Draft:Tachash


 * Comment:, I was looking at the draft and read your comments. You haven't tagged the article at all, so it is not possible to tell what you believe is WP:OR and where you think WP:NPOV is an issue and which headings you think do not meet MOS:SECTIONTITLE. Can you tag the article, and include the reasoning in the appropriate tag field, so other editors can see what you are referring to? If you can ping me or the author when done, I'll take a look to see if I can fix the article.
 * Also asked you this question 16 days ago, in response to your AfC message,, but I cannot see where you have replied. If you are going to review articles, you need to reply to author's requests for clarification; you have been reviewing other articles since then, please review articles you have reviewed and reply to any questions from authors. See WikiProject Articles for creation, "a willingness and ability to respond in a timely manner to questions." I know I have missed author's questions before, so I understand they can be missed. If you have replied somewhere (again I know these discussions can get spread out into many pages and sections) and I missed it, please let me know where.  // Timothy :: talk  22:35, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Tachash or Tahash (in Hebrew תחש) is a type of leather that was used in the Tabernacle. There are different opinions about the meaning and identity of 'tachash',  from ancient times to the present day. Some said it is the name of the animal from whose skin the leather was made, and many opinions exist about which animal it was. Some said it is a type of leather processing or dye for the skin of any animal.

The Tachash in pre-modern literature
The Bible says that the tabernacle and some of its vessels were covered by tachash skins. According to Ezekiel the Children of Israel made shoes of tachash skin while journeying in the wilderness. Nothing else is mentioned in the Bible about the meaning of the tachash, or any of its characteristics.

The Septuagint and Vulgate translations translated 'tachash' as 'hyacinth-colored'. Onkelos translated it as 'colorful' or 'brilliant'.

In the Talmudic literature there are several opinions. Some thought it to be skin dyed altinon (Greek ἁληδινον) seemingly purple. Some maintained that the tachash was a legendary creature that existed in the time of Moses and was afterward hidden. Others gave additional signs: that it was a clean animal, that it had multicolored skin, and that it was identical with the keresh, the legendary unicorn. The suggested name keresh corresponds to the Greek word κέρας (keras=horn) in the name μονόκερως (monokerōs) that Greek sources gave to the mythical unicorn around that time.

Rashi and Ibn Ezra think tachash is the name of an animal, but make no attempt at identification.

In Martin Luther's translation, and following that in the King James translation, the word tachash was translated as a badger. Luther's translation was based on the phonetic similarity between 'tachash' and 'dachs' (badger in German). This is now considered a flawed translation as there is no real linguistic connection between Hebrew and German.

Identifying the Tachash in modern research
There are several opinions in modern research today about the identity of the tachash. The most common is that it is the marine mammal Dugong dugon, that lives in the Red Sea surrounding Sinai desert, which means it was familiar to the people living there. The name of this animal in Arabic is tukhesh, and the Bedouins living in Sinai still use the skins of the dugong to create shoes, which corresponds to the verse from Ezekiel 16:10.

Another common opinion is that the word tachash comes from the Akkadian word dušû , which is similar in pronunciation to tachash, and it represents a technique of sewing blue beads from faience onto leather for the purpose of producing different colored effects. Alternatively in ancient Egyptian, the root ' ths' seems to mean a kind of 'stretched leather'. The zoologist Israel Aharoni believed, on the other hand, that the tachash was the narwhal, a type of whale, with a long tusk (up to three meters). Its main skin color is yellowish but his skin is mottled with multiple dark spots. Aharoni speculated that it is possible that a herd of these creatures came across the Sinai desert area through the Strait of Gibraltar and was thrown onto land and from there the Israelites collected it. Aharoni noted that these features correspond to what some the opinions in the Talmud said about an animal with one horn, spotted, and which appeared only for the moment and then disappeared, because the natural location of this animal is in the arctic regions, and only rarely do some of it appear in more southern regions (there is evidence of this animal rarely reaching Britain and Spain). Others suggested other types of marine mammals, such as seals or dolphins.

Others hypothesized that it was the giraffe, because of its colorful skin, and the horned protrusion on the middle of its forehead which corresponds to the Talmudic statement that "he had one horn on his forehead". Others speculated it was the giraffe's relative the okapi.

The word Tachash is modern Hebrew
In modern Hebrew the word Tachash has several meanings. At first it meant badger (following Luther's Bible translation). This meaning is now obsolete. The current meanings are the dachshund dog (as it was bred to hunt badgers) and the dugong.