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Old Screeds
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Holy Wemic! [20 January 06] A lion-man in the Bible
I am indebted to my friend Kim for a lead on "wemics" in the Bible. Well, maybe not wemics, exactly, but fantastical lion-men in any event! Here's what Kim wrote to me:
I was perusing your Wemic site, and recalled that there was mention of a lion transformed into a wemic-like creature mentioned in one of Daniel's dreams. So, I thought I'd go check it out. Here is the quote:
Daniel 7:1-4
7:1 In the first year of Belshaz'zar king of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream, and told the sum of the matter. 2 Daniel said, "I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 4 The first was like a lion and had eagles' wings. Then as I looked its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand upon two feet like a man; and the mind of a man was given to it.
RSV (Revised Standard Version)
So, there you go. Wemics are Biblical! Well, at least in dreams and visions. ;-)
Well, the figure in the dream is pretty clearly a two-legged thing, more like a rakshasa or a lionet. But it is still pretty neat.
Evidently, at least some biblical scholars interpret the lion-man as a symbol of Ancient Babylon, not a literal representative of a race of lion-men. Which seems too bad to me ... I think the latter would have been more fun.
Here's another bible interpretation in the Babylon mode, but with pictures!
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