עֲטַלֵּף (atalef) — bat

Etymology

The word עטלף appears three times in the Hebrew Bible — in Leviticus 11:19, Deuteronomy 14:18 (where it is listed among impure flying creatures), and Isaiah 2:20. The texts tell us only that it was considered an impure flying creature; they give no physical description. We rely on two ancient witnesses to confirm that the biblical עטלף is the animal we know as a bat today. First, the Septuagint (the oldest Greek translation of the Bible) renders the word as νυκτερίς, meaning "nocturnal creature" — the Greek word for bat. Second, Talmudic literature preserves the word in use: the Babylonian Talmud (Bekhorot 7b) states the pseudo-scientific claim that "all who give live birth nurse their young, and all who lay eggs gather food for them, except for the bat, which although it lays eggs, nurses." The only "bird" that nurses is indeed the bat, though we know today it does not lay eggs. Rashi (1040–1105) identified the biblical עטלף as the animal called "calva souris" (Old French for bat — not far from modern French chauve-souris, "bald mouse," possibly a corruption of chouette-souris, "owl-mouse").

The story might have ended there, but Rashi's identifications created a problem. He identified both עטלף and the related word תנשמת as the same Old French word for bat. Centuries later, when Haskalah intellectuals decided to write secular Hebrew and needed to name animals, this double identification caused confusion that lasted over a hundred years.

The teacher Baruch Linda (1759–1849) wrote the landmark Hebrew-language science encyclopaedia "Reshit Limudim" (1788) in Berlin. He needed to assign Hebrew names to animals in scientific classifications. For the bat (Fledermaus in German — "flapping mouse"), he chose the word תנשמת, leaving עטלף free for another creature. But Linda then confused two birds: in his entry for תנשמת, describing the bat, he refers to its pursuit of the "tzipor dror (Schwalben nest)" — using the German Schwalben (swallows) in parentheses. Yet in his separate entry for "tzipor dror," he defines it as the German Sperling (sparrow). Under the entry "עטלף," he gives the bird Schwalbe (swallow), though the Latin name he assigns (Hirundines) refers to the swift/swallow. The confusion was compounded by Rashi's own inconsistency: he identifies "dror" in Proverbs 26:2 as the French hirondelle (swallow), while the rabbinic commentary Metzudat Zion says "dror" is in fact the bat.

The result: early 19th-century Hebrew writers routinely called the swallow עטלף and the bat תנשמת. Multiple dictionaries perpetuated the error (Buchner 1829, Josephs 1834, Newman 1830). The confusion persisted despite critics such as Rabbi Pinhas Eliyahu Horowitz, who as early as 1797 pointed out that the swallow (Schwalbe) nurses its young by gathering food — not by suckling — and therefore cannot be the Talmudic עטלף that nurses. The matter was finally settled largely through the enormous influence of Mendele Mocher Sefarim (1836–1917) and his natural history book "Toldot ha-Teva" (1862), which used עטלף correctly for bat and swallow correctly for swallow. As late as 1905, a Galician rabbi still felt the need to correct the old confusion in a Haredi journal — today no one is confused.

Key Quotes

"כל המוליד מניק וכל המטיל ביצים מלקט, חוץ מעטלף שאף על פי שמטיל ביצים מניק" — Babylonian Talmud, Bekhorot 7b

"את העטלף ראיתי בראשית לימודים בו כותב שזה הוא העוף הנקרא שוואלבע... וזה בודאי אינו אמת" — Rabbi Pinhas Eliyahu Horowitz, Sefer ha-Brit, 1797

Timeline

• Biblical era: עטלף attested three times (Leviticus 11:19, Deuteronomy 14:18, Isaiah 2:20)
• Septuagint (3rd–2nd century BCE): translates עטלף as νυκτερίς (bat)
• Talmudic era: עטלף used in biological discussion (Bekhorot 7b) — confirms its meaning as bat
• 1040–1105: Rashi identifies עטלף as "calva souris" (Old French for bat); also identifies תנשמת the same way
• 1788: Baruch Linda in "Reshit Limudim" assigns תנשמת to bat and עטלף to swallow (an error)
• 1797: Rabbi Horowitz criticizes Linda's identification in "Sefer ha-Brit"
• 1829–1834: Several dictionaries follow Linda and define עטלף as swallow
• 1862: Mendele Mocher Sefarim's "Toldot ha-Teva" establishes correct identifications
• 1905: Final known protest against the old confusion in the Haredi journal Ha-Peles

Related Words

• תנשמת — another biblical creature (Leviticus 11); identified by Rashi as bat; later settled as barn owl
• דרור — sparrow/swift; its identification was also tangled in the same linguistic confusion
• סנונית — swallow; confused with עטלף in Haskalah literature