Cultural references to donkeys
[1] In Greek myth, Silenus is pictured in Classical Antiquity and during the Renaissance (illustration, left) drunken and riding a donkey, and Midas was given the ears of an ass after misjudging a musical competition.
[2] Donkeys (or asses) are mentioned many times in the Bible, beginning in the first book and continuing through both Old and New Testaments, so they became part of Judeo-Christian tradition.
They are portrayed as work animals, used for agricultural purposes, transport and as beasts of burden, and terminology is used to differentiate age and gender.
In Jewish Oral Tradition (Talmud Bavli), the son of David was prophesied as riding on a donkey if the tribes of Israel are undeserving of redemption.
A book on the subject, published in 1998 by the militant secularist Sefi Rechlevsky, aroused a major controversy in the Israeli public opinion.
[8] With the rise of Christianity, some believers came to see the cross-shaped marking present on donkeys' backs and shoulders as a symbol of the animal's bearing Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
Europeans used hairs from this cross (or contact with a donkey) as folk remedies to treat illness, including measles and whooping cough.
Shakespeare popularised the use of the word "ass" as an insult meaning stupid or clownish in many of his plays, including Bottom's appearance in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1600).
In contrast, a few years later, Miguel de Cervantes writes a more positive slant on the donkey in his novel Don Quixote, primarily as Sancho Panza's mount, portraying them as steady and loyal companions.
[15] In G. K. Chesterton's 1927 poem, The Donkey, the animal deprecates himself as "the tattered outlaw of the Earth" but finally reveals his moment of glory on the first Palm Sunday.
[18] A donkey is featured as the main figure in the 1966 film Au hasard Balthazar by Robert Bresson, and, is given a life path of Christian symbolism.
The philosopher Jean Buridan (1300-1358) proposed a dilemma in which a hypothetical donkey suffering from hunger and thirst finds itself halfway between a bucket of fresh water and enjoyable bales of hay.
[22] Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) is another philosopher of the Renaissance Era who utilised the fictitious exposition of the donkey to achieve theoretical depth.
[22] In his masterpiece, In Praise of Folly, the Dutch philosopher Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1506) depicted the concept of asininity and applied it to the high-ranking echelons of the society including kings, lawyers, grammarians, boastful theologians and even the pope himself.
[23] In keeping with their widespread cultural references, donkeys feature in political systems, symbols and terminology in many areas of the world.
[24] The donkey is a common symbol of the Democratic Party of the United States, originating in the 1830s and became popularised from a cartoon by Thomas Nast of Harper's Weekly in 1870.
In 2003 some friends in Catalonia made bumper stickers featuring the burro català as a reaction against a national advertising campaign for Toro d'Osborne, a brandy.
The burro became popular as a nationalist symbol in Catalonia, whose residents wanted to assert their identity to resist Spanish centralism.
Zhirinovsky replied to the assertions by stating that similar treatment is commonplace in the Arab world and claimed that his ass has been treated "better than many people".
