The secret history of animals…
24 Jul 2008
Stephen writes… Genesis, for all of its problems and provocations, says something about animals that is really unbelievable. Genesis says that animals were domesticated first before they became wild. The details of the text can be debated, of course, and many Christians do not take Genesis literally anyway, so the depiction of animals is easily read as a fable. But even as a fable, what do we do with the fact that Genesis gets the biological story exactly backwards? How can we possibly take Genesis seriously if its narrative structure is so wrongheaded?
I want to argue that Genesis actually gives us the clue to the secret history of the origin and fate of all animals. Animals were meant to be (in the language of Genesis, they “originally were”) domesticated, in the sense of being at peace with each other and with us, and their wildness is a temporary state that will not withstand God’s redemption of the world.
The Genesis paradigm is thus the opposite of what we can call the romantic view of nature, which portrays animals as naturally wild and sees their domestication as a result of human manipulation and oppression. In the romantic view, animals are meant to be predators and prey, and they are meant to stand apart from us.
The romantic view can be illuminating when it comes to praising the beauty of animals, but it gets the source of that beauty all wrong. When wild animals defy human expectations and restraints, they are a sublime sight to behold. They demonstrate that they are more than we can ever handle, consume, or tame.
Yet wild animals are not sublime simply because they are wild. They are sublime because they answer to a power that is greater than us. Wild animals demonstrate their essential goodness even when they are being ferocious and terrifying. Otherwise, why would we admire them? Wild animals kill or are killed, and surely when we watch nature shows we are not just enjoying the bloody spectacle of their brutish situation. What we are enjoying is the way in which another authority is watching over them, an authority that has its own laws that we do not fully understand. We are enjoying the way they expand our sense of goodness and restrain our natural desire for authority over nature.
According to the Genesis paradigm, all creatures are meant to be in a peaceful relationship with God and with each other. That is why domestication is not a marginal human activity shaped by evil motivations. Humans have been domesticating animals as long as we have been human because domesticating animals is one of the things that makes us human.
We are meant to stand in a relationship of authority over animals, but that authority is only an extension of the authority God has over us. We should rule animals, but we should do so in a way that does not exploit or manipulate them for human ends alone. Animals have value, but that value does not lie in their independence from us. It lies in our dependence on each other.
The Bible is full of this secret history. Think of the way God creates the animals originally as Adam’s companions, and the way Adam names the animals before Eve is formed. Think of all the Old Testament Prophets who place the redemption of animals in the end times, and think of the Jewish laws that regulation what people can and cannot do to animals. Think also of the Apostle Paul talked about all creation groaning for redemption and how Jesus Christ portrayed God as a feeder of birds (Matt. 6:26 and Luke 12:24) and compared himself to a hen gathering her brood under her wings (Matt. 23:37).
Some day all animals will be subjected to the authority that we have only because God granted it to us, just as some day we will be subjected to the authority that God granted his Son.
Stephen Webb
Tagged: Animals, Creation, speciesism, stephen webb
13 comments
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Comment by Ben DeVries
1.01 am on 25 Jul 2008
I strongly recommend picking up Steve’s book “Good Eating” (http://stephenhwebb.com/index.php?content=publicatio) if you get the chance, which is an excellent, balanced and rich Christian perspective on both animal welfare and humane eating.
Comment by Kevin
5.12 pm on 25 Jul 2008
Stephen,
My problem is that the idea of an original domestication seems wildly incompatible with what we know via science, and especially evolution. I’m curious; do you reject evolution as the means God used to create the natural world, including both human and non-human animals?
Comment by Ben DeVries
11.29 pm on 25 Jul 2008
Kevin,
thanks for the comment, and a great question. I’ll let Stephen respond for himself if he gets the chance, because he has a very valuable take on this issue which is somewhat unique. But theistic evolutionists, and I lean in that direction myself along with an ever-growing number of evangelicals (though likely still a minority on the whole, at least Stateside), would likely say that the account in Genesis is actually forward-looking in its depiction of God’s ideal, which will be realized in the future peaceable kingdom. If you have a significant interest in this area, there’s an excellent essay by Robin Collins in a collection called “Perspectives on an Evolving Creation,” ed. Keith Miller (Eerdmans 03).
