An Intertextual Conversation on Interspecies Ethics: 2 Samuel 12:1-4 and Proverbs 27:23-27 (original) (raw)
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The Poor Man's Ewe Lamb (2 Sam 12:1-4) in Intersectional, Interspecies Perspective
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Nathan tells David a story about a rich man who takes and kills a poor man’s lamb (2 Sam 12:1–4). This, it turns out, is figurative for David’s own deeds of killing Uriah the Hittite and taking his wife. The story and its application suggest the intersecting power dynamics between groups: rich and poor, male and female, native and foreigner—and, crucially, human and nonhuman. This article argues that intersectional analysis should include an interspecies dimension, and explores these dynamics at work through various mechanisms of relation. Low status human groups are connected with nonhumans through animalisation, and are thereby delegitimised. Nonhuman animals and animalised humans are positioned as objects within mechanisms of domination, such as exploitation, exchange, and semiosis. The relationship between the poor man and lamb, though, offers another possibility: alliance. Care can be extended across species lines, with implications for intergroup relations throughout the intersectional web.
Complex Attitudes towards Animals in the Hebrew Bible
T&T Clark eBooks, 2023
For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xxvii constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes.
Vetus Testamentum, 2024
Three new monographs have appeared in 2023 that explore the Bible and nonhuman animals: Peter Joshua Atkins, The Animalizing Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4: Reading Across the Human-Animal Boundary (London: T&T Clark, 2023); Dong Hyeon Jeong, Embracing the Nonhuman in the Gospel of Mark (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2023); Saul M. Olyan, Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible (New York: OUP, 2023). This review brings these books into conversation, suggesting six questions that they grapple with and which might stimulate further research.
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In attempts to provide theological weight to the concern for non-human creatures, there are a variety of ways, and a number of biblical texts chosen which modern Christians have utilized. This essay has chosen Genesis 9 and Hosea 2 to use in making a case for the value of non-human creatures. Gen. 9 may at first glance seem an odd choice to use in making a case for animals as valued as subjects, rather than objects. Genesis 9 is after all, the very place where God gives an allowance (and not a command) for humans to consume animal flesh. However, this is also the first time in scripture where God explicitly covenants with His creatures, and does so with both humans and non-humans . The same action of God covenanting with non-human creatures can also be found in Hosea 2. This paper will make the case that because God covenants with the non-human, they can be understood to have independent value as subjects in their own right. In making this case, this paper will first examine Genesis 9 and Hosea 2 as two scriptural cases where God covenants with non-human creatures. In doing so, a number of biblical commentators and theologians will be shown to have recognized the fact that God does indeed covenant with non-human animals. From here, this paper will then proceed to examine a number of understandings of what it means to covenant, and suggest that to engage in covenant with something is to be in relationship with, and value them. Finally, this paper will suggest that given that God cares for non-human animals enough to covenant with them, this necessarily has implications as to how humans should understand and relate to non-human creatures.
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Animal Studies refers to a set of questions which take seriously the reality of animal lives, past and present, and the ways in which human societies have conceived of those lives, related to them, and utilized them in the production of human cultures. Scholars of the Hebrew Bible are increasingly engaging animals in their interpretive work. Such engagement is often implicit or partial, but increasingly drawing directly on the more critical aspects of Animal Studies. This article proceeds as a tour through the menagerie of the biblical canon by exploring key texts in order to describe and analyze what Animal Studies has brought to the field of Biblical Studies. Biblical texts are grouped into the following categories: animals in the narrative accounts of the Torah, legal and ritual texts concerning animals, animal metaphors in the prophets, and wisdom literature and animal life. The emergence and application of zooarchaeological research and a number of studies focusing on specific ...
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One way or another, animal and humans beings are closely connected, whether in harmony or conflict. Animals can be our friends and helpers, but also may become our food. On the other hand in the history of religions, animals as sacrificial offerings have been the means of mediation between people and God(s). In biblical discourse, the relationship between people and animals is depicted either in terms of human superiority over the animal world, ―so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground‖ (Gen 1:26-30) or as a relationship of mutual fear, ―The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth, and on all the birds in the sky, on every creature that moves along the ground, and on all the fish in the sea; they are given into your hands‖. (Gen 9:2). Finally, in biblical discourse, animal are food for humans, ―Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything‖. (Gen 9:3). Here we shall examine biblical bestiary, particularly in relation to the position of dogs in the Bible.
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Defence & Confirmation, 2016
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Animals in the New Testament: Perspectives from Animal Studies and Ancient Contexts, 2025
The daily lives of ancient Jews, Christians, and their neighbors were filled with animals-in their physical spaces, stories, and abstract thinking. Given this ubiquity and the untold influence of the New Testament upon the West, remarkably little scholarship has been devoted to understanding the place of animals in the New Testament. This is an introduction chapter to an edited volume that represents an intervention into this unfortunate state of affairs. Here in the introduction chapter, we are concerned with fleshing out the theoretical framing, describing the trajectories that have led us here, and offering an orientation to the relevant scholarship. We begin first by exploring why we are interested in questions of animals to begin with-the turn to animals. We then survey the Animal Studies scene, finding where the New Testament is situated in these broader scholarly conversations about animals. An overview of chapters then sets the contributions in context.
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Dialog, 2009
This article examines theological thought pertaining to the imago Dei doctrine in light of its relation to non-human animals within the framework of biblical, intertestamental Jewish, and early Christian writings. Evaluating theological understandings of human nature as they relate to and interact with theological and philosophical understandings of animals and animal nature, the author finds that the understandings of the image of God and dominion as they are ideally conceived in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures are significantly more closely related to the ideas of human-animal continuity, compassion, and responsibility than to human rationality or the human immaterial immortal soul (and the entailed implication of animals’ lack thereof ).
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