[Avodah] Archaeologists discover 7, 000-year-old Jerusalem settlement

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Sat, Feb 20, 2016 at 10:07:06PM +0200, Lisa Liel wrote:
: >I could accept that bedil means pewter, which I hadn't realized was that
: >old.

: >We need to do something with the etymology, though.

: Why?  What's the etymology of barzel?

Unlike barzel, though, we know the meaning of the shoresh /bdl/.

Bedil makes sense for tin if you think of it as "that metal we add to
copper". It's a metal they got by extracting it from cassirerite (Sno2),
using coal and heat to split the Sn (tin) from the oxygen.

Pewter? Maybe bedil means tin for the above reason, and by extension
could mean pewter, as in Midyan's pewter keilim. (I do not think tin
keilim are a possibility, from what I've seen on google.) The same way
that nekhoshes means copper and by extension bronze and brass.

Barzel's etymology is only guesswork. There is a discussion on balashon
http://www.balashon.com/2006/08/barzel.html

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "'When Adar enters, we increase our joy'
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