Meaning of BIBLICAL FAUNA

The Bible classifies animals by the place where they live, without making an anatomical description, like that of modern science. The scriptural classification is totally ecological, that is, based on the natural environment of each species (Gen. 1:20-30; 2:19, 20; Lev. 11).

The modern classification system is based on morphology and anatomy, although it is not more accurate than that of the Bible, but rather it is different. Below we give a list of the main animals mentioned in the Bible with Hebrew, Greek, scientific and Spanish names.

Animal names are classified in the following list into three categories:
(a) safe, which are the majority and are generally translated with the same names in the Spanish versions of the Bible;

(b) a second class (marked by an asterisk) is composed of dubious names,

(c) and the third (indicated by two asterisks) is made up of names obscured in the Hebrew text for reasons of transcription.

The dividing line between the second and third categories is not always clear, since various subjective criteria induce the scholar to classify animals into one of these two groups.

Finally, a "°" sign above some names indicates that they appear only once in the Bible, and they are called "hapax legomena" because they are among the names that appear only once in the entire biblical text. The spelling used in the translation is that of the Reina-Valera Version.