Posting the verses and science article links above your query, and response to your query below your it, for ease of reading:
*Honey Bee* [Quran 16:68-69] 68 And inspired your Lord to the Bee that "Take [second person female singular] among the mountains houses, and among the trees, and in what they construct 69 Then/ Moreover eat [second person feminine singular] from all the fruits, and follow [second person female singular imperative] ways/paths, of your Lord, made smooth." Comes forth, from her [singular feminine] bellies [plural], a drink of varying colours. In it is a healing for the mankind. Arabic grammatical form of each word: http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=16&verse=68 http://corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp?chapter=16&verse=69 National Geographic: http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/honeybee/ Worker honeybees are all females and are the only bees most people ever see. They forage for food and build and protect the hive, among many other societal functions. https://insects.tamu.edu/continuing_ed/bee_biology/lectures/password/Internal_Anatomy_of_Honey_Bees_PN.pdf Food enters through the esophagus and enters the crop (aka honey stomach). Most digestion and absorption occurs in the midgut (a.k.a. small intestine). The small intestine opens to the rectum through which waste is expelled. http://beeinformed.org/2011/07/from-the-flower-to-the-hive/ http://beeinformed.org/2011/07/from-the-flower-to-the-hive/slide-b/ The crop and proventriculus make up what is referred to as the fore-gut while the ventriculus (stomach) and pyloric valve constitute what is otherwise known as the mid-gut. The small intestine and rectum form the region called the hind-gut. Each organ plays an integral role in digestion, absorption, and excrement. http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/eof/4 "Each lens is sensitive to ultraviolet light, which can reveal markings on flowers that are invisible to humans but inform the bees where to land in order to find nectar." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_honey Health effects of honey Other links: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526216.100-honey-is-the-bees-knees-for-staying-young.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128305.200-honeybee-antiwaggle-song-tells-others-to-buzz-off.html#.U2SgFvmSw2Y On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 2:06 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > That's quite interesting. I assume Arabic is a language in which there are > not normally masculine and feminine forms of nouns, since that would mean > that there was a 50-50 chance of happening to get it right simply by luck. > (For example, I'm sure the French would be overjoyed if all tables turned > out to be female.) So I assume this is a language like English, with a > non-gendered form for most things, and only gendered forms for things which > are actually known to *have* genders, like animals and people. In that > case it would be fairly startling if bees are specifically described as > female when it would seem more natural to make them gender-neutral (as I > believe they are in English). On the other hand, if Arabic commonly assigns > random genders to genderless things (as French does with "la table") then > it would be fairly insignificant, and I would expect a detailed survey of > all gender assignments to things that weren't known to have a specific > gender to have a hit rate around 50%. > > According to Wikipedia, > > Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical > cases<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noun_case> >> (nominative <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_case>, >> accusative<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_case>, >> and genitive <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genitive_case> [also used >> when the noun is governed by a preposition]); >> threenumbers<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_number> (singular, >> dual and plural); *two >> **genders*<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_(grammar)>* (masculine >> and feminine)*; and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and >> construct<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_constructus> >> ). > > > I'm not very well up on languages, and there appear to be several > varieties of Arabic, but that quote certainly appears to indicate there is > no neutral form, like the German "das" (or the English "the") but that > *all* nouns in Arabic are assigned a gender, as in French ("le" or "la"). > That would make the fact that bees are described as female simply a > linguistic artefact that happens to have come out the right way (a 50% > chance, as I said) rather than any deep insight into which gender they in > fact are. > > Since it's fairly crucial to your argument, can you explain how gender > assignment works in the particular form of Arabic that is being used in > this case? > > PS By the way, what's this? Am I missing something? Here, "the bee" > appears to be masculine. > > (16:68:4) > l-naḥli <http://corpus.quran.com/qurandictionary.jsp?q=nHl#(16:68:4)> > the bee, <http://corpus.quran.com/wordmorphology.jsp?location=(16:68:4)> > *N* – genitive masculine noun → > Bee<http://corpus.quran.com/concept.jsp?id=bee> > اسم مجرور > > I asked a former *Spoken Arabic instructor*, and he says that An-Nahl or The Bee is a collective form of genderless proper noun basically because how can you assign a gender to a group which has both male and female. He thought the translation was okay, but he said it's difficult to comment on the rules of grammar of the arabic spoken at that time, as the Quranic arabic grammar has basically been derived from its usage in the Quran, hence he cannot comment either ways. I asked a *religious scholar*, and following are his answers: *Replies from Dr Khalid Zaheer * www.khalidzaheer.com quran.khalidzaheer.com 1) Is it normal to use feminine singular pronoun 'ha' after a masculine plural 'butuun'? A) ha is referring to bee. butuniha means the bellies of bees. Ha here is a pronoun for the entire category of bees. It's like saying "Man is mortal; the diversity of his views make him a rare specie." In the second statement the pronoun 'his' ie referring to the collective noun 'man'. 2) Is the pronoun 'ha' referring to 'butuun' or to singular bee in the preceding imperative 'kulli' and 'uskulli'? A) It can't be referring to butun nor can it be to a singular bee because the word butun is referring to bee which has to be a collective noun. 3) What is the gender assigned to the bee by the Arabs at the time of the revelation? Is 'an-Nahl' male or female? A) It's quite obviously feminine. 4) the principles of the language are those which were in use already when the Quran was being revealed, or the principles have been formulated based upon the Quran? 5) in the verses where it reads that in this are signs, should we not try and find the best possible meaning? A) It has to be first and foremost from the Qur'an. And yes we need to find signs from the Qur'an. However, in our keenness to find signs we should not put into the mouth of the text what it is not saying. Indeed we can disagree on what it's saying and what it is not saying. That's what the trial of this life is: Keep trying sincerely what the truth is, and more and more of it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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