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The research problem consists of four parts:i) What is meant by the various problematic animal names in the Hebrew Bible? ii) What cognitive paradigm was used by the ancient Hebrews to classify the animals they came into contact with? What happens when we take prototype theory as described by Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff,1 among others, and apply it to the naming of animals in the Hebrew Bible? iii) What new insights does this information then produce when taken and applied to the original texts in which the problematic words occur, and to the translation and identification of disputed terms? iv) What new points of theory arise from this whole exercise? Where point iii) asks what the application of the theory tells us about the texts; point iv) asks what the application to the texts tells us about the theory. Are certain theories challenged by the findings? Are others bolstered?
Overview
Words used in the Hebrew Bible to name types of animals have always caused problems in translation. A number of them are hapax legomena – words that occur only once in the Biblical text. Some of the best-known oddities of early translations involve animal words – for example, “the voice of the turtle” in Song of Songs 2:12,2 the “unicorn” in Psalm 92:103 among other texts, and “satyrs” in Isaiah 13:21.4 Other, less picturesque, examples go generally unremarked upon but are nevertheless debated amongst scholars – for example, the identity of vx ;T; in Exodus 25:5 where it refers to a type of leather. It is translated as, variously, “badger,”5“goat,”6
Metaphor in cognitive linguistics
Probably the best-known application of cognitive linguistics is the study of metaphor and its fundamental role in the development of language and thought. While metaphor is not the main focus of this study, it is so central to the discipline of cognitive linguistics that a short discussion of it is appropriate at this point. The seminal work in the field is George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s 1980 book Metaphors we live by (reprinted with a new afterword in 2003). In it they drastically expand the understanding of metaphor from a mere poetic technique to being the foundation of all conceptual thought and key to the way we experience the world.80 Guy Deutscher calls language “a reef of dead metaphors” and compares the formation of language to: …a stream of metaphors that runs right through language and flows from the concrete to the abstract. In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one after another, and carried towards abstract meanings. As these words drift downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless terms for abstract concepts – the substance from which the structure of language is formed.
Category levels
Several types of categories exist, and an important division to take note of is that of basic-level versus higher- or lower-level categories. The term basic-level as a description of a type of category is used often and needs to be well understood. It is not, as might be imagined, the highest-level or broadest type of category. In fact there are category types higher (broader) as well as lower (narrower; more specific) than basic-level ones. Basic-level terms are the most cognitively important ones.
Habitat- or realm-based taxonomy
Names for animals in Biblical Hebrew occur in patterns that suggest a degree of idiomatic usage that approaches ritualised construction. The most important aspect of the way animal words are used is the fact that they are so often attached to the habitat of the animal in question. In fact, it may be concluded from this study that habitat is the most fundamental level of animal classification in the system used by the ancient Hebrews. This means that if we want to approach the Biblical texts involving animals in the way they were intended by their authors, we must always think of the animal in the context of its habitat – the two concepts are so basically intertwined that they cannot be viewed separately if we hope to achieve any level of insight into the way the ancient Hebrews viewed and classified animals. Habitat, and not morphology, is the most important factor in classification. “Beasts of the field, birds of the air” – these constructions are not accidental artefacts of translation, or simply quaint idioms:they are utterly fundamental to the biological worldview of the ancient Hebrews.
The clean / unclean dichotomy
A major surprise is the relative unimportance, in terms of the primary categorisation system, of the clean / unclean dichotomy. Going into the study I imagined that this would have been a major – even the major – categorical division for animals in terms of Hebrew thought. After all, the anthropological theory presupposes that the things that are talked about are above all the things that have practical or ritual significance for the speakers. In 2.2 I said “…the primary question of this genre (on the surface, at least) is ‘can we eat it?’” It seems that the ancient Hebrews did not after all consider this to be the primary question. Instead, the primary question is “where does it live?”
Arbitrary taboos and cognitive dissonance
So the distinctions between clean and unclean could be arbitrary. But are they? I would argue that they are not entirely so. Few things in human society are completely random; humans are pattern-making beings. However, that is not to say that I agree with the scholars who believe that the distinctions are primarily about hygiene, or economics, or the intrinsic natures of certain animals, or even the sacrificial cult. In fact, a degree of arbitrariness is beneficial to the boundary-marking function of the dietary laws, for one reason: cognitive dissonance.
Conclusion
In this chapter, various findings that were too broad to fit properly within the analyses of particular words and individual texts in chapter 3 were discussed, and others that were begun there were further developed and expanded. The key point was repeated that animal taxonomy as seen in the Biblical texts is based on habitat and upon the threefold (or fivefold) view of creation as comprising the realms of earth, sky and sea. As an aside, one more “realm” was examined: the landscape of desolation often found in poetic texts and inhabited by its own characteristic collection of animals, particularly scavenging canids and unclean birds. Another brief digression gave attention to the creatures that are sometimes or usually considered to be legendary, mythical or supernatural.
Chapter 1: Orientation
1.2. Problem statement
1.2.1. Overview
1.2.2. Some problematic texts
1.2.3. Folk systematics
1.2.4. Survey of scholarly approaches
1.3. Method
1.4. Hypothesis
Chapter 2: Theory
2.2. Notation
2.3. Discussion of some of the dissension in the field of linguistics, especially cognitive
linguistics
2.4. Metaphor in cognitive linguistics
2.5. Linguistic relativity and linguistic determinism, the weak and the strong form
2.6. Experiential realism
2.7. Lakoff, Rosch, and prototype category theory
Chapter 3: Textual analysis
3.2. Corpus analys
3.3. Preliminary results arising from the corpus analysis
3.4. Analysis of problematic texts
3.4.1. Birds of the air
3.4.1.1. @A[ versus rAPci; sparrows, swallows and swifts
3.4.1.2. Doves
3.4.1.3. Birds of prey
3.4.1.4. Owls and non owls
3.4.1.5. Other birds
Chapter 4: Finding
4.2. Habitat- or realm-based taxonomy
4.2.1. The realm of desolation
4.3. Natural versus supernatural animals
4.4. The clean/unclean dichotomy
4.4.1. Reasons for the existence and for the content of food taboos: two questions rather than one
4.4.2. Arbitrary taboos and cognitive dissonance
Chapter 5: Conclusion
Appendix A
Bibliography
