The natural history of the Bible ; or, A description of all the quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, trees, plants, flowers, gums, and precious stones, mentioned in the sacred scriptures: Collected from the best authorities, and alphabetically arranged / by Thaddeus Mason Harris.

  • Thaddeus Mason Harris
Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The natural history of the Bible ; or, A description of all the quadrupeds, birds, fishes, reptiles, and insects, trees, plants, flowers, gums, and precious stones, mentioned in the sacred scriptures: Collected from the best authorities, and alphabetically arranged / by Thaddeus Mason Harris. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    so appropriate, so pure, so nicely adjusted by my law, as to con. vince yourselves, and all the world, that you are indeed sepa- rated from idolaters, and devoted to me alone*.” Agreeably with this, Moses tells them, Deut. xxiv. 2, 3. 31. ** The Lord hath chosen you to be a peculiar people unto himself. . Ye shall not eat any abominable thing. Ye shall not eat any thing that dieth of itself; ye shall give it to the stranger, or sell it to an alien; for ye are a holy people. ‘That is, since God has invested you with singular honour aud favour, you ought to reverence your- selves; you ought to disdain the vile food of Heathen idolaters ; such food you may lawfully give or sell to foreigners; but a due self-respect forbids you to eat 1t. I. The immediate and. primary intention of the law was, as I apprehend, to break the Israelites from the ill habits they had been accustomed to or indulged in Egypt, and to keep them for ever distinct from that corrupt people, both in principles and practices?; and, by parity of reason, from all other idolatrous nations. No more simple nor effectual method could be devised for preventing or ensnaring imtercourse, or dangerous. assimila- tion, than by a law regulating their food; for nothing separates one people from another more than that one should eat what the other considers as unlawful, or rejects as improper. Those who cannot eat and drink together are never likely to become inti- mate. We see an instance of this in the case of the Egyptians, who, from time immemorial had been accustomed to consider certain animals as improper for food, and therefore to avoid all intercourse with those who ate or even touched what they deemed defiling. [See Gen. xlii. 32.] Hence they and the Hebrews could not eat together; and of course could not associate or live together. Accordingly, they assigned that people, when they . had come down to dwell in their country, a separate district for their residence:.for some of the animals which the Hebrews ate were, among them not indeed unclean, but sacred, being so expressly consecrated to a deity that they durst not slaughter them. The Hebrews, by killing and eating these animals, must 4 Dr. Tappan’s Lectures, p. 260.. 5 This was the opinion of Minutius Falix, which his commentator Aurelius has supported by many testimonies of the ancients; see also. Basil, Orat. vi. p. 34; Origen. 1. iii. iv. contra Cels, p. 225, ed. Spencer and Theodoret, Quest. in Levit. ] 9 So the poet Anaximandrides, in Athenwo Dienosoph, l. vii. p. 299, thus ridicules the Egyptians: ait Ovx ay Suverny cuppooy ety vay eyw Oud’ oi vpomrot yep Serovar” wd” ot yoprot Hwy, an’ wrrnrwy de dieysory mou. &e. Ego esse vester non queam commilito,. Quando nec leges nec mores consentiunt, . Sed multis inter se intervallis dissident. Bovem tu adoras, ego quem sacrifico Diis: