Moses Was an Animal, and Other Insights from Animal Studies

Moses Was an Animal, and Other Insights from Animal Studies:
Beth Berkowitz Interviews Sébastien Doane and Suzanna Millar,
Co-Chairs of the New Bible and Animal Studies Unit of the Society for Biblical Literature

The Society for Biblical Literature has recently approved the new unit “The Bible and Animal Studies.” I spoke with the two co-chairs, Dr. Suzanna Millar, Chancellor’s Fellow in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Sébastien Doane, CLE Chair in Biblical Exegesis of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences at Laval University, about how the new unit came into being and why they think it’s time for Animal Studies to have its own unit. Read on to find out what sessions they’re planning, what’s wrong with Bible translations, and whether Animal Studies scholars have to like animals. I am Beth Berkowitz, Professor of Religion and Ingeborg Rennert Chair of Jewish Studies at Barnard College, and I specialize in Animal Studies and rabbinic literature.

BETH: I know you’ve been working with a group of scholars interested in Animal Studies since I’m part of that group! Can you describe the formation of that group and who’s in it?

SUZANNA: The group began in 2020 when - working from home and starved of academic community - I reached out to a few scholars working on animals and the Bible, hoping to create an informal zoom research group about our shared interests. Though we were just a few disparate scholars in our bedrooms, I found the group an exciting and productive environment to think about the future of the field. The membership of the group has varied a bit over time, but in addition to the three of us (you, me, and Sébastien), the core members are David Carr, Jacob Evers, Dong Hyeon Jeong, Brian Fui Kolia, Megan Remington, and Brian Tipton.

BETH: Can you tell some of the backstory for the new Animal Studies program unit at the Society for Biblical Literature that you’re co-chairing? How did the idea for the new unit come up?

SÉBASTIEN: I met Suzanna by attending the 2021 SBL meeting. Both of us participated online and presented papers that had common interests. We later communicated and I joined the zoom group that Suzanna had set up the year before. Together, we decided to organize a colloquium on animal studies and the Bible. A year later (March 2023), we held the first “humanimal” conference with 40 presentations and more than 150 participants. With this evident scholarly interest, the organizing group decided to propose an SBL unit to have a yearly in-the-flesh meeting alongside the virtual format of the humanimal conference.

BETH: Why is there a need for an SBL program unit dedicated to Animal Studies? Why do you think this need is being felt now?

SUZANNA: SBL was once dominated by particular kinds of scholarship – asking particular questions and answering them using particular methodologies. But this is no longer the case. SBL’s offerings are steadily diversifying, giving room for different approaches. There was in fact an SBL consultation on the Bible and animal studies in 2017-19, headed up by Arthur Walker-Jones and Lidar Sapir-Hen. I attended some of these sessions, and it’s what piqued my interest in the field.

SÉBASTIEN: Modern humans have naturally tended to center on the human character in biblical texts. However, humans are not the only animal in these texts. Nonhuman animals are everywhere and have not received attention until recently.

BETH: What is the mission of the Animal Studies program unit? What kind of scholarship do you want it to attract and inspire? Do you have any sessions in the works?

SUZANNA: We have a few main aims for the unit. For one thing, we want decoloniality to be at the heart of this group’s agenda, so we’re planning to host a session in our first year offering research papers with decolonial perspectives on biblical animals. We’re aware that much of the traditional scholarship published on animals in the Bible has been born out of Eurocentric hierarchies of being and knowing. We want to foreground the knowledges of non-Western peoples, which can open fruitful new avenues to explore the texts. The following year we will have an open call for papers, particularly welcoming scholars whose perspectives have been traditionally underrepresented in the field. One of these sessions will be on gender and biblical animals.

SÉBASTIEN: Another aim is to showcase existing and developing research on the Bible and animals, and book panels are a great way to do this. We’re planning to have a session to help prepare the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Animals. We’ll also have review panels on Saul Olyan’s forthcoming Animal Rights in the Hebrew Bible and on a new volume with contributions from several of our steering group members, called Exploring Animal Hermeneutics (edited by Arthur Walker-Jones and Suzanna).

SUZANNA: We also want to create a welcoming space for new and innovative work, and will always have open calls for papers. So, we’d love any AJR readers who are interested to get involved!

