Saturday, June 27, 2015

Slifkin, The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom

NEW BOOK: New from OU Press: “The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom” by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. Note that this is the Orthodox Union Press, not Oxford University Press. Be that as it may, it sound interesting, especially for the lavish illustrations. But I suspect I would not be convinced by some of the identifications of biblical animals with modern ones. For example, Behemoth is a cosmological monster in the Bible and ancient Jewish tradition and is associated with the sea monster Leviathan. I very much doubt that Behemoth is to be identified with the hippopotamus.