Identifying the Chilazon of Techeiles — A Response – Beis Aharon V’Yisrael 143

Identifying the Chilazon of Techeiles — A Response

(Continuation of the article “The ‘Discovery’ of Techeiles,” Kovetz 124, Nissan–Iyar 5766, and “Further Regarding the Identification of the Techeiles Chilazon,” Kovetz 126, Tishrei–Cheshvan 5767)

In these lines I would like to address the responses of Dr. Shaul Kaplan and Rabbi Dovid Shapira, published in issue 127, to what I wrote in my article “The ‘Discovery’ of Techeiles,” which appeared in issue 124. I apologize in advance for the long delay in responding, but for various reasons I was unable to complete this response until now.

Since the responses of Kaplan and Shapira are very lengthy and go into many details that are not really relevant to the issue, and since they address my arguments only partially, and because I have no desire to get drawn into a winding and endless debate whose conclusion no one can foresee, I will respond according to the order of my original arguments and summarize the issues briefly.

I will begin with the scientific sources. In his article, Dr. Kaplan cited three sources which, according to him, testify that remains of Janthina shells were found at dyeing sites along the coast of Lebanon. In my article I showed that some of these citations lacked any source and others were simply incorrect.

The first was R. Turner Abbott’s American Sea Shells, which, as I demonstrated, says nothing whatsoever about the discovery of such shells. Kaplan responded that this was his mistake.

The second source was W. W. Leggett’s Ancient and Medieval Dyes, pp. 56–60, which, as I pointed out, does not discuss Janthina snails at all, but rather plant dyes. In Kaplan’s response, the quotation from Leggett is actually attributed to Jensen, yet Kaplan himself admits that he could not find the quotation in Leggett’s original work. If so, it is even more puzzling why he chose to cite it.

The third source was an article by D. S. Reese in the 11th Annual Report of the Society for Libyan Studies, 1979–80. That article gives no source whatsoever for its statement concerning Janthina. Kaplan says in Reese’s name that Reese’s source was Jensen, who in turn cites Rogers — but those statements are not found in the editions of Rogers available to us.

In other words, in both cases Kaplan is relying on Jensen, whose own book is unavailable — the term privately published, which Kaplan quotes, loosely means a private or internal publication — and Jensen in turn cites two sources whose contents do not bear out the claims being made. I think the fair-minded reader can judge for himself the level of reliability involved here.

Regarding the quotation from the Italian botanist Fabio Colonna’s De Purpura, whom Dr. Kaplan calls a biologist, unfortunately I am unable to verify the citation. Although after considerable difficulty I did obtain the book, I do not know Latin, and the length of the work makes it impossible for me to search it effectively without a precise reference. I would appreciate an exact citation, in keeping with Kaplan’s earlier practice of supplying specific sources.

Regarding my quotation from Dr. Spanier that no archaeological findings have been discovered indicating the use of Janthina for dyeing, the response argues that Dr. Spanier is not an archaeologist. I find that assertion rather surprising. Spanier gathered together all the material concerning Janthina for his work on Rabbi Herzog’s research, and it is difficult to understand who would be in a better position than he to know whether such archaeological findings exist.

In short, as of now not a single proper reference has been produced from the professional literature to an archaeological discovery of Janthina shells at a dyeing site. All the supposed sources for this claim have so far turned out to be nothing more than empty assertions.

Regarding the law of Justinian: Dr. Kaplan claimed in his first article that “in the Roman law code of Emperor Justinian it states that dyeing silk or wool with porphyra and hyacintha was forbidden to the general public and permitted only for the royal household. We therefore have clear evidence that the Romans used Janthina for dyeing garments…”

I showed that this claim is fundamentally mistaken, because in the actual text of the law the restriction is on the production of the color “hyacintha” from “porphyra.”