Comment by Stephen H. Webb
6.30 pm on 28 Jul 2008
Evolution is too big a topic to treat briefly or superficially. I personally think that Darwinian theory is not sufficient to describe biological development, and that the many convergences in evolution demonstrate how much plan there was from the very beginning. That is, the future of animals, and the development of humans, even from a biological perspective, is implicit from the very start. There is a ladder in evolution, a direction, and it points to us (the evolution of intelligence and morality). Moreover, the persistence of cruelty and randomness in evolution that Darwin does underscore is evidence, to me, of natural evil, and thus a battle between animals as God intended them to be and animals as predators. The Genesis story is thus the single best reflection we have of this battle.
Comment by xGodBod
1.24 pm on 28 Jul 2008
Isn’t there some incongruity here as Gen 1:24 uses the words “livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals” [NIV]. I don’t have a Hebrew dictionary here at work but I can’t see that the inclusion of the word “wild” in that sentence supports the argument that “animals were domesticated first before they became wild.”
Interestingly (to me at least) in verse 25 there’s a list of creatures that man is to rule over, namely “the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
The fish and birds appeared in verse 23 (day 5) and the others are referenced above but how come the list of animals to be ruled over excludes “the wild animals” mentioned in verse 24?? Again I don’t have a Hebrew dictionary to hand but I’m guessing there a word/expression present in the v24 that’s absent from v25 list.
This doesn’t mean some of your later points aren’t necessarily congruent with your argument but I’d have thought that some clarification/rewording would be needed to keep the train of thought internally consistent.
Comment by Stephen H. Webb
2.45 pm on 28 Jul 2008
Interestingly, that same verse, Gen. 1:24, says God made the cattle, so it puts domesticated cattle before wild animals, and the the Hebrew word for beast in Gen. 1:24 should not be taken to mean our distinction between wild carnivorous animals and herbivores, because God gives these very same “beasts” only green plants for food (see Gen. 1:30)! Some people, by the way, distinguish between the beasts made in 1:25 and the ones “formed” in 2:19 in terms of animal sacrifices, with the first not being and the second being appropriately sacrificable, but I think that is a stretch. The Hebrew word is chay, by the way, and it does not necessarily mean wild beast, but could mean living animal or strong animal, and you can read all day various debates about its use. I think it is not a stretch to say that Genesis is thinking about what we mean by wild animals but is also grappling with the idea that God made these animals to be something different from what they currently are.
Comment by xGodBod
9.50 am on 29 Jul 2008
As I don’t want to mishandle the original Hebrew so I’ll revert to the Amplified version which has v24-26 as:
24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creeping things, and [wild] beasts of the earth according to their kinds. And it was so.
25 And God made the [wild] beasts of the earth according to their kinds, and domestic animals according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good (fitting, pleasant) and He approved it.
26 God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our likeness, and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the [tame] beasts, and over all of the earth, and over everything that creeps upon the earth.
The points I’d take from this are that v25 lists “[wild] beasts” before livestock, apparently negating the potential significance of word order in v24…. perhaps it could be argued that God wanted to give the livestock a headstart before he created the carnivores?
The contributors to the Amplified version would seem to disagree with you about the “wild” emphasis in context and make the distinction between “wild” beasts in v24,25 and “tame” beasts in v26.
I’m not sure you can use v30 as an argument in this case as I’d suggest that the plain reading of the text doesn’t suggest exclusivity and wouldn’t support your use of the word “only” in your phrase “only green plants for food”. I would read it more as making all green food available to all species listed rather than making it the sole source of food.
Despite my earlier reticence I’ll take a pop at the Hebrew ;)
Although “chay” may be the root word for living things don’t verses 24-26 specifically refer to “beme” for tame beasts (i.e cattle/livestock) and “chith” for wild beasts?
http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/OTpdf/gen1.pdf
If I’m reading it correctly the Hebrew, reflected in the Amplified version, makes the distinction between the tame and wild beasts while you’re suggesting there was no real distinction and they all ate plants? In your opinion does this mean that predators such as lions would not originally have had canine teeth as they had no need to eat meat or is that taking the point too far?
