malloc wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 8:18 pm
Ephraim wrote: ↑Mon Apr 13, 2026 5:32 pmWell, according to Philostorgios, Wulfila translated the entire Bible except for the Books of Kings, since they contained accounts of war and he did not want to inspire the warlike Goths. So there may not have been a need for a word for ‘ape’ to translate that passage after all.
What about all the other books in the Bible that talk about war? Consider the Book of Joshua which follows the Hebrew conquest of the Levant and abounds in bloodshed.
As far as I understand, only small parts of the Old Testament are preserved and we don't know for certain how much was actually translated. It's possible that Wulfila omitted the Book of Joshua as well. Or maybe Philostorgios was wrong.
Nonetheless, good point about needing words for far-off animals to translate texts. That is not something I considered, although it definitely makes sense.
Apparently, monkeys or apes were quite common in medieval European art, and they were sometimes depicted in the margins of manuscripts. Presumably most people creating these depictions had never seen these animals in real life, but they may have been familiar with them from various texts, illustrations or sculptures. Bestiaries were quite popular in the Middle Ages.
https://www.leslieparke.com/blog/painti ... iddle-ages
https://mad.hypotheses.org/172
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestiary
I also think that the similarities with humans were recognized at the time, and that this may have been one of the reasons why people were fascinated by monkeys or apes. Söderwall's dictionary of Old Swedish has the following example from Heliga Birgittas uppenbarelser (the revelations of Bridget of Sweden, who lived 1304–1373):
apinian hawir ok anlite swa som människia ok j allom androm limmom diura ham
This might translate to something like this:
the monkey/ape also has a face like a human and in all other body parts the appearance of an animal
(I may have gotten some parts wrong. Also, note that a word corresponding to Modern Swedish “apa” is not attested in the Old Swedish corpus, but the derived word “apinia” was used with the same meaning. I don't think it meant specifically ‘female monkey/ape’ like Old Icelandic “apynja”.)
It's possible that (oral) stories of monkeys spread to the Germanic speaking area even before the Middle Ages, and perhaps some objects depicting monkeys may have spread through trade. People have always been fascinated by animals and I guess people would have simply found monkeys/apes interesting and enjoyed hearing about them.
Similarly, there is a long history of depicting and describing lions in Northern Europe, even if most people would have never encountered these animals.
