Bible animals : $b being a description of every living creature mentioned in the Scripture, from the ape to the coral.Wood, J. G. (John George)
Religion
Bible animals : $b being a description of every living creature mentioned in the Scripture, from the ape to the coral.
Wood, J. G. (John George)
Animals in the Bible; Nature in the Bible
He then observes that the translators of the authorized Anglican
version, whose many excellences he fully admits, could not be
considered as free agents, as they were bound by the positive
injunctions of their monarch, as well as by the less obvious, but more
powerful influence of Christian authorities, to alter the original
translation as little as possible, and to keep the ecclesiastical
words. Retaining, therefore, the renderings of the Anglican
translation whenever it can be done without infringing upon absolute
accuracy, the translator has marked with great care various passages
where he has felt himself obliged to give a different rendering to the
Hebrew. Whenever words, especially such as are evidently the names of
animals, cannot be rendered with any amount of probability, they have
not been translated at all, and to those about which there are good
grounds of doubt a distinctive mark is affixed.
Now to the word Hedgehog, by which the Hebrew Kippôd is rendered, no
such marking is attached in either of the three quoted passages, and
it is evident therefore that the rendering is satisfactory to the
highest authorities on the Hebrew language. And we have the greater
assurance of this accuracy, because, in the mere translation of the
name of an animal, no doctrinal point is involved, and so there can be
no temptation to the translator to be carried away by preconceived
ideas, and to give to the word that rendering which may tend to
establish his peculiar doctrinal ideas.
The Septuagint also translates Kippôd as [Greek: echinos] (_echinus_)
_i.e._ the Hedgehog, and this rendering is advocated by the eminent
scholar Gesenius, who considers it to be formed from the Hebrew word
_kaped_, _i.e._ contracted; reference being of course made to the
Hedgehog's habit of rolling itself up when alarmed, and presenting
only an array of bristles to the enemy. This derivation of the word is
certainly more convincing than a suggestion which has been made, that
the Hebrew Kippôd may signify the Hedgehog, because it resembles the
Arabic name of the same animal, viz. Kunfod.
As therefore the word Kippôd is translated as Hedgehog in the
Septuagint and Jewish Bible, and as Bittern in the authorized version,
we very naturally ask ourselves whether either or both of these
animals inhabit Palestine and the neighbouring countries. We find that
both are plentiful even at the present day, and that more than one
species of Hedgehog and Bittern are known in the Holy Land. About the
Bittern we shall treat in good time, and will now take up the
rendering of Hedgehog.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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