[Mesorah] All that glitters may not be...

Sun Jun 18 08:41:06 PDT 2017

As Chazal say, אמר ר' חנינה הרבה למדתי מרבותי ומחבירי יותר מרבותי ומתלמידי יותר מכולן

I was talking with one of my talmidim about the materials that the kelim in the Mishkan and the BhM were made, and I mentioned brass, but I was asked, "do you not mean copper?"

Which, as R. Chanina says, made me stop and think.  And I did a little research and realized how little I understood.  Which is not a surprising experience for me.

So what I found is that bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, and brass of copper and zinc.  Since bronze is much stronger than copper, already in the 4th Millenium BCE in the Middle East most artifacts were made out of bronze. Brass is more malleable, and is brighter in color, so most artwork was out of brass.Coins, including "copper" coins, were mostly out of brass, since copper itself is soft, and small coins out of copper (or out of silver or gold) would be bent and otherwise misfigured in the normal course of commerce.

But copper and its alloys did not have separate words in most languages.  The only word in AngloSaxon for copper and all of its alloys was bræs (pronounced very similarly to American English "brass"). It was not until the 17th-18th Centuries that words were borrowed from other languages to distinguish the alloys.  Copper was borrowed from the Latin that referred to the ore from Cyprus, an important source of copper/brass/bronze in Antiquity.  Bronze was borrowed from the Italian word for bell, which were mostly made out of bronze because of its sound.

And so in the KJ Bible and in Shakespeare "brass" could mean copper, brass or bronze   In Greek the word for all three alloys was χαλκός, in Latin aeris.  And in Hebrew, נְחֹשֶׁת

So when the Torah says that many of the kelim in the Mishkan were "נְחֹשֶׁת," it is not clear at all what it was referring to. As far as I can see, there is not a serious discussion about what exactly the Torah meant. Since the older English texts all used "brass," I believe it was one of the modern translations that changed the translation to "copper," based on the fact that Ben Eliezer decided to use the Hebrew word for copper, and to invent a word for brass and bronze.  BDB says it means "copper or bronze," but their sources show it could mean brass as well.  R. Aryeh Kaplan in Ex. 27:2 translates it as "copper," but in his note he says, "Or brass that shone like gold."

It is irrelevant for halokho, because, "All the k'lei sharet were out of silver or gold." (Rambam Hil. K'lei haMiqdash, 1:13), including those that were made of נְחֹשֶׁת in the Mishkan.
Even the gates, made out of wood, were covered with gold, except for the Gate of Nikanor, which was all made out נְחֹשֶׁת, but "היה נחושת דומה לזהב."  That would indicate that it was made of brass.  Indeed, no one would make a large gate out of copper, since it would not hold up so well.

So, as far as I have been able to find, there is no source to tell us whether the kelim in the Mishkan were copper or brass or bronze.

And now I await to be enlightened by you, my comrades in searching for the Truth.

Rabbi Dr. Seth Mandel
Rabbinic Coordinator
The Orthodox Union

Voice (212) 613-8330     Fax (212) 613-0718     e-mail mandels at ou.org
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