The Mysterious Mouse Deer: Unclean Animals in the Kambera (Eastern Sumbanese) Bible and Precedents in Malay and Indonesian Translations

Of names chosen for unclean animals in a translation of the Old Testament in the Kambera language of eastern Sumba, most are Kambera names for animals corresponding closely to kinds specified in the original Hebrew. The main exception is the four unclean “beasts” of Lev 11.4-7 and Deut 14.7-8, of which only the pig is designated with a Kambera term. Naming the other three are adaptations of names used in the Indonesian Bible of 1974. Two designate the camel and the hare, while the rock hyrax is replaced by a quite different animal. But both translations exhibit a discrepancy between Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for replacing the hyrax in Leviticus is the mouse deer ( Tragulus spp.), and in Deuteronomy the marmot. This deployment of the mouse deer is further inconsistent with an earlier Malay translation (Klinkert 1879), where it is listed as clean and permitted. The paper explores the possible origins of these discrepancies.