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A ''Corny'' Issue>/h1>

Is biblical "corn" a mistake?

May, 2019


Among many glaring flaws in the Book of Mormon are references to things which did not exist in North America at the time the book's events supposedly took place. Examples of these are elephants, steel, horses, chariots, cattle, bees, and scimitars. Astute Bible readers, however, sometimes notice use of the word "corn" in the Bible. They note this specific plant grain—also known as maize—didn't exist in the ancient middle east. Does that mean the Bible is similarly flawed, or just mistranslated? The answer is neither; this is an example of how language changes over time.

The only major translation that uses the word "corn" in that way is the King James. That's an immediate clue to solving this dilemma: this is the English word, and not the original term found in the ancient biblical languages. The English term corn used to mean something more generic: it was a reference to a single grain seed. Whatever the local region produced as a main grain crop was referred to as corn in the Old-and-Middle-English era. We see residue of that when we talk about "corned beef," meaning meat cured using "corns" of salt, or someone having "corns" on their feet, meaning hard spots of skin.

Eventually, what was initially called maize took over the name "corn" entirely. So not only are we looking at a translation from one language to another, we're speaking about a word which means something today it did not mean when the KJV was translated.

There are a few different words translated as "corn" by the KJV. The main ones are as follows:

The Hebrew word dā'gān is used in Genesis 27:28, 37, Numbers 18:27, Deuteronomy 28:51, etc. This is the equivalent of kokkos in John 12:24, and both are generic terms for "grain."

Genesis 41:35, Proverbs 11:26, Joel 2:24 and others use the Hebrew bār, also a generic term for grains and cereal crops. This parallels Matthew 3:12, Luke 3:17, Acts 7:12, using the Greek term sitos.

The Hebrew word used in places such as Genesis 42:1, Joshua 9:14, Nehemiah 10:31 is se'ber, meaning something like "staples" or "provisions" in the sense of a basic food commodity.

Another term used is from Pharaoh's dream in Genesis 41:5, which is sib'bolim, something we transliterate as shibboleth. This Hebrew word was hard enough to pronounce that it was used as a password (Judges 12:6). It can mean a flowing mass of water, or the "fruit" part of a grain plant. That passage is specifically describing the "productive" part of the plants, so it uses a different term. If a modern person's inclined to think of corn, they'd call that the "ear," and vice versa. However, the term "ear" is used of other grains, as well.

There are several places in Scripture where we're reminded that category and group words don't always have direct translations between languages. As another example, the Old Testament includes 'atalleph (Leviticus 11:19) as part of the group called owph (Leviticus 11:13). The closest translation of those words into English is "bats" and "birds / fowls," but in the modern era, "birds" has a scientific meaning which it did not originally imply, nor is it what the Hebrew term owph means.

In short, "bats" are not "birds," as we'd say in modern English, but 'atalleph are owph as we'd say in ancient Hebrew. In the same way, there was no "corn [maize]" in the ancient middle east, as we'd say in modern English. But there were grains referred to as dā'gān, bār, and sib'bolim in ancient Hebrew or sitos and kokkos in Greek, which Old-and-Middle-English speakers would have simply called "corn."

This is yet another example of why context, discipleship, and care are necessary parts of studying the Word of God!


-- Editor
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