BETH: Can you tell us about the larger research context of Animal Studies? Who are the main Animal Studies thinkers that Bible scholars have been drawn to?

SUZANNA: There are a few different influences at play here. For one thing, the natural sciences have demonstrated that there are no definitive criteria to distinguish between humans and other animals. Equally, while philosophers like Descartes and Kant once emphasized the distinctiveness of humans, later philosophers challenged this. For example, Derrida deconstructs the human-animal binary, Deleuze talks about the indistinction zone of becoming-animal, and Agamben denounces what he calls the “anthropological machine.” Literary criticism too has turned towards nonhuman theory, stressing embodied qualities like affect and materiality, which makes ample room for nonhuman species.

SÉBASTIEN: Socio-cultural research has also demonstrated that humans have always collaborated with animals; in Donna Haraway’s terms, they have always “become-with” “companion species.” In societies other than the modern industrialized West, the contribution of nonhuman animals is often more fully recognized. Feminist scholars and queer theorists such as Carol Adams, Mel Chen, and Harlan Weaver and scholars of race such as Brigitte Fielder, Evan Mwangi, and Luís Cordeiro-Rodrigues have explored the gendered, sexualized, and racial implications of the human-animal binary.

BETH: How do you see the study of the Bible fitting into Animal Studies? Why is it important to pose the “question of the animal” specifically to the Bible?

SÉBASTIEN: Interpretations of the Bible have played an important role in constructing and reinforcing a set of assumptions about the distinction of humans and human culture from nonhuman animals and “nature.” Related assumptions concern the perceived proper relations of those designated “human” to others considered “animals” (whether nonhumans or, sometimes, other homo sapiens). Over time, these assumptions have evolved to include ideas about the (white, male, European) human destiny to rule the world, the need to domesticate other life forms, a fundamental divide between nature and culture, the superiority of Western European forms of knowledge, etc. 

SUZANNA: Work in animal studies has drawn on the Bible to interrogate these issues. But it has not included the specialist expertise of biblical scholars, and it has usually worked with a limited textual selection (often focusing on Gen 1-3). Meanwhile, specialist biblical work, even when focused on themes like “animals” or “nature,” has been largely uninformed by animal studies. The Bible has often been read with anthropocentric assumptions, interpreting nonhuman animals as mere objects or as background for the Bible’s human story.

BETH: Many Animal Studies scholars will speak of “non-human animals” in order to make clear that humans are also animals and to challenge the human-animal binary. How do you approach talking about “animals” in your scholarship given the problematic genealogy of the term?

SÉBASTIEN: Great question! It directly points to one of the most important aspects of our work. Humans are animals. Moses was an animal, and so was the big fish in Jonah. Cartesian modern western philosophy has set humans apart from “nature.” In everyday language, Animals live “out there” and we live in houses. However, Biblical texts help us think differently and question the specific ways of conceiving Humans as “apart from” that we unconsciously project on texts that do not have the same borders between forms of life than we have. Yes, we want to explore non-human animals in biblical texts, but we also want to explore humans as animals as well as question the conceptual frontiers between animals. In a New Testament example, what is it for Jesus to be spoke of in terms of a lamb? What is it for a lamb to be associated to Jesus? What is common and different for these two animals in the passion narratives?   

An interesting debate occurred in the Humanimal conference. When one person said that she was an animal, another participant voiced an important preoccupation with speaking of humans as animals. People have been animalized to degrade them and legitimize violence against certain marginalized groups. Biologically there is no distinction between human and other animals. The positive side of saying “I am an animal” or “Moses was an animal” is to set common ground for ethical views about non-human animals on what we share. However, underscoring shared animality must not pull the wool over our eyes about dehumanizing discourses that has misused other animals to degrade some humans.

BETH: How does or should Animal Studies interact with classical approaches in Biblical Studies such as source and form criticism, philology, textual criticism, comparative ancient Near Eastern work, and archaeology? Does Animal Studies complement these methods, challenge them, or replace them?

SÉBASTIEN: Animal studies almost always develop an interdisciplinary process. Paleozoology and archaeology bring a more nuanced reconstruction of the lives of nonhuman animals in biblical societies. They can be used with philology when trying to determine what animals are in the text. All the methods of narrative criticism can be used to better understand the stories involving animals. Basically any biblical methodology can be utilized with an attention to the animals of our texts.

