Annotated Chapter 15 Page 6
As usual, the ambiguity is because the Lizard’s range was defined by a human who didn’t have the subtlest grasp of species variation among lizards.
Leviticus 11:29 outlines a list of “unclean animals,” one of which is just “the great lizard (generic).” (The word also gets translated as turtles/tortoises, specifically — and the part where it’s also used to refer to canopies or covered wagons sure suggests that the speakers had a distinct shape of reptile in mind — but it looks like most translations go with Generic Lizard, and the experts would have more evidence to go on than I would.)
Let’s not even get started on Leviticus 11:30, where each word can have translations as varied as “gecko, ferret, or shrew,” “crocodile, monitor lizard, or mole,” “skink, sand-lizard, or snail,” and “chameleon, mole, or centipede.”
…in those cases, I assume the issue is different translators making wildly-different guesses based on scant evidence, not “the writers figured ferrets and geckos looked like members of the same species.”
Chicago offices of Ann Walker.
Computer: Age: 18
Nationality: United Kingdom
Being: Iguana (Kara Lynn)
Walker: Computer, pause.
God, I love being able to do that. How did I cope before digital voice-reading software?
Tiger: You had unpaid interns to read things for you, boss.
Walker: Ah, yes.
So . . . the girl with the Lizard has an interest in coming to see us. We had a file on its last Master for years, but never managed to speak to her. It’s good to know her distaste for research hasn’t been passed on to the granddaughter. Seems this Jany has pulled the Lizard out of sex work, though, so she may be an idealist in other ways.
The Lizard is an interesting one . . . We’ve had her filed as the Iguana for a long time, but records indicate she’s a lot more versatile than that. Maybe even more versatile than you, with your “any big cat that isn’t a lion” trick.
Why would some of you Living Beings be so specific a species, while others seem to represent an entire kind? It doesn’t seem to make sense with everything else we know about your destiny.
And we can’t even fish for clues about it from Cohen, because the less he knows of that prophecy, the better.
Maybe an exploration of the Lizard’s range will be able to clear it up.
Before the invention of photography, it was kinda hard to communicate how the animal you saw but didn’t managed to catch looked. Maybe that also played a role?
Although gecko and ferret, like, that’s probably case of word everyone forgot which was guessed back based on context.
Remember that the European otter was exterminated by monks who figured that, since they lived in water, they must count as fish for Friday eating.
Our modern ideas of types or species are often very different from ancient ones.