Kaplan replied that he had taken the translation of the law from Techeiles Ve’Argaman by Rabbi Menachem Adler, and that the version I quoted was truncated and corrupted. First of all, his article did not present any translation of the law in the first place. Second, the translation I quoted is word-for-word the same as the translation printed in Techeiles Ve’Argaman, p. 51, so I do not understand what Kaplan meant by this response.

Third, I did not take the quotation from Techeiles Ve’Argaman at all. I copied the original law itself, exactly as I cited it: Corpus Iuris Civilis, Vol. 2, Codex Iustinianus 4:40:1. The translation, which was also used by the author of Techeiles Ve’Argaman and by Dr. Kaplan, was prepared in consultation with first-rate experts in Latin.

As an aside, regarding Kaplan’s claim that my citation was truncated and corrupt: the only significant copying error I found was the word “HYACINTHA” instead of “HYACINTHINA” — “hyacintha” instead of “hyacinthina.” Its meaning is, exactly as I wrote, a hyacinth-colored dye and not the name of a snail. There were also three minor copying errors of no significance, which occurred inadvertently, and I regret them. In any case, as I wrote in my article, the language of the law explicitly states that the “hyacinthina” color is produced from the “porphyra” snail.

There is no point in endless discussion about the names of colors and snails. It is obvious that the term “hyacintha” or “hyacinthinon” appearing in the Roman law, in the Septuagint, and in the Greek translation of Esther is the name of a color, not of a snail. There is no point in dragging this out further after we have already dealt with it extensively.

Since there is no question that the modern name “Janthina” was given to the snail because of the color of its shell, any attempt to prove something from the similarity between the snail’s modern name and the ancient name of the color is ridiculous.

If the philologist Gesenius, whom Dr. Kaplan chooses to call “the Christian scholar,” was not actually the originator of the theory that Techeiles was produced from Janthina based on the same philological considerations that led Dr. Kaplan in that direction, but rather Antonio Telesio was, it changes nothing. We have already shown that this theory has no basis in reality beyond the similarity of the name.

Accordingly, the quotations from Antonio Telesio brought in the response are meaningless for our purposes, because once again they refer only to Greek and Latin names of various colors, without any reference to known species of snails or descriptions of them.

I again emphasize what I already wrote: none of the ancient naturalists — Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny, or the Roman architect Vitruvius, who described dyes — knew of any snail called Janthina. They used this word only to describe a color.

Regarding the “characteristics” which the article claimed identify the Techeiles chilazon:

1. The color of the chilazon’s blood

There is no reason to attribute the Rambam’s description to some unknown source when we know that Aristotle explicitly writes that the blood of the Murex is black, while none of the ancient naturalists ever mentioned any possibility of dyeing with the blood of Janthina, or even the existence of such a snail.

Dr. Kaplan must necessarily admit that when Aristotle says that the blood of the Murex is black, he was referring to the Murex and not to Janthina — because he is speaking about the Murex and not about Janthina. We therefore must explain that Aristotle apparently saw the fluid in a dried state. It is consequently very likely that this was the Rambam’s source.

As for the claim that Aristotle describes catching it and tells how the fishermen’s hands become stained by it: in that passage Aristotle is discussing those Murex snails found “in the south,” as he describes them, whose blood he says is red rather than black. Clearly he is referring to the Red-Mouthed Rock Shell, a member of the Murex family — Pliny’s “trumpet” — which was used together with the Spiny Dye-Murex to produce argaman. Even today one can see fishermen’s hands becoming stained from it.

I would add another point concerning the color of Janthina’s secretion. Kaplan’s statement that it is “black as ink,” apparently in order to fit his identification to the Rambam, is puzzling. The professional literature describes the secretion as blue-purple — see Zoology, vol. 1, Fishelson, p. 420; The Fauna and Flora of Eretz Yisrael, vol. 4, p. 71, cited in HaTecheiles, p. 234 — or as “violet or reddish scarlet with a slight admixture of orange, between purple and red,” in The Genus Ianthina, p. 8, cited in HaTecheiles, ibid., n. 6.

