Survey of ancient writing about birds:
factor is hereMoses first wrote of the birds when he specified those which were not to be used for food, while compiling the laws to govern the Hebrews after they had reached the Promised Land. As a rule, it is easy to see why he so emphatically declared certain birds an "abomination." There was a good natural history reason, especially as the list stands in the latest and most scholarly translations.
Other Bible writers accepted these laws of Moses, and what they had to say of birds was more in the way of comparing the processes of bird life with man. Solomon recorded that he "spake three thousand proverbs, and his songs were one thousand five. And he spake of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes."
factor is here factor is hereJob, in replying to friends who brought him such dubious comfort at the time of his afflictions, continued that poetical strain in which his whole book is couched when he turned to nature for a comparison. He proved that he had learned great lessons all around him, and was capable of speaking of what he learned comprehensively.
But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee ;
And the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee ;
Or, speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ;
Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this ?
In whose hand is the soul of every living thing,
And the breath of all mankind."
It was Job who indicated that, although chickens were unknown in his time, people were eating the eggs of fowls of some species when he asked:
"Can that which hath no savor be eaten without salt ?
Or is there any taste in the white of an egg?""
King David, who said of himself, "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer," unhesitatingly declared:
"I know all the fowls of the mountains :
And the wild beasts of the field are mine."
It was David who, in writing of the goodness of the Almighty to the Israelites, recorded that
"He rained flesh upon them also as dust,
And feathered fowls like as the sand of the sea."
Birds were so plentiful that the Creator enumerated "the fowls of the air" as one of the methods of destruction which should fall upon the Jews: and the son of Sirach wrote in Ecclesiasticus, "As birds flying down he sprinkleth the snow."
factor is herePeople were accustomed to seeing large flocks in migration. The birds of interior Africa came up to Bible lands, and those found there crossed the Mediterranean, each returning when driven by changes of season. Jeremiah proved that people of his time knew the birds, and spoke of them casually, just as we do, by recording that
 | "The stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming." |
It must have been the remembrance of myriads of birds, massed in migration, which was in the mind of Isaiah when he wrote that beautiful and poetic line,
| "As birds flying, so will the Lord of Hosts defend Jerusalem." |
He had seen clouds of birds sweeping the night sky to seek the land in which they homed, and he thought that, like them, the Almighty would fly to the defense of the loved city. factor is here factor is here
But when the people had sinned, and the Creator was provoked to anger, He warned them that He would destroy Judah and Jerusalem, and give the carcasses of the inhabitants to "the fowls of the heaven."
In prophesying the doom of Ethiopia, He called upon the birds to take part in its destruction.
| "For thus hath the Lord said unto me, I will be still, and I will behold in my dwelling place; like clear heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becometh a ripening grape, He shall cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and the spreading branches shall He take away and cut down. They shall be left together unto the ravenous birds of the mountains ; and the beasts of the earth : and the ravenous birds shall summer upon them, and the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them." |
Hosea said,
| "As for Ephraim, their glory shall fly away like a bird." |
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factor is here factor is hereThe origin of the oft-quoted phrase, "A little bird told me," can be found in Ecclesiastes:
|
"Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought; |
Jeremiah complained,
| "Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird, the birds around about are against her." |
Jesus, in illustration of His devotion to His ministry, was thinking of the birds when He said:
|
The foxes have holes |
Balaam remembered the secure bird homes he had seen among the shelving rocks and on the high mountains when he said to the Kenites:
|
" Strong is thy dwelling place, |
Job had the picture of the happy home-life of a pair of brooding birds in mind when, in recounting the days of his prosperity, he cried:
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Then I said I shall die in my nest, |
A proverb in Ecclesiastes contains these lines :
|
"Birds will resort unto their like ; |
Habakkuk, in reproving the Chaldeans for covetous-
ness, drew on his knowledge of the habits of the birds
when he gave the warning, "Woe to him that coveteth
an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest
on high."
Throughout the Bible there is constant mention of the practices of snaring and netting birds; some for food,
some for sacrifice, and some, undoubtedly, for caged pets, since James wrote that "every kind of beasts, and of birds, and of serpents, and of things in the sea, is tamed, and hath been tamed of mankind."
Jeremiah compared the civil state of Judah to "a cage full of birds." And he exhibited a sense of humor when he did it, for, no doubt.
