The Search for Biblical Blue

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Even as the first freezing drop of water trickled beneath our wetsuits, we knew that this dive would be historic. We checked our scuba equipment one last time, and then slowly descended into the deep blue waters off the ancient Mediterranean port of Akko, in northern Israel. Our goal: to find the small snail used in ancient times to produce tekhelet, the brilliant blue dye prized in the Bible—but lost to the modern world. For the first few minutes, we saw nothing. Then my dive partner and old school buddy Baruch Sterman, a physicist who lives in Israel, purposefully […]

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Footnotes

The Talmud was written and collected between 200 B.C.E. and 500 C.E. It has come down to us in two versions, called the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud.

Endnotes

F. Thureau-Dangin, “Un comptoir de laine poupre à Ugarit d’après une tablette de Ras-Shamra,” Syria 15 (1934), pp. 137–146.

Personal communication with Dr. Irving Finkel, Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities, British Museum.

Babylonian Talmud, Sota 46b.

Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 26a.

Babylonian Talmud, Baba Metzia 61b.

Babylonian Talmud, Menachot.

Responsa of the Radbaz.

Sepher Ha Chinuch, Commandments of the Tzitzit.

Isaac Halevi Herzog, Hebrew Porphyrology (Jerusalem: Keter, 1987), p. 114.

10.

Herzog, Porphyrology. Herzog concluded Janthina was the best option when he found that the Murex only gave a purple color and that the color of the dry polished shell is brown and not “similar to the sea” as described in the Talmud. But his doctorate is written about Murex, and only when faced with the two problems did he suggest Janthina. He even admits that he prefers the Murex alternative. Had he seen a Murex snail covered with blue-green algae and had he understood the chemistry and seen its intense blue dye, I am sure he would have proclaimed the Murex as the source of tekhelet.

11.

Babylonian Talmud, Menachot 45.

12.

In Deuteronomy 33:19, Zebulun is told that the blessing of his tribe is “those things buried in the sand.” The Talmud explains that “those things buried” refers to the tekhelet snail (chilazon).

13.

Pliny, Natural History, 9.125–128.

14.

Henri de Lacaze-Duthiers, “Mémoire sur le Pourpre,” Annales des Sciences Naturelles comprenant la Zoologie, la Botanique, 4th series, no. 12 (1859), pp. 5–84.

15.

Nira Karmon and Ehud Spanier, Archeological Evidence of the Purple Dye Industry from Israel (Jerusalem: Keter, 1987).

16.

See G.F. Hill, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Phoenicia (London: British Museum, 1910, pp. cxxii-cxxxix.

17.

The legend is recorded in the second century C.E. by the Egyptian Greek lexicographer Julius Pollox in his Onomasticon 10.45.