Wow, that does explain a lot. I mean, what was the whole deal with telling Abraham to sacrifice his son, only to pull that back at the last minute? Or telling Moses to go tell Pharaoh to release the Hebrews, but oh “he will not listen” (because He plans to harden his heart), and now for some smiting?
Cat. Yes. I see.
No, that’s not it. God is bipolar.
Teh kitteh was long a devil incarnate in European Christianity (indeed it’s been suggested the great plagues were sped along by a lack of predators against rats). Could the King James Bible have suppressed mention of Felis catus for just these reasons?
Interesting. Many people have told me that the sole source of knowledge is The Bible. Since no cats are mentioned, they clearly do not exist. So that furry thing sitting 4 feet from me now must be a Satan-induced hallucination.
Suppression in one late vernacular European language wouldn’t mean much nowadays, even if it had happened. The Bible was written long before the English were Christian, after all, and Hebrew and Greek texts are regularly read and re-translated into the vernacular.
Cats were (and are) strongly associated with witches but “a devil incarnate” seems a bit strong. If that were true, wouldn’t the habit of keeping domestic cats have been discouraged? It would also be nice to have a cite for the suggestion that a decline in the cat population hastened the spread of Bubonic Plague; my impression was that a population with no immunity living in close proximity to each other and infrequent laundering of outerwear were more salient factors.
And we study the cat-echism to learn dog-ma.
There is also the effect of translation to consider:-
The ‘coney’ [European rabbit] was the word the translators of the Authorised Version used, though the original animal was probably the Egyptian hyrax.
Wait, I thought that it was only those things that do chew the cud that were kosher, not those that don’t. After all, cows chew their cud, and there’s kosher beef.
If they chew their cud and have split hooves, they’re kosher. If they don’t do both, then they’re not.
And one of the reasons cats aren’t mentioned in the bible was because domestic cats were associated with Egypt, and the ancient Israelites weren’t all that fond of Egypt.
They have to both chew their cud and have cloven hooves.
All right, so we’ve established that cats aren’t kosher…
Does that mean that Orthodox Jewish men don’t…ummmm…you know…?
Eat ham or rabbit? That’s correct.
One cite for said suggestion.
Googling [ cats bubonic plague ] will reveal others.
The King James Bible mistranslated the word for cat as “serpent”.
Cats, as everyone know, are six feet tall, have green scaly skin, and eat little babies. The only reason we think they’re soft and cute is that they have very good PR.
Cats are mentioned a few times in the Hindu Laws of Manu. From chapter 4:
(tr. George Bühler) Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Verse 195 shows up in the appendix of C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man this way: “He who is cruel and calumnious has the character of a cat.”
Don’t what?
Edit: Ohhh, I think I see what you did there…
Is beaver kosher?
Choke the chicken?