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Textus receptus is THE word of God, and the default on blue letter bible, and rigthly so. The revised version adopted the roman catholic critical text instead of using the majority text plus looking at the church Fathers which became textus receptus. These are just more reasons to love blue letter bible.

Second, although with time tekhelet came to denote the color blue, the exact hue in antiquity is not definitively known. The task is made harder by the tendency of ancient writers to identify colors not so much by their hue, as by other factors such as luminosity, saturation and texture.[26] Modern scholars believe that tekhelet probably referred to blue-purple and blue colors.[25] The color of tekhelet was likely to have varied in practice, as ancient dyers were generally unable to reproduce exact colors from one batch of dye to another.[27]

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In the early classical sources (Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, Vulgate, Philo, and Josephus), tekhelet was translated into Greek as hyakinthos (, "hyacinth") or the Latin equivalent.[26] The color of the hyacinth flower ranges from violet blue to a bluish purple (though the hyacinth species dominant in the eastern Mediterranean, Hyacinthus orientalis, is violet[26]), and the word hyakinthos was used to describe both blue and purple colors.[26]

Early rabbinic sources provide indications as to the nature of the color. Some sources describe tekhelet as visually indistinguishable from indigo (kala ilan).[28] This description is also somewhat ambiguous, as different varieties of indigo have colors ranging between blue and purple,[26] but generally the color of dyed indigo in the ancient world was blue.[29]

Other rabbinic sources describe tekhelet as similar to the sea or sky. An oft-repeated explanation for the Torah's choice of tekhelet went as follows: "Why is tekhelet different from all other colors? Because tekhelet is similar [in appearance] to the sea, and the sea is similar to the sky, and the sky is similar to lapis lazuli, and lapis lazuli is similar to the Throne of Glory."[30] (In a few versions of this source, "plants" (asavim) are included in this chain of similarity even though plants are not blue;[31] though it has been suggested that these sources refer to bluish plants like hyacinth.)[26] Jose ben Jose was another early author who described tekhelet as resembling the sky.[29]

In Akkadian, the cognate word takiltu is written using the word sign also used for lapis lazuli, suggesting they have similar colors.[25] Lapis lazuli can vary between blue and purple-blue, and according to some sources the preferred shade of lapis lazuli in the Near East was purple-blue.[25] However, Mesopotamian mythology asserted that visible sky is a layer of lapis lazuli stone underlying Heaven, suggesting a sky-blue color for the stone.[37]

The Sifrei says that counterfeit tekhelet was made from both "[red] dye and indigo", indicating that the overall color was purple.[38] However, other sources list just "indigo" as the counterfeit,[28] suggesting either that in their opinion the color was purely blue, or that indigo was the main counterfeit ingredient and the other ingredients not significant enough to mention.

The Sippar Dye Text (7th century BCE), as well as the Leyden and Stockholm papyri (3rd century) provide recipes for counterfeit takiltu dye that include a mixture of red and blue colors, for an overall purple color.[25]

A pure blue color can only be produced from Hexaplex dye through a debromination process. Only in the 1980s did modern scientists learn how to create blue Hexaplex dye using this process, leading some experts to declare that ancient dyers would not have been able to create blue tekhelet (and therefore, that an undebrominated purple color is more likely).[26] However, in recent years archaeologists have recovered several fabrics dyed blue with Hexaplex dye 1800 or more years ago, demonstrating that ancient dyers could and did make blue dye from Hexaplex.[29] Such fabrics have been found at Wadi Murabba'at (2nd century),[39] Masada (1st century BCE),[40] Qatna (14th century BCE),[41] and arguably[42] Pazyryk valley (5th-4th century BCE).[29]

Chemically, exposure to sunlight turns the red 6,6'-dibromoindigo in snails into a mixture of blue indigo dye and blue-purple 6-bromoindigo. The leuco (white) solution form of dibromoindigo loses some bromines in the ultraviolet radiation.[62]

Chemical testing of ancient blue-dyed cloth from the appropriate time period in Israel reveals that a sea-snail based dye was used. Since murex dye was available, very long lasting, and visibly indistinguishable from indigo based dyes, but also not specifically prohibited against as counterfeit despite being known, it is argued that murex (or one of the other two indigo producing sea snails) must have been the hilazon or at least deemed as acceptable to use interchangeably.[65]

