Probably the best known example is in Lamentations 4:3.
3 Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
I suppose someone might also argue that this passage states that “sea monsters” must be mammals (because they nurse their young.) But here again that’s not the point. The Book of Lamentations is not only poetry (specifically “lamentation poetry”, a genre common to many cultures), many scholars believe it was sung, perhaps even in plaintive wails. Once again, genre matters.
Perhaps “Let the rivers clap their hands” (Psalms 98:8) is limnologically objectionable but not to a poet.
Thanks to @John_Harshman (and whoever helpfully moved these posts), we now have a new thread entitled “Biblical Ornithology”. Yes, folks, that’s why the crowds flock to Peaceful Science!
POSTSCRIPT: @John_Harshman, Lamentations 4:3 uses a different Hebrew word for ostriches but it is clearly the same animal with the same reputation.
Why are we assuming this is an animal still living? It may be extinct, like the leviathan since Job is likely our earliest book of the Bible. Also, it may be an ancient species that has different behavior than ostriches today - maybe it is the common ancestor of all the ratites.
Lol, I didn’t think I’d be the one arguing against species fixity.
Getting back to the ostrich, not only does the Bible confirm the similarity of ostriches from thousands of years ago to today’s ostriches, but there are Egyptian records and images of ostriches from the same time period that also demonstrate that ostriches at that time would have been indistinguishable from today’s ostriches. In other words, the ostrich species has not visibly changed ( but see footnote ) in over 4000 years.
Which “same time period” are we talking about? YEC may not agree on the dates he’s providing for those Egyptian records. It is possible that Job was penned before whatever records he’s referring to. I guess I don’t see why these birds couldn’t have a common ancestor that went extinct early and the ostrich we have has been around a while.
A hypothetical YEC-3 hyper-evolution model of ostrich origins - this part seemed quite over the top. Other descriptions seemed much too woodenly literal. But I guess there’s a lot of space in the text while still being literal!
correct. The few other references to ostriches use a different word (and some think another word should be read in Job 39…normal text-critical problem, especially when dealing with rare vocabulary).
I’d have to defer to our science friends on this one, both about extinctions and how far certain male/female behaviors would extend to near-species of a certain animal.
I take this as a chaos monster, don’t think think it even existed! (If it is a normal animal, then a crocodile would fit the bill…not a dinosaur )
Definitely not. Goes against all the Hebrew evidence (and mistakes the genre to be an historical narrative)
Consider also that the ostrich has a multitude of adaptations for living in a desert. For YECs, however, the prelapsarian world (eg. the edenic state) has been almost always been considered devoid of deserts. Young earth creationists view deserts as harsh locations that would not have been present in the world before sin entered the world (i.e. they are not “very good”).
I just realized that Job includes both words for ostrich - the one in Lamentations is the same as in Job 30 and there’s a different word in Job 39. This just got more interesting - maybe the book is making note of speciation.
Of course we disagree on this.
I recently was looking at a kids sticker book I had. My second is way more into dinosaurs and he loves it. And there was a section on plesiosaurs Plesiosaur - Wikipedia and I was thinking - wait! they look like the descriptions of the leviathan I had recently been reading about (I had recently gone through the book of Job and was also reading Psalm 104)! Then I looked them up and Liopleurodon - Wikipedia
Of course, you have to be YEC to believe it. In your reading of the Bible, humans never got to interact with cool monsters. Ours is more fun
The whole point of text criticism is trying to discern what the Bible actually says–in this case, what the text of Job actually is. It’s not a big deal, I was just pointing out an issue with words. (While Strong’s can be useful to a degree, it’s woefully inadequate to address any of this…and may give those who don’t know Hebrew a false confidence to know what the heck is going on.)
Or not
Sorry I’m missing out, but I remain content with my Hebrew lexicons, ANE texts & iconography, and attempting the scientific study.
Coincidentally, I taught through the book of Job in my intro OT class the past two days. Amazing how God’s delights in his “good creation” while full of such terrifying creatures.
