Sunday 18 July 2010

'Salt' Can Lose its Saltiness - True or False?

Someone said the Bible includes a mistake of fact - by saying that salt can lose its saltiness.

But something can legitimately be called 'salt' even though it may not be pure NaCl.

For example, food-grade table salt is usually only 97-99% NaCl. It often has iodine, magnesium carbonate, fluoride or folic acid in it. If it's wrong to call it 'salt' - what should we call it?

82.5% of the world's 'salt' is industrial salt which is even less pure than table salt - but for all intents and purposes we still call it 'salt'.

Salt wasn't always pure sodium chloride in Jesus' day either. I've seen rock salts which are slightly greyish in colour due to mineral content. I've also seen salt which is yellowish in colour due to folic acid content.

When such a rock salt becomes damp or wet, some of the sodium chloride leaches out with the moisture, with the result that the remaining rock salt becomes less 'salty' in flavour.

That's probably what Jesus was talking about I imagine. Whatever He meant, everyone evidently readily understood His analogy - for there is no record that anyone disagreed with him over His assessment of the properties of 'salt'.

So if someone wants to cite an alleged mistake of fact in the Bible, they'll have to cite something else.

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