Eagles and vultures
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Big birds in the Bible.
"‘On Eagles’ Wings’: Comfort and Translation,The bird is most probably not cited in the Bible." WSJ Opinion (1/6/25)
A dilemma.
Rosemary Roberts, of Waterbury Connecticut, writes:
Eli Federman’s op-ed “The Bald Eagle Is Heaven-Sent” (Dec. 31) brings to mind the beautiful hymn “On Eagles’ Wings,” which is often sung both at Roman Catholic funeral Masses and at many protestant church services. While most of the hymn is based on Psalm 91 from the Old Testament, the refrain is based on Exodus 19:4, when God told the Israelites, after their flight from Egypt, that He had carried them “on eagles’ wings” through their times of trial. The refrain reads:
And He will raise you up on eagles’ wings,
bear you on the breadth of dawn,
make you to shine like the sun,
and hold you in the palm of His hands.
To me, this brings a message of comfort, love and hope to those who mourn their loved ones, and a feeling of peace and resilience for those who are struggling in a troubled world.
Leon Sutton responds:
Mr. Federman states that the Bible mentions the eagle at least 30 times. The Bible, however, uses the term “nesher.” There is serious scholarship that connects that word with the griffon vulture, the largest bird in that part of the world and a cognate of the Arabic nesra (or nasr), which definitively refers to the griffon vulture.
In ancient times, the vulture wasn’t despised as it is today and was worshiped as a god in several places, including by the Arabians and the Assyrians. It was a symbol of royalty in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
The bald eagle is a wonderful and fitting symbol for our country, but the eagle is most probably not referred to in the Bible.
Some translators would hold that cultural context counts as much as lexical precision.
Selected readings
- "Lexical orientation" (10/12/18)
- "Lexico-Cultural Decay" (10/9/18)
[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]
Philip Taylor said,
January 7, 2025 @ 11:15 am
"Some translators would hold that cultural context counts as much as lexical precision" — I would agree that some interpreters might legitimately hold that perspective, but surely translators should stick to translating, not interpreting …
J.W. Brewer said,
January 7, 2025 @ 11:51 am
The earliest non-Hebrew version of Ex. 19:4 we have is the Septuagint Greek, which has ἐπὶ πτερύγων ἀετῶν ("on wings of eagles"). See also the Vulgate ("super alas aquilarum"). All of which suggests that any alleged ornithological confusion may have arisen very early on. On the other hand, consider Job 39:27, which the King James Version has as "Doth the eagle mount up at thy command, and make her nest on high?" The LXX, however, has two separate birds in the verse: ἐπὶ δὲ σῷ προστάγματι ὑψοῦται ἀετός, γὺψ δὲ ἐπὶ νοσσιᾶς αὐτοῦ καθεσθεὶς αὐλίζεται, which is Englished in the recent NETS version as "And is it at your decree that the eagle rises up and the vulture lodges, sitting on its brood?"
FWIW the JPS 1917 version of that line (that version is a modest reworking of the KJV Old Testament under Jewish auspices) has "Doth the vulture mount up at thy command" etc., having changed only that one word. Yet the JPS 1917 version has ""on eagles' wings" in Ex. 19:4. Which suggests to me that maybe that set of translators/revisers believed that the same Hebrew lexeme might refer to what modern science considers different sorts of bird in different contexts?
Kate Bunting said,
January 7, 2025 @ 12:50 pm
The Bible verse that springs to my mind is Luke 17:37, given in the King James Bible as
'And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.'
Most later translations say 'Vultures'.
J.W. Brewer said,
January 7, 2025 @ 1:00 pm
St. Luke of course did not write in Hebrew and all sources agree that the core meaning of the Greek word he used (in nom. sg. ἀετός) is "eagle." But some will say it can mean "bird of prey" more generally, and some exegetical sources say things like "since eagles are said seldom or never to go in quest of carrion, [we] understand with many interpreters either the vultur percnopterus, which resembles an eagle [parenthetical citation to Pliny noting that very resemblance in the same century in which Luke wrote], or the vultur barbatus."
J.W. Brewer said,
January 7, 2025 @ 2:04 pm
This link (long to avoid a paywall issue) gives an interesting (perhaps not entirely neutral) account of a controversy about what bird or birds the lexeme should *officially* refer to in Modern Hebrew. https://web.archive.org/web/20220926061334/https://www.haaretz.com/2014-05-08/ty-article/.premium/word-of-the-day-nesher/0000017f-e944-dc91-a17f-fdcd85210000
Note btw that St. Luke may well have been expressing in Greek something Jesus said in Aramaic – and said in Aramaic while discoursing in parables about the End Times, not passing on a literal observation of a literal event. But whatever the original semantics of the Biblical Hebrew lexeme may have been may well have been different from the semantics of the cognate Aramaic lexeme as used when Jesus was speaking.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
January 7, 2025 @ 2:44 pm
What about the Zoroastrian symbol, the Faravahar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faravahar)? I mean, it's _literally_ a guy sitting on top of the wings of a non-passerine, and Wikipedia says that it predates even the
Zoroastrians;
Does that enter into the picture at all? If so, then that's another reason to demand the extirpation of the worst hymn since "Gather Us In" (I know, I know; some people like it, but, c'mon, it starts with "Yoo-hoo!", and I can't pray and snicker at the same time).
I say we hasten its demise by requiring lexical fidelity in the hymnals — from now on, you have to sing: "…and [] will raise you up on griffon vulture's wings…"
J.W. Brewer said,
January 7, 2025 @ 4:20 pm
Next up: bold new revisionist scholarship demonstrates that Tolkien misinterpreted key Elvish lexemes in his archival sources and in fact Frodo and Sam were retrieved from Mount Doom by giant vultures.
KevinM said,
January 7, 2025 @ 6:09 pm
Also very familiar is Isaiah 40:31: "But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint." (KJV) The Bible Gateway site compares some 50 translations, old and new, but there's not a vulture in sight; it's eagles all the way down. https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Isaiah%2040%3A31
Peter Taylor said,
January 7, 2025 @ 6:23 pm
Leon Sutton's claim that
does need some qualification, in that Revelation has three references to eagles and I'm not aware that it's generally considered to have been composed in Aramaic and then translated to Greek. There is also uncertainty about whether the unclean birds of kosher law (Leviticus and Deuteronomy) name both eagles and vultures. I've only skimmed the most relevant section and want to go back to read it in full, but Peter Altmann's monograph Banned Birds, The Birds of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 addresses this along with many other ornithological words, although without drawing definite conclusions.
David said,
January 7, 2025 @ 6:27 pm
Interestingly, the quoted article gets one word of the song (which I played at many Catholic funerals) wrong. It's not "the breadth of dawn"; it's "the breath of dawn."
Lucas Christopoulos said,
January 7, 2025 @ 9:28 pm
Jesus could speak or understood Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.
katarina said,
January 7, 2025 @ 9:41 pm
Lucas,
Where does it say Jesus could speak or understood Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek ? All I ever learned was that Jesus spoke Aramaic and St. Paul knew Greek.
Lucas Christopoulos said,
January 8, 2025 @ 1:20 am
Here is the argument
https://tyndalehouse.com/explore/articles/did-jesus-speak-greek/