Comment by Stephen H. Webb
3.50 pm on 29 Jul 2008
Great questions and good points…These issues are complex, but I think it is fair to say that Genesis has traditionally been read by nearly everyone as portraying a peaceful Garden of Eden, including peace between humans and animals. God brings the animals to Adam to be named, and so on. Eden is, after all, paradise; there is no violence there. This theme, though not dominant in the Bible, does run as a subtext throughout the Prophets when they portray the restoration of the world as a time when the lamb will lie down with the lion. Now you are right that there is a distinction being drawn in v. 24-5 between domesticated cattle and “beasts,” but I’m not sure how much we can read into that. The beasts are the other mammals that are not domesticated cattle, but are they wild in the sense that we use that term today? Well, they are not YET wild, because Eden does not have predation. Moreover, Adam is given dominion over all the earth, a phrase that is repeated, so these beasts were subjected to Adam’s authority. Today, we think of wild animals as not being subjected to our authority; that is what makes them wild. But these animals were part of a good order that was hierarchical, with Adam being God’s steward. I also think you play down the force of v. 30, where everything that lives (breathes) has been given green plants for food. It is clear from the narrative that one of the things God is angry about later on is that animals have turned against each other in violence, which is one of the prompts for the flood.
Comment by Stephen H. Webb
3.57 pm on 29 Jul 2008
I didn’t address your comment about lions without sharp teeth and claws. You are asking if I think that the fall entailed a revolutionary change in the biological make-up of animals. No, I don’t, because I actually believe in the Gap Theory that states that there is a fall of angels prior to Adam and Eve’s fall, and in a book I am just now completing, I argue, and it is a very complex long argument!, that this fall accounts for the features of randomness and violence that Darwinism highlights in its theory. What took place in Eden can be looked at in several ways: First, allegorically, as a statement of the ideal that God intended, an ideal that Satan interrupted, so that natural evil precedes human sin; Second, literally, as a description of a counter-evolutionary creation that takes place in one part of the earth, a protected part, where God demonstrates the creation as it essentially should be but also as it essentially really is; Third, metaphorically, as a story about the future, not the past, and an attempt to provide timeless moral truths in legendary form. I actually think you can combine all three of these readings, but I admit it is hard to do with clarity. I am NOT a harmonizer, that is, I don’t think Genesis can be harmonized with the biological facts of evolution, but I do not think that Darwinism gives us a complete account of nature either. Now I have to get back to revising my book!!!!
Comment by xGodBod
2.39 pm on 1 Aug 2008
Thanks for the extensive responses!! I don’t think I’m persuaded to change my understanding of the meaning of the Genesis verses but I’ll wait for the new book and give that a read to get the full discussion!
Comment by Gavin
5.00 pm on 6 Aug 2008
Are we not reading to much into this verses and perhaps need to look at it more simply? Maybe livestock is just mentioned before wild animals not because of chronology but rather importance to the author and readership of Genesis?
Comment by Stephen H. Webb
5.51 pm on 6 Aug 2008
I think the point is that the author of Genesis, as well as the ancient Israelites generally, considered their domesticated animals, with whom they would have shared their lives on an incredibly intimate basis, as the paradigm of all animals. The Prophets, for example, in many passages take it for granted that the destiny of all animals is to be peaceful and obedient to a hierarchy of authority (tamed, or domesticated, if you will). Now, what do we make of that insight? How do we “harmonize” it with evolution? To me, it is a very profound insight, and could only have been revealed, given how counterintuitive it is.
Comment by Gavin
2.27 pm on 8 Aug 2008
I think there is a difference between man having authority and stewardship over animals and directly taming or domesticating them all. I’m not sure how one would go about taming a giant squid for example, but I do think man’s creativity can fully realise and exert a type or degree of authority over it.
I would suggest that this expression of our God-given authority over the animal kingdom is more the authority the prophets were envisioning for the wider animal kingdom (that they knew of), rather than directly taming all animals.
Deuteronomy 7:22 certainly seems to indicate a stark difference between the natures of wild and domesticated animals. Passages such as the ones in Job concerning behemoth and leviathan would also seem to indicate that their are creatures in creation that although under God’s control cannot be tamed by man but are rather to be respected.
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