The Jerusalem Talmud[71] translates tekhelet as porporin; similarly Musaf Aruch translates tekhelet as parpar. These translations refer to the Latin term purpura, meaning the dye produced by Hexaplex snails.[63] Similarly, Yair Bacharach stated that tekhelet was derived from purpura snails, even though this forced him to conclude that the color of tekhelet was purple rather than blue, as in his era it was unknown how to produce blue dye from Hexaplex.[63]

The word porforin, or porpora, or porphoros is used in the midrash as well as many other Jewish texts to refer to the illazon, and this is the Greek[72] translation of Murex trunculus. Pliny and Aristotle also both refer to the Porpura as being the source for purple and blue dyes, showing that the Murex has a long history of being used for blue dye.[23]

The Talmud equates the colors of tekhelet and indigo, but also gives a practical test to distinguish between the two fabrics. Seemingly, since the color-producing compounds in Hexaplex trunculus and indigo are identical, no test should be able to distinguish them.[63][67] However, according to Professor Otto Elsner, while Hexaplex and indigo have the same color-producing compound, they also contain other compounds which differ and may lead to a different response in the practical test.[63] According to Professor Ziderman, the test consists of a chemical reduction reaction occurring when hydrogen is produced by decaying organic matter. Indigo (from a vegetable source) is more strongly reduced than the debrominated indigo found in snail tekhelet (assuming a blue-purple rather than pure blue tekhelet), leading to a different result to the test.[74]

The hillazon's body resembles the sea. This does not appear to be true of Hexaplex. Hexaplex supporters argue that when alive Hexaplex is well camouflaged and has a similar appearance to the sea floor, apparently due to algae which grow on its shell.[63] This shell color can even be blue, similar to the sea.[74]

There are two other snails that produce the same dye as Hexaplex trunculus: Bolinus brandaris and Stramonita haemastoma, so how do we know which one is the illazon? Some argue that dye from any of these species would be valid. Alternatively: Hexaplex trunculus contains more natural indigo and thus is a more natural source for blue tekhelet, and archaeological finds show Hexaplex trunculus being processed separately from snails of the other species, suggesting that a different color was derived from this species.[70]

In 1887, Grand Rabbi Gershon Henoch Leiner, the Radziner Rebbe, researched the subject and concluded that Sepia officinalis (common cuttlefish) met many of the criteria. Within a year, Radziner chassidim began wearing tzitzit with cuttlefish dye. Herzog obtained a sample of this dye and had it chemically analyzed. The chemists concluded that it was a well-known synthetic dye "Prussian blue" made by reacting Iron(II) sulfate with an organic material. In this case, the cuttlefish only supplied the organic material which could have as easily been supplied from a vast array of organic sources (e. g., ox blood). Herzog thus rejected the cuttlefish as the illazon and some[who?] suggest that had Leiner known this fact, he too would have rejected it based on his explicit criterion that the blue color must come from the animal and that all other additives are permitted solely to aid the color in adhering to the wool.[80]

Within his doctoral research on the subject of Tekhelet, Herzog placed great hopes on demonstrating that Hexaplex trunculus was the genuine illazon. However, having failed to consistently achieve blue dye from Hexaplex, he wrote: If for the present all hope is to be abandoned of rediscovering the illazon Shel Tekhelet in some species of the genera Murex [now "Hexaplex"] and Purpura we could do worse than suggest Janthina as a not improbable identification".[81] Janthina is a genus of sea snails, separate from Hexaplex. More recently, blue dye has been obtained from Hexaplex and the pigment molecule itself is hypothesized to be Tyrian Purple or Aplysioviolin.[82] Janthina seems an unsuitable candidate in several ways: it was apparently only rarely used by ancient dyers; it is found far out at sea (while the hilazon is apparently found near the coast); and its pigment is allegedly unsuitable for dying.[74]

In 2002 Dr. S. W. Kaplan of Rehovot, Israel, sought to investigate Herzog's suggestion that Tekhelet came from the extract of Janthina. After fifteen years of research he concluded that Janthina was not the ancient source of the blue dye.

Maimonides holds that half of one string should be colored blue and it should wrap around the other seven white strings. It should wrap around three times and then leave some space and then three more and leave some more space and should continue like this for either 7 or 13 groups. The first and last wrap around should be from a white string not a blue string.[90] e24fc04721