A Corny Translation

By J. Dean

Matthew 12: 1-8
"1 At that time Yahshua went on the sabbath day through the corn; and his disciples were hungry, and began to pluck the ears of corn, and eat.

2 But when the Pharisees saw, they said to him, Behold your disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the sabbath day.

3 But he said to them "Haven't you read what David did, when he was hungry, and they that were with him;

4 How he entered into the house of Yahweh, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?

5 Or have you not read in the law, how that on the sabbath days the priests (Yahshua is High Priest) in the temple profane the sabbath and are blameless?

6 But I say to you, that in this place is greater than the temple.

7 But if you had known what it means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the guiltless.

8 For the Son of man is Master even of the sabbath day."

Actually it couldn't have been corn, because corn is native to the Americas, but the English translation says "corn" and who are we to argue with the learned scholars who translated them, right? If we question we're casting doubt on the "infallibility of God's word." Nonsense! You have to wonder when they have the disciples picking corn, and corn wasn't even discovered in Europe until Native Americans showed it to Columbus! It's no wonder educated people read the Bible and conclude, "this is just a bunch of made up stories."

All through the scriptures, English translators use this word "corn," and it's sometimes a reference to "seeds" planted in a field. Yet here the translators said "ears of corn." It cannot be! Here is a short history of corn I pulled off the internet.

"Corn is a member of the grass family of plants. Corn is a native grain of the American continents. Fossils of corn pollen that are over 80,000 years old have been found in lake sediment beneath Mexico City. It was first grown by the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca Indians more than 5,600 years ago. The Indians used the sugar-filled leaves of the corn plant as "chewing gum", immature corn as a fresh vegetable, and the dry, mature kernels of corn were ground into flour. Corn, squash and beans were known as the "Three Sisters" by the Native Americans - sisters who should be planted together. These three plants were important sources of food.

Archeological studies have found that corn was grown near in Ontario, Canada before 1200 A.D. By the time Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, corn was being grown from what is now Southern Canada to the Andes Mountains in South America. When Columbus landed in the West Indies, he was given corn by the Native Americans, which he took back to Spain. From there, corn spread quickly throughout Europe and the rest of the world." (http://www.cyberspaceag.com/cornhistory.html)

Yet, when you go to the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and look at the greek word used there for "corn," (Strongs number 4702 sporimos) the Corcordance defines it as "cornfield." It's rather odd that the disciples are passing through a corn field 1500 years before corn was even in europe, don't you think? This discovery proves two things. One, the bias of the Strong's translators, who didn't even bother to research which word was in the original greek testament, for we know of a certainty that there was no word for "corn" in the greek language when the New Testament was translated in 325 A.D. The second thing we learn from this is the lax way in which English translators went about translated the texts into English. Accuracy was unimportant to them.

Perhaps I'm missing something here. Perhaps the word "corn" in the English language actually referred to something else prior to Columbus. Perhaps "maize" was called "corn" because the kernels are in fact large seeds, and corn was a word for "seed" in English. Yet, if so, you would think you could discover that in the Strong's Concordance? You can, in the word for "ears" (of corn) "stachus" (Strongs 4719) is defined as "a head of grain (as standing out from the stalk).

There are numerous other plants who's seeds cluster together and stick out from the head of the stalk, and perhaps it was one of these.

This little study we did on "corn" proves one thing, it's important to look up the original greek or hebrew word when studying the Bible. An exhaustive concordance is an invaluable and desirable tool in studying scripture. Some have accused me of "re-writing" the Bible because I look up the original words and discover their meanings. This "corn" issue is a prime example of why I do it. How would you answer the person who knows the history of corn and sees this passage and says, "I know that's a made up story?"


Yahweh bless and keep you, IN HIS LOVE.


Shalom

J. Dean


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