"phute'okicu" and other new animals

[shokooh Ingham]

Interesting.  I wonder what it is in the original Hebrew.  In the Quran Yunis (Jonah) is swallowed by huut (with pharyngeal -h-).  Nowadays this is the Arabic word for whale, but I doubt that the 7th century Arabs were any more familiar with whales than the Ancient Hebrews.  In Moroccan Arabic huut is the normal word for fish.  One wonders however, if the whale is not intended in the Old Testament, what they could have been thinking about.  After all a whale is the only fish on earth, which one could imagine large enough to swallow a man whole.  Could they have heard of whales from those further afield?  Did it wait for the scriptures to reach Northern Europe before it could be interpreted strictly as a whale?
Bruce


Anthony Grant <Granta at edgehill.ac.uk> wrote: I've checked the Vulgate and a German (admittedly Lutheran rather than Catholic) Bibe translation and in both of them it's a 'big fish', not a whale.  I assume Buechel would have translated either from the German Bible as used by Catholics of his time or from the Vulgate.  The Greek NT has a big fish too.  

As a matter of interest, what does the Lakota NT do with such items as the lists of precious stones in the Book of Revelations?  The names and entities (chrysoprase, for instance) are mostly as alien to native speakers of 
English as they would be to Lakota speakers.  

Anthony

>>> shokooh Ingham  01/24/08 10:14 am >>>
Buechel gives wamnitu as 'whale or hippopotamus'.  I suppose it is a case of it being a name given to a  large animal living, at least occasionally in water, which is unfamiliar to the Lakotas and that they have heard of from the whites.  I don't know who ate Jonas, but in my folk memory as a C of E Brit I'm sure we always refer to Jonah and the Whale.  I haven't got a King James version of the OT available to check it in the original.  Yes Buechel's Bible history gives hogan tanka wan and also for the story of Tobias a hogan wan tanka (his orthography).  There is a very good description of an Unkchegila in Buechel's tales and Texts in a story called Pretty weasel goes on a raid.  They find one where the rain has washes away the soil.  They say it looks like a horse but is much bigger and has a long pointed nose.  I give it to my students asa translation exercise and offer extra marks if anyone can guess what the beast is.
Bruce

Anthony Grant  wrote: My understanding is that whatever swallowed Jonah, it certainly wasn't a whale as we know it.  I'd never thought that whales were native to the Middle East anyway! 

Anthony

>>> "Rankin, Robert L"  01/24/08 4:50 am >>>
Not being well versed in matters theological, I may be wrong, but I think 'great fish' more closely mirrors the original Hebrew text.  I'll have to check into the education of the translator to see if this is an accident or a superior translation.
 
Bob

________________________________

> As a matter of interest, in the OT story of Jonas & the Whale, Buechel's Bible History Stories (1924) merely uses (p.127) : "HOGAN TANKA" [= big fish] for the famous 'whale'.
 

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