Blue

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
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Jonathan Robie
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Joined: May 5th, 2011, 5:34 pm
Location: Durham, NC
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Blue

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Radiolab had a program where they point out that in Homer, the sky is not blue, and early cultures generally do not describe the sky as blue. Colors are generally quite different in ancient texts.
What is the color of honey, and "faces pale with fear"? If you're Homer--one of the most influential poets in human history--that color is green. And the sea is "wine-dark," just like oxen...though sheep are violet. Which all sounds...well, really off. Producer Tim Howard introduces us to linguist Guy Deutscher, and the story of William Gladstone (a British Prime Minister back in the 1800s, and a huge Homer-ophile). Gladstone conducted an exhaustive study of every color reference in The Odyssey and The Iliad. And he found something startling: No blue! Tim pays a visit to the New York Public Library, where a book of German philosophy from the late 19th Century helps reveal a pattern: across all cultures, words for colors appear in stages. And blue always comes last. Jules Davidoff, professor of neuropsychology at the University of London, helps us make sense of the way different people see different colors in the same place. Then Guy Deutscher tells us how he experimented on his daughter Alma when she was just starting to learn the colors of the world around, and above, her.
This is probably old hat to you classicists, but it was new to me. Are there good articles on the use of color in Koine?

I didn't find blue in the Greek New Testament, but I did find it in the Septuagint, e.g. a hyacinth-colored covering of skin for the Ark of the Covenant. I wonder how they would dye skin to get it to be that color. On a quick read, the word ὑακίνθινος always seems to be used to describe liturgical items made of skin or cloth or ceremonial clothing in the Septuagint, never to describe the color of the sky or the sea.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Wes Wood
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Joined: September 20th, 2013, 8:18 pm

Re: Blue

Post by Wes Wood »

Jonathan Robie wrote:I wonder how they would dye skin to get it to be that color.
I thought I had read that both the royal purple and blue dyes came from sea snails. A cursory search on google turned up a wiki page on Tyrian Purple that suggested this as a possibility: "This is speculation, and a matter of debate today, but according to some, in Biblical Hebrew, the dye extracted from the Bolinus brandaris is known as argaman (ארגמן). Another dye extracted from a related sea snail, Hexaplex trunculus, produced a blue colour which according to some is known as tekhelet (תְּכֵלֶת), used in garments worn for ritual purposes." I think 'argaman' refers to the color purple and 'tekhelet' refers to the color blue in Exodus 25:4.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Paul-Nitz
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Joined: June 1st, 2011, 4:19 am
Location: Sussex, Wisconsin

Re: Blue

Post by Paul-Nitz »

When I saw the title to this thread, I thought maybe you were going to teach us how to talk up a blue streak.
Paul D. Nitz - Lilongwe Malawi
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