Biodiversity in the Bible

The Oxford "Cyclopedic Bible Concordance", printed in Britain in the 1940s, contains special sections listing the animals, birds etc. which are named in the Bible. The lists are very impressive. That is because the Holy Lands include a wide variety of natural habitats including "maritime and inland, mountain and plain, luxuriance and desert, cold and tropical, glacial and volcanic, pastoral and arable". So, the species which like any one of these places can live there.

Although some species of animals formerly abundant have disappeared, such as the lion, wild bull, rhinoceros and bison, 80 species of mammalia still existed there in the 1940s. How well have the present stewards of the Holy Lands preserved these species?

As for birds, the Concordance states that there were about 350 species there in the 1940s. The list of plants mentioned in the Bible includes 114 kinds, and the Concordance states that a noted scientist says of Palestine: "There is not another spot on earth where so much of nature is focused as in this little corner. You have Alpine cold and torrid heat. Here are all the animals, birds, insects, plants, shells, rocks of all zones".

If you compare the biodiversity of the former Palestine to Ontario's Tommy Thompson Park in Toronto, which is an internationally recognized important birding area, it has a list of 300 resident and migrant birds ever seen there. We used to have more animal species living in forests extending further south in Ontario, until the trees were cut down for lumbering and agriculture. We have quite a variety of habitats, from the warm south to the far north of our province, and we have more freshwater lakes than anywhere else in the world.


Note: You are encouraged to explore how your own religion supports biodiversity.