Pests, Plagues & PoliticsLecture 9

From Pharaohs to Salt Lake CityInsects in Religion

Key Points

• Insects as Gods– The sacred scarab– Beelzebub

• The sacred honey bee– What makes a social insect

• Insects in the Bible and the Koran• Insects and Witchcraft

TIME - the 3rd Millennium

• When did it begin?– >1999??– >2000??

• An argument created by– DIONYSIUS EXIGUSS– 6th century monk who proposed calculating a

calendar based on the birth of Christ.– Not widely adopted until the 9th century

• FYI: in Buddhist countries it is now the year 2553

Insects as Gods

• Insects as gods in METAPHOR– a figure of speech in which one thing is compared

to another.• The Sacred Scarab Beetle of the Pharaohs

– vin 4,500 BP

• What’s a scarab??

What’s a Scarab??

• Coleoptera– family Scarabaeidae

• a large group of beetles, with >1,280 species in North America alone.

• [When the British biologist Haldane was asked what he had learned about God from studying evolution, his reply was:]

• God must have “an inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Scarabs• Numerous species of scarabs make a living out

of “dung” & therefore have been given the common name “dung beetles”

Dung Beetle Life History

• Female collects dung• Molds it into a ball• Rolls it over the ground to a burrow

– male may help• Oviposits into dung• Stays with brood in underground

chamber until her death• With the next rainy season, the new

generation emerges

Dung Beetles

• To ancient (Pharaonic) Egyptians these beetles were considered sacred.

• A mummy-shaped pupa which emerges from a sphere: many metaphors!!

• Scarabs are holometabolous, ergo:– mummy-like pupae = the dead– dungball = the present life– emergence of new beetle from pupae =

entrance to the afterlife (resurrection)

Sacred Scarabs• “I am the master of Eternity,

ordering how I am fated, the Great Beetle”– Book of the Dead

• The god RE, a.k.a. Kheper or Khepri, was represented with

the body of a human and the head of a scarab.

Egyptian Beetle Hieroglyphs

Osirian Judgement

• Osirus: God of the Underworld & Judge of the Dead.

• Heart of the dead was removed and weighed to judge a good life or a bad life.

• Often the heart was removed and replaced with a scarab.

Beelzebub

• a.k.a. “The Lord of the Flies”• A god of the Philistine city of Ekron

in ancient Palestine.• Representative of the 5th deadly sin:

GLUTTONY

Beelzebub’s Mythological Form

Insects as sacred objects

• William Morton Wheeler– 20th century entomologist - discussing honey bees

• “…a divine being, a prime favorite of the gods, that had somehow survived the golden age or had voluntarily escaped from the Garden of Eden with poor fallen man for the purpose of sweetening his bitter lot.”

Insects as sacred objects

• George Santayana– American philosopher (LIFE OF REASON)

“The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, & essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the female (soul) is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive & abounding in intuitions without method and passions, without justice.”

Why use bees as a metaphor?• HUMANS are SOCIAL • HONEY BEES are SOCIAL• Honey bees:

– familial organizations with MOTHER • widowed

– Kings (males)– Daughters

• (usually sexually repressed)– Sons

• (slovenly & sexual automatons)

What are the requisites for “sociality” in the INSECT world?

1) REPRODUCTIVE DIVISION OF LABOR2) COOPERATIVE BROOD CARE BY SIBLINGS3) OVERLAP OF GENERATIONS

It is an error to use insect sociality as a metaphor!!!

Who are the social insects??

• Found in two orders• HYMENOPTERA

• all ant species– (“one ant ain’t”)

• ca. 10% of bee species• ca. 10% of wasp species

• ISOPTERA– all termites species{also naked mole rats & a species of coral shrimp}

Honey Bees & bee products as icons.• Icon: an image, a figure, a likeness, often as a sacred image.

• Pharanoic Egypt– bees & honey arise from

the tears of RA

• Ancient Greece & Rome– a bee landing on the mouth of a new borne foretells a

great philosopher or poet• Plato - Sophocles - Xenophon - Virgil - St. Ambrose - St.

Basis - the Bishop of Caesarea

Honey Bees & bee products as icons

• Milk & HONEY a constituent part of communion.– No longer so for the RCC, but still in effect in the Coptic

& Ethiopian CC• St. Gregory (Pope from 590-604 AD)

– “When the grace of the Holy Spirit bathes us, it fills us with honey & butter equally. Honey falls from above**, butter is drawn from the milk of animals, so honey is from the air, butter from the flesh.”

Honey: perhaps the 1st & last food of Christ.

• Isaiah 7: 14-15– “Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son &

shall call his name Emanuel. Butter & honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse evil, & choose the good.”

• Luke 24: 42– “’Have ye here any meat?’ And they gave him a

piece of boiled fish & of a honeycomb. And he took it, and did eat before them.”

