Gordon,
I I think its a mistake to assume the ancients knew or cared about what
21st century biologistss meant by taxonomy. the key category for the writer
of Leviticus was clean and unclean. For him, a bat was an unnatural type of
bird and therefore unclean.A rabbit was an abnormal type of cud chewing
animal, and therefore also unclean. Had he known that a rabbit did not chew
his cud, he may reassigned the rabbit to the clean category.In any case, it
is crystal clear that the writer was mistaken about the characteristics of
these animals.
-----Original Message-----
From: gordon brown [mailto:gbrown@euclid.Colorado.EDU]
Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 3:36 PM
To: Shuan Rose
Cc: Asa
Subject: RE: sciDocument.rtf
Shuan,
I think that it is a mistake to assume that the ancients used the same
taxonomy as 21st century biologists. Thus we can't expect to
find exact equivalents for translations of general categories. It appears
to me that the first division the Old Testament makes is to distinguish
land animals, marine animals, and animals that fly in the air. See Genesis
1 and Leviticus 11.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, Shuan Rose wrote:
> I would say that the author in this case was not a biologist and was
> unconcerned about such things as how many legs an insect had, or whether a
> bat was a bird or flying mammal. His concern was telling the ordinary
person
> of his time which animals were clean, and which unclean. Even today, many
> laymen in modern society would not know if a bat was a bird, or the true
> number of legs on insects. You don't need to be stupid not to know things
> outside your experience, or area of expertise.
>
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