AS THE SEED OF WHITE GAD ( OR WHITE MANNA?).

M. L. Glikman,  Israel

The ancient people used to find the Shoham stone in the land of Havillah along with gold and bedolach.  The color of bedolach and the seed of gad had served as some kind of identification marks for the manna. 

    In the book of Exodus (Shemot) 16:31 we read the following:  “And the house of Israel called the name thereof  manna: and it was like gad seed  white…”  The second time we see the combination “manna – gad” in the book of Numbers (Bamidbar) 11:7: “Now the manna was like gad seed, and  the  appearance  thereof  as the appearance of bedolach.”

   We have made small changes in the translation.  In both cases the translator used the word coriander  as the name of the plant instead of the word גד – gad.  We felt it was appropriate to use the original Hebrew word but in its English transliteration.

   The first sentence in the original text does not provide a clear answer to the following question: To which of the two nouns does the definition “white” relate to?  The reference is either to the white gad or to the white manna.  Unfortunately, a survey of a small number of Torah scholars and students in the town of Bnei Brak has revealed differences of opinion, and yet, the majority of respondents adhered to the traditional view: gad is the coriander and the manna is white.

   Various ethnic groups have almost identical names for coriander.  In Akkadian the name is kisibirru,kisibirritu(m), in Sanskrit - kustumbari, in Telugu – kustumburu, in Urdu –kothamir, in Tamil – kotamali, in Arabic – al-kuzbara, in Latin – celiandrum.  The most often used Russian name is kinsa. 

  The history of translation of the word gad as coriander dates back to the Septuagint and continues in translations of the Holy Scriptures into other languages.  Due to the color difference between the coriander seeds, which are of dirty yellow/ brownish color, and the whiteness of the manna, the Torah commentators made some amendments.  According to the Babylonian Talmud (Yoma, page 75), Rav Asi (אסי ) said that the manna was round like gad and white like margalit (this word is usually defined as a pearl or a precious stone).  RASHI supported such interpretation: “….a  herb , the name of which is coriander ; its seed  is round and is not white, whilst the Manna was white." ( Pentateuch.  Exodus. London, 1930 ,p. 87 ).  

   In the same section of the Babylonian Talmud (see also the commentaries Sefer Ein Israel, also called Ein Yaakov) it had been suggested for the first time that gad is pishtan (פשתן ) – flax. 

  However, this idea did not get a momentum due to the red color of flax seeds, which contradicted the accepted notion about the color of manna.   S. Landersdorfer (1916), F.X. Kortleiter (1930) and Moshe Raanan ((ד"ר משה רענן had proposed that the possible explanation for comparing gad with flax may be found in the Sumerian language, where the word gad means flax (http://www.daf-yomi.com/DYItemDetails.aspx?itemId=8058).  Unfortunately these authors did not go beyond simply stating the fact.  

Thus, we have two possible concepts for the etymology of the word gad - גד.   The first one is based on the assumption that the word is derived from the Phoenician language, as the Carthaginians, according to Dioscorides (1^st century AD), used the word goid  for the African coriander (J. Parry,1858; I. Low, 1881).

  The second concept is based on the cuneiform writing.  The Sumerian word gish GADA corresponds to the Akkadian word kitu meaning flax, linen (gish being an indicator of flora).  The earliest records on the clay tablets about flax date back to the third millennium BC (http://psd.museum.upenn.edu/egi-bin/epsd ). (See also R.C. Thompson. A Dictionary of Assyrian Botany, 1949, p. 113).

  The word gad in the Torah is used together with the word zerah – זרע (seed).  In the Sumerian-Akkadian the word seed is written as SHE.NUMUN = zerum (B. Kienast, W.  Sommerfeld, 1994), while the expression zer GADA- Leinsamen (the flax seed) can be found in the dictionary АНw II. 495.

The Wikipedia article “Common Flax” indicates that there are several colors of flax seeds.  The colors vary from pale yellow to dark brown.  The seed capsules have either flattened spherical or ovoid spherical shape, while the seeds are of either ovoid or elongated elliptical shape.   The flax variety with pale yellow seeds is called “white flax” or Linum perenne "Alba".   The flowers of common flax are blue (blue flax), while white flax has white flowers.  Can this be the biblical “white gad”?

W.H. van Soldt (1990) has published the names for flax in the Ugaritic language: pttm = GADA –flax, linen.   Besides that, there are two more words for flax in this language: ktn and qt.  The last word even falls into the same pattern as gad.  One of the words for flax in the Ancient Egypt was psd (sounds similar to the Hebrew pshtn).

   In the Dravidian language the word gaddi  means grass, straw, hay ( T. Burrow, M. Emeneau, 1961).

Continuing the search for white flax we discovered  GADA   BABBAR - white linen (M. Silver, 1992) on the lists  of goods arriving from Tilmun (Dilmnun, Bahrain).   The word BABBAR means white, while the collocation GADA  BABBAR  can be found in the" Lugalbanda in the Wilderness"  epos (H.L.J. Vanstiphout, J.S. Cooper, 2003), as well as in the works of  A. Livingtone (2007), J.O. Nriagu,(1983), A. Berlejun (1998) and others.

   We assume that the phrase ki zerah gad lavan   כזרע גד לבן-from the book of Exodus could be written in Sumerian as zer GADA BABBAR – the seed of white flax.   Therefore, גד לבן  (gad lavan) means white flax.  Then the manna is like the seed of white flax and does not have anything to do with coriander.   The heavenly manna is of the light golden color.  Continuing with this train of thoughts we come to the conclusion that bedolach is of golden color.  But bedolach will be the topic of the next article.