I am revisiting the issue of Unclean Birds due to multiple postings I've seen around recently on the issue.
I can understand the
perspective of questioning whether chicken is unclean. I personally
do not know whether it is or not, and as such I do not eat chicken
meat or its eggs. However, my reasoning is very different, and I
would disagree with some assertions I've witnessed.
Translating the Hebrew
words for various birds is a major challenge because most of the bird
names are only present in the prohibition passages. So, based on the
Hebrew alone, the only source we might even have for that word
existing is a single use in the text, and all we can readily deduce
from that evidence is that it is some type of unclean flying thing.
Even many bird words that do appear repeatedly in the text are not
readily translatable and could be referring to any number of birds.
Furthermore, no specific criteria are given for determining clean vs
unclean (such as with fins and scales or cloven and cud), and instead
we are only told what birds are unclean. This is what I would
perceive as the problem. Since we do not necessarily know what all
of the unclean birds are, we do not know whether chicken is one of
them.
Defining clean vs unclean
by what an animal eats is a common perspective, but it is
nevertheless non-textual. Mammals we determine by whether or not
they have cloven hooves and chew the cud (Lev 11:3). Fish we
determine by whether or not they have fins and scales (Lev 11:9).
Insects we determine by whether or not they have locust-style jumping
legs (Lev 11:21). None of these criteria actually specify what sort
of diet the animal must eat. While one might presume a
generalization regarding the diet of the allowed or forbidden
animals, this is not always accurate, nor is it textual. For
example, deer are certainly clean, but certain kinds have actually
been known to cannibalize each other or to eat mice and birds on
occasion. Clean fish will also eat unclean things like insects and
unclean water-life. However, that does not change whether or not
these animals are clean. The textual criteria has not been violated.
A similar situation would
presumably exist for birds (or “flyers”, actually). As stated,
we are given a list of unclean birds. Of the few birds that we do
know from the Hebrew, we can recognize vultures and ravens as
unclean, and indeed, these birds would be considered “scavengers”
in modern classification. However, the command does not actually say
“all scavengers are unclean” or anything like that. Instead, it
refers to “all raven to his type”, “vulture”, etc. A chicken
is not a raven or a vulture. Claiming it as a “scavenger”, as I have witnessed asserted, and
therefore claiming it as prohibited is baseless when it comes to the
text. Bird types are prohibited because they are listed as unclean,
not because it supposedly shares a single characteristic with another bird. It is often asserted that quail are definitively clean, even though they
will eat insects and their own feces and will eat each other's eggs
and will try to kill each other at times (I've previously raised
hundreds of quail). What is the difference between a bird eating an
unclean insect and a different bird eating an unclean rodent? There isn't a
difference based upon the text, and once again, that's not a listed
criterion. A chicken is not a type of raven, nor is it a type of
vulture, and it isn't even conventionally considered a “scavenger”
(if one was going by that non-textual category). If it's not a type
of bird that's prohibited, then it is clean. However, as I stated,
it would seem to be unknown as to all of the birds that are
prohibited.
Furthermore, presuming to create a category of what defines clean birds is just as problematic. As I will soon elaborate on, the only two birds that we presumably have certainty regarding being clean are doves and pigeons, and they are extremely unique in relation to many other birds (producing "crop milk"). Additionally, assertions regarding "clean birds have crops and four talons for perching", etc, are baseless as well, especially when the people who are claiming these categories do not actually have knowledge regarding the birds that they presume to be clean.
On the notion of defining
the birds, there is one method I have used to attempt to solve the
problem. The LXX version of the Torah, being a contemporaneous
translation of the Hebrew (being supposedly translated separately
from the NK of the TNK), would seem to be a largely untapped
resource. Additionally, given the widespread use of its language,
there are a vastly greater number of resources to allow us to
translate the bird list. That being said, even it does not provide a
clear or consistent rendering of the birds list. Here is what I
translated from it:
Lev 11 (LXX) “13...the
eagle and the bearded-vulture and the osprey 14 and the vulture and
kite and those similar [of] him 15 and raven and those similar [of]
him 16 and [sparrow or ostrich] and owl and gull and those similar
[of] him and hawk and those similar [of] him 17 and long-eared-owl
and [swooping or sea bird] and ibis 18 and purple-swamp-hen and
pelican and swan 19 and owl and heron and thickknee and those similar
[of] him and hoopoe and bat.”
Dt 14 (LXX) “12...the
eagle and the bearded-vulture and the osprey 13 and the vulture and
the kite and those similar [of] him 14 and all raven and those
similar [of] him 15 and [sparrow or ostrich] and owl and gull 16 and
heron and swan and ibis 17 and [unknown] and hawk and those similar
[of] him and hoopoe and long-eared-owl 18 and pelican and thickknee
and those similar [of] him and purple-swamp-hen and bat.”
So, as seen here, the
orders differ when comparing the two Hebrew lists to the LXX lists,
though the content between the two LXX lists is consistent with each
other. If this list is reliable, I might make some generalizations,
but even this list is not completely translated. So, arguably, the
one I wrote “unknown” for could be a chicken or jungle-fowl, but
that's not known.
Additionally, in other discussions I've witnessed, quail were referred to as definitively clean.
What's interesting is that the LXX does not actually say “quail”,
but instead, it seems to say “the bird that migrates with the
quail”. This might actually be referring to the corn crake. It
would certainly be an odd deviation if it was indeed contrary to the
Hebrew wording, especially since it was translated contemporaneously
to Hebrew language use. So, even quail could be up for debate
arguably.
So, from my perspective,
the Hebrew unclean bird list is not readily translated, and the LXX
translation is both incomplete and possibly uncertain as to its
validity. The reason a chicken would be unclean is because of its
presence in the prohibited list, or it would be clean because of its exclusion from the prohibited list. While I understand the motivation
to make categorizations in an attempt to personally understand the
text, that does not make our generalizations accurate or textual.
Non-textual criteria is exactly that, non-textual.
