Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comFausset Bible Dictionary: Silk
Subjects in this Topic:
The English is derived by the change of r and l from sericum, the manufacture of the Chinese (Seres): . Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. is the first who positively mentions the import of the raw material to the island Cos in the Mediterranean (H. A. 5:19). In (shesh) translated "fine linen," not silk. The texture silk was probably known much earlier in western Asia, considering its intercourse with the far East by various routes, namely, from southern China by India and the Persian gulf, or across the Indus through Persia, or by Bactria the route of central Asia, for the SINIM () are the Chinese. Meshi, the other Hebrew term for silk, occurs in ; , from maashah "to draw," fine drawn silk (Pliny 6:20; 11:26, describes the manner). The Bombyx mori, the caterpillar of a sluggish moth, feeding on the mulberry tree, produces the oval-yellow cocoon of silk wound around its own body.