species

Distinctions

min (מין)

Thirty appearances in Chumash, most of them in Shemini and its parallel: the non-kosher birds "and its kind" (Vayikra 11:14-19, Devarim 14:13-18), the kosher grasshoppers (Vayikra 11:22), the impure creeping things (Vayikra 11:29). It appears in Bereishis for the kinds of plants (1:11-12), animals (1:24-25) and creeping creatures (1:21, 1:25), and in the account of the Teivah (Bereishis 6-7). Outside Chumash it occurs once (Yechezkel 47:10). Ibn Janach and Radak (Sefer HaShorashim): a min is a set of individuals alike enough in their properties to be classed as one kind. Ibn Janach adds that man, the manna, is from min: a kind of food they could not classify, "for they did not know what it was" (Shemos 16:15).

Rabbi Shlomo Pappenheim takes the two-letter root מ-נ as the making of order out of causes and effects. Its lead derivative is moneh and minyan, counting, which orders a set by quantifying it; min follows, since classification is deciding what counts within a grouping and what does not. Shadal (to Shemos 20:4) and Pappenheim both attach temunah, an image, to the same root: a temunah is a representation close enough to show the kind but not identical to any one individual, so that grouping unlike things under one name is itself a kind of approximation. (Rav Hirsch to Shemos 20:4 distinguishes pesel from temunah.) Shadal extends this to min in the sense of heretic: each has his own belief, yet they fall under one heading. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Sefer HaTishbi) derives that sense differently, from the idol Meni (Yeshayahu 65:11).

Minnim at Tehillim 150:4, "praise Him with minnim and pipe," is contested. Rav Saadia Gaon reads it as minim, an ensemble of types of instrument sounding as one (so too Ibn Ezra, Sefas Yeser 95, and to Tehillim 150:4 and Daniel 3:5); Pappenheim reads a single instrument combining features of all the types. Donash Ibn Labrat objects that the dagesh in the nun marks minnim off from minim, making it the name of a particular instrument and unrelated to min; Machberes Menachem, Ibn Janach, Radak and Rashi (to Tehillim 150:4) take that side. Rabbi Yehoshua Steinberg suggests minnim is a metathesis of nimim, strings, hence a stringed instrument.

On whether the Torah's minim are today's species: Ramban (to Bereishis 6:19) holds that a miracle let the Teivah hold specimens of them all; Rabbeinu Nissim of Gerona (to Bereishis 6:14) holds instead that the minim of the Teivah were the ancestral kinds, from before they differentiated into the many kinds known now, so that far fewer were aboard.

zan (זן)

Three times in the Hebrew of Tanach (twice in Tehillim 144:13, once in Divrei HaYamim II 16:14) and four times in the Aramaic (Daniel 3:5, 3:7, 3:10, 3:15), where zenei zemara is glossed by Rashi as minei zemer, kinds of music. Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur (Meturgeman): Targum renders every biblical min as zan. In Hebrew it is disputed. "Our storehouses full, producing from zan to zan" (Tehillim 144:13): Menachem and Rashi tie it to mazon, so nourishing foods; Ibn Janach reads it broadly as kinds of food; Rav Hirsch (to Tehillim 144:13) leaves the choice open; Radak takes the first way in Sefer HaShorashim s.v. זון and the second elsewhere and in his commentary there. "Spices and znim" burned for Asa (Divrei HaYamim II 16:14): Machberes Menachem, pseudo-Rashi and Ralbag read a particular kind of fragrance, not "types"; Ibn Janach and Radak read types of incense. Pappenheim, who avoids explaining Hebrew from Aramaic, derives both Hebrew forms from the two-letter ז-נ, sustenance and the meeting of needs: the first from mazon, the second from zenus, a spice serving as an aphrodisiac (see Bava Kamma 16b).

sug (סוג)

Not in Tanach in this sense. In the Mishnah sug is a large container: produce bought wholesale may not be tithed from one portion for the whole even if it came in one sug and is all one min (Demai 5:6), and a sug is listed among vessels susceptible to tumah (Keilim 16:3). A category may be understood as a conceptual container, admitting what meets its criteria and shutting out the rest; on that reading sug belongs with ס-ג, setting a boundary or fence, which yields sugah (Shir HaShirim 7:3) and siyag (Avos 1:1). Its reverse, ג-ס, yields words of mixing, army, coarseness and undue familiarity, all of them the breaking down of a boundary.

As a term of logic, sug is the genus and min the species: Rabbi Moshe Ibn Tibbon's translation of Rambam's Milos HaHigayon 10, Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon's Peirush HaMilos HaZaros, and the Ran's Derashos 12. Ramchal (Derech Tevunos 11:9) adds that the pair is relative, not fixed: mankind is a min within the sug of living creatures, but living creatures is itself a min within the sug of physical entities. The parent-child relation holds even as the terms move.

Rendering guidance

• Lemineihu in Bereishis and Shemini: "according to its kind." Resist "species," which imports a modern taxonomy the meforshim expressly do not assume (Ramban and the Ran on the Teivah).
• Trap: English "kind," "type" and "sort" will absorb min, zan and sug indifferently. In a logical passage the pair must be fixed: sug is "genus," min is "species," and if you have used "species" for lemineihu elsewhere in the same work, add the Hebrew in brackets at the logical use.
• Where a Targum is quoted beside its pasuk, keep one English word across both, since zan is simply the Aramaic for min; using two words invents a distinction the Targum does not make.
• Tehillim 144:13 is a genuine fork. "From kind to kind" follows Ibn Janach; "with every sort of provision" follows Menachem and Rashi's mazon. Pick one and footnote the other rather than blending them.
• Min as heretic is a separate entry's business; never let "sectarian" or "heretic" bleed into a passage where min means kind, and be alert that a derashah may deliberately play on both.

Sources

Rabbi Reuven Chaim Klein, "Shemini: Types of Species," What's in a Word?, Ohr Somayach, 24 Nisan 5783 (2023-04-15): raw text in sources/whats-in-a-word/raw/10897-shemini-types-of-species.md. Primary loci: Bereishis 1:11-12, 1:21, 1:24-25, 6:14, 6:19 and the Teivah narrative of Bereishis 6-7; Shemos 16:15, 20:4; Vayikra 11:14-19, 11:22, 11:29; Devarim 14:13-18; Yeshayahu 65:11; Yechezkel 47:10; Tehillim 144:13, 150:4; Shir HaShirim 7:3; Daniel 3:5, 3:7, 3:10, 3:15; Divrei HaYamim II 16:14; Mishnah Demai 5:6, Keilim 16:3, Avos 1:1; Bava Kamma 16b; Rambam, Milos HaHigayon 10 (Rabbi Moshe Ibn Tibbon's translation); Rabbi Shmuel Ibn Tibbon, Peirush HaMilos HaZaros; Derashos HaRan 12; Ramchal, Derech Tevunos 11:9; Rabbi Eliyahu HaBachur, Sefer HaTishbi and Meturgeman. The article's Arabic cognate for temunah, its Latin and Proto-Indo-European comparison for "species," and the academic proposals of Prof. Avi Hurvitz and Dr. M. Z. Kaddari are omitted here under house rule 9.