Bible Animals

THE VIPER, OR EPHEH

Passages in which the word Epheh occurs—El-effah—The Sand Viper, or Toxicoa—Its appearance and habits—The Acshub—Adder's poison—The Spuugh-Slange—The Cockatrice, or Tsepha—The Yellow Viper—Ancient ideas concerning the Cockatrice—Power of its venom.

We now come to the species of snake which cannot be identified with any certainty, and will first take the word epheh, which is curiously like to the Greek ophis. From the context of the three passages in which it occurs, it is evidently a specific, and not a collective name, but we are left in much doubt as to the precise species which is intended by it. The first of those passages occurs in Job xx. 16: "The viper's (epheh) tongue shall slay him." The second is found in Isa. xxx. 6: "The burden of the beasts of the south: into the land of trouble and anguish, from whence come the young and old lion, the viper (epheh) and fiery flying serpent." The last of these passages occurs in ch. lix. 5 of the same book: "That which is crushed breaketh out into a viper" (epheh).

The reader will see that in neither of those passages have we the least intimation as to the particular species which is signified by the word epheh, and the only collateral evidence which we have on the subject fails exactly in the most important point. We are told by Shaw that in Northern Africa there is a small snake, the most poisonous of its tribe, which is called by the name of El-effah, a word which is absolutely identical with the Epheh of the Old Testament. But, as he does not identify the effah, except by saying that it rarely exceeds a foot in length, we gain little by its discovery.

Mr. Tristram believes that he has identified the Epheh of the Old Testament with the Sand-Viper, or Toxicoa (Echis arenicola). This reptile, though very small, and scarcely exceeding a foot in length, is a dangerous one, though its bite is not so deadly as that of the cobra or cerastes. It is variable in colour, but has angular white streaks on its body, and a row of whitish spots along the back. The top of the head is dark, and variegated with arrow-shaped white marks.

THE TOXICOA. (Supposed to be the viper of Scripture.)

"The viper's tongue shall slay him."—Job xx. 16.

The Toxicoa is very plentiful in Northern Africa, Palestine, Syria, and the neighbouring countries, and, as it is exceedingly active, is held in some dread by the natives. The Toxicoa is closely allied to the dreaded Horatta-pam snake of India (Echis carinata).

The old Hebraists can make nothing of the word, but it is not unlikely that a further and fuller investigation of the ophiology of Northern Africa may succeed where mere scholarship, unallied with zoological knowledge, has failed.

The next word is acshub (pronounced ăk-shoob). It only occurs in one passage, namely Ps. cxl. 3: "They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent (nachash); adder's (acshub) poison is under their lips." The precise species represented by this word is unknown. Buxtorf, however, explains the word as the Spitter, "illud genus quod venenum procul exspuit." Now, if we accept this derivation, we must take the word acshub as a synonym for pethen. We have already identified the Pethen with the Naja haje, a snake which has the power of expelling the poison to some distance, when it is out of reach of its enemy. Whether the snake really intends to eject the poison, or whether it is merely flung from the hollow fangs by the force of the suddenly-checked stroke, is uncertain. That the Haje cobra can expel its poison is an acknowledged fact, and the Dutch colonists of the Cape have been so familiarly acquainted with this habit, that they have called this reptile by the name of Spuugh-Slange, or Spitting Snake, a name which, if we accept Buxtorf's etymology, is precisely equivalent to the word acshub.

Another name of a poisonous snake occurs several times in the Old Testament. The word is tsepha, or tsiphôni, and it is sometimes translated as Adder, and sometimes as Cockatrice. The word is rendered as Adder in Prov. xxiii. 32, where it is said that wine "biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Even in this case, however, the word is rendered as Cockatrice in the marginal translation.

It is found three times in the Book of Isaiah. Ch. xi. 8: "The weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den." Also, ch. xiv. 29: "Rejoice not thou, whole Palestina, because the rod of him that smote thee is broken: for out of the serpent's (nachash) nest shall come forth a cockatrice (tsepha), and his fruit shall be a fiery flying serpent." The same word occurs again in ch. lix. 5: "They hatch cockatrice' eggs." In the prophet Jeremiah we again find the word: "For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord."

