MSS had been carried off to Asia Minor. It has been conjectured that the Septuagint translators, in rendering the Hebrew word arnebeth, or "hare," by the Greek word dasypus (hairy-foot), instead of by the word lagos, which had been usual in earlier classical Greek, were following a new fashion set by Aristotle in his 'Researches about Animals,' in which work "the modern word dasypus had almost entirely superseded the older."[1] And it is added that "there was an even yet more striking example of Aristotle's influence on the passage" (Leviticus, xi. 6): for whereas in the original Hebrew text the hare was said to chew the cud, the translators, having been enlightened by the natural history of Aristotle, "boldly interpolated the word not into the sacred text." The facts of the case are—that Aristotle uses lagos for "hare" indifferently with, and nearly as often as, dasypus; and that in one passage ('An.,' III. xxi. 1) he cursorily contrasts the hare with the class of ruminants. On the whole, then, it seems most natural to believe that the Septuagint translators used the word dasypus because it had become the fashion in speaking Greek to use it, and that Aristotle himself had obeyed and not created this fashion. With regard to the other point, it is quite possible that the translators may have seen that passage of Aristotle's above referred to; at all events, as educated men, they were doubtless influenced by the spread of the study of natural history, to which Aristotle, who had died only thirty-seven years before, had given great impetus.
- ↑ Dean Stanley's 'Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church,' iii. 261.
