Animals

The ot describes vividly the animals that were known to the ancient Hebrews and thereby provides a comprehensive overview of the former animal life in Palestine. Anecdotes depict how animals ranging from the camel to the flea affected the life of the Hebrews, whether as domestic animals providing food, wool, or transport, as game animals, or preying carnivores, or as parasites or as a disease vector. Apart from this secular importance, animals figured prominently in Hebrew religious ritual as sacrifices. In addition, the Bible uses animals to illustrate certain abstract concepts; for instance, the lion symbolizes danger, the horse signifies warfare, and the ass signifies peace.

While we commonly use the word ‘animals’ to mean all living creatures that are not plants, the ot seems to use it usually in the sense of ‘mammals,’ since ‘animals’ are distinguished from birds, reptiles, and fish. For instance, in Gen. 1:24-25 God creates the animals on the sixth day of his work, the fishes and birds having been called into life the day before (Gen. 1:20-23).

Clean and Unclean: A distinction is sometimes made between wild and domestic animals (see Gen. 3:14), but there is a crucial separation into ritually clean (and therefore also edible) and unclean animals, as specified in Lev. 11:1-47 and Deut. 14:3-21a. Gen. 7:2-3 implies the difference in status between these two categories: Noah is ordered to take into the ark seven pairs each of the animals that are chosen for sacrifice and eating, while of all the others a single pair suffices (but see Gen. 6:19-20). Animals allowed as food in the ot are all those that both chew the cud (or ruminate) and have cloven hooves (Lev. 11:2-3; Deut. 14:6). They are enumerated in Deut. 14:4-5 and include cattle, sheep, goats, deer, gazelles, roedeer, wild goats, ibex, antelope, and mountain sheep. All these species were once extant in or around Palestine and in zoological terms are all members of the suborder Ruminantia of the order Artiodactyla. In the nt, however, such provisions for identifying ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ animals were understood to have been set aside with the coming of Jesus (Mark 7:19; see also Acts 10:10-16).

Specifically mentioned as unclean in Lev. 11:4-7 are the camel, the coney (‘rock badger’), the hare, and the pig (‘swine’). The first three (as it was thought) all ruminate but do not have cloven hooves; the opposite applies to the swine. Of all aquatic and marine animals only those that have scales and fins are declared clean (Lev. 11:9-10). Unclean birds are listed in Lev. 11:13-19. Also forbidden to the Hebrews to be eaten were all flying insects (with the exception of locusts and the like; see Matt. 3:4), animals that walk on paws (i.e., carnivores), and the mole, the rat, the lizard, the gecko, the mouse, the snail, and the chameleon (Lev. 11:29-30). Not only was it forbidden to eat unclean animals, one was not supposed to even touch them (Lev. 11:8). Leviticus issues regulations about every creature or item that has touched a dead body, for these were also considered unclean (Lev. 11:31-40). Even clean animals that died a natural death were taboo (Deut. 14:21).

In Israelite Religious Ritual: As mentioned above, animals also played a fundamental role in Israelite ritual sacrifices, and detailed instructions about the procedures to be followed and the types of animals to be offered were given (Deut. 16:1-4; 17:1; Lev. 1:1-7:38). In general it is the animals ‘from the herd or from the flock’ that are asked for (Lev. 1:2)—cattle, goats, and sheep. To the Israelites as herdsmen whose wealth was measured in numbers of such animals, these were especially precious. All firstborn male animals were to be sacrificed (Deut. 15:19) in an annual ceremonial feast unless something was wrong with them (Deut.15:21). However, just as the nt understood the coming of Jesus to have abolished the categories of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ animals, so the nt also viewed Christ’s death on the cross as a sacrifice that brought to an end all need for further sacrifices (e.g., Heb. 7:27; 9:12; 10:10).

The equation of the ot references to animals with the animal species we recognize today has always presented a formidable problem, and as a consequence there is great variation in the different translations. For example, one term (Heb. beth yaشanah) is translated ‘ostrich,’ ‘owl,’ and ‘eagle owl’ in the various versions of the Bible. There are several reasons for these difficulties. First, the Hebrews did not necessarily distinguish between similar species and sometimes they lumped two or more together under one term. One word (nesher), for instance, seems to identify both the eagle and the vulture. Second, the early European interpreters of the Bible had little knowledge of zoology and much less of the wildlife of Palestine. As they were not familiar with gazelles, they translated the Hebrew for gazelle (tsebi) as ‘roedeer,’ which was better known to Europeans. Matters were further complicated by the fact that many animal species that were common in Palestine when the Bible was written have since become extinct in that location, for instance, the lion, the ostrich, the fallow deer, the onager, and some antelope species. As a consequence, there are still several animal terms that cannot be translated with certainty.

Birds

Feathered, winged vertebrates. Palestine is blessed with an extremely rich bird life and, due to its geographical location, it witnesses twice yearly the great bird migrations between Africa and Europe. Unfortunately, due to ruthless hunting, the numbers have been greatly declining in the last few years.

Of the three collective terms for birds used in the Bible, one is translated as ‘flier’ (Heb. شoph), another means literally ‘owner of a wing’ (Heb. baصal kanap), and a third means ‘winged’ or ‘flying’ (Gk. peteinon). Furthermore, birds in the ot were classified either as ‘screamers’ (Heb. شayit) or as ‘twitterers’ (Heb. tsippor). To the former belonged most of the raptorial birds, such as birds of prey and owllike birds, and to the latter the passerine (sparrowlike) birds.

Important for Jewish ritual in the ot is the distinction between clean and unclean birds, although such distinctions no longer held for the nt. There are twenty unclean ‘birds’ listed in Lev. 11:13-19 and in Deut. 14:11-20. These are: the eagle, metire (‘vulture’), osprey, falcon, kite, raven, ostrich, nighthawk, seagull, hawk, owl, cormorant, ibis, marsh hen (‘water hen’), pelican, vulture, stork, heron, hoopoe, and bat. Most of these are raptors. The bat of course is not a bird, but a mammal. Some have speculated that the reason behind the taboo on all these is that they are considered carnivorous or at least partly so, and therefore might have had contact with a corpse or with blood. The inclusion of the strictly vegetarian hoopoe, however, calls such speculation into question.

The clean birds, which are not specifically listed but are mentioned throughout the ot, are, for instance, the pigeon, the partridge, the quail, and the passerines, which are all vegetarians. All of them feature as important sources of food in different circumstances (cf. Matt. 10:29; Luke 12:6). Concerning birds as sacrifices, Lev. 1:14 specifies that turtledoves or young pigeons should be chosen for burnt offerings (see Luke 2:24).

In the Gospels, birds are used by Jesus as illustrations of God’s providence (Matt. 6:26) or as examples of items of very little value (Luke 12:6-7, 24). Yet even they have a security denied the Son of man (Matt. 8:20).