This last passage gives us a little, but not much, assistance in identifying the Tsepha. We learn by it that the Tsepha was one of the serpents that were not subject to charmers, and so we are able to say that it was neither the cobra, which we have identified with the Pethen of Scripture, nor the Cerastes or Horned Snake, which has been shown to be the Shephiphon. Our evidence is therefore only of a negative character, and the only positive evidence is that which may be inferred from the passage in Isa. xiv. 29, where the Tsepha is evidently thought to be more venomous than the ordinary serpent or Nachash.

Mr. Tristram suggests that the Tsepha of Scripture may possibly be the Yellow Viper (Daboia xanthica), which is one of the largest and most venomous of the poisonous serpents which are found in Palestine, and which is the more dangerous on account of its nocturnal habits. This snake is one of the Katukas, and is closely allied to the dreaded Tic-polonga of Ceylon, a serpent which is so deadly, and so given to infesting houses, that one of the judges was actually driven out of his official residence by it.

As to the old ideas respecting the origin of the Cockatrice, a very few words will suffice for them. This serpent was thought to be produced from an egg laid by a cock and hatched by a viper. "For they say," writes Topsel, "that when a cock groweth old, he layeth a certain egge without any shell, in stead whereof it is covered with a very thick skin, which is able to withstand the greatest force of an easie blow or fall. They say moreover that this Egge is laid only in the summer time, about the beginning of Dog days, being not so long as a Hen's Egge, but round and orbicular. Sometimes of a dirty, sometimes of a boxy, and sometimes of yellowish muddy colour, which Egge, afterwards sat upon by a Snake or a Toad, bringeth forth the Cockatrice, being half a foot in length, the hinder part like a Snake, the former part like a Cock, because of a treble combe on his forehead.

"But the vulgar opinion of Europe is, that the Egge is nourished by a Toad, and not by a Snake; howbeit in better experience it found that the Cock doth sit on that Egge himself: whereof Serianus Semnius in his twelfth book of the Hidden Animals of Nature hath this discourse, in the fourth chapter thereof. 'There happened,' saith he, 'within our memory, in the city of Pirizæa, that there were two old Cocks which had laid Egges, and the common people (because of opinion that those Egges would engender Cockatrices) laboured by all meanes possible to keep the same Cocks from sitting on those Egges, but they could not with clubs and staves drive them from the Egges, until they were forced to break the Egges in sunder, and strangle the Cocks."

In this curious history it is easy to see the origin of the notion respecting the birth of the Cockatrice. It is well known that hens, after they have reached an advanced age, assume much of the plumage and voice of the male bird. Still, that one of them should occasionally lay an egg is no great matter of wonder, and, as the egg would be naturally deposited in a retired and sheltered spot, such as would be the favoured haunts of the warmth-loving snake, the ignorant public might easily put together a legend which, absurd in itself, is yet founded on facts. The small shell-less egg, so often laid by poultry, is familiar to every one who has kept fowls.

Around this reptile a wonderful variety of legends have been accumulated. The Cockatrice was said to kill by its very look, "because the beams of the Cockatrice's eyes do corrupt the visible spirit of a man, which visible spirit corrupted all the other spirits coming from the brain and life of the heart, are thereby corrupted, and so the man dyeth."

The subtle poison of the Cockatrice infected everything near it, so that a man who killed a Cockatrice with a spear fell dead himself, by reason of the poison darting up the shaft of the spear and passing into his hand. Any living thing near which the Cockatrice passed was instantly slain by the fiery heat of its venom, which was exhaled not only from its mouth, but its sides. For the old writers, whose statements are here summarized, contrived to jumble together a number of miscellaneous facts in natural history, and so to produce a most extraordinary series of legends. We have already seen the real origin of the legend respecting the egg from which the Cockatrice was supposed to spring, and we may here see that some one of these old writers has in his mind some uncertain floating idea of the respiratory orifices of the lamprey, and has engrafted them on the Cockatrice.

