As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
_Physiologus_ gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book
of Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. Out
of the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in the text there
came a curious development of error, until we find fully evolved an
account of the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was
the lion mentioned by Job, and it says: "As to the ant-lion, his
father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an ant; the
father liveth upon flesh and the mother upon herbs; these bring
forth the ant-lion, a compound of both and in part like to either;
for his fore part is like that of a lion and his hind part like
that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither able to eat
flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he perisheth."
In the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this
theological method in the great work of the English Franciscan
Bartholomew on _The Properties of Things_.
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