Donkeys In The Biblical World

In this volume, Kenneth Way explores the role of donkeys in the symbolism and ceremonies of the biblical world. His study stands alone in providing a comprehensive examination of donkeys in ancient Near Eastern texts, the archaeological record, and the Hebrew Bible. Way demonstrates that donkeys held a distinct status in the beliefs and rituals of the ancient Near East and especially Canaan-Israel. The focus on ceremony and symbol encompasses social and religious thoughts and practices that are reflected in ancient texts and material culture relating to the donkey. Ceremonial considerations include matters of sacrifice, treaty ratification, consumption, death, burial, “scapegoat” rituals, and foundation deposits; symbolic considerations include matters of characterization, association, function, behavior, and iconographic depiction. However, the distinction between ceremony and symbol is not strict. In many cases, these two categories are symbiotic. The need for this study on donkeys is very apparent in the disciplines that study the biblical world. There is not a single monograph or article that treats this subject comprehensively. Philologists have discussed the meaning of the Amorite phrase “to kill a jackass,” and archaeologists have discussed the phenomenon of equid burials. But until now, neither philologists nor archaeologists have attempted to pull together all the ceremonial and symbolic data on donkeys from burials, ancient Near Eastern texts, and the Hebrew Bible. Way’s study fills this void.

The Hebrew Bible is filled with animals. Snakes and ravens share meals with people; donkeys and sheep work alongside us; eagles and lions inspire us; locusts warn us. How should we read their stories? What can they teach us about ecology, spirituality, and ethics? Author Laura Duhan-Kaplan explores these questions, weaving together biology, Kabbalah, rabbinic midrash, Indigenous wisdom, modern literary methods, and personal experiences. She re-imagines Jacob's sheep as family, Balaam's donkey as a spiritual director, Eve's snake as a misguided helper. Finally, Rabbi Laura invites metaphorical eagles, locusts, and mother bears to help us see anew, confront human violence, and raise children who live peacefully on the land.

Camels are first mentioned in the Bible as the movable property of Abraham. During the early monarchy, they feature prominently as long-distance mounts for the Queen of Sheba, and almost a millennium later, the Gospels tell us about the impossibility of a camel passing through a needle’s eye. Given the limited extrabiblical evidence for camels before circa 1000 BCE, a thorough investigation of the spatio-temporal history of the camel in the ancient Near and Middle East is necessary to understand their early appearance in the Hebrew Bible. Camels in the Biblical World is a two-part study that charts the cultural trajectories of two domestic species—the two-humped or Bactrian camel (Camelus bactrianus) and the one-humped or Arabian camel (Camelus dromedarius)—from the fourth through first millennium BCE and up to the first century CE. Drawing on archaeological camel remains, iconography, inscriptions, and other text sources, the first part reappraises the published data on the species’ domestication and early exploitation in their respective regions of origin. The second part takes a critical look at the various references to camels in the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, providing a detailed philological analysis of each text and referring to archaeological data and zoological observations whenever appropriate. A state-of-the-art evaluation of the cultural history of the camel and its role in the biblical world, this volume brings the humanities into dialogue with the natural sciences. The novel insights here serve scholars in disciplines as diverse as biblical studies, (zoo)archaeology, history, and philology.

Bible trivia expert J. Stephen Lang pulls together some wild and wacky biblical tales. Think the Bible is boring? Think again. These tales will both entertain and enlighten the reader, and engender a desire to read the Bible in search of more.

“An excellent introduction to the field of animal studies . . . [the] applications of these ideas to biblical passages . . . illuminate the text in new ways." -- Brandon R. Grafius, Horizons in Biblical Theology Animal studies may be a recent academic development, but our fascination with animals is nothing new. Surviving cave paintings are of animal forms, and closer to us, as Ken Stone points out, animals populate biblical literature from beginning to end. This book explores the significance of animal studies for the interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. Combined with biblical scholarship, animal studies sheds useful light on animals, animal symbolism, and the relations among animals, humans, and God—not only for those who study biblical literature and its ancient context, but for contemporary readers concerned with environmental, social, and animal ethics. Without the presence of domesticated and wild animals, neither biblical traditions nor the religions that make use of the Bible would exist in their current forms. Although parts of the Bible draw a clear line between humans and animals, other passages complicate that line in multiple ways and challenge our assumptions about the roles animals play therein. Engaging influential thinkers, including Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, and other experts in animal and ecological studies, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies shows how prehumanist texts reveal unexpectedly relevant dynamics and themes for our posthumanist age. “[Stone’s] ecological sensibilities, theoretical acumen, and incisive exegetical arguments open up fresh perspectives.” —Stephen D. Moore, The Theological School, Drew University “This monograph is poised to become a key work in the field.” —Anne Létourneau, Reading Religion “Groundbreaking.” —Carol J. Dempsey, OP, Horizons