In addition, photograph 29 in the book HaTecheiles clearly shows the secretion as blue-purple.

2.

Dr. Kaplan acknowledged that in regard to the shell, Murex and Janthina are equal. It is only unfortunate that in his first article he ignored this and emphasized only how the description supposedly fit Janthina.

I do not intend to respond to his focus on incidental details in what I wrote.

3. “It comes up once in seventy years”

A.

Dr. Kaplan claimed that Janthina is occasionally washed ashore in enormous quantities, and that during those periods Techeiles was produced in quantities sufficient for many years.

I brought a proof from the Gemara that the chilazon was caught in the sea: Shabbos 74b says, “For those who catch the chilazon tie and untie.”

Kaplan responds that he himself said that during ordinary times Janthina was caught in nets. I have been unable to find where he said this. In his article he stressed that “sweeping the sea with nets will bring up one or two Janthina, or perhaps a few dozen.”

As I already wrote, it is absurd to imagine that in such a manner Techeiles was produced for the Mishkan, the Beis HaMikdash, the tzitzis of millions of Jews, and royal garments throughout the entire Mediterranean world and even distant Persia.

There can be no question that large numbers of snails had to be caught in the sea on a regular basis to provide for all of these needs.

The lengthy discussion in the response regarding the Techeiles of the Mishkan is therefore unnecessary, and I find the focus on such minor details surprising.

Furthermore, even according to Kaplan’s own approach I do not understand how this description fits Janthina. Its natural habitat, at least according to what is known, is warm water, while its presence in the Mediterranean is marginal and involves very small numbers.

The reports of “enormous quantities” washing ashore — which, incidentally, were never properly documented — refer to areas within its natural habitat.

B.

Regarding my statement that there are various interpretations of the phrase “it comes up once in seventy years,” and that it does not necessarily refer to rarity, I admit that I did not formulate this properly. Because I wrote in haste, the sentence entered the article in that form, and I regret it.

On the substance of the matter, however, the statement has the character of Aggadah, and it seems unreasonable to interpret it literally as exactly seventy years, for the reasons I mentioned both above and in my original article.

It is impossible that a famous and valuable dye used throughout the entire Mediterranean world could have been produced in such a fashion.

The sense of the Gemara seems rather to be describing major fluctuations in the abundance of the chilazon — something known even today in fishing areas — together with the difficulty of relying on the relatively small quantities that wash ashore, requiring the snails to be actively caught in nets out at sea.

Kaplan also writes at the beginning of his response:

“The entire historical issue is unnecessary to our theory, because since indigo, which is kala ilan, was already common in Biblical times and was cheap in comparison to all the various molluscan dyes, it is reasonable that only Jews used the Techeiles color made from a chilazon.”

This statement contradicts explicit pesukim in Yirmiyahu, Yechezkel, and Esther, where Techeiles is described as a prestigious color used by the nations and ranked alongside gold and argaman. It is likewise contradicted, lehavdil, by historical sources describing the production of blue — hyacinth — from molluscan dye.

C.

The response claims that I wrote that the high price of the chilazon was caused by the decrees of the Byzantine emperors, contrary to the Gemara.

I never wrote any such thing regarding the reason for Techeiles being expensive.

What I wrote was:

“As for the question why Jews who went into exile in Italy, Greece, and North Africa stopped producing Techeiles if the chilazon was so abundant in those lands, the answer is simple, and the author of the article himself mentioned it earlier. Byzantine law — the Code of Justinian mentioned above — and Roman law forbade dyeing with the Murex snail. As is also indicated in Sanhedrin 12a, during the days of Rava, exactly at the time of this decree, there was danger involved in bringing Techeiles. The Ramban writes on Shemos 28:2: ‘Even today, no man would dare wear Techeiles except a gentile king.’ This was written only about seven hundred years ago, after the Arab conquest of Eretz Yisrael. It therefore indicates that molluscan dyeing was still being used for royal purposes. As a result of this, together with the destruction of the dyeing installations in Eretz Yisrael under the Arab conquest, the art of dyeing was forgotten.”

