This interpretation has been discussed in this thread. The ultimate problems with this interpretation are:
- Rabbits don’t “chew” the excrement they swallow the pellets whole.
- Pigs also eat their excrement
Hey Joe! May God bless you on this journey. Inerrancy is a teaching near and dear to my heart. I hope that my response is a blessing for you.
The two things I’d be curious to know here are
- What studies have been conducted to determine that the rabbit doesn’t chew his poop at all but swallows his poop pellets whole?
- When the pig eats his own poop (or other animals’ poop for that matter
), is this part of a biological process which is seemingly necessary for him to get the nutrition he needs, as with the rabbit, or is he just being nasty? He’s probably just being nasty. I’ve seen a pig peeing and another pig walk up and start drinking from the urine fountain. They’re pretty gross.
The Catholic position on inerrancy as it pertains to physical sciences is laid down by
Leo XIII:
There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, “not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.” If dissension should arise between them, here is the rule also laid down by St. Augustine, for the theologian: “Whatever they can really demonstrate to be true of physical nature, we must show to be capable of reconciliation with our Scriptures; and whatever they assert in their treatises which is contrary to these Scriptures of ours, that is to Catholic faith, we must either prove it as well as we can to be entirely false, or at all events we must, without the smallest hesitation, believe it [the true interpretation of Scripture] to be so.” To understand how just is the rule here formulated we must remember, first, that the sacred writers, or to speak more accurately, the Holy Ghost “Who spoke by them, did not intend to teach men these things (that is to say, the essential nature of the things of the visible universe), things in no way profitable unto salvation.” Hence they did not seek to penetrate the secrets of nature, but rather described and dealt with things in more or less figurative language, or in terms which were commonly used at the time, and which in many instances are in daily use at this day, even by the most eminent men of science. Ordinary speech primarily and properly describes what comes under the senses; and somewhat in the same way the sacred writers – as the Angelic Doctor also reminds us – “went by what sensibly appeared,” or put down what God, speaking to men, signified, in the way men could understand and were accustomed to.
Since the rabbit appears to chew the cud, it is permissible for us to say that they chew the cud [from the perspective of the observer].
And there may be something to that refection trail that some people follow and which I do not exclude as a possibility.
And maybe the passage is not a reference to rabbits after all, but to some other animal.
Whatever solution may satisfy you, do not be satisfied with believing that there are errors in Sacred Scripture.
The Church teaches total inerrancy. This excludes big errors and little errors. It does not tell us how to interpret Scripture, literally or figuratively, except to say that there is no error whatsoever. If our interpretation leads us to charge Scripture with error, then something is wrong, but it’s not God (the Author) Who is wrong.
The article you linked to on the other forum quotes from Tertullian and Chrysostom. A pretty scant survey of the Fathers. But these are not the fathers that the Popes drew from in order to tell us what is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church. Concerning Tertullian, I simply say with Jerome, “he there produces Tertullian as a witness … Of Tertullian I say no more than that he did not belong to the Church” (
The Perpetual Virginity of Mary). And the key phrase from Chrysostomos is “discordance which
seems to exist.”
But now even that discordance which seems to exist in little matters delivers them from all suspicion, and speaks clearly in behalf of the character of the writers.
But if there be anything touching times or places, which they have related differently, this nothing injures the truth of what they have said. And these things too, so far as God shall enable us, we will endeavor, as we proceed, to point out; requiring you, together with what we have mentioned, to observe, that in the chief heads, those which constitute our life and furnish out our doctrine, nowhere is any of them found to have disagreed, no not ever so little.
What did Chrysostomos say? He said two things
1.) there is no disagreement, “
no not ever so little” in “those [chief heads] which constitute our life and furnish out our doctrine.” And
2.) even in “little matters… touching times or places,” the disagreement only
seems to be there.
And this approach to Scripture agrees with the ancient and unchanging faith of the Catholic Church. The fact that the author of that article says that Chrysostom “was even bolder (at least to modern ears) to suggest that contradictions,” etc., is disingenuous. Two things: (1) there was nothing bold about what he said, and (2) he never admitted to there being any real contradictions. This is the author’s own spin to mislead his reader into adopting his own personal view of inerrancy over against that of the whole Church. But what do the Fathers really tell us about inspiration and inerrancy…
“Every word of God proves true” (Proverbs 30:5)! 
