The Scorpion and the Frog

And the divergence as to just who croaked

The tale of the scorpion and the frog has gone through various incarnations. One recent one, in meme form, is this:

I chatted GPT-3 to tell me the fable, and it goes like this:

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog is hesitant, knowing that the scorpion could sting it at any moment. However, the scorpion assures the frog that it would not do such a thing, as it would then drown as well. The frog agrees to carry the scorpion across the river.

As they near the other side of the river, the scorpion stings the frog, causing them both to drown. As they are sinking, the frog asks the scorpion why it stung him, even though it meant both of their deaths. The scorpion replies, "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."

We encounter a version of this tale on Nedarim 41a

שְׁמוּאֵל חַזְיַיהּ לְהָהוּא קְרוּקִיתָא דְעַקְרַבָּא יְתִיבָא עַל אַקְרוּקְתָּא וְעָבְרָה נַהֲרָא טָרְקָא גַּבְרָא וּמָיֵית. קָרֵי עֲלֵיהּ ״לְמִשְׁפָּטֶיךָ עָמְדוּ הַיּוֹם״.

Shmuel saw a certain frog [kerokita], and also noticed that a scorpion was sitting upon the frog and the frog crossed the river. The scorpion stung a man on the other side of the river and the man died. Shmuel read and applied the verse to the dead man: “They stand this day according to Your judgments.” Even the frog and scorpion are servants and agents of God. The only way the scorpion could reach the man and kill him was by means of the frog taking it across the river.

The commentators consistently define the קְרוּקִיתָא or the אַקְרוֹקְתָּא as a tzfardea, which would be a frog. Jastrow defines this as frog, based on the word קרקר, croaker, an onomatopoeia. (Though note that Rabbenu Bachya defines the tzefardea of Egypt as the crocodile. Could this be a crocodile instead?)

Let’s try to trace the origins of the non-Talmudic tale. We could consult Wikipedia (which also makes a link to the tale with Shmuel). We’d discover that there is a precursor in The Scorpion and the Turtle, appearing in “Anvaar Soheili, a collection of fables written c. 1500 by the Persian scholar Husayn Kashifi”. That doesn’t bring it back to Talmudic times.

An illustration of "The Scorpion and the Turtle", from a 19th-century edition of the Anvaar Soheili, a Persian collection of fables. Via Wikipedia.

They continue by noting that “The Anvaar Soheili contains fables translated from the Panchatantra, a collection of Indian fables written in Sanskrit, but The Scorpion and the Turtle does not appear in the Panchatantra, which suggests that the fable is Persian in origin.” The Panchatantra, meanwhile, is a collection of animal fables dating to 200 BCE at the latest, but probably earlier. So, we don’t know the precise time. But it could be a much older tale than 1500 CE, and with Persian origin, thus something Shmuel, who lived from 165-267 CE, under Persian rule, would have known.

In the turtle version, the scorpion does not successfully sting the scorpion, for its shell protects it. “The turtle is baffled by the scorpion's behavior because they are old friends and the scorpion must have known that its stinger would not pierce the turtle's shell. The scorpion responds that it acted neither out of malice nor ingratitude, but merely an irresistible and indiscriminate urge to sting. The turtle then delivers the following reflection: "Truly have the sages said that to cherish a base character is to give one's honor to the wind, and to involve one's own self in embarrassment."”

We thus have three versions of the story, with different messages. In the Talmudic version, the point isn’t the inevitability of the scorpion being true to its nature, but of the inevitability of God’s messengers fulfilling His will. You might have thought that, since scorpions cannot swim, they cannot fulfill their mission to kill the man. But much different species can conspire together, combining their skills to achieve the aim.

Are these stories related? Often, when we encounter the same story, or the same idea, in A and B, the approach we take is that either:

1. A got it from B

2. B got it from A

3. A and B jointly got it from a third source, C

either directly or indirectly. This approach makes sense. On the other hand, folklorist Stith Thompson catalogued stories from multiple cultures and assigned them Stith Thompson numbers in his motif index, which is organized hierarchically. For instance:

F. Marvels

• F0-F199 Otherworldly journeys

• F200-F699 Marvelous creatures

  • F535.1 Thumbling

It is possible that specific motifs are common to the human experience, so two tales involving the impossible task of counting the number of tiny mustard seeds don’t draw from one another. (Though if enough fine details of two tales match up, I’d more readily posit a dependency.) People afraid of scorpions but happy that they are protected by water can worry about super-powered scorpions might imagine them crossing via this device, just as people nowadays would be concerned about Sharknados or sharks with mounted lasers. To show dependence, you’d also need to demonstrate parallels in unnecessary fine details.

Shark to which scientists have mounted a laser

With this universal idea in the back of its mind, different cultures will call upon it to convey their respective values. That could be to reflect on intrinsic characteristics of base people - haters gonna hate and stingers gonna sting, or the inevitability of fate and God’s will.