By J.R. Hyland -
[email protected]
Many people are deeply upset because animal rights
activists use the term "holocaust" when referring to the torment and
killing of millions of animals. And they seem to think the word has been
irreverently taken from those who use it to describe the horror of what
happened to millions of persons whose bodies were immolated in the ovens
of Nazi concentration camps.
But they are wrong. The word "holocaust" is taken from
the biblical term used to describe the total immolation of sacrificed
animals -- they were known as whole-burnt offerings. The Greek word for
such sacrifices is "hol�kaustos" and was used in the translation of the
Hebrew scrolls as far back as 250 B.C. That translation (called the
Septuagint) was completed for the Jews who lived in Alexandria, Egypt,
and could no longer read or speak Hebrew. So referring to the death of
millions of animals as a holocaust was used more than 2,000 years before
people applied it to the torture and slaughter of human beings. It is
not animal rights people who have linked the death of animals and the
death of people. It is those who were appalled at the human carnage of
Nazi Germany, who likened it to a holocaust -- to the death of millions
of animals.
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