"To conclude," writes Topsel, "this poyson infecteth the air, and the air so infected killeth all living things, and likewise all green things, fruits, and plants of the earth: it burneth up the grasse whereupon it goeth or creepeth, and the fowls of the air fall down dead when they come near his den or lodging. Sometimes he biteth a Man or a Beast, and by that wound the blood turneth into choler, and so the whole body becometh yellow as gold, presently killing all who touch it or come near it."

I should not have given even this limited space to such puerile legends, but for the fact that such stories as these were fully believed in the days when the Authorized Version of the Bible was translated. The ludicrous tales which have been occasionally mentioned formed the staple of zoological knowledge, and an untravelled Englishman had no possible means of learning the history of foreign animals, except from such books which have been quoted, and which were in those days the standard works on Natural History. The translators of the Bible believed most heartily in the mysterious and baleful reptile, and, as they saw that the Tsepha of Scripture was an exceptionally venomous serpent, they naturally rendered it by the word Cockatrice.

THE FROG

The Frog only mentioned in the Old Testament as connected with the plagues of Egypt—The severity of this plague explained—The Frog detestable to the Egyptians—The Edible Frog and its numbers—Description of the species.

Plentiful as is the Frog throughout Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, it is very remarkable that in the whole of the canonical books of the Old Testament the word is only mentioned thrice, and each case in connexion with the same event.

In Exod. viii. we find that the second of the plagues which visited Egypt came out of the Nile, the sacred river, in the form of innumerable Frogs. The reader will probably remark, on perusing the consecutive account of these plagues, that the two first plagues were connected with that river, and that they were foreshadowed by the transformation of Aaron's rod.

When Moses and Aaron appeared before Pharaoh to ask him to let the people go, Pharaoh demanded a miracle from them, as had been foretold. Following the divine command, Aaron threw down his rod, which was transformed into a crocodile—the most sacred inhabitant of the sacred river—a river which was to the Egyptians what the Ganges is to the Hindoos.

Next, as was most appropriate, came a transformation wrought on the river by means of the same rod which had been transformed into a crocodile, the whole of the fresh-water throughout the land being turned into blood, and the fish dying and polluting the venerated river with their putrefying bodies. In Egypt, a partially rainless country, such a calamity as this was doubly terrible, as it at the same time desecrated the object of their worship, and menaced them with perishing by thirst.

THE FROG. (Rana esculenta).

"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly."—Exod. viii. 3.

The next plague had also its origin in the river, but extended far beyond the limits of its banks. The frogs, being unable to return to the contaminated stream wherein they had lived, spread themselves in all directions, so as to fulfil the words of the prediction: "If thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs:

"And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bed-chamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneading-troughs" (or dough).

Supposing that such a plague was to come upon us at the present day, we should consider it to be a terrible annoyance, yet scarcely worthy of the name of plague, and certainly not to be classed with the turning of a river into blood, with the hail and lightning that destroyed the crops and cattle, and with the simultaneous death of the first-born. But the Egyptians suffered most keenly from the infliction. They were a singularly fastidious people, and abhorred the contact of anything that they held to be unclean. We may well realize, therefore, the effect of a visitation of Frogs, which rendered their houses unclean by entering them, and themselves unclean by leaping upon them; which deprived them of rest by getting on their beds, and of food by crawling into their ovens and upon the dough in the kneading-troughs.

And, as if to make the visitation still worse, when the plague was removed, the Frogs died in the places into which they had intruded, so that the Egyptians were obliged to clear their houses of the dead carcases, and to pile them up in heaps, to be dried by the sun or eaten by birds and other scavengers of the East.

As to the species of Frog which thus invaded the houses of the Egyptians, there is no doubt whatever. It can be but the Green, or Edible Frog (Rana esculenta), which is so well known for the delicacy of its flesh. This is believed to be the only aquatic Frog of Egypt, and therefore must be the species which came out of the river into the houses.

