The fathers in the first ages, after the death of Christ, seem to have been wonderfully pressed in point of argument before they could have recourse to a fable like this to vindicate the possibility of the Virgin Mary’s conception without human means. Tertullian[73], Orgines[74], Bazil[75], and Ambrosius[76], are all wild enough to found upon this ridiculous argument, and little was wanting for some of these learned ones to land this fable upon Moses, who probably knew it as a vulgar error before his time, but was very far from paying any regard to it; on the contrary, it is with the utmost propriety and precision, that, speaking to the people, he calls it Rachama in the feminine, because he was then giving them a list of birds forbidden to be ate[77], among which he selected the female vulture, as that was best known, and the great object of idolatry and superstition; and the male, and all the lesser abominations of that species, he included together in the word that followed _his_ kind; though the English translator, by calling the female vulture _him_, has introduced an impropriety that there was not the least foundation for. That Moses was not the author of or believer in this Egyptian fable, is plain from a verse in Exodus, where, at another time, he speaks of this bird, as a male, and calls him Racham, and not Rachama. It will not be improper that I here take notice, that the English translator, by his ignorance of language, has lost all the beauty and even the sense of the Hebrew original. He makes God say, “Ye have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles wings, and brought you unto myself[78]”. Now, if the expression had been really Eagle, the word would have been Nisr, and would have signified nothing; but, in place of eagle, God says Vulture, the emblem of maternal affection and maternal tenderness towards his children, which has a particular connection with, “brought you unto myself;” so that the passage will run thus, Say to the children of Israel, See how I have punished the Egyptians, while I bore you up on the wings of the Rachama, that is, of parental tenderness and affection, and brought you home to myself. It is our part to be thankful that the truths of Holy Scripture are preserved to us entire, but still it is a rational regret that great part of the beauty of the original is lost. Notwithstanding all that has been said, this bird has been mistaken nearly by all the interpreters Hebrews, Syrians, and Samaritans; the Greeks, from imaginations of their own, have thought it to be the pelican, the stork, the swan, and the merops. Bochart, after a variety of guesses, acknowledges his own ignorance, and excuses it by laying equal blame upon others. Hitherto, says he, we have not been able to condescend upon what bird this was, because those that have wrote concerning it were as ignorant in the natural history of things as they were skilful in the interpretation of words.