Judah did resemble the cage of a dealer in birds, packed with many species, rebellious in confinement, and quarreling over perching-places or food.
factor is here factor is hereThe Bible makes it quite evident that even in those early days people so loved the graceful motion and cheery songs of the birds that they constructed rude cages of peeled willow wands and confined beautiful feathered creatures for pets. Job inquired:
|
Wilt thou play with him as a bird ? |
Jeremiah said, "As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit." Jesus referred to the sale of sparrows, which seemed to have been a common and constant practice; and it was He who entered the temple and "overthrew the seats of them that sold doves."
factor is here factor is hereBirds were so numerous in those lands in which Bible scenes were enacted that undoubtedly they were much tamer than those we know, which for generations have been pursued with the smoke and explosion of guns. In ancient times they were caught by some sort of lure, or a trap, which did not frighten those escaping and make them so wild. Those methods really seem more humane. Sometimes a struggling bird could break a snare or a net; a gun is usually fatal. I think the very frequent mention of this custom of taking birds in the Bible is due to the fact that there is such a wonderful parallel to be drawn between a man setting a snare for an unsuspecting bird, to capture it, and offering innocent-appearing lures to entangle people unawares. Over and over, almost every Bible writer made these comparisons.
Isaiah said, "Fear and the pit and the snare are upon thee, O inhabitant of the earth!" David promised, "He
shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler." Solomon, writing of the lure of the Strange Woman, recorded that a man went to her,
" As a bird hasteth to the snare,
And knoweth not it is for his life."
David gave the warning, "Upon the wicked He shall rain snares."
But he also made the promise, "He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler." In writing a sonnet on the perils of giving surety for the debts of another, Solomon twice made use of this illustration:
My son, if thou art become surety for thy neighbor,
If thou hast stricken thy hands for a stranger,
Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth,
Thou art taken with the words of thy mouth,
Do this now, my son, and deliver thyself,
Seeing thou art come into the hand of thy neighbor;
Go, humble thyself, and importune thy neighbor.
Give not sleep to thine eyes,
Nor slumber to thine eyelids,
Deliver thyself,
As a roe from the hand of the hunter,
And as a bird from the hand of the fowler."
Equally common was the practice of netting not only birds, but animals of great size and strength. That these nets had to be concealed with great care we gather from the wise man who said in Proverbs, "Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird!" Using this as an illustration which all of his hearers could comprehend, Hosea, in reproving the wicked, said, "Where they go I will spread my net upon them, I will bring them down as the fowls of heaven."
In illustration of the loss of courage of the people, Isaiah said to them:
"Thy sons have fainted,
They He at the top of all the streets,
As an antelope in a net."
Most of the methods for taking birds and animals at that time were included in the words of Bildad, when he reproved poor, suffering Job on the ash heap for trying to explain and excuse his condition.
"How long will ye lay snares for words?"
"Yea, the light of the wicked shall be put out,
And the spark of his fire shall not shine.
The light shall be dark in his tent,
And his lamp above him shall be put out,
The steps of his strength shall be straightened,
And his own counsel shall cast him down,
For he is cast into a net by his own feet
And he walketh upon the tolls,
A gin shall take him by the heels,
And a snare shall lay hold on him.
A noose is hid for him in the ground,
And a trap for him in the way."
All these methods for capturing birds are easy enough to understand, and to these were added several others of such cruel design that they resulted in wholesale slaughter.
There was the decoy method, by which young larks, doves, or quails were taken from the nest, raised by hand, and made very tame. These were then hidden in cages of wands, and when their notes had attracted large numbers of their kind, they were skillfully dropped by arrows of concealed bowmen. Still worse was the custom of taking a wild pigeon or quail, sewing its eyelids together, and binding it in a good location for birds, so that its fluttering and cries would lure large numbers to their death through curiosity.
p. 45
factor is here factor is hereThe birds of the Bible are constantly written of as fowl. This is our translation of a Hebrew root which means "to attack vehemently." In its original use it undoubtedly referred to birds of prey, and not to ,songsters and game birds. It is very probable that the term began to be applied to birds which were used for food when they first confined them in coops and cages to fatten them, near 600 B. C. Aristotle wrote of "domestic fowls," in contrast with wild birds, so that the distinction was made in his time. But it must be borne in mind that these compilers of the Bible meant any bird, and all birds, when they said "fowl." However, what they wrote, and the connection in which they recorded it, made their meaning so clear, their knowledge of bird life so positive, their conception of bird habits and characteristics so poetical, that with the added knowledge of the centuries lying between their time and ours, no man has surpassed them in drawing wonderful comparisons between the life of birds and human beings.
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factor is here factor is hereOf writers of Greece and Italy most nearly contem-
poraneous with Bible historians, the oldest was Aristoph-
anes, the Grecian satirist, who lived 444 B. C. and wrote
the immortal comedy, "The Birds." But as he was simply
parodying the extravagance and foolishness of the people,
by making the birds found a city, and do the vain and
silly things he wished to ridicule humanity for doing,
his work has no scientific value. It merely proves that
half our birds of to-day are known by the same name they
were then, and have the same habits and characteristics.
The father of the history of birds was Aristotle who lived 400 B. C., and in all probability he knew Aristophanes. He wrote in the days of Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi. The bulk of his work is highly regarded by scientists, and much, in fact nearly two-thirds of what he recorded, proves good natural history to-day. The remaining third is a queer and quaint commingling of tradition, sayings of augurs and oracles, and sheer imagination. His ideas of the origin of some species were marvelous, but all that he said of bird life was extremely interesting.
