaphorical uses of flax are relatively few in the Bible, and all suggest the weakness of the material. In Judges 15:14 flax fiber is used as a simile for Samson’s fetters (they snapped like linen thread). Isaiah 42:3 says the Messiah will be gentle with weak people (“a dimly burning wick [pishtah] he will not quench”), in contrast to the typical iron-fisted tyrants of the day. Isaiah 43:17 describes the fate of the Babylonian enemies: they will be snuffed out “like a wick [pishtah].”
Linen cloth (or other cloth with a similar name) is surprisingly widespread. Cloth merchants in the translators’ area may know it under a trade language name, and if so, that can be used.In some places it is used only for burying people. In that case, if it is used in translation at all, the difference in culture should be explained in a footnote. Since linen is bleached white, a generic phrase such as “beautiful white cloth” can be considered in many places. In the three metaphorical passages mentioned above, an appropriate cultural image may be substituted, or an adverb expressing weakness or fragility.
Following are a number of back-translations as well as a sample translation for translators of Exodus 25:4:
Kupsabiny: “and also expensive threads which are: grey-blue, purple, red and beautiful cloth and goat’s hair.” (Source: Kupsabiny Back Translation)
Newari: “blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair;” (Source: Newari Back Translation)
Hiligaynon: “blue, purple and red wool, linen, cloth made from the hair of a goat,” (Source: Hiligaynon Back Translation)
Bariai: “and sipsips hair on which they rubbed paint which is red and somewhat red and blue, and good cloths, and cloths which they made from memes hair,” (Source: Bariai Back Translation)
Opo: “and thread good which be green/blue, that which be purple, and that which be red, and hair of sheep/goats,” (Source: Opo Back Translation)
English: “blue, purple, and scarlet yarn/wool, fine linen/white cloth, goats’ hair for making cloth,” (Source: Translation for Translators)
And this points to the long list that follows. The offering which you shall receive from them repeats what is said in verse 2, so Good News Translation simply says “These offerings are to be:….” Contemporary English Version has “Here is a list of what you are to collect:….” Gold, silver, and bronze are metals known in just about every culture. The word for bronze may also refer to copper, since bronze is an alloy, or mixture, of copper and tin. A few translations prefer to use “copper” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh, Revised English Bible), but “bronze” was more useful and decorative, and the people would more likely have brought along tools and objects of bronze from Egypt. If cultures do not have these metals, they are so important throughout the Bible that translators should use descriptive terms such as “metals named ‘gold’ ” and so on, and also have descriptions of these metals in the Glossary. (See the Word List in Good News Translation as an example.)
Blue and purple and scarlet stuff describes three different colors of material, which was probably yarn made from wool. But the Hebrew only names the colors, and stuff has been added in translation. New Revised Standard Version adds “yarns” instead of stuff, and Good News Translation has “wool.” In some languages this will be termed “sheep’s hair.” The word for purple also refers to the wool that is dyed a purple color. New Jerusalem Bible simply uses “materials.”
It may be difficult to distinguish between the three colors, for they are all various shades of a mixture of red and blue. The difference between the words for blue and purple seems to be that the first has more blue and the second has more red. But both colors were purple. New Jerusalem Bible translates these two terms as “violet-purple” and “red-purple.” Both colors came from dyes made from the secretion of certain mollusks, or shellfish, along the Mediterranean Sea. Materials dyed in the “red-purple” color were the most valued and were worn by kings, but both colors were signs of wealth.
A Handbook on the Gospel of Mark, page 482, has excellent suggestions of ways for translating the color purple. In brief, translators are urged to: (1) select an indigenous term which is approximately the color of purple or red-blue; (2) find an approximation of the color, employing other terms that identify colors that are reasonably close; for example, “dark red,” “burnt red,” and so on; (3) identify the color through the color of some bird or flower; for example, “sheep’s wool dyed with the color of…”; or (4) use a phrase identifying the process of dyeing cloth; for example, “sheep’s hair like that dyed in….” Then introduce the proper plant in the culture that is used for dyeing cloth or other materials with a purple color.
The third color, scarlet, came from the larvae of an insect found on the oak trees of that area. The Hebrew uses two words to describe this color, literally “worm-scarlet.” This should be considered a deep, rich red, like “crimson,” which New Revised Standard Version now uses instead of scarlet.
And fine twined linen is just one word in the Hebrew, but it refers to a high quality of linen, a cloth made from the long fiber of the Egyptian flax plant. For a description of the flax plant from which linen is made, the translator should consult a Bible dictionary. In cultures where linen is unknown, however, one may say, for example, “a good white cloth from the flax plant,” and include a note in the Glossary. (New Revised Standard Version has removed the word twined, since this is not specified here as it is in 26.1.) This should be distinguished from the more common linen referred to in 28.42. Goats’ hair is also one word in the Hebrew for the female goat, but here it refers to the “cloth made of goats’ hair” (Good News Translation).
Quoted with permission from Osborn, Noel D. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Exodus. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1999. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .
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