Teil tree
Encyclopedia
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the etymology of teil as Latin tilia and Old French (13-15th c.) til. In Modern French it is tilleul. The French and Latin word cognates appeared amongst the English literate classes starting in the 14th century. Most names of trees, however, kept their Germanic origins, hence linden and lime (a deformation of lind according to the OED). The linden or til tree is native to northern Europe and Asia. In various versions of Protestant Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

s the til is sometimes confused with the terebinth
Terebinth
Pistacia terebinthus, known commonly as terebinth and turpentine tree, is a species of Pistacia, native to the Canary Islands, and the Mediterranean region from the western regions of Morocco, and Portugal to Greece and western Turkey...

, which is a tree native to southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. One variety of terebinth furnishes the pistachio
Pistacia
Pistacia is a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae. It contains ten to twenty species that are native to Africa and Eurasia from the Canary Islands, whole Africa, and southern Europe, warm and semi-desert areas across Asia, and also North America from Mexico to warm and...

 nut and the thick bark of the tree is a source of a highly valued varnish and particular turpentine (Modern French, térébenthine). The English and French translations in the Roman Catholic Douay Bible from the Vulgate
Vulgate
The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...

 do not confuse the two trees.

The Easton's Bible Dictionary
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897)
Easton's Bible Dictionary generally refers to the Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, by Matthew George Easton, M.A., D.D. , published in 1897 by Thomas Nelson. Because of its age, it is now a public domain resource. It contains nearly 4,000 entries relating to the Bible, from a 19th...

 (1897) says that Teil tree is an old name for the linden tree, the tilia
Tilia
Tilia is a genus of about 30 species of trees native throughout most of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The greatest species diversity is found in Asia, and the genus also occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but not western North America...

 (also known as "lime tree" in the UK).

The name was used in the King James Version of the Bible
King James Version of the Bible
The Authorized Version, commonly known as the King James Version, King James Bible or KJV, is an English translation of the Christian Bible by the Church of England begun in 1604 and completed in 1611...

 for the Hebrew word "elah", a word that more modern translations translate as "terebinth
Terebinth
Pistacia terebinthus, known commonly as terebinth and turpentine tree, is a species of Pistacia, native to the Canary Islands, and the Mediterranean region from the western regions of Morocco, and Portugal to Greece and western Turkey...

" or "oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...

– this seems to be the chief source of Web references to the name, but the linden tree does not grow in the middle east where the Bible verses were describing, so it seems unlikely that the KJV translation was correct.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK