Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 1.djvu/583

Rh ANIMALS 517 ANIMALS as, St. Roche, with a dog; St. Hubert, with a stag; St. Jerome, with a lion; St. Peter, with a cock; St. Paul the Meniiit, with a raven, etc. The Bible, also, gives .>ioine motives, as the ram of Isaac, the golden calf, the brazen serpent. The artistic value of such varied productions, whether painted or carved, can- not he too niucli praised or studied. With the four- tceulh century, animals become less frcf)uent in ico- nograpliy. The fifteenth and si.xteenth centuries use them again, liut <i)picd more clo.sely from life, usu- ally of small size, and without any intention of sym- t)oIism. One finds now rats, snakes, rabbits, snails, lizards, etc. With the Renaissance, animals were nearly banished, except as an accessory to the hu- man figure. Modern Christian art, being mostly temimrary revivals of one or another period of the art of other ages, takes the symbols and decoration of the period under revival, without adding anything new. The study of animals, therefore, though adding much of value and interest to profane art, did not produce any results in church sculpture or painting wortli mentioning. NoRTHcoTE ..u Brownlow, Ronuj Sotierraneo (London, 1870); LuBKE, Hittory of Sculpture (London, 1872); Babbct DE Jouy. Lea mosaiquea chrHiennea (Paris. 18(i3^; Bond, Gothic Architecture in England (London, 1900): Viollet-le- Duc, Dictionnaire raiaonni de VarchHecture fran^aiae tlu XI (lu XVI aiicU (Paris, 1858); de Baudot, La aculpture fran^iae au moyen dge el ta renaiaaance (Paris, 1885). Paul P. Cret. Animals in the Bible. — The Bible makes no prcten.sion.s to science; we must not therefore expect to meet in its pages willi any kind of elaborate clas.sification, whetlier zoological or otherwise. The sacretl books, on the other hand, were composed by, and for a people almost exclusively given to hus- banilry and pastoral hfe, hence in constant com- munication with nature. To such a people references to the animal worlil. animal customs, etc., are quite natural, and the more animals abounded in the countrj'. the more frequent and varied these allu.sions may be expected to be. In point of fact, the names of a large number of animals — over a hundred and twenty species — occur in the Scriptures. A clo.ser examination of the way in which references to animals are introiluced, the frequency of allusions to certain .species, and the date of tiie documents in which they are found, may give a fair idea of the conditions of the countrj' at the different stages of its history. The species, for instance, called in Hebrew re'em, verj' probably the aurochs, or wild ox. totally dis- appeared about the time of the Babylonian captivity; the wild ass, the lion, and a few otliers long ago be- came extinct in Palestine; other .species are now so scarce that they could hardly afford a familiar sub- ject for illustration. The variety of animals spoken of in the Bible is remarkable; the ostrich, for in- stance, a denizen of the torrid regions, and the camel, of the waterless districts aniund Palestine, are men- tioned side by side with the roebuck and deer of the wcxxly summits of Lebanon. This variety, greater prob.'ibly in Palestine than in any other countrj- in the same latitude, should be attnbutcd to the great extremes of elevation and temperature in this small country, rurthennore, that the Palestinian fauna is not now as rich as it useil to be during the Biblical times, must not be wondered at; the land, now- bare, was then well wooded, especially on the hills east of the Jordan; hence the changes, .lthough no rcpilar classification is to be .sought for in the Bible, it is easy to .sec. however, that the animal creation is there practically di-idcd into four cla.sses, according to the four different modes of locomotion; among the animals, some walk, others fij-, many are essentially sw-immcrs, several crawl on the ground. This classification, more empiric than logical, would not by anj- means satisfy a modern scientist; it must be known, however, if we wish fairly to under- stand the language of the Scriptures on the matters connected therewith. The first class, the behemdth, or beasts, in the Biblical parlance, includes all quad- rupeds living on the earlli, with the exception of the amphibia and such siiiall animals iis moles, mice, and the like. Beasts are diided into cattle, or ilomes- ticated (behimdth in the strict sense), and beasts of the field, i. e. wild animals. The fow-ls, which con- stitute the .second class, include not only the birds, but also "all things that fly", even if they "go uiMjn four feet", as the ditTerent kinds of locusts. Of the many "living beings that swim in the water" no particular species is mentioned; the "great whales" are set apart in that class, while the rest are divided according as they have, or have not, fins and scales (Lev., xi, 9, 10). The reptiles, or "creep- ing things", form the fourth class. References to this class are relatively few; however, it should be noticed that the "creeping things" include not only the reptiles properly so called, but also all short- legged animals or in.sects which seem to crawl rather than to walk, such as moles, lizards, etc. From a religious view-point, all these animals are divided into two classes, clean and unclean, according as they can, or cannot, be eaten. We shall presently give, in alphabetical order, the list of the animals whose names occur in the Bible; whenever required for the identification, the Hebrew name will be indicated, as well as the specific term used by naturalists. This list will include even such names as griffon, lamia, siren or unicorn, which, though generally applied to fabulous beings, have nevertheless, on account of some misunderstandings or educational prejudices of the Greek and Latin translators, crept into the versions, and have been applied to real animals, (In the following Hst D.V. stands for Douay Version, A,V, and R.V'. for Authorized and Revised Version respect ivelj-.) Adu.x. — A kind of antelope (anlilope addax) with twisted horns; it vcrj- probably corresponds to the d!shdn of the Hebrews and the pj'garg of the divers translations (Deut.. xiv, 5). Adder. — .A. poi.sonous snake of the genus I'lpera. The word, unused in the D.V., stands in the A.V. for four different Hebrew names of serpents. Ant. (Prov., vi, 6; XXX, 25). — Over twelve species of ants exist in Pales- tine; among them the ants of the genus Atta are particularly common, especially the alia barbara, of dark colour, and the alia struclor. a brown species. These, with the pheiclole megacephnla, are, unlike the ants of northern countries, accustomed to laj' up stores of corn for winter use. Hence the allusions of the wise man in the two above-mentioned passages of Proverbs. A.vtklgpe. — The worth first applied as a qualification to the gazelle, on account of the lustre and soft expression of its eye. has become the name of a genus of ruminant quadrupeds inter- mediate between the deer and the goat. Four species are mentioned in the Bible: (1) the dtshon (I).V. pj-garg; Deut.. xiv, iy), commonly identified with the anlilope nddni; (2) the fcWif (Deut., xii, 1.'). etc.; D.V. roe) or gazelle, anlilope dorcas; (3) the llicV) (Deut., x-iv, 5; D.V. wild goat; Is., li, 20, D.V. wild ox which seems to be the Dubale {anlilope bulmlix); and (4) the ydhmiir (Deut., xiv, 5). the name of which is given by the Arabs to the roebuck of Northern Syria and to the oryx (the white antelope. anlilope oryx) of the desert. Ape. — Nowhere in the Bible is the ape supposed to be indigenous to Pales- tine. .pcs are mentioned with gold, silver, ivorj', and peacocks among the precious things imported by Solomon from Tharsis (III K., x. 22; II Par., ix. 21). Asp. — This word, which occurs ten times in D.V., stands for four Hebrew names: (1) Pi'lhcn [Deut.. xxxii. :W; Job, xx, 14, 16; Ps., Ivii (Hebr., Iviii). n; Is., xi, 8]. From several allusions both to its deadly venom (Deut., xxxii, 33), and to its use by