[MarkBsnr]

***One group of people may have a word to describe a category (let it be called A) that contains representatives of things that another group of people may choose to describe using more than that one word based on characteristics that, to them, are sufficiently important to warrant commemorating that distinction by coining a new terms (say A1 and A2).***

Yet bats are not birds and whales are not fish. This is not a matter of what people would describe. This is a discussion of Scripture.

[aruanan]

***One group of people may have a word to describe a category (let it be called A) that contains representatives of things that another group of people may choose to describe using more than that one word based on characteristics that, to them, are sufficiently important to warrant commemorating that distinction by coining a new terms (say A1 and A2).***

Yet bats are not birds and whales are not fish. This is not a matter of what people would describe. This is a discussion of Scripture.

You have a mistaken idea of scripture if you think that because ancient Hebrew used a term that includes both what we call "birds" and what we call "bats" the scripture is somehow out of line with truth as revealed by science or that scripture can't be scripture if the taxonomic categories used in the language then aren't coterminous with the taxonomic categories used now as though the Holy Spirit would certainly NOT have used a term then that comprises what we use it for now as well as something that we don't describe by it now (of course, there's the possibility that citation of the bat in this particular instance was an addition at the end of a list of unclean birds of another unclean flying animal that wasn't seen as being a bird, merely another unclean flying animal). Some people seem to be saying that if God were really communicating truth in the scriptures, then everything would be consistent with our understanding now.