This volume explores a number of instances of unexpected but influential readings of the Bible in popular culture, literature, film, music and politics. The argument in all of them is that the effects of the Bible continues to have an effect on contemporary culture in ways that may surprise and sometimes dismay both religious and secular groups. That the Bible was at one time chained in churches is true. The subversive misreading of this enchainment as a symbol of a book in captivity to the established church is hard to suppress, however. Yet, once released from these chains, the Bible proves to be a text that gets everywhere and which undergoes surprising and sometimes contradictory metamorphoses. The pious advocates of making the Bible accessible who sought to free it from the churches' chains are the very people who then decry some of the results when the Bible is free to roam.

Almost every book in the Hebrew Bible mentions horses and chariots in some manner, usually in a military context. However, the importance of horses, chariots, and equestrians in ancient Israel is typically mentioned only in passing, if at all, by historians, hippologists, and biblical scholars. When it is mentioned, the topic engenders a great deal of confusion. Notwithstanding the substantial textual and archaeological evidence of the horse’s historic presence, recent scholars seem to be led by a general belief that there were very few horses in Iron Age Israel and that Israel’s chariotry was insignificant. The reason for this current sentiment is tied primarily to the academic controversy of the past 50 years over whether the 17 tripartite-pillared buildings excavated at Megiddo in the early 20th century were, in fact, stables. Although the original excavators, archaeologists from the University of Chicago, designated these buildings as stables, a number of scholars (and a few archaeologists) later challenged this view and adopted alternative interpretations. After they “reassessed” the Megiddo stables as “storehouses,” “marketplaces,” or “barracks,” the idea developed that there was no place for the horses to be kept and, therefore, there must have been few horses in Israel. The lack of stables, when added to the suggestion that Iron Age Israel could not have afforded to buy expensive horses and maintain an even more expensive chariotry, led to a dearth of horses in ancient Israel; or so the logic goes that has permeated the literature. Cantrell’s book attempts to dispel this notion. Too often today, scholars ignore or diminish the role of the horse in battle. It is important to remember that ancient historians took for granted knowledge about horses that modern scholars have now forgotten or never knew. Cantrell’s involvement with horses as a rider, competitor, trainer, breeder, and importer includes equine experience ranging from competitive barrel-racing to jumping, and for the past 25 years, dressage. The Horsemen of Israel relies on the author’s knowledge of and experience with horses as well as her expertise in the field of ancient Near Eastern languages, literature, and archaeology.

Donkeys carried Christ into Jerusalem while in Greek myth they transported Hephaistos up to Mount Olympos and Dionysos into battle against the Giants. They were probably the first animals that people ever rode, as well as the first used on a large-scale as beasts of burden. Associated with kingship and the gods in the ancient Near East, they have been (and in many places still are) a core technology for moving people and goods over both short and long distances, as well as a supplier of muscle power for threshing and grinding grain, pressing olives, raising water, ploughing fields, and pulling carts, to name just a few of the uses to which they have been put. Yet despite this, they remain one of the least studied, and most widely ignored, of all domestic animals, consigned to the margins of history like so many of those who still depend upon them. Spanning the globe and extending from the donkey's initial domestication up to the present, this book seeks to remedy this situation by using archaeological evidence, in combination with insights from history and anthropology, to resituate the donkey (and its hybrid offspring such as the mule) in the unfolding of human history, looking not just at what donkeys and mules did, but also at how people have thought about and understood them. Intended in part for university researchers and students working in the broad fields of world history, archaeology, animal history, and anthropology, but it should also interest anyone keen to learn more about one of the most widespread and important of the animals that people have domesticated.