A reader sent me a comment about how Catholics tell stories that they claim are in the Bible that aren’t, and that specifically they don’t include spiders. I had to double check. Here are all the Bible verses that mention spiders.
Pathetic. For one, they’re about spider webs, not spiders, and the second one is about lizards. Do they think lizards and spiders are the same thing? They’re so desperate to pad their list of spider facts from the Bible that they include reptiles.
Speaking of padding, here’s my correspondent’s tale of Catholic fable-making.
I made a comment on Bluesky that it wasn’t until I was studying the Bible in Religion class at a Catholic High School that I realized how many of the stories I was told by nuns in grade school weren’t actually in the Bible. I gave, as an example, the story of how Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, in their flight to Egypt to escape Herod Antipas’ attempt to kill all potential Kings of the Jews, they hid in a cave from pursuing soldiers. After they entered the cave, spiders spun webs across the entrance to the cave causing the soldiers to believe that the Holy Family couldn’t have possibly entered the cave.
A commenter wondered if the story I related was inspired by a similar one about David fleeing from King Saul for the exact same reason. Unlike the story about the Holy Family, the tale of David hiding in a cave, minus the spiders, is actually in the Bible.
I interpret this to mean Christians realize that there is a serious lack of spider relevance in their holy book, and they are crying out for more.
That depends on your selection of Bible versions. In the King Kames Version it is:
Have fun explaining how either lizards or spiders have ‘hands.’
Conversely, the King James Version of Job 27:18 is not about spiders at all.
So the authors of the Bible didn’t know the difference between spiders, lizards, and moths? Heresy. Burn that book.
Inside the Church of Abu Serga: a Hidden Gem Where the Holy Family Sought Refuge
This description makes no mention of spiders.
I attended 12 years of Catholic school and was never told this story. I guess my nuns were better informed than those of the correspondent.
The Christmas Spider: A Story of Faith
And that spider’s name was Charlotte.
Wait, I might be getting my religious stories mixed up.
It was the Council of Nicaea of 325 that excluded most references to spiders in the Bible. It was known as the Arachnid Anathema.
It is worse than that.
The bible also doesn’t mention cats.
Despite the fact that cats had been domesticated in the Middle East for thousands of years already.
One of the major centers of cats was in Egypt, the major power of the day right next door to Israel.
They had to know about cats.
They may have even had cats.
The bible was written by the Ken Hams and Pat Robertsons of their day. It has only a vague resemblance to what those societies and that era of history was like.
@7 raven
Letter of Jeremiah
Also, 176 mentions of ‘lion’, 9 ,mentions of ‘leopard’, and one mention of ‘hyena’.
Animals in the Bible: Full A-Z List with Symbolic Meanings
There are cobwebs on my bible. Does that count?
I took a quick look at a concordance (Strong’s; not the best but easily accessed) to see what’s up terminology-wise.
Job 8 and Isaiah both use עככביש (akkabis), which is pretty unambiguously “spider”. Those are the only two uses of that word in the Hebrew-language Bible text.
Job 27 uses עש (as), which almost certainly means “moth”, and several translations use that term. It’s likely that “spider” is a nonliteral choice meant for clarity, as spiders are better known as builders than moths among the intended audience.
Proverbs uses שממיﬨ (s’mamit), a peculiar term whose translation is a bit vague. The root is שמם (s’mam), a verb with a wide range of meanings from “horrify” to “destroy”, and the stem would make the term used in Proverbs into something which etymologically would be “horrifier” or “destroyer”. It’s often translated as being a poisonous or somehow horrifying creature, but exactly which one isn’t absolutely clear form a casual search.
You may not have Jesus, but at least you can claim Robert the Bruce.
Funny you should sing praise to the spiders at the same time I’m fighting a spider mite infestation. Coincidence? I think not.
The Ungoliant has traits both spidery and scorpion-y (her offspring Shelob had a sting at the rear).
This may not be the babble, but Tolkien was Christian so it should count. Especially as the LOTR trilogy is logically consistent which is never the case with Garbage Book #1 (# 2 is the koran # 3 is the hindu & buddhist stuff).
Muslims have a similar tradition. When Muhammad was travelling from Mecca to Medina to flee his persecutors, he and his companion, Abu Bakr hid in a cave on Mount Thawr until the search died down. To fool his pursuers the tradition says that God sent a pair of birds to build a nest and lay eggs near the entrance and a spider to spin a web across the entrance.
@8 Reginald Selkirk
The Letter of Jeremiah isn’t in all bibles.
The eternal unchanging word of god is constantly being edited and revised.
The Book of Baruch was removed by the Protestants when they revised the bible.
The purported Catholics of this anecdote are just carrying on the Jewish tradition of midrash, embroidering on mythological storylines (similar to Muslim hadith, bogus sayings attributed to Mohamed).
Some “Jesus mythicists” consider the core New Testament a collection of midrash; most non-fundamentalist “Jesus historicists” readily concede much of said scripture consists of elaborations and additions to whatever actually happened – so the alleged fabulators have ample and respected precedents.
The spiders themselves, last I heard, don’t care.
I don’t associate webs with fragility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk
—
Each spider and each type of silk has a set of mechanical properties optimised for their biological function.
Most silks, in particular dragline silk, have exceptional mechanical properties. They exhibit a unique combination of high tensile strength and extensibility (ductility). This enables a silk fibre to absorb a large amount of energy before breaking (toughness, the area under a stress-strain curve).
Strength and toughness are distinct quantities. Weight for weight, silk is stronger than steel, but not as strong as Kevlar. Spider silk is, however, tougher than both.
@ ^
Wow, thanks for your original contribution. It’s almost like you’re quoting something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Mechanical
But, I’m sure you would have used tags to indicate so, instead of being a lazy shit.
John Harshman # 1 alludes to the legend, well known among my people, that a spider was responsible for the casting out of Scotland of the English invader:
Alba gu brath! X-D
[Nelson’s Eye]
Review:
I don’t associate webs with fragility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk
—
Each spider and each type of silk has a set of mechanical properties optimised for their biological function.
Most silks, in particular dragline silk, have exceptional mechanical properties. They exhibit a unique combination of high tensile strength and extensibility (ductility). This enables a silk fibre to absorb a large amount of energy before breaking (toughness, the area under a stress-strain curve).
Strength and toughness are distinct quantities. Weight for weight, silk is stronger than steel, but not as strong as Kevlar. Spider silk is, however, tougher than both.
@ 20
Forgot the source. Now who’s lazy X-D
https://folklorescotland.com/bruce-and-the-spider/
Morton’s Demon.
@ Me
12! not 1!
My fingers seemed to have stopped working in sympathy with Morales’ ability to blockquote.