Pests, Plagues & Politics
Lecture 9
From Pharaohs to Salt Lake City
Insects 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
rd
3 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 LABOR
2) COOPERATIVE BROOD CARE BY SIBLINGS
3) 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 Luther
The Great Reformer
UBI MEL, IBI FEL
“Where the is honey, there is bile.”
De Roomsche Byen-korf
by 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
• Proverbs
6:6
“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 God
Ahu Lib Cab
Stingless Bees
Nang Mai Tree
Guazzo, an Italian
priest who, in 1626,
authored this rather
unusual 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