He had a very correct idea of the circulation of the blood of man, and his physiology. He sustained his points by extracts from Synnesis, a physician of Cypress, who came near owing the perpetuity of his name to these quotations; for the remainder of his work was lost. Aristotle also quoted Diogenes of Crete, with whose sayings we are familiar; and Polybus, of the island of Cos, whose work survives him.
What Aristotle had to say of animals is less reliable than his history of man, which is easily explained by the fact that, as a matter of self-preservation, men naturally would investigate themselves first, and find the material for such study most convenient to obtain. Much of his animal history is correct, but the per cent which fails to prove true is filled with ideas that seem to us so crude as to be wonderful.
p. 49
factor is hereThe Bible Writes About Birds in A Way More Reasonable Than Other Ancient Sources
My reason for wishing to introduce a few of these superstitions and traditions is to set in sharp contrast the natural history of the Bible and that of pagan writers of Greece and Rome, of the same days, and even centuries later. There is scarcely a bird or a beast mentioned in the Bible, either in description or comparison, that is not so sanely and accurately used that reference might not quite as well apply to our corresponding species of to-day.
factor is hereBut Aristotle wrote that there were "two kinds of lions. One of these has a round body and more curly hair, and is a more cowardly animal. The other is of longer form, has straight hair, and is more courageous." Undoubtedly this described a male and female of the same species. He gravely recorded that "horses delight in meadows and marshes, and drink dirty water; and if it is clean, they first disturb it with their hoofs, and then drink it." Any one who has watered a horse at a stream or river and has seen the animal wade deeper and deeper, thrusting its muzzle further and further out to avoid the disturbance caused by its feet, knows what to think of this.
He related that sheep produce males or females from "the nature of the water which they drink," and also that "in Antandria there are two rivers, one of which turns the sheep white, the other black; and the Scamander appears to make the sheep yellow, wherefore some people think that Homer called the Scamander the Xanthus." He wrote that "the weasel eats the herb rue before it attacks a serpent, for the smell of this herb is obnoxious to serpents."
His explanation of the rapid increase of mice was that "in a certain part of Persia the female foetus of the mice are found to be pregnant in the uterus of the parent."
His accounts of caterpillars, butterflies, and fish are accurate in parts, because observation of these subjects
is easier, yet what he wrote contains many amazing statements. For example, he said that "butterflies are pro-
duced from caterpillars ; and these originate in the leaves of green plants." "The commencement of life in all other worms, and in all creatures produced from worms, originates in the influence of the sun and wind." "There are several kinds of bees; the best are round, small, and variegated." "They bring the material for wax from the droppings of trees, but the honey falls from the air, principally about the rising of the stars, and when a rainbow rests upon the earth." "We argue that wax is made from flowers, but that the bees do not make the honey, but simply collect that which falls." Most quaint of all : "It is good for bees to have drones among them, for it makes them more industrious." "When the wind is high they carry a stone with them for balance."
There are many quotable things concerning fish, and the birth of eels is interesting, for he said that they "originate in what are called the bowels of the earth, which are found spontaneously in mud and moist earth."
Because migration limited the residence of most birds to a half year in one place, and the free, wild life they lived, they came in for the greatest share of superstition, mystery, and fabrication. In fact, the portion devoted to birds is so remarkable in its surprises that it is a never-ending source of delight to the bird-lover.
He naively wrote that certain birds were "of good color and habit," without in the least indicating what
the color and habit was; and again he said that others were "bad." He described one bird as "faulty, both in
its color and in its voice." His store of unexpected adjectives in bird-lore is a delight, as witness these detached phrases: "The chlorion is a clever and diligent bird." "The elea has an excellent mode of life." He said of another: "Its colors are beautiful, its mode of life good, and its form elegant;" and again, "It is swift, elegant, liberal, fearless, warlike, and a good omen;" or, "It is ingenious in providing its substance, though otherwise an unfortunate bird." In what manner ingenious, or how unfortunate, we are left to surmise.
He wrote that some people regard the cuckoo as a "changed hawk," and quoted the poet Masseus, "that the bird which lays three eggs hatches but two of them, and brings up but one." He attributed the red rim around the eyes of certain birds to the violence of their emotion at mating time, and declared that the "hawk does not devour the heart of the bird it has killed." He described a bird "as large as a bustard which hides its eggs in the skin of a hare or fox," and said that the bill of an eagle continued to curve as it grew older until the bird died of starvation. He confirmed the story that swans sang; and accounted for the number of partridges by explaining that they build two nests, on one of which the male broods, and the female on the other; and that the male mated with all the young females before they left the nest. If any Bible writer ever produced any natural history similar to this, which is just a few quotations cited at random, I have failed to find it.
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factor is hereFrom Moses and Creation