Any attempt to claim that I was discussing the reason Techeiles was expensive is a blatant distortion.

As for his suggestion that the Ramban’s words are a scribal error, it is very likely that during the period of the Rishonim there remained a tradition that the Techeiles chilazon was a snail that still existed. Nowhere do we find the Midrashic explanation that it was “hidden away.” Rather, we find only “it is not found among us” in the Sefer HaChinuch, or “it is found in the Salt Sea” in the Rambam.

Accordingly, the Rambam’s description of the color of its blood, which fits Aristotle’s description of the Murex, was very likely based on a tradition identifying the chilazon with the Murex.

As for the claim that the Rambam moved in royal circles in Egypt, everyone knows that the Muslims destroyed the dyeing industry in the lands under their rule, and that this craft finally ceased with their conquest of Constantinople. There is no reason to assume that the Rambam personally saw Techeiles or the chilazon.

4. “Its form resembles a fish”

All of Dr. Kaplan’s impressive arguments are insufficient.

I repeatedly examined the photographs in his original article and in his booklet, as well as the illustrations in HaTecheiles, photographs 26, 27, and 29, and in my opinion there is no resemblance to a fish whatsoever.

Second, as I asked in my article: what sort of fish is the chilazon supposed to resemble? A whale? A carp? Perhaps an electric fish, or an eel?

5. Regarding the samemanim

There is really no point in debating this, because we do not derive practical conclusions from Aggadic passages. It is similar to someone bringing a proof for the identity of the Techeiles chilazon from the Aggadah concerning the wife of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa.

The attempt to argue that the Sifrei is describing a known zoological reality is ridiculous and does not withstand scrutiny for the reasons I explained in my article.

In any case, both the language and the correct girsa of the Sifrei fit my explanation naturally, while Dr. Kaplan’s explanation is forced.

As an aside, regarding Kaplan’s comments about the text of the Sifrei, anyone familiar with textual variants knows that the version I quoted is primary.

Kaplan wrote in his response that the correct reading should not be determined by checking manuscripts and parallel sources, but rather by investigating whether there is some real-world phenomenon corresponding to the printed version, and that this reality should determine the girsa.

That approach is, to put it mildly, astonishing, and it would have been preferable not to say it.

The Sifrei is quoted in this version by four early Midrashic collections — Midrash HaGadol, Pesikta Zutrasa (Lekach Tov), Midrash Chachamim, and Midrash Tannaim on Devarim. All of the major commentators on Sifrei — the commentary attributed to the Raavad, Sifrei Devei Rav, Ohalei Yehudah, and Toldos Adam — likewise determined this to be the correct reading. The manuscripts of the Sifrei also support this version.

To cling instead to the difficult and forced printed text is simply ignorance.

6.

It is remarkable that in attempting to refute what I wrote, Dr. Kaplan quotes statements of his own which confirm exactly what I said.

In his article Kaplan claimed that Techeiles cannot be produced from a dead Janthina. In his words:

“After its death, the Janthina snail is worthless.”

In the continuation, which he again copied into his response, it is clear that a dead Janthina cannot be used for anything.

As is his manner, he uses contradictory wording: on the one hand, “from these fluids one can produce extremely light shades,” while on the other hand he adds, “if at all.” Which statement are we supposed to accept?

This is different from the Murex. After its death one can still produce from its blood murky, light shades which are not stable, and one can also preserve the dye extracted while the animal is alive by drying or freezing it.

Thus, the Murex fits the Gemara’s description, “so that its color should remain clear,” while Janthina does not.

Kaplan then writes as though I claimed that Janthina has no gland at all, as though that were separate from my statement that there is no need to wound it.