[don’t do what Isaiah recommended]

Saint Ambrose

Bishop of Milan - 374-379 AD - one of the four Latin Fathers - Patron Saint of Beekeeping

• “Let then your work be as it were a honeycomb, for virginity is fit to be compared to bees, so laborious it is, so modest, so continent. The bee feeds on dew, it knows no marriage couch, it makes honey. The virgin’s dew is the divine word, for the words of God descend like the dew. The virgin’s modesty is unstained nature. The virgin’s produce is the fruit of the lips, without bitterness, abounding in sweetness. They work in common their fruit is in common.”

[can you see the “hand” of Aristotle in all of this?]

Beeswax as sacred

• Catholic Encyclopedia - 1907– “…beeswax is to be regarded as typifying in

the most appropriate way the flesh of Christ born of a virgin mother. The wick of a beeswax candle symbolizes Jesus’ soul, and the flame the divinity which absorbs & dominates both.”

– this idea of virginity of beeswax was first promulgated in the 11th century.

Martin LutherThe Great Reformer

UBI MEL, IBI FEL“Where the is honey, there is bile.”

De Roomsche Byen-korfby Philips of Marnix

Pope blesses evolution

• 1996– “The theory of evolution (is) more

than a hypothesis.”• 1950

– Humani Genesis• granted the notion that evolution is a “serious hypothesis.”

• Science (1996) 1 Nov. vol. 274, p. 717.

Insects in the Bible

• Old & New Testaments possess 120 insect references.–Orthoptera 34 ref.–Worms & Caterpillars 34 ref.–Moths 11 ref.–Flies 9 ref.–Bees & Hornets 8 ref.– {scorpions} 10 ref.

Biblical Plagues

• Exodus 8: 24–“The Lord sent great swarms of flies

into the king’s palace & the houses of his officials. The whole land of Egypt was brought to ruin by the flies.”

Possibly misconstrued• Isaiah 66: 24

– “And they shall go forth & look upon the carcasses of men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched: they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.”

• Mark 9: 44– “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is

not quenched.”{T. Rosebury, MICROBES & MORALS says perhaps not

entomological}

Selected Biblical favorites

• Proverbs6:6“Go to the ant thou sluggard consider her ways and be wise.”

30: 25“The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer.”

30: 27“The locusts have no king, yet they go forth all of them by bands.”

The BUG Bible

• The CLOVERDALE translation– prepared in England for Henry the VIII in

1535• Psalms 91: 5

– “Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed of eny bugges by night.”

• But these are NOT entomological “bugs”– referring to demons & devils such as

Beelzebub, who is also known as the Lord of the Flies.

Insects of the Koran• Chapter 16

– Titled “THE BEE”– verse 68:

• “Your Lord inspired the bee, saying ‘Build your homes in the mountains, in the trees, and in the hives which men shall make for you. Feed on every kind of fruit & follow the trodden paths of your Lord.”

– verse 69:• “From its belly comes forth a fluid of many hues,

a medicinal drink for man. Surely in this there is a sign for those who would give thought.”

Insects of the Koran

• Mohammed the Prophet (571-632 AD)– quoted as saying:

• “Honey is a remedy for every illness, & the Koran is a remedy for all illness of the mind, therefore I recommend to you both remedies, the Koran and Honey.”

Insects of the Koran

• Gnats– used as an example of a “low creature that, while

deserving disdain is not shunned by God.• Locusts

– a rehash of the old Testament• Bees

– as before mentioned• Ants

– Chapter 17 of the Koran is titled “The Ants”• accounts Solomon waging war against Egypt

Entomology & the LDS

• Original name proposed for Utah was DESERET

= honey bee according to the Book of Mormon

Honey Bees & Buddhism• An elephant named Paliligha

The Mayan Empire

Mayan Bee GodAhu Lib Cab

Stingless Bees

Nang Mai Tree

Guazzo, an Italianpriest who, in 1626,authored this ratherunusual book

Insects & Witchcraft• From COMPENDIUM MALEFICARUM

– That classic book of intolerance by Brother Francesco Mario Guazzo

“Witches (are) obligated, as instructed by the devil, to wrought fresh evil, such as, infesting trees & fruit with locusts, caterpillars, butterflies, canker-worms & such pestilent vermin, for all this we know from the confessions of witches.”

Insects & Witchcraft

• Numerous insects were felt to be representatives of the devil (evil)– Black Bees– Lice– Flies– And especially crickets

• maintained as “bottle imps”• to be fed and released at appropriate times.

Key Points

• Insects as Gods– The sacred scarab– Beelzebub

• The sacred honey bee– What makes a social insect

• Insects in the Bible and the Koran• Insects and Witchcraft