BETH: Are major translations of the Bible anthropocentric? How might Animal Studies change Bible translation? Do you encounter translation challenges in your own work related to your Animal Studies orientation?

SÉBASTIEN: YES!!! Jonathan Kavusa’s paper during Humanimal conference pointed to Gen 2:7,19 that describes both humans and animals as nephesh hayya. However, in translations humans are “living beings” (v.7) and other animals are “living things” or “creatures” (v.19). This shows how we project modern distinctions that are not in the texts. Interestingly Kavusa presented African-Bantu cosmology that, like many biblical texts, uses common elements for words for humans and other animals.

A well-known example is the “Noahic” covenant in Genesis (9:16-17). The Hebrew says “all flesh,” but commentators speak of this covenant for “all of humanity” without realizing that this way of talking excludes all of the other animals that are part of all flesh and all life on earth.

BETH: What books in the Bible and Animal Studies would you recommend to AJR readers?

SUZANNA: There have been some great contributions in recent years. For example, I’d recommend Stephen Moore’s Gospel Jesuses and Other Nonhumans, Ken Stone’s Reading the Bible with Animal Studies, Hannah Strømmen’s Biblical Animality after Jacques Derrida, and Peter Atkins’ The Animalising Affliction of Nebuchadnezzar. And of course your book, Beth – Animals and Animality in the Babylonian Talmud!

SÉBASTIEN: There are also a few exciting new books in the pipeline, which readers should look out for. For example, Dong Hyeon Jeong’s With the Wild Beasts, Saul Olyan’s The Hebrew Bible and Animal Rights, and Arthur Walker-Jones’ and Suzanna Millar’s Exploring Animal Hermeneutics.

BETH: Our group discussed some of the constraints that surround attending the SBL, especially cost, which many scholars do not have covered by the institutions with which they’re affiliated. Do you have thoughts about how to maximize inclusiveness for Animal Studies and Bible as a field and for the SBL unit dedicated to it?

SÉBASTIEN: I think one of our strengths will be the combination of virtual and “real” research opportunities. Because the Humanimal conference was free and online, we had around 60 proposed papers. People from Pacifica, Africa, Europe and the Americas were present. Established scholars such as David M. Carr or yourself, Beth, were present, but also emerging scholars for whom coming to an SBL event is not possible. And, with the SBL annual meeting we will have a time and place to meet in the flesh, work together, but also grab coffee or beer and develop deeper relationships.

BETH: Many scholars of Animal Studies approach it intersectionally. For example, in the recent Humanimal Conference you were both involved in, two sessions were dedicated to indigenous and decolonial perspectives, and one session to gender and sexuality. Can you address intersectional dimensions of Animal Studies and their relevance for the study of the Bible?

SÉBASTIEN: A great example was Dong Hyeon Jeong’s paper “Consuming Cornelius” that brought a postcolonial and ecocritical reading to Acts 10 with the concept of “gastro-colonialism.” Food consumption dictates identities. In this text, Peter’s gut is the site for the ingestion of settler colonizer’s food as he is forced to ingest “unclean” animals. Dong’s presentation was an aesthetic experience, since he brought two contemporary poems to help us feel in our gut an affective response of disgust to gastro-colonialism.

SUZANNA: Work by one of our steering group members, Brian Fiu Kolia of Malua Theological College (Samoa), performs the Samoan art of Fagogo (loosely translated as retelling) of biblical stories like Balaam’s donkey (Num 22:22-35) or the Garden of Eden (Gen 2:4b-3:24) in relation to Pasifika traditions, allowing the islander traditions to open up new ways to unpack the biblical tala (a Samoan word for both the story itself and the act of unpacking).

BETH: Animal Studies has emerged in the context of mass-scale industrial animal slaughter, species extinctions, and global climate crisis. What is the activist impetus for Animal Studies? Is Animal Studies itself a form of animal activism? How is the activist impetus of Animal Studies and Bible different from that of the Ecological Hermeneutics program unit?