In fact, I was making one point. This is what I wrote:

“An important point worthy of note is that the reason no color can be extracted from a dead Janthina is because Janthina has no dye gland. Its color is a secretion used for self-defense, similar to a squid. There is not even a need to break the shell to cause it to release the color; it is enough merely to irritate it. All this is contrary to the explicit language of the Gemara, ‘one who traps a chilazon and wounds it.’ Likewise, the Gemara speaks of ‘the blood of the chilazon’ in Menachos 42b, and it is difficult to call a defensive secretion released while the animal is alive ‘blood.’”

I did not mean that it has no gland whatsoever, but rather that this is not a dye gland. It is a substance secreted for defense.

Kaplan’s statement in his summary that “in this respect, that clear dye is produced only from a living specimen, Janthina and Murex are equal,” directly contradicts what he wrote in his original article, where he claimed this did not fit the Murex at all.

In other words, he was forced to concede that the Murex fits.

7. The color of the chilazon

I am not an expert like Dr. Kaplan in the various Janthina species and their geographic distribution. I merely took the trouble to quote Rabbi Herzog’s view accurately.

According to Rabbi Herzog, the Techeiles chilazon was either Janthina pallida or Janthina prolongata, whose shells are white, and not Janthina janthina, whose shell is light blue.

If, according to Kaplan, the facts differ from what Rabbi Herzog wrote and from what is described in the scientific literature — namely, that Janthina janthina is distributed in warm waters; see HaTecheiles, p. 236, n. 11 — I am not in a position to argue with him.

There is no question that the Murex shell is not blue but greenish, although Kaplan describes it as yellow-brown, and it does not literally fit the description “its body resembles the sea” unless we accept the quite reasonable explanation that Chazal were referring to environmental camouflage.

See photographs 38–39 in HaTecheiles, where the snail blends into its surroundings to the point that it is difficult to notice.

Dr. Kaplan established seven identifying characteristics.

The first fits the Murex very well, especially considering the nature of the Rambam’s description, while it is not clear how well it fits Janthina.

The second fits the Murex even according to Kaplan himself.

The third is extremely general, and we have shown that it cannot be understood in the simplistic, superficial fashion Kaplan presents.

No fully satisfactory explanation of the fourth has yet been given according to any view.

The fifth is entirely unnecessary, and in my opinion there is no reason to debate it.

The sixth fits only the Murex and in no way Janthina.

Only the seventh constitutes a significant proof for Kaplan’s position and presents some difficulty for the Murex identification, although it can be answered, albeit somewhat forcedly.

Regarding the samemanim and the dyeing process: I have never spoken with Dr. Kaplan, nor have I personally watched the procedure which he calls dyeing.

However, I spoke with people who were present during the process, and not one of them understood exactly what chemicals Kaplan was adding to the Janthina secretion.

I was also in written contact with Rabbi Menachem Burstein, who according to Kaplan was present at the procedure, and he too wrote to me that he did not understand the nature of the additives or the process.

As I wrote, Janthina has no actual dye gland — and I emphasize this to prevent another distortion of my words — but rather a defensive secretion which, as far as is known, is not itself considered a dyestuff.

Therefore, if Dr. Kaplan insists that he succeeded in dyeing with the “blood” of Janthina, he will necessarily have to concede either that one of the chemicals he adds is itself a dyestuff, or that the role played by the Janthina secretion is similar to the role played by the cuttlefish secretion in Radzyner Techeiles, v’dal.

In contrast, the only natural animal-derived material which is a true vat dye is the blood of the Murex family. The chemicals added to it are merely fermentation or reduction agents — such as glucose or urine in a natural process — whose purpose is to reduce the dye chemically, not to transform it into a dye.

They are therefore “samemanim,” additives, not coloring agents. Once the dye is absorbed into the wool, nothing of those materials remains — only the pure dye.

Furthermore, in Dr. Kaplan’s own booklet, The Rediscovery of Techeiles, mentioned in Rabbi Dovid Shapira’s article in issue 121, he explicitly states in black and white that the substance he adds is a mordant.