Both in Egypt and Palestine it exists in very great numbers, swarming in every marshy place, and inhabiting the pools in such numbers that the water can scarcely be seen for the Frogs. Thus the multitudes of the Frogs which invaded the Egyptians was no matter of wonder, the only miraculous element being that the reptiles were simultaneously directed to the houses, and their simultaneous death when the plague was taken away.

It has, however, been suggested that, at the time of year at which the event occurred, the young Frogs were in the tadpole stage of existence, and therefore would not be able to pass over land. But, even granting that to be the case, it does not follow that the adult Frogs were not numerous enough to produce the visitation, and it seems likely that those who were not yet developed were left to reproduce the race after the full-grown Frogs had perished.

The Green Frog is larger than our common English species, and is prettily coloured, the back being green, spotted with black, and having three black stripes upon it. The under parts are yellowish. At night it keeps up a continued and very loud croaking, so that a pond in which a number of these Frogs are kept is quite destructive of sleep to any one who is not used to the noise.

Frogs are also mentioned in Rev. xvi. 13: "And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet." With the exception of this passage, which is a purely symbolical one, there is no mention of Frogs in the New Testament. It is rather remarkable that the Toad, which might be thought to afford an excellent symbol for various forms of evil, is entirely ignored, both in the Old and New Testaments. Probably the Frogs and Toads were all classed together under the same title.

FISHES

Impossibility of distinguishing the different species of Fishes—The fishermen Apostles—Fish used for food—The miracle of the loaves and Fishes—The Fish broiled on the coals—Clean and unclean Fishes—The scientific writings of Solomon—The Sheat-fish, or Silurus—The Eel and the Muræna—The Long-headed Barbel—Fish-ponds and preserves—The Fish-ponds of Heshbon—The Sucking-fish—The Lump-sucker—The Tunny—The Coryphene.

We now come to the Fishes, a class of animals which are repeatedly mentioned both in the Old and New Testaments, but only in general terms, no one species being described so as to give the slightest indication of its identity.

This is the more remarkable because, although the Jews were, like all Orientals, utterly unobservant of those characteristics by which the various species are distinguished from each other, we might expect that St. Peter and other of the fisher Apostles would have given the names of some of the Fish which they were in the habit of catching, and by the sale of which they gained their living.

It is true that the Jews, as a nation, would not distinguish between the various species of Fishes, except, perhaps, by comparative size. But professional fishermen would be sure to distinguish one species from another, if only for the fact that they would sell the best-flavoured Fish at the highest price.

We might have expected, for example, that the Apostles and disciples who were present when the miraculous draught of Fishes took place would have mentioned the technical names by which they were accustomed to distinguish the different degrees of the saleable and unsaleable kinds.

Or we might have expected that on the occasion when St. Peter cast his line and hook into the sea, and drew out a Fish holding the tribute-money in his mouth, we might have learned the particular species of Fish which was thus captured. We ourselves would assuredly have done so. It would not have been thought sufficient merely to say that a Fish was caught with money in its mouth, but it would have been considered necessary to mention the particular fish as well as the particular coin.

But it must be remembered that the whole tone of thought differs in Orientals and Europeans, and that the exactness required by the one has no place in the mind of the other. The whole of the Scriptural narratives are essentially Oriental in their character, bringing out the salient points in strong relief, but entirely regardless of minute detail.

We find from many passages both in the Old and New Testaments that Fish were largely used as food by the Israelites, both when captives in Egypt and after their arrival in the Promised Land. Take, for example, Numb. xi. 4, 5: "And the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat?

"We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely." Then, in the Old Testament, although we do not find many such categorical statements, there are many passages which allude to professional fishermen, showing that there was a demand for the Fish which they caught, sufficient to yield them a maintenance.

In the New Testament, however, there are several passages in which the Fishes are distinctly mentioned as articles of food. Take, for example, the well-known miracle of multiplying the loaves and the Fishes, and the scarcely less familiar passage in John xxi. 9: "As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread.

"Jesus saith unto them, Bring of the fish which ye have now caught.