There are a number of different versions of "the Bible," which selectively choose to leave out books and passages or sometimes split a book into I and II. Different wordings and translations, and then the fact that the book is approximately 2000 years old, the versions have definitely shifted away from one another over time and it is noticeable. For example, the Assyrian and Ethiopian churches have books that most others ignore, but the biggest divide is going to be the Catholic Bible and any form of Protestant Bible, with the serious differences of opinion they have on things.

I believe the two most popular versions in the United States are the King James Version (KJV) at 55% and New International Version (NIV) at 19%. This is based on population surveys, researchers prefer to use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which has three formats and is a revision of a standard that was a revisions of a standard and...that's not of great importance to answering, but does further show that people pick and choose what Bible to use.

Anyway, cats. That's the important thing here and elsewhere on Reddit, is we love cats. But why aren't they in the Bible?

Well, they are. If your choice of "the Bible" is the right Bible, such as the one the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox church use. These are called deuterocanonical books and it simply refers to books that certain churches kept. The Catholic Church convened for the Council of Trent in 1545-1563 and decided to keep these books. By this time, the Jewish faith had abandoned at least the Book of Baruch, and the King James Bible first published in 1611 would also leave it out.

The Book of Baruch contains the Letter of Jeremiah. NRSV Full Text of the Letter here, which at verse 22 mentions cats. So yes, cats are mentioned in a single verse of several versions of the Bible.

Why aren't cats mentioned more?

The Letter of Jeremiah has a lot to talk about with idol worship, a central theme of Abrahamic religions. In case you didn't know, it's considered to be pretty bad to worship idols. The Egyptians, why as you mentioned were a focal aspect of the Bible, had many idols. Big wooden and gold statues devoted to their gods, some strange form of idol worship of cats (like Reddit), and surely other things that the Bible says we shouldn't do. Likely, a major aspect of why cats aren't mentioned in many versions is because they didn't want to emulate Egyptian practices in later versions (remember, these versions were written over a millennium after the events surrounding Christ). The one mention in the Letter of Jeremiah isn't exactly a round of applause for cats either.

Also worth noting is that many cultures at the time only had wild cats that were attracted to cities only for the abundance of rodents to hunt. The Egyptians were the first to domesticate cats, so many other cultures still had them as "wild" animals or, as a minimum, not domesticated like they are today. Think farm cats, maybe, at the best, that just sort of came and went and were ignored by farmers or noted for their hunting and left to run wild.

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It is 5Am here and I need to sleep, but hopefully this covers your question. If you want to delve into anything mentioned above like the Council of Trent, etc., it may offer more context but it seems not much more direct info on the lack of cats.

Hey there,

Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.

If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!