In other words, when the various parts of the Testaments were being written, what animal were they thinking of when they say “lion”? As in the Lion of Judah, or when Satan is described as being a roaring lion in the book of Peter, or when Samson killed the lion (only ones I can think of at the moment.). Were there lions in the area, or was it an animal that they had heard of and it sounded impressive?
Lions used to be much more widespread. They lived in Europe and the Middle East stretching to India in historical times. There is still a very small population of lions in the Gir Forest of India. If you read Greek mythology you’ll see heroes and demigods fighting lions all through Greece. Lions weren’t exactly common, but they weren’t legendary creatures either.
Lions used to live in North America, but they went extinct here much earlier with the rest of the Pleistocene megafauna.
From the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History entry on Panthera leo:
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Lion Panthera leo:
Yep – think of Pyramus and Thisbe (from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the threatening lion. Or Androcles and the lion. Or Hercules ith the Nemean Lio (that he made into his headpiece), r all those lions in Aesop’s fables.
Didn’t the arms of England at the time feature three golden lions?
As far back as Henry VII’s time*, foriegn leaders sent him live lions for the zoo the king kept in the Tower of London. The menagerie was a very popular attraction among Londoners, so even the commoners could see a live lion.
- The time period with which I’m most familiar is the Tudor era. There might have been lions in the royal menagerie before that time.
I’ve read that the Romans killed them off in the arena, along with the elephants of North Africa.
As far as I’m aware, the lions in Europe were already extinct in classical times, although they may have been alive recently before. The North African elephant population only died out circa 300-400 CE.
Yeah, that was the reason I asked. I thought the Romans had them shipped in from away for their games, so I assumed that was where the Christians saw them.
European Lion (Leo leo europaea)
(More recently classified as Panthera leo europaea, the European lion is treated as a separate species from the lion we know today, but there is not much information on it.)
Wiki’s European Lion and redundant Lions in Europe articles.
Except the examples you give in your OP (and I would add Daniel in the lions’ den) are all Old Testament references, written by the Jews centuries before there were any Christians around (or Romans, for that matter). And presumably when there were still wild lions in the Middle East.
Whoops, sorry, obviously the epistles of Peter are in the New Testament. It’s getting late here…
There are low relief sculptures from Babylon and Persia of kings and nobles hunting lions. These pre-date the Exodus (which was about 1200 BCE, I think). Surely they were known through out the Middle East. Alexander the Macedonian, the Greek hero Hercules and Roman Legion standard bearers are portrayed as wearing a lion head headdress. Lions were a pretty common motive through out the ancient world.
The things on the English-British coat of arms are leopards. The confusion comes in with King Richard (the Lion Hearted) and political cartoonists using a lion to represent the Empire – like the ones at the foot of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square. The other things holding up the coat of arms are an Unicorn and a lion– make what you will of that. I suppose that those old imperialists though a lion (strong, bold, noisy) was a better symbol than a leopard (sneaky, treacherous, spotted).
There was also trade with Africa. Solomon imported ivory, apes and baboons from Africa (through Phoenician middlemen) for his palace/temple complex.
In heraldry, the only difference between a lion and a leopard is its position.
Indeed?
Minor nit:
Trinomial names specify genus, species, and subspecies, so Panthera leo europaea is defined as a separate subspecies from the African lion, not a separate species.
Again from the L.A. Natural History Museum, the American lion is another species within Panthera, P. altrox.
Panthera atrox is also sometimes considered a subspecies of P. leo (P. leo atrox)
Of similar vintage was the extinct Cave Lion Panthera leo spelea (or P. spelea), which lived in Europe and across much of Asia during the Pleistocene.
They actually are intended to be lions, except that in heraldry a lion was often called a “leo-pardé.”
I was actually reading about this recently - there’s no scholarly consensus on a) where the traders went, b) what they bought and c) if it happened. A good deal of ink has been spilled on ‘Ophir’.