One hunded bottles of...

[John of Japan]

Even now, the word bottle is still used of non-rigid vessels, not "made of a solid material like glass":

water bottle:

http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/walgreens-water-bottle/ID=prod17205-product

collapsible hydration bottle:

http://www.ultralightdesigns.com/products/hydration/evernew2000.html

Good semantic research! :thumbs:

 

[John of Japan]

Thanks John, that's just what I was looking for!

Many of the other versions (contemporary to their time and eariler) used the term, "vessel".
I wonder why the translators used "bottle" instead?

Rob

Any time!

Translators' choices are hard to figure sometimes, and there's not much out there about why we choose certain words. Modern researchers in secular translation studies are researching the translators more than the methodology nowadays, and that's a good trend I think.

 

[Van]

One of the reasons why translations need to be updated is the meaning of words is affected by the culture. Cool can mean hot. Bottle brings to mind a glass vessel even though other vessels are included in the definition. So choosing words that do our best to convey the message in the current culture may be rendered a poor choice in the future.

Thus choosing a word that describes what the original word meant in the culture it was written for is part of the difficult process of translation. Thus leather wine bag or leather water bag describes what the original authors had in mind and that translation still conveys the idea today. But the translators in the 1600's could not know what their word choices would conjure up 400 years later.

That is why updates are needed.