Now 'beast' as a term is ambiguous. It's not the same, for example, as 'monster.' A monster is always disordered because it violates nature and natural law, the latter of which is derived from the instructions of divine law. A beast is ordinarily natural: Proverbs 12:10 has 'the righteous man has regard for his beast,' meaning whatever animals he might own. There's nothing necessarily disordered about a beast.
So I looked this up in the Sacra Vulgata, which is the oldest language text version of the Bible I can actually read -- Greek and Aramaic are not in my skill set, except for such small things as I've done with Greek in the commentaries here -- and there Proverbs 12:10 has animas rather than bestiam as does Revelations (which in the Sacra Vulgata is called "Apocalypsis"). That suggests to me that the term is intended in its negative connotation, rather than in its natural one.
Nevertheless, the fact that we can find regular and repetitive tokens that instantiate the dynamic described in the prophecy -- the Orthosphere goes from Nimrod to the present Leviathan -- suggests that this sort of creature is produced naturally in the sense of 'ordinarily by the operation of nature.' There's a kind of form involved, in other words: it's a thing that happens 'always or for the most part,' as Aristotle says.
We can distinguish, they usefully note, thusly:
St. Luke tells us that when Jesus first set his face towards Jerusalem, there was a Samaritan village that “did not receive him.” Indignant at this affront, James and a much younger John asked Jesus, “wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven.” Jesus, lamb-like in more than appearance, then rebuked them saying,“ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them” (Luke 9: 52-56).The Second Beast calls down fire to destroy anyone who does not worship the First Beast and its “hideous strength.” And it does this “in the sight of man,” nowadays on television, so that others will think twice before inviting such a rain of fire.
That is a very helpful discussion in learning to identify this ordinary thing from the genuinely divine thing it seeks to mimic.
"Animas".........my creaky latin memory tells me that that word is the accusative plural of "anima"--soul.
ReplyDeleteSo it's your contention that 'soul'/'spirit' is more a threat, right? I tend to agree but that's an instinct thing.
It's interesting that 'anima' came to mean 'soul' while 'spiritus' came to mean 'spirit' even though both of them are etymologically linked to breathing. There are a lot of different concepts about what the soul or the spirit is/are, and whether they are the same thing or different things.
ReplyDeleteMy translation of Proverbs 12:10 is from memory, but it is how I recall the KJV putting it. Prior to the Norman Conquest, the Old English word for a wild animal was deor, cf. "deer."
All I meant to say was that the Bible referring to something as a 'beast' doesn't imply that it's a monster, because at least in some translations like the KJV the word 'beast' is often used even for domestic animals let alone wild ones. But in the Latin they verses use distinct words, and the beasts of Revelations are clearly not natural animals.
They are also described in terms that sound monstrous, but so are angels in some verses. Ezekiel's vision of the angelic beings is far more outlandish than the beasts in Revelations, but they are clearly not monsters but angels.
Prior to the Norman Conquest, the Old English word for a wild animal was deor, cf. "deer."
ReplyDeleteThere was a deep Germanic taboo in properly naming some things. The proto-Germanic name for 'bear' split from the more proper 'arkto' to 'bero' (brown/grey one). Also see that in some of the earliest god names in that they are descriptions vs proper names.