Science
in Christian PerspectiveScience
in Christian Perspective
Letter
[ 'min' not 'species']
From JASA 10 (December 1958): 22.
Editor:
I
have read with dismay the attempt to show that
min in the Bible is to be equated with the term "species." For that seems to be the implication of
The Concept of "Kinds" In Scripture.
Certainly, as note 24 says, "Moses was not aware of modern taxonomy!", also "The Hebrew words may have less precise meanings than the classification of the chart suggests."
Much harm is done Christian's view on such is difficult to define.
To take the Bible language, which in this instance may be compared to the language an adult might use to explain phenomena to a child just learning to talk, as if it were meant to be like 20th Century technical terminology is absurd. Too, the method used in the article assumes that the Bible terms are of uniform meaning, which is not always true.
Our task in this passage is not to show what the ultimate truth is (for it is religiously irrelevant). but only to show that there is no necessary contradiction between natural facts and the biblical narrative.
Genesus defines min as equivalent to the Latin 'species" with emphasis on form, that is, "form" that meets the eye, This would mean that God made animals, differing in appearance, of various kinds. Genisius adds, "but also kind, sort." Certainly these are non-technical terms of wide latitude.The big blunder of 19th Century orthodoxy was the foisting upon trusting Christians the erroneous idea that because God told the creature to reproduce (bring forth after their kind), the Bible taught the fixity of species, a totally unwarranted inference.
Surely, we do not wish to keep on repeating such errors.
May God bless us all.(The Editor changed the writers Hebrew symbols to the italicized min)