My “or not” is as ground as your “perhaps.” I’m not opposed to the idea, but speculation gets us nowhere. I prefer evidence (textual, historical, or scientific).
The only evidence we have is the text itself, which reflects Hebrew no earlier than the 8th c. BC. The only reason to conceive of an earlier version (and possibly other language) is other evidence…which is entirely lacking. Moreover, to treat the story like a play-by-play of some bygone era simply lacks support. Granted, the implied setting of the book of Job is (largely) non-Israelite and patriarchal. But there is NO evidence (or reason) to assume the writing of the story is similar to the story described. Even if one assumed the story is an historical narrative (which is dubious and lacks evidence), there is no reason to assume it was written at or near the time of the events. All we have is the text itself, whose Hebrew matches 8th c (or later) orthography, grammar, and syntax. Also, theologically, it fits as within an inner-canonical tension with normative wisdom literature like Proverbs (i.e., Job [and Ecclesiastes] is a counter or correction to a simplistic reading of Proverbs).
My concern is not your contentment but your evidence/argument to arrive at such a POV. Saying “YEC” is not evidence (nor is such a POV demanded by YEC). The text (i.e., the inspired text) is what we have, and it is written with a specific language & style. That is what with which we must be concerned. To emphasize a speculative history beyond the evidence–at least to me–undermines the (inspired) text’s authority and power.
Well, if I ever said or do say such a thing, please chastise me.
Excellent point. I agree. I’d just like to weigh all the evidence.
This from @Joel_Duff linked above seems to indicate a familiarity with specific animals. I wonder what rationale is for the author not to be as familiar with behemoth and leviathan, if you’re suggesting that. I’m not sure what your earlier comment about “terrifying creatures” and “good creation” was meant to convey or criticize.
The book of Job contains some of the most descriptive language about the natural world in all of Scripture. In Job 39 alone, we find God describing the natural history of animals including the mountain goat, deer, donkey, ostrich, horse, hawk and eagle in order to illustrate His omniscience and wisdom in creation. Although the authorship and date of Job is unknown, most scholars agree that Job is an ancient text.
So my biggest question still is - why the two words for ostrich? That’s odd. I noticed while looking up some of the animals above Job 39:5 is the same.
@Joel_Duff if you think YEC is confused, I’d love to see what you’d make of this. I randomly clicked on it, but the Moa’s Ark is pure gold. Really can’t make it up
I really need to take a deep dive into Job at some point. I enjoyed reading some basic commentary on it tonight. Does anyone have a commentary to recommend?
I have to share this quote from John Piper because it’s just too good of a metaphor not to and struck me as true to suffering in my own life.
We should be able to say to people, “I’m not looking for a specific sin in your life that God is punishing you for or chastising you for. God may be permitting this calamity to come into your life just to refine very beautiful faith. Your faith is like gold, but it does have straw in it, and God loves you so much that he is now going to burn out a little more straw.”
Any suffering person I’ve ever talked to bears witness to the fact that they have seen more of God and have come to know and trust God more deeply than if their suffering hadn’t come.
Why do you think it odd? Synonyms existed in ancient Hebrew just as we also have them in modern English. (Of course, modern English tends to have synonyms by the barrel because of its fascinating history—but I won’t pursue that tangent here.)
I happened to turn on my TV this morning and a “reality program” showed a veterinarian treating a guinea pig. However, he alternated that term with the lesser used but not at all uncommon synonym: cavy.
If a guinea pig can also be called a cavy, why should anyone be surprised that there were at least two words for “ostrich” in the Old Testament?
There have been times you bring in the YEC card to explain away evidence and support speculation (b/c it fits with a YEC worldview)
The question is if we are dealing with real creatures or mythical creatures. The terms can be used for both. Leviathan is certainly used both ways. Behemoth is a feminine plural of the normal word for land animals (sometimes specifically domesticated animals). But the use of a plural form for a singular animal, within the context of a potentially mythic creature like Leviathan, opens up the possibility that Behemoth means something like “mega beast.” If mythical, then the point is that, imagine the most terrifying creature you could imagine, God is more powerful than that. If more realistic animals are in view, then certainly they would be known animals to the characters and the narrator (hippo and crocodile are the usual candidates, except for the dino view of many YECs).
