You'll be pleased to hear that the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo contains 204 species of birds. Or maybe you won't. It depends on what your view of zoos is. Anyhow, what I wanted to know is ... how many species of birds are there in the Bible? There is considerable room for controversy over this ...what a surprise. "How could that possibly be ?" one might ask. Well ... there's loads and loads of versions of the Bible, and they don't all agree, bird-species-wise. To show you what I mean, here's a thing I wrote about Psalm 102 .... it's not half as boring as you might think, me being me ... there's disappearing Pelicans which later re-appear as corvids of some sort for a start ... In the paper the other day some bloke was writing about "sparrows on the roof" in Psalm 102. I remembered that , in Welsh, the sparrow is a " roof bird" .... aderyn y tô. I've always thought it a bit odd, because I don't see them on rooftops very much ... gutters sometimes, but the roof top, the ridge at the top, is more usually a place for starlings, gulls, pigeons, jackdaws ( jac-y-dô) etc. Anyway, naturally I went to my Welsh bibles and looked up Psalm 102.... it was very interesting. Oh yes. There's more than one bird in there for a start, and some of them get changed and/or edited out.... the "normal" English bible says ... 6] I am like a pelican of the wilderness: I am like an owl of the desert. 7] I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house top. but ... but.. the "New" English bible goes like this .. 6] I am like a desert-owl in the wilderness, an owl that lives among ruins. 7] Thin and meagre, I wail in solitude like a bird that flutters on the roof-top. Well, that's no good is it! Where's the blasted pelican flown off to? Where's all this " thin and meagre" stuff come from ? And all those ruins ? Why has he started to wail in the second version ? This is all very odd !! I'm sure the Welsh will have it sorted ... let's see shall we..... here's what my "old" Welsh bible says about all this.... 6] Tebyg wyf i belican yn anialwch: ydwyf fel dylluan y diffaethwch. 7] Gwyliais ac ydwyf fel aderyn y tô, unig ar ben y tŷ . Well well well ... the pelican ( °belican) is back, in the wilderness, even though they prefer lakes and stuff, the owl's still there ( °dylluan), but they're using a different Welsh word for the wilderness/desert it's in. There's the roof-sparrow, all on its own by the looks of it. "ydwyf = I am , by the way. Let's get bang up to date with a look at what "Y Beibl Cymraeg Newydd" has to say on this vital topic ... will the Pelican still be in its wilderness? Will the owl be in a slightly different sort of desert/wilderness? What will the sparrow be getting up to in the possible ruins? Is anyone going to be wailing ...or not ? Here we go ... brace yourself for a shock of biblical proportions ... 6] Yr wyf fel brân mewn anialwch, ac fel tylluan mewn adfeilion. 7] Yr wyf yn cadw'n effro, ac fel aderyn unig ar do. Cripes ... from Pelican to crow,rook or raven ( brân) in 1 easy step. The owl... yes, they've stuck to that owl ( tylluan this time) ... has got its ruin to play around in... as for the writer, no mention of any wailing , nor any solitude ...unlike the lone "bird" on the soft-mutated roof. And there's no fluttering either. Deary me ! What a carve-up ! You can't help but be suspicious that the Pelican has been Cymraeg-ificated into some corvid or other. I wonder exactly how many Pelicans there are in Wales.... I'm guessing 23. Isn't it interesting though to see how these bibles chop and change the content of these stories verse by verse, sentence by sentence? Yes it is. Very peculiar. There you are .... that's 1 tiny bit of the Bible in two languages , and already we're in a right old mess ! We're not even sure what sort of sparrow it was either. Can you just begin to imagine the chaos there must be among the many thousands of Biblical-Bird-Tickers in the world, not to mention the Biblical Zookeepers. Mad ! Totally doolally. I'll tell you something else too .... you know there's a big list of all the types of food that you're not supposed to eat ... well, they're somewhat different in other-language bibles !! Now that's a bit odd, is it not ??!! It's a good job there's me about to spot all these, er, anomalies. It was well worth learning Welsh just to bring it to your attention. And now back to some sort of sanity with Deacon Blue .... "Chocolate Girl " Incidentally ... it started drizzling about an hour ago ... the first rain here for about 22-23 days.
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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