ravens
animal · 4 works · 6 mentions · 6 anchored passages
the raven · the kite · the ravens
spoken of as
2 expressionsin the texts
Stromata
Bird forbidden by Mosaic law, allegorized as greed.
"You shall not eat the swine, nor the eagle, nor the hawk, nor the raven.
" For the eagle signifies plunder, the hawk injustice, and the raven greed.
"You shall not eat the pig, nor the eagle, nor the sharp-winged, nor the raven, nor any fish that has not a scale in itself.
Adversus Marcionem
Birds cited as an example of creatures fed by the Creator's providence without labor.
whose ravens too neither sow nor reap nor lay up in storehouses, and yet are fed by him;
Who would have commanded this but he who both feeds the ravens and clothes the flowers of the field, who before granted to the ox too treading out the grain freedom of mouth for the pardon of fodder, in removing it from the work, because the worker is worthy of his hire?
De Rerum Natura
Black birds used in a hypothetical reductio to show colour cannot be an intrinsic property of seeds.
For then 'twere meet that ravens, as they fly,
Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,
De ieiunio adversus psychicos
The ravens that fed Elijah with bread and flesh, contrasted with the later angelic gift of bread and water alone.
When the ravens had been wont to satisfy him with bread and flesh, why was it that afterward, at Beersheba of Judaea, when he was roused from sleep, that certain angel offered him doubtless bread alone and water?