A friend posted this on Facebook: "Some time ago, I read an article on the ancient belief that what your child looks like could depend on what the mother was looking at when she had sex. This ancient belief is reflected, for example, in Genesis 30, when Jacob manipulates the appearance of Laban's flocks. I probably posted the article here at Facebook. I'm wondering, now, if there's a word for this belief, but I can't figure out for the life of me what sort of search terms I should enter into Google or whatever. Anyone know what I'm talking about?"
Anybody know if such a word exists and what it is, or can you find it using Logos?
I found lots of discussion of the practice but not a term for that belief. All I could find were things like this sentence in the Collegeville Bible Commentary: "Jacob’s breeding practices are based on the ancient belief that what a mother experiences while pregnant is transmitted to the fetus." And this note in the NET Bible: "sn He put the branches in front of the flocks … when they came to drink. It was generally believed that placing such “visual aids” before the animals as they were mating, it was possible to influence the appearance of their offspring. E. A. Speiser notes that “Jacob finds a way to outwit his father-in-law, through prenatal conditioning of the flock by visual aids—in conformance with universal folk beliefs” (Genesis [AB], 238). Nevertheless, in spite of Jacob’s efforts at animal husbandry, he still attributes the resulting success to God (see 31:5)." And this from later on in that Genesis [AB] volume: "To obtain appropriately pigmented kids, Jacob resorted to the visual stimulus of rods with chevron markings whittled onto them. The sheep, on the other hand, needed only to face the goats, which came naturally by the dark color required. These were the goats of Laban (40), who had thought it safe to leave them with Jacob, while he was removing the parti-colored specimens out of Jacob’s reach; he had not figured on crossbreeding between the two kinds on so occult a basis."