According to his own position, then, the Janthina secretion is a mordant dye.

When someone there asked him:

“How could a mordant dye be stronger than a vat dye, such as indigo or Techeiles from the Murex? And if it is not, then it does not fit what the Rambam writes in Hilchos Tzitzis 2:1, that the color ‘remains beautiful and does not change.’”

Kaplan gave an answer that did not address the question:

“The mordant does not dye at all.”

Later Kaplan writes other puzzling statements which do not fit basic knowledge of dye chemistry, such as the claim that the mordant changes the color of the dyestuff from purple to blue.

This suggests that these statements do not reflect a proper understanding of the dyeing process or its quality.

Regarding Kaplan’s questions on the Murex:

A.

The assumption that argaman comes from the blood of a living creature has a basis in the Yerushalmi, Kilayim 9:1:

“Just as shni tola’as comes from something possessing life, so too everything [mentioned there] comes from something possessing life.”

In addition, it seems that we are not dealing with the same mollusk, but rather with two different members of the Murex family: the Spiny Dye-Murex, Murex brandaris, and the Red-Mouthed Rock Shell, Purpura haemastoma.

B. Regarding the tests for Techeiles

In my opinion, since the materials used in the Gemara’s tests are mordants or chemically active agents, such as alum and urine, their effect would be on mordant dyes and not on vat dyes such as the Murex dyes.

The only animal-derived vat dyes are the dyes of the Murex family.

This itself is a very strong proof for identifying the Murex as the Techeiles chilazon, because chemically the testing substances would have no effect on it.

The real difficulty, therefore, is not the identification of the Murex as the Techeiles chilazon. The difficulty is that kala ilan, plant indigo, is also a vat dye and is chemically identical to animal-derived indigo — meaning the Techeiles color produced from Murex trunculus — after the extraction process as it is performed today.

In essence, I believe that the solution to this problem lies in two interconnected areas.

The first concerns the methods by which Techeiles and plant indigo were extracted historically, which differ from the modern methods used today.

The second concerns the exact color and shade of the Techeiles used for the mitzvah, which was undoubtedly produced, as has already been demonstrated, from the blood of Murex trunculus.

Research into both of these areas is still incomplete.

As an aside, Rabbi Shlomo Sheinman, in his article “The Tests of Techeiles Which I Conducted and a Solution to Basic Problems Concerning Techeiles — Part II,” describes examples of indigo and woad dyed by natural methods. Their colorfastness was poor — apparently because of the quality of the reduction process — in contrast to the Murex dye, which retained its appearance.

I do not know on what basis Kaplan assumes that I came to defend specifically the Techeiles produced by the Ptil Tekhelet organization, to the point that in his conclusion he groups us together as “Rabbi Goldstein and his colleagues.”

My goal in my article was simply to demonstrate that the identification of the Murex chilazon is clear, while the identification with Janthina is untenable from every angle.

I did not come to discuss the precise chemical composition of the different colors that can be produced from the Murex.

As I wrote, in my view the research into this matter is not yet complete.

There are opinions, such as that of Dr. Israel Ziderman mentioned in the response, that the Techeiles produced from Murex is purple tending toward blue. According to that view, its chemical composition is not identical to that of indigo.

There are also methods of producing the same indigo shade used by the Ptil Tekhelet organization without altering the chemical composition of the dye.

This is not the place to go into the matter at length. With Hashem’s help, I hope to discuss it more fully on another occasion.

To summarize: the alleged archaeological evidence for dyeing with Janthina has, at least for now, turned out to be baseless. The supposed historical proof from Roman law has been shown to have no substance. The possibility of producing a proper dye from Janthina remains as unclear as before, and its fit with Chazal’s description of the chilazon is weak, if it exists at all.

The identification of Murex trunculus as the chilazon of Techeiles is supported by the tests and descriptions brought by Chazal — not contradicted by them.

With blessings that Torah be magnified and glorified,

Yaakov Goldstein
Jerusalem