in Animals, Articles, Bible

Biblical Classification of Animals: Part 1

Goats and Sheep grazing together in Israel: ID 22375220 © Gkuna | Dreamstime.com

[Originally published as the first section of Biological Classification in the Bible: ethnobiology and more]

Some people have suggested that seeing biological classification in the Old and New Testaments is a misreading of modern science into Scripture. That is only true if people try to force a modern (Linnaean) taxonomic concept onto ancient beliefs.

In truth, classification is an inherent instinct to humanity as we conceptually organize the natural world into a coherent environment. Taxonomic units at different hierarchical levels are regularly met in Scripture. The different classification schemes are worth a look so that we better understand the context of biological terms within ancient Israel’s culture.

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Baraminic Lineages are Covert

First, let me point out that there are no biblical classification schemes that readily equate to scientific classification, whether evolutionary or creationist. The Hebrew word mîn is often translated as ‘kind’, but it does not directly equate to ‘species,’ or any other Linnaean class. It is a word that differs in meaning depending on contextual use, particularly as a classificatory term. It might, sometimes, indicate divisions within broader taxa, or it might indicate a comparable taxon of equal rank. The phrase ‘after its kind’ might simply refer to all the different types of a certain thing (Neville 2011). Context is key.

For the creationist, since we do not accept the idea of a universal common descent of all organisms because of the clear teaching of Genesis 1, the concept of the baraminic lineage best fits natural reality (Wood et al. 2003). Specifically, an “archaebaramin” is the entirety of the potentiality region of a biological lineage, from the initial created organisms (however many there were) through all of their descendants, including any morphologically distinct descendants which are unknown.

But while Genesis notes that lineages are separately created, it doesn’t tell us exactly what those lineages are. God never defines or delineates the baraminic lineages themselves. The finer points of baraminology are intended to test organisms for possible relationships within baraminic lineages.

There has been debate within creation science over whether the Created Kinds are the same as the Ark Kinds in Genesis.

The similarity in language is notable, but creationists who promote an upper Cenozoic Flood boundary run into difficulties if a single unclean pair of a kind on the Ark represents the entirety of a baraminic lineage. My ARJ paper (Arment 2022) discusses this point, and notes that it is certainly possible that the mîn of the Creation account and Flood account are referring to the same baraminic lineages, but if so, it is in a covert fashion. (You’ll see more discussion of covertness below in the ethnobiology section.)

Because of the ambiguity in the language in Genesis, the geological Flood model one holds essentially determines how we view the relationship between Created Kinds and Ark Kinds.

  • Those who hold to an upper Cenozoic Flood boundary are forced to limit the Ark Kind to genus level or smaller, even if the Created Kind is family level or higher. This is because of the sheer number of genera within the same unclean baraminic lineages that cross the upper Cenozoic boundary. Many of those genera are known to hybridize, so they aren’t separately created baraminic lineages.
  • Those who hold to a K/T Flood boundary or variable lower Cenozoic Flood boundary are able to include Ark Kinds that would incorporate family levels or broader. It isn’t necessary to posit multiple genera from the same unclean baraminic lineage on the Ark, because modern mammals, for example, didn’t diversify in post-Flood strata until some time (more recent fossil strata) after their dispersal from the Ark and into the new continentally-divided landscape.

A Prescribed Taxonomy

Best known from the Dietary Laws, there was a classification system which was specifically ordained by God, where animals were ‘divided’ (Leviticus 11:47) between three polarities: edible/inedible, clean/unclean, and detestable/not detestable (Hawley 2015). These designations determined what was permissible to eat and what was permissible for sacrifice. These were separate labels, though often overlapping.

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Prior to the Dietary Laws, Genesis 7 noted that both clean and unclean animals would be brought to the Ark, but it isn’t until Genesis 9:3 that God gave permission to mankind to eat animals (and at that point, no differentiation was made between clean and unclean kinds). After the Exodus, Israel was given specific guidelines for determining if an animal was ‘clean’ or ‘unclean,’ and therefore whether it could be eaten or not. When Jesus came, he declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19), which was reiterated with Peter’s vision (Acts 10).

Whether an animal was edible, clean, or detestable was determined by God. A designation could change, and did not necessarily apply to an entire baraminic lineage. For example, the ‘clean insects’ in Leviticus 11:22 appear to be singled out from within a specific baraminic kind (the locust kind), but there are orthopterans which would not have been considered ‘clean.’ See Arment (2022) for more details on this.

Ethnobiological Classification

Ethnobiology is a multidisciplinary study of the relationships between people and other living organisms: how a community views plants and animals, how they utilize them and interact with them, how they classify them, and what they know or believe about them (Berlin 1992; Anderson 2011; Hunn 2011).

Cultures past and present infer biological relationships, whether due to physical appearance, behavior, or other characteristics. Even distinctly unrelated cultures will often share commonalities in folk-taxonomies (Atran 1990). Berlin (1992) noted:

“When human beings function as ethnobiologists… they do not construct order, they discern it. One is not able to look out on the landscape of organic beings and organize them into cultural categories that are, at base, inconsistent with biological reality….Rather, groups of plants and animals present themselves to the human observer as a series of discontinuities whose structure and content are seen by all human beings in essentially the same ways…”

Even with notable discontinuities and definable clusters, of course, there can be more than one way to classify a cat. Ross and Revilla-Minaya (2011) highlighted several inductive principles that are used in ethnobiological classification:

  • similarity (relationships based on how similar organisms are),
  • typicality (relationships based on how ‘normal’ an organism is),
  • and diversity (relationships based on what may be shared by diverse organisms).

Despite a wide range of literature on ethnobiological classification, even the ethnobiology of Scripture, the subject is rarely discussed by creation biologists. (Sanders and Wise (2003) referred to a 1973 paper on folk biology, while McLain, Petrone, and Speights (2018) discussed folk taxonomies in regard to how creationists use bird and dinosaur.)

While some creationists have argued that God never intended to prescribe a taxonomic system in the Bible, taxonomy is not simply a divine dictate—it is an anthropological desire to conceptually organize the natural world we see around us. Taxonomic structure is present in Scripture, because while ‘God-breathed,’ it is also written by and for humans—it just does not directly equate to modern scientific classification.

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References

Chad Arment

Written by Chad Arment

Chad Arment (currently of Ohio), has published in the Answers Research Journal, the Journal of Creation, and using his own website. His goal is to explore topics in organismal zoology (living and fossil species) as they relate to the Bible, from a young-earth creationist perspective.

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