A Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 edition. Excerpt: ...St/mp. viii. 29; comp. Horat. Carm. i. 3. 2; iv. 8. 31); and hence their figures were often adopted for 'the sign' (rh mpAsnftaWy inrigne from which a ship derived its name, as was the case with that 'ship of Alexandria in which St Paul sailed on his journey for Rome (Acts xxviii. 11). CAT (aXKovpos). It might le assumed that the cat was an useful, if not a necessary, domestic animal to the Hebrew people in Palestine, where com was grown for exportation, as well as foi consumption of the resident population, twenty or thirty-fold more than at present, and where, moreover, the conditions of the climate required the precaution of a plentiful store being kept in reserve to meet the chances of scarcity. The animal could not be unknown to the people, for their ancestors had witnessed the Egyptians treating it as a divinity, under the denomination of Pasht, the Lunar Goddess, or Diana, holding every domesticated individual sacred, embalming it after death, and often sending it for interment to Bubastis. Yet we 6nd the cat nowhere mentioned in the canonical books as a domestic animal. And in Bartich it is noticed only as a tenant of Pagan temples, where no doubt the fragments of sacrificed animals and vegetables attracted vermin, and rendered the presence of cats necessary. This singular circumstance, perhaps, resulted from the animal being deemed unclean, and being thereby excluded domestic familiarity, though the Hebrews may still have encouraged it, iu common with other vermin-hunters, about the outhouses and farms, and corn-stores, at tbe risk of some loss among the broods of pigeons which, in Palestine, were a substitute for poultry. If the domestic species of cats were not tolerated, there could not exist many wild in a country almost...