That whole thing about women having one less rib always puzzled me as well. God *took *a rib *from *Adam to create Eve. Shouldn’t Adam be the one missing a rib?
Much as I, as an atheist, enjoy laughing at the many flaws in the Bible, I can’t honestly go along with this one. Just because it doesn’t square with our modern view of taxonomy does not mean it was ‘wrong’ at the time it was written. If it was consistent with contemporary thinking when it was written, then it should be considered to be correct (in that regard at least). The error is on the part of modern commentators not making allowances for changes in usage. Similarly, scoffing at ‘Bats aren’t Birds’ and ‘Whales aren’t Fish’ is not justified. If the the contemporary terminology classified winged-creatures as birds and finned-and-tailed swimming creatures as fish - a perfectly logical system for those with a limited knowledge of biology - then to have called them otherwise would have been erroneous. Ancient texts should be read and understood with reference to ancient customs. To do otherwise is a sign of ignorance IMHO.
Who’s scoffing at anything? I’m just honestly wondering why insects are described as four-legged in this passage, when, in reality, the number of legs they have is 3/2 if that. Real question. No ridiculing going on here. Understanding it with reference to ancient custums is precisely what I would like to do.
I understand that being a scientific, enlightened European you have probably developed a purely rationally-based language, Europeranto or something, but those of us in other benighted countries still occasionally encounter “idiom” now and again. There’s also the small point that Leviticus wasn’t actually written in English, and that even benighted non-European folk are separated culturally from the Hebrews involved by several thousand years.
I realize that you know this on some level, having already mentioned it in a previous reply. But really, ticker has it right: This passage is as clear as anyone has reason to expect, from a translation developed with a balance tilted toward readability from precision, and translated both in language and between such different cultures. Although I’m one of those poor benighted irrational non-European folk, I don’t actually have a complete interlinear Hebrew-English-Europeranto Torah close at hand. However, if they still have the Intarwebs over in Europe you might check them out for some translations and commentaries which would help. Here is an interlinear Hebrew-English translation of Leviticus 11, showing that the “on all fours” of your translation is slightly loose; the literal Hebrew is apparently closer to “on four.” If we are to nitpick, then “on four” doesn’t actually mean that it has only four legs, just that it has at least four. Some commentaries I’ve found online point this out. Later verses indicate that even the Hebrews could count at least past four; some insects are referred to as having “many” feet.
But even this apology is probably silly; I don’t believe even Leviticus was written with that level of nitpicking legalese in mind. The intent of the text was probably to communicate effectively–and given that even you appear to understand the meaning of the text, this goal was apparently reached–rather than to close all possible tent-lawyer loopholes.
This isn’t really anything to do with the topic, but it’s interesting. Apparently Aristotle asserted that flies have four legs and his statement was quoted and repeated in natural history texts for over a thousand years, before someone thought to check if he was right.
It’s because they didn’t want anyone eating the Jerry Seinfeld Bee, or the likeable characters from A Bug’s Life. (Notice that the Grasshoppers are OK to nosh on.)
And, as pointed out, John the Baptist ate locusts. So did Aristotle, and lots of other folks. Our squeamishness about eating bugs is relatively recent. Heck, we only eat certain parts of a cow.
I’ve heard it argued that John the Baptist ate Locust pods (which is another name for carob beans). I don’t know if what has any possibility of being true, and I don’t think it makes any difference anyway, as the Bible doesn’t forbid eating the insect kind of locusts.
Really? I had a locust tree in my backyard, and not even the squirrels would eat the seeds from the pods. The local Baptists expressed no interest. In the last autumn before I had the tree cut down, I filled 24 big paper lawn waste bags, packed hard, with locust pods. None of the bags was attacked by wild critters or health food merchants while we waited for the city pickup. :dubious:
I know these sorts of things get said a lot about Aristotle, but I very much doubt he ever said or wrote anything like this. From On the Parts of Animals, Book 4:
It does indeed appear that Aristotle, though usually a regular provider of these oddball mistakes, is unfairly maligned in this matter. Another strange case of miscounted body parts, though, is the business with Pliny the Elder and the three-balled buzzard (yeah, yeah - band name!).
Pliny’s Natural History, book 11. Latin :
“Testes pecori armentoque ad crura decidui, subus adnexi. delphino praelongi ultima conduntur alvo; et elephanto occulti. ova parientium lumbis intus adhaerent, qualia ocissima in venere. piscibus serpentibusque nulli, sed eorum vice binae ad genitalia a renibus venae. buteonibus terni.”
A translation (the one from 1601 is the only one I found online, sorry):
“Dolphins have these parts very long, and the same lying hidden within the bottome of their bellies. In Elephants likewise they be close and hidden. In as many creatures as doe lay egges, the stones sticke hard to their loines within the bodie: and such bee ever most quicke of dispatch in the act of generation, and soone have done the feat. Fishes and Serpents have none at all, but in stead therof there be two strings or veines reach them from their kidnies to their genitall member. The Buzzard (a kind of Hawke) is provided of three stones.”
Excuse me - buzzards (hawks) has three balls?! Well, no, they don’t, unless one is in the Albert Hall. My guess is that he put that in there just to check if people were paying attention.
Apart from his famous observation that men have more teeth than women, are there really that many oddball mistakes in Aristotle? There are surely a number of things that he got wrong (he thought flies were generated from putrefying matter), but in the context he was working in, they are somewhat understandable.