Scripture on Animal Groups: The Whale and the Bat
This article examines what Scripture teaches about animal classification, specifically addressing whether whales should be classified as fish and bats as birds, rather than accepting modern taxonomic categories. The author engages with historical perspectives (including Melville's Moby Dick) and Linnaean taxonomy while appealing to Scripture's own categories and descriptions of animals to determine proper biblical understanding of creation's animal groups.
In his 1851 classic, Moby Dick, Herman Melville had this to say about the whale: In his System of Nature, A.D. 1776, Linnaeus declares, "I hereby separate the whales from the fish." But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850, sharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linnaeus's express edict, were still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the Leviathan.… Be it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish,...
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