SÉBASTIEN: In your keynote speech at the humanimal conference, Beth, you highlighted the importance of the “so what” question. Both critical animal studies and ecocriticism critique anthropocentrism, the human-centered value system that has been unconsciously important in biblical studies. Both ask ethical questions that address the most important issues of our generation by studying texts that are at the foundation of our cultures but at the same time, witness to other ways of thinking creation and creatures. Personally, since I started working on animal studies and ecocriticism, I have modified my life choices to eat almost no more meat. This choice was multifactored but also came from reading articles such as “What Would Jesus Eat” from Robert Seesengood. He reflects upon biblical animal sacrifice and modern slaughterhouses. “The awareness of killing is gone, and with it both the guilt and the sense of unheimlich that occurs when one is elbow deep in the death, then dismemberment, of another creature.”[1] Thinking of biblical animals with an ethical framework brings us to think of our personal and communal choices and responsibilities.

SUZANNA: We have interests and values in common with research units on “Ecological Hermeneutics” and “Nature Imagery and the Bible.” However, in contrast to these groups, we highlight the important and distinctive role that animal life plays within broader ecological webs, as well as the critical work done in texts and interpretation by the human-animal binary. We also raise questions about the modern Western construction of a “nature” category, which may not be straightforwardly applicable to the Bible.

BETH: In an essay about Animal Studies from 2009, philosopher Cary Wolfe said that “taking animal studies seriously … has nothing to do, strictly speaking, with whether or not you like animals.”[2] Would you agree? Do you think for the scholars working in Animal Studies and Bible that they understand their personal relationships with animals to be informing their work? Is your own work informed by “whether or not you like animals”?

SÉBASTIEN: I think we can see it both ways. I contend that scholarship is never completely neutral, objective and cut off from our embodied life. I humbly disagree with this statement since I think that real encounters with animals do form the ways we think. The relation developed by Derrida and his cat is explicitly at the heart of his scholarly work. Without the lived experience of being looked at by a cat gazing at him naked, Derrida’s work would not be the same. Beth, your own humanimal keynote centered on kin relations developed between diverse animal species. You speak of “mutuality of being,” of creative energy that can develop with the development of kin relations with other species. Experiences of interspecies attachment and relations or absence of such does impact the ways we study relations between humans and other animals in biblical texts.  

BETH: Can you each share some of your own interests in Animal Studies and Bible and give a sense of your scholarship?

SÉBASTIEN: I came to animal studies via an interest in ecological hermeneutics. This brings me to try to do scholarship that matters in light of our current ecological crisis. I have a published article on Joel, a very underrated prophetic text in which human, non human animals and even the soil have similar emotions and responses of lament and praise in the midst of an ecological disaster.

My current research in animal studies mainly uses theoretical frameworks from philosophy such as Derrida, Agamben and Deleuze. For example, I continue Stephen Moore’s Deleuzien insights on Johannine Jesus as a nonhuman animal, vegetable, vegetable by-product, inorganic matter, and inorganic energy to investigate John’s Gospel in a de-anthropocentric affective reading experience. How are Johannine disciples/readers’ bodies affected by Jesus’s animal-plant-object more-than-human body? This invitation investigates the intertwined and interconnected relations of all life forms in a biblical text and how it can in turn affect us readers. A hyper-literal reading of John with nonhuman theories reconfigures readers to reveal that we are already always more-than-human, not-quite human and nonhuman.

SUZANNA: I’m looking at nonhuman animals in the books of Samuel. I’m particularly interested in the power dynamics between humans and nonhumans, and how these interact with other societal power dynamics, such as gender, ethnicity, and class. For example, in my paper for the humanimal conference, I examined how animal imagery is used to construct ideas of masculinity and foreignness in the story of Goliath. Elsewhere we find women, children, and livestock being taken together as plunder in warfare, and animals and slaves being treated alike.

BETH: What can AJR readers do to get involved?

SUZANNA: We’d love to hear from any AJR readers with an interest in the field! For those who attend SBL, there’ll be plenty of opportunity to propose papers for our open sessions in future years. Everyone should also keep their eyes peeled for future humanimal conferences (https://www.humanimalconference.org), which we hope to keep online and entirely free for everyone.

[1] Robert Paul Seesengood, “What Would Jesus Eat? Ethical Vegetarianism in Nascent Christianity,” in The Bible and Posthumanism, ed. Jennifer L. Koosed (Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature, 2014), 242.

[2] Cary Wolfe, “Human, All Too Human: ‘Animal Studies’ and the Humanities,” Proceedings of the MLA 124, no. 2 (2009): 567.