Corn

Corn There are several words thus translated in the English version of the Scriptures, in which it is used in the proper sense of grain of any kind, and never in the American application of maize or "Indian corn" (Zea mays of Linn.), which it is generally thought was anciently unknown. In 1817, Parmentier (Nouveau Dictionnaire d'Hist. Naturelle, vol. 18), founding on the silence of Varro, Columella, Pliny, and the other agricultural and botanical writers of classical antiquity, concluded that maize was unknown till the discovery of America; and in 1834 Meyer asserted that "nothing in botanical geography is more certain than the New-World derivation of maize" (quoted by Duchartre in Orbigny's Dict. d'Hist. Natur.). But since then, in the magnificent monograph (Hist. Naturelle du Mais, 1836), M'. Bonafous, the director of the Royal Garden of Agriculture at Turin, has shown that it is figured in a Chinese botanical work as old as the middle of the sixteenth century — a time when the discoveries of Columbus could scarcely have penetrated to the Celestial Empire; and; what is more conclusive, in 1819 M. Rifaud discovered under the head of a mummy at Thebes not only grains, but leaves of Indian corn. Nor is it at all impossible that the ζειά of Homer and Theophrastus may include the plant in question. The wide diffusion of this corn through the Indian archipelago, and on the Indian continent itself, is in favor of the hypothesis which claims it as a native of the Old World; and if it was known to the Egyptians, nothing could be more natural than its early introduction into Palestine. See CEREALS.

1. The word דָּגָן, dagan' (from its increase), which is rendered grain," "corn," and sometimes "wheat" in the Auth. Vers., is the most general of the Hebrew terms representing "corn," and is more comprehensive than any word in our language, seeing that it probably includes not only all the proper cereals, but also various kinds of pulse and seeds of plants, which we never comprehend under the name of "corn," or even of "grain." It may therefore be taken to represent all the commodities which we describe by the different words corn, grain, seeds, pease, beans. Among other places in which this word occurs, see Ge 27:28-37; Nu 18:27; De 28:51; La 2:12,. etc. See GRAIN.

2. There is another word, בִּר bar (i e. winnowed), which denotes any kind of cleansed corn, that is, corn purified from the chaff and fit for use (Ge 41:35-49; Pr 11:26; Jer 4:11; Joe 2:24). The same word is more rarely used to describe corn in a growing state (Ps 65:13). It elsewhere signifies the open "fields" or country. See LAND.