The point is that the natural world described in Job 38-41 is a world God delights in, yet it does not depict some people’s views of what a “good creation” should be. But God doesn’t seem to mind a world of, e.g., predation.
It’s a good observation, but it’s not necessarily odd. Perhaps it means something; perhaps it doesn’t. Hebrew exhibits synonyms like any language. Different authors prefer different terms. And the same other may prefer variety. This is especially true in poetry (like Job 39). The hypothesis that the terms refer to different species is fine, but it then needs to be tested for confirmation or falsification. The problem is that I’m not sure we have any mechanism (evidence, like enough data from cognate languages, since the biblical data is insufficient) to test it. So it remained an interesting observation.
Poetry often prefers rare vocabulary as well, which might explain a different word for “wild donkey.”
Tremper Longman III just came out with one. John Walton has one, including a series of videos you can find online (begin here). I’ve found Richard Belcher’s book on Wisdom Lit helpful. The textbook I use in my Wisdom Lit class is the one by Bartholomew and Dowd. But it’s focus is theological; it won’t likely get into the historical/scientific stuff you might be interested in.
Agreed. The late Gleason Archer was a great resource when I had a question like this one. (“Can we learn anything significant from the cognates of this Hebrew word X?”) Gleason always responded to such questions with a hint of surprise that it wasn’t obvious to me that “X is quite clearly related to the Northwest Semitic root Y which meant A—but don’t assume that you can safely ignore the Arabic cognate Z which emphasized the B aspect. Also, don’t be fooled by the vowel shift which obviously can be explained by the development of . . .”
Dr. Archer had the advantage of a photographic memory of the vocabulary of something like 48 languages. (My colleagues provided estimates in a range +/-3 languages.) However, in lunch-time conversations with Gleason, I soon began to realize that the wealth of etymological and historical linguistics information actually worked against him—because he (at least in his later years) seemed to ignore a basic rule I had learned as an undergrad: etymology is not all of lexicography and can even work against it. I was reminded of that truth when Gleason would go into a long etymological tangent only to come up with far-fetched speculation about the meaning of a Hebrew hapax legomenon [a word which appears only once in a corpus like the Old Testament] based on a hapax legomenon from Ugaritic—and I’d notice Barry Beitzel frown just a little as he ate his ham sandwich to Gleason’s left. [That’s another ivory-towered tale for @Dan_Eastwood’s entertainment.]
My story-telling tangent indeed has a purpose and that is to reiterate @deuteroKJ’s caution: I’ve read AAR/SBL papers where a young scholar trying to build his/her C.V. will explore obscure questions like two Hebrew synonyms (in this thread’s case, for ostrich) and generate a lot of vapid speculation based on far too few contexts and little supporting evidence. (Of course, another incentive for writing such a paper for a major academic conference was so that the young professor’s institution would pay for the airfare and hotel expenses. A lot of mediocre papers found their origins in economic if not profoundly academic justifications.)
Thanks for the link, John. I’ve never had any great interest in ratites but that is an extremely interesting article you co-wrote. And I learned something striking–to me, at least–in the very first sentence:
Living birds are divided into two major groups, Palaeognathae
and Neognathae . . .
I reflexively process the morphemes of unfamiliar words and in this case immediately learned that living birds are divided into old-jaws and new-jaws types of birds. I’m very appreciative that ornithologists and taxonomists have employed Greek morphemes in such helpfully mnemonic ways.
I’m disappointed in myself if that’s your impression of me. I can respect that people disagree (though I will do my best to change their minds) but I believe strongly that the biblical, logical, and philosophical evidence is on the side of YEC. Science always changes, so I’m filtering interpretations of science through that, as well as how science affects biblical interpretations.
As far as speculation goes, I like to think about possibilities and enjoy imagining. There’s obviously a limit when it comes to evidence. So if my speculation is stupid or ridiculous, then tell me. But I usually don’t take someone’s word for it, unless they give me a reason or evidence of against an idea.
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