The KJV of the Bible repeatedly talks about corn. Does this strike anyone else as rather odd?

Question

Example:

Gen 42:1-5
1 Cor 9:9

LOL: It is a new world grain.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-04/du-poc033004.php

Answer 1

A couple thousand years ago, corn was a very important commodity.

Answer 2

The Holy Bible Douay-Rheims Version

With Challoner Revisions 1749-52
1899 Edition of the John Murphy Company

IMPRIMATUR:
James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, September 1, 1899.

Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546.

The DR New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D. The DR Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D. The first King James Version was not published until 1611. This online DRV contains all 73 books, including the seven Deutero-Canonical books (erroneously called Apocrypha by Protestants). These seven books were included in the 1611 KJV, but not in later KJV Bibles.

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752 A.D. The notes included in the text were written by Dr. Challoner.

The DR Bible was photographically reproduced from the 1899 edition of the John Murphy Company, Baltimore, Maryland, by Tan Books in 1971. Eventually, this edition was optically scanned to produce a large text file which this publisher used for creating this website, with the aid of text-processing software.

One important goal of this project was to preserve the original text "as is", without making any changes in the wording, because the original text had the Imprimatur of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, dated Sept 1st 1899.

The text file was checked quite thoroughly by software written by the publisher for punctuation errors and verses out of order. The index was humanly checked for misspelled words and the corrections were made to the text. However, some spelling errors may still be present in the text. Many verses were out of order in the original file. These have been corrected.

Every effort was made to ensure that this online version is an exact match to the original printed version. No words were added or ommitted from the text, except for correcting errors caused by the scanning process. No words were rearranged. No verse numbers were changed, except in the case of Psalm 9.

Psalm 9 originally contained 21 verses and there were 2 versions of Psalm 10, numbering 1-18 and 1-8. This obviously caused a conflict, so it was decided to make the first Psalm 10 as the last part of Psalm 9 and renumber the verses 22-39. This retains the same numbering as all the Douay Rheims. Note, in the Protestant Bibles the numbering of Psalms 10 through 146 differs by one.

Answer 3

Is it because Corn Originated in the New World?

The Maze of the New World was called Corn by the Colonists. It is an Old World Name given to a New World Crop.

Answer 4

To the English of King James time "corn" was wheat and other grain plants. What we refer to as "corn" in this country is actually New World maize.

This mistake is made all the time - I actually saw a documentary once on Discovery that purported to be scenes from ancient Egypt. In the background, the actors were carrying baskets of modern yellow corn. Not possible. That's someone who misunderstood what early European archaeologists meant when they used the word "corn" in their field reports.

UPDATE: For those people who are clearly confused, corn as we know it today came from the New World - the Americas. That's why the questioner was surprised to see its reference in the Bible. It's a translation problem!! A lot of the foods we enjoy - potatoes, tomatoes, most squashes, etc are all New World plants. They didn't eat them "overseas" before 1492!!

Answer 5

must say you put me through the hoops on this one. In the strongs concordance there is a little a in the position normally used for an asterick. That means there is a translation problem of some kind but in looking through those areas where normally one would find the reason and meaning of that little a bugger I fopund nothing. Guess it means one of the ideas given above. Tell you what I did learn there is a hebrew and greek words section in the back of my concordance with lotsa good stuff so thanks.

A translation difficulty. Wonder how I missed this word it is just the kind of thing I usually hone in on

Answer 6

Corn is the old English word for the fruit of a plant that you eat.Wheat corn would be what we call ,kernel,same with oats and barley.Don't make something out of nothing.That's why the English who came to America in the 1600s called the "corn" kernal corn,and the name just stuck.

Answer 7

Ummmm Corn

Answer 8

Corn was used in old english to refer to the produce of grain or kernel type producing plants in the same way that fruit is used to refer to a broad range of produce from trees and bushes.

Answer 9

From an atheist. "Corn" was common English usage for any old grain. It could even be used to mean salt.

UPDATE: Obviously most folks don't appreciate that the corn we think of these days is a new world crop.

Answer 10

Nope it sure don't. Corn is good with some butter on it and a tad of salt.