bdellium (b silent)

[In Ger. and Fr. bdellium; Port. bdellio; Lat, bdellium and bedell a; Gr. βδέλλιον ( bdellion ). Apparently akin also to Heb. בְּוֹלַח ) bedholachh ), from ( badhal ) = to separate, to select.] I. Scripture. The "bdellium" of Scripture is in Heb. בְּרֹלַח ) bedholachh ) (see etym.), rendered in the Septuagint of Gen. ii. 12 ἄνθραξ ( anthrax ) (literally, burning coal) = the carbuncle, ruby, and garnet ( Liddell and Scott ), the red sapphire ( Dana ); whilst in Numb. xi. 7 it is translated κρύσταλλος ( krustallos ) =... rock crystal. Some modern writers, following the Septuagint translation, make it a mineral, as are the "gold" and the "onyx stone" with which it is a ociated in Gen. ii. 12. Others think that it was the gum described under II. and III. 2; while the Rabbins, Bochart, and Gesenius consider that it was a pearl or pearls. "And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx-stone." Gen. ii. 12. "And the manna was as coriander-seed, and the colour thereof as the colour of bdellium ."- Numb . xi. 7. I. Cla . Nat. Hist . The bdellium of Pliny was once supposed to have been the gum of the Palmyra Palm, Bora us flabelliform is , but was more probably a Balsa mod end ron, apparently B. Mukul (III. 2). III. Modern Botany, Old Pharmacy, and Commerce: 2. The bdellium of the Persian Gulf : A gum resin derived from Balsa mod end ron Mukul . 3. African bdellium : Two gum resins, the one from Balsa mod end ron Africanum, which grows in Aby in i a and Western Africa; the other from a composite plant, Ceradia furcata . (Treas. of Bot .)