Medieval bestiary

A common argument against the inerrancy of Scripture is to compare Scripture to alleged parallels in pagan sources, then infer that Bible writers shared the prescientific outlook of their pagan neighbors. In that regard I'd like to expand on a comparison offered by John Collins in Reading Genesis Well (Zondervan 2018), 260n34.

Suppose a modern reader thought a medieval bestiary was a reliable source for what medieval folk knew about animals. Yet medieval peasants clearly had accurate knowledge of farm animals and game animals. So a medieval bestiary is not a representative sample of what-all they knew about animals. Which is not to deny that a bestiary may reflect a degree of ignorance and superstition, just as pagans in the ancient Near East suffered from ignorance and superstition. But it means we need to be avoid the knee-jerk assumption that some of their depictions were necessarily meant to be realistic.