"The Kidneys In the Bible: What Happened?"

[ElizaG]

I just happened on an article about the fact that the kidneys (kelayot) are mentioned over 30 times in the Bible.

 

"In the first vernacular versions of the Bible in English, the translators elected to use the term 'reins' instead of kidneys in differentiating the metaphoric uses of human kidneys from that of their mention as anatomic organs of sacrificial animals burned at the altar. This initial effort at linguistic purity or gentility has progressed further in recent versions of the Bible, in which the reins are now replaced by the soul or the mind. The erosion may have begun in the centuries that followed the writing of the Bible, when recognition of the kidneys as excretory organs deprived them of the ancient aura of mysterious organs hidden deep in the body but accessible to the look of God. At approximately the same time, Greek analytical philosophy argued that the brain, which is never mentioned in the Bible, was the most divine and sacred part of the body."

 

The Douay-Rheims concordance lists 11 references to kidneys, and 22 to reins.

 

Here's the original article, from a nephrology journal.  It has references to religion, medicine, ancient languages, biology, philosophy, psychology, and more.   Kind of an unusual topic, maybe, but I thought it might be an interesting basis for a unit study (if your family is as strange as ours ;) ).

 

 

[SnMomof7]

Even the KJV retains interesting references to guts, I the first chapter of Phillipians, "...in the bowels of Jesus Christ.". Yep. Beechick even wrote a book emphasizing how the heart is a thinking organ based on biblical references to it.