Leviticus 11:13-19

CONCERNING FOWLS, Leviticus 11:13-19.

In the case of fowls no general principle of classification is laid down, but twenty unclean species are specified. From an inspection of the list we discover that it is composed almost exclusively of birds of prey, never eaten by civilized man. Thus Mosaism did but sanction by legislative enactment that which the instinct of cultivated man has, in all ages, approved. The passerine birds, game and poultry groups, the duck tribe, and most of the waders, except only the herons and storks, were clean. It will be found that in the Authorized Version many of them have been translated erroneously. This results from the fact that they are found only in the catalogue given in Leviticus and repeated in Deuteronomy. Thus practically many of them are cases of only once mentioned terms. In these cases the translator must resort to the meaning of the radical form from which the term was derived, to its cognate in the kindred languages, to the most ancient versions, and to the opinions of the wisest Jewish rabbins. After all his care he may fall into a mistake which advancing scholarship and research may expose. Since birds, insects, and the smaller animals are quite permanent in their habitat, the studies of modern ornithologists and entomologists throw much light upon this subject. Unclean birds and insects which are now abundant in Palestine and the Sinaitic Peninsula would naturally find a place in the catalogue, while those not now found in those regions would be omitted. Of the twenty names in this catalogue of unclean birds nine are found only in the catalogues and seven are improperly rendered in the Authorized Version. We can harmonize the twenty-one species named in Deuteronomy 14:12-18, “by assuming a slight error of transcription. The Hebrew daah and raah, vulture and glede, differ only in their initial letters ד and ר . On this hypothesis, if we drop the superfluous daah (omitted in the Samaritan, the Septuagint, and several MSS.) rendered vulture, the discrepancy vanishes.” Haley.