Birds sacred

I have never been closely interested in sacred texts, until a few years ago, at the invitation of the Eshkolot project, I took part in a seminar dedicated to birds and other winged creatures mentioned in the Old Testament. It turned out that to carefully deal with the birds found on the pages of the Holy Scriptures is a fascinating lesson. Here I want to share my observations made in the recent time during (so it happened) my foreign trips.

The first story, however, is not about the Bible, but about the Qur'an. The Qur'an copy fell into my hands while visiting the old Isa-Bay mosque, located on the outskirts of the city of Selchuk in Turkey, near the ruins of Ephesus. Already at the hotel, the Koran himself opened on the 27th Sura, the very one where the story of King Solomon and Udoda is described. In short, the content of this legend, which gave rise to a large number of folk jokes, is such.

During the examination of the birds, Solomon (named in the Qur'an Suleiman) did not notice his beloved Udod. The Qur'an does not explain why it was the Udod for the ruler, but, according to the Arab tradition, this bird, probing the soil with a beak, helped the soldiers of Solomon find water sources in the desert. The king threatened the yield of severe reckoning if he did not appear and does not explain the reasons for his absence. Udod was not long in coming. In his defense, he said that he was in the land of Sava (Saba) and saw what the master did not know about, namely, that the local queen worships the sun and does not recognize Allah. Then follows the story of the conquest of the Savsky kingdom, and the reader does not part immediately with the Udod: the bird acts as a messenger attributing to the letter of Solomon to the incorrect queen.

It seems to be a trifling story, if you leave aside its possible sacred meaning, but this story seems very significant to me. The fact is that the land of the Saba is at such a great distance from the kingdom of Solomon that the king does not know what is happening there, and his subordinate genie needs some time to get there. In the biblical texts composed much earlier than the Koran, there is no mention of the flights of birds over long distances. Yes, on the pages of the Old Testament, we meet with birds, which, as we understand, are in the middle of the distant path (like quails that suddenly appeared in the desert), but the ancient Jews, apparently, if we thought about where the birds are getting from, filling Palestine from time to time, were not ready to allow them to fly from distant places. Similar difficulties were in antiquity. Aristotle mentioned from Aristotle is not randomly about turning a cuckoo for the winter into a hawk, about the winter hibernation of birds.

The reflection of such ideas can be found in the modern language. One of the feathered predators - a first -class specialist in fishing - we call a sink. A lot of hypotheses about the origin of this name were expressed, but, in my opinion, it is explained quite easily: it is enough to look into ancient sources that remained popular in the Middle Ages. If you literally interpret the name, then the skop (or, in the old way, “man”) is a bird that is not able to leave offspring (like a fragmented animal). The animals that have received certain physical injuries, but also interspecific estates, such as mules (the result of crossing the horse and donkeys) are not only inherently known since antiquity.

According to Pliny, the senior, a skip (or other fish -eating bird, similar to it according to the description) is just such a hybrid and therefore does not make up a “special species”. The skops did not nest along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, people tried to understand where they came from, and came up with the story that strange fish-eating birds of white and black coloring are nothing more than the estates between some other, more ordinary species of birds of prey. This explanation at first seems wild, but we should not forget that even at present, rare, poorly studied birds, known for one or several specimens stored in museum collections, sometimes considered this assumption, and often this assumption turns out to be true. For some birds, the truth can be established only by using the methods of molecular genetics.

For both ancient Jews and the ancient Hellenes, the art of flying birds was the ability to rise to a great height. Birds could be the messengers of the gods, could see from the height what a person did not see from the level of the earth (or the sea, let's say Mount Ararat during the World Flood), but they somehow did not think about their ability to fly off the lands in those days. It took not only time, but also the arrival of a fundamentally different culture.

For the Hellenes, despite active trading and conquering campaigns, the trip was rather a test than a routine business. They and birds were inclined to consider homebody: why would it be at risk, putting themselves into distant wanderings? Obviously, the text of the Koran is compiled by a man of nomadic culture: often on his pages, vehicles are mentioned - ships, camels, horses, mules ... Following the Qur'an itself involves the commission of Hajj - sometimes a distant trip to the Holy Mecca. It was easier for Muslims to believe in distant bird wanderings.

In addition to Udoda, only two species of birds are called in the Qur'an - a raven and a quail. Nevertheless, the sacred for Muslims the text fixes the overcoming of an important border in knowledge about the migrations of birds. It is no accident that the emperor Friedrich II Staufen, who lived at the turn of the XII and XIII centuries, was the first among European naturalists who wrote in detail about bird flights, was well acquainted with Arabic culture.

The second legend is about one of the birds mentioned in the Bible. In chapter 39 of Job’s book, an ostrich is mentioned. This biblical story is no less famous than the story of the Coron's Udoda. Researchers also turn to him, proving that the ostrich is not as stupid as the sacred book claims. Among others and the wonderful English ornithologist Nicholas Davis. In the book about parasitism in birds, he notes that the female ostrich is quite smart, is ready to accept eggs of other females for the good of her own offspring: thereby it reduces the likelihood of the death of future chicks if the jackal or other predator can be abducted by an egg from the nest.

This story about an ostrich, which turned out to be not so stupid, I included in my story for students of the University of Zagreb. When preparing a presentation, I found an appropriate place in the translation of the Bible into the Serbian-Khorvat language. He ran his eyes - and was stunned. Where in the Russian text it is carefully written that the ostrich laughs at the rider “from a height”, which can be understood as a high hill, the Croatian translation directly says that the ostrich spreads its wings and takes off in the skies. Honestly, only after that I began to doubt that in the initial text I meant ostrich. An attentive reading of the episode revealed other inconsistencies: the bird described in the Bible easily lost his nest, as soon as a person or animal accidentally step on it. But you must admit that this rarely happens with ostrich eggs that can withstand the weight of an adult, and the ostrich rises without delay in protection of masonry.

All contradictions are removed, if we assume that instead of an ostrich, the author of Job was a completely different bird. The candidacy is easily searched. In the fields and pastures, exposing the eggs of the danger to die under the hooves of livestock or under a person’s foot, nesting nesting. Of these, we are best signed by Chibis, whose restless behavior is described in the famous children's song to the words of Anton Anton: “He screams, worries, an eccentric:“ Tell me, whose you are? And tell me, whose are you? And why, why are you here? ” Screaming excitedly, Chibis flies in circles, somersaults in the sky, and at that moment his behavior is very similar to the dance that this bird performs in the period of preparation for nesting. It seems that the feathered carelessly rejoices, leaving the nest in danger. Other pygalis also behave, not excluding the Shortz Chibis - the usual nesting species of Palestine.

If you substitute a biblical text instead of an ostrich, the biblical text will be as accurate as the story of Brem or Buffon: “He leaves his eggs on the ground, and warms them in the sand, and forgets that the leg can crush them and the field beast can trample them; He is cruel to his children, as if not his own, and is not afraid that his work will be in vain; Because God did not give him wisdom and did not pay the point to him; And when he rises to a height, he chuckles on the horse and his horseman. ”

Pavel Kvartalnov,
cand. Biol. sciences, p. n. With. Department of Zoology of the Verse Biology Faculty of Moscow State University