And I said, WTF? Then I remembered, people in Jerusalem are there because they believe its the promised land, given by God to the Jews. They are just as nutty as the christians, the muslims and all the other religions.So these zookeepers over in Jerusalem are trying to sort of reconstruct the animals from the bible (old testament, of course) in Israel. They aren't trying to repopulate the area with the biblical predators like bears, but they are trying to bring back vultures, even though Levitucus 11:13 called them detestable. Which makes me wonder why they'd want to nurture and breed them. And why cherry-pick certain animals but not the rest from the bible? But why try to get logical now?
Almost 100 animals were mentioned in the bible, according to the fluffy, credulous HuffPo article where I found this ridiculous story, so of course, I am quite skeptical. I guess that's how Noah was able to get them all on the ark, then. He only had 100 or so to deal with, not the millions found in the world today.
There are nearly 100 different types of animals mentioned in the Bible, many of them key players in well-known stories: the lions in Daniel's den; the dove that scouted for dry land from Noah's ark; the ram that was sacrificed by Abraham to save the life of his son, Isaac.
Today, many of them are gone, hunted to the point of extinction or driven away by ongoing conflict. Of the 10 animals that are listed as acceptable dinner fare in Deuteronomy 14 -- ox, sheep, goat, deer, gazelle, roe deer, wild goat, ibex, antelope and mountain sheep -- only two (the gazelle and the ibex) could still be found in the historical boundaries of Israel in 1960. ...
"... I want to keep the vultures because they were mentioned in the Bible that it was a common animal and that's good enough for me."
