the Week of Proper 25 / Ordinary 30
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Bible Encyclopedias
Mole
Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature
or Mole (choled, , in our version 'weasel'). Although the similarity of sound in names is an unsafe ground to depend upon when it is applied to specific animals, still, the Hebrew and Syriac appearing likewise to imply creeping into, creeping underneath by burrowing—characteristics most obvious in moles—and the Arabic denomination being undoubted, choled may be assumed to indicate the above animal. This conclusion is the more to be relied on as the animal is rather common in Syria, and in some places abundant. Zoologists have considered the particular species to be the Talpa Europœa, which, under the name of the common mole, is so well known as not to require a more particular description. The ancients represented the mole to have no eyes: which assertion later scientific writers believed they had disproved by showing our species to be possessed of these organs, though exceedingly small. Nevertheless, recent observations have proved that a species, in other respects scarcely, if at all, to be distinguished from the common, is totally destitute of eyes. It is to be found in Italy, and probably extends to the East, instead of the Europea. Moles must not, however, be considered as forming a part of the Rodent order, whereof all the families and genera are provided with strong incisor teeth, like rats and squirrels, and therefore intended for subsisting chiefly on grain and nuts: they are on the contrary supplied with a great number of small teeth, to the extent of twenty-two in each jaw—indicating a partial regimen; for they feed on worms, larvae, and underground insects, as well as on roots, and thus belong to the insectivorous order: which brings the application of the name somewhat nearer to carnivora and its received interpretation 'weasel.'
Public Domain.
Kitto, John, ed. Entry for 'Mole'. "Kitto's Popular Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature". https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/kbe/m/mole.html.
