Dear BBC Radio Four
I am a keen and regular listener to Tweet Of The Day, your two-minute programme devoted to birds and birdsong broadcast each weekday morning at the ungodly hour of 5.58. I have grown used to beginning my day having my ears delighted by the various trills, chirps, chirrups, caws, squawks, tweets, etcetera etcetera of our avian pals. Thus I was mightily disconcerted, this morning, to hear not a bird but a bat.
I charged the unpaid interns of the Hooting Yard Ornithological Research Bureau with the task of checking these things for me, and the crippled yet sprightly orphans toiling away in the cellar reported back, toot sweet, that, as I suspected, a bat is not a bird. Unless you have renamed the series Airborne Mammalian Squeak Of The Day, this is simply unfathomable.
Please ensure that your editor studies carefully this diagram of a bird, to avoid committing the same blunder in the future.
Yours peevishly,
Frank Key
*
Dear Mr Key
Thank you for your peevish complaint. Recent developments at the BBC have clearly escaped your notice. You may know that the inaugural Director General of the Corporation was a God-fearing Scotchman of great rectitude, Lord Reith. Following a conference held in a grim granite chapel perched on a windswept promontory, the senior management vowed to jettison all that leftie politically correct Gramscian Marxist poppycock and return the BBC to stern-jawed Reithian values informed by Christian ethics.
Henceforth Christ is our guide, and the Bible is His Word, and it is abundantly clear from the Bible that the bat is a bird. I refer you to Leviticus 11:13-19.
And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray, And the vulture, and the kite after his kind; Every raven after his kind; And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind, And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl, And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle, And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
I trust this clarifies the matter, and that you will repent of your sins. May the Lord bless you and keep you, or smite you and chastise you, as in His infinite wisdom He sees fit.
Yours in Christ,
The Rev. Ninian Tonguelash
BBC Ornithology & Theology Inquisitor General
Dear Mr Key,
I refer to the ‘bird diagram’ which accompanies your latest article. On behalf of the esteemed legal firm of Cant, Sordid Longings & Schadenfreude I must ask you to desist immediately from bringing our good name into disrepute by associating it with unhinged – and dare I say fly-by-night – political organisations such as the Corkscrew Tendency, and certain less principled solicitors like our bitter rivals, Stalinism, Pomp & Truculence.
For shame, sir, for shame.
W.J. Schadenfreude III, esq.
Greetings.
The link to the image below is very important
https://www.flickr.com/photos/37319613@N08/37563860795/sizes/o/
The image above demonstrates that the layout of the flyers in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 is actually quite logical.
First, notice that the bat is not placed arbitrarily among the list of the Chordate flyers, but it is always placed at the end (Lev 11:19B, Deu 14:18B).
Also, there are two Phylum of flyers presented in those chapters. According to the Scientific Classification System, the Phylum must precede the class.
In the King James Version, the Hebrew word (owph) that is rendered “fowl” is also rendered “flying” (Leviticus 11:21, 23) and “that flieth” (Deuteronomy 14:19). This justifies using “flyer” instead of “fowl” in Leviticus 11:13, and it is so rendered in the Concordant Literal Version (CLV):
CLV “These you shall regard as abominable among the flyers…”
But the ostrich, for example, is “winged” but can not “fly”. The definition from the Strong’s Concordance justifies rendering the word “winged”.
FACT: the FIRST group of flyers listed in Lev 11:13-19 are members of the CLASS Aves: birds.
FACT: the LAST flyer listed in Lev 11:13-19 is a member of the CLASS Mamalia: the bat.
FACT: birds are NOT members of the CLASS Mamalia.
CONCLUSION: THE BAT IS NOT A BIRD.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the eagle. 11:13.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the ossifrage. 11:13.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the ospray. 11:13.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the vulture. 11:14.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the kite. 11:14.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT every raven. 11:15.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the owl. 11:16.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the night hawk. 11:16.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the cuckow. 11:16.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the hawk. 11:16.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the little owl. 11:17.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the cormorant. 11:17.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the great owl. 11:17.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the swan. 11:18.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the pelican. 11:18.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the gier eagle. 11:18
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the stork. 11:19.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the heron. 11:19.
CONCLUSION: the bat is NOT the lapwing. 11:19.
INQUIRY: IF Leviticus is Taxonomically unreliable, THEN from the text of Leviticus 11:13-19, and the Scientific Classification System, LOGICALLY CONCLUDE that the bat is a bird…