The Animal at Unease with Itself: Death Anxiety and the Animal-Human Boundary in Genesis 2-3 9781978702912, 9781978702929, 1978702914

Citation preview

The Animal at Unease with Itself

The Animal at Unease with Itself Death Anxiety and the Animal-Human Boundary in Genesis 2–3 Isaac M. Alderman

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Alderman, Isaac, 1977- author. Title: The animal at unease with itself : death anxiety and the animal-human boundary in Genesis 2-3 / Isaac Alderman. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: "In this book, Isaac Alderman uses insights from the cognitive study of death anxiety and disgust to examine the animal-human boundary in Genesis 2-3, providing biblical scholars with a case study for how this interdisciplinary approach can be used to analyze texts that deal with themes of mortality, the human body, or the animal-human boundary"-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020018580 (print) | LCCN 2020018581 (ebook) | ISBN 9781978702912 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978702929 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Genesis, II-III--Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Death--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Human body--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Human-animal relationships--Religious aspects--Christianity. Classification: LCC BS1235.52 .A44 2020 (print) | LCC BS1235.52 (ebook) | DDC 222/.1106--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018580 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020018581 TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For Christina. After two decades spent together talking about the Bible and art—and the Bible as art—I have repeatedly thought about Melville’s response to the one he loved: Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The Cognitive Turn The Hero Who Faces Death Embodiment and Meaning The Bible and Death I Am Not an Animal The Animal Turn Humans, Animals, and Clothing Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3 Garments of Skin

1 23 41 57 75 85 99 117 143

Conclusion

157

Bibliography

161

Index of Ancient Texts and Names

179

Index of Modern Authors

183

About the Author

187

vii

Acknowledgments

There are many people to thank for their assistance in the preparation of this book. First and foremost, thank you to Dr. David Bosworth for his guidance and suggestions; also to Fr. Christopher Begg and Dr. Robert Miller II for their careful reading, and to Dr. Caroline Sherman and Dr. Michael Gorman for their valuable comments regarding my work. I have gained a great deal of insight and needed support from my good friends Dr. Maria Rodriguez, Fr. Eric Wagner, and Eric Trinka, who also read my manuscript and provided valuable feedback. I also want to thank my very good friend Juan Miguel Betancourt for keeping in touch throughout the process. I would like to thank Neil Elliott, the senior acquisitions editor at Lexington/Fortress Academic. This has taken much longer than I expected, and so thank you for your patience with my frequently changing and wildly unrealistic timelines. Finally, thank you, Christina, for your incredible support throughout this process.

ix

Introduction

Many scholars are now pursuing interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Bible and the ancient Near East by drawing on the insights from the study of cognition and emotion. To my knowledge, there has not yet been any biblical study which applies the work of terror management theorists, nor has the concept of animal reminder disgust been utilized to better understand the opening chapters of Genesis. The first part of this book (chapters 1 and 2) introduces biblical scholars to some of the current application of cognitive science to the study of the Bible and the ancient Near East. This is a broad topic, and I will narrow it by also introducing terror management theory and the cognitive implications of death anxiety. The second part (chapters 3–7) deals with issues of human bodies, the bodies of non-human animals, death, and clothing. It is necessary to cover these topics because their presence and interaction in Genesis 2–3 is the point of the third section (chapters 8–9). My purpose in writing this book is to demonstrate, using Genesis 2–3 as a case study, the usefulness of accounting for the cognitive implications of death anxiety when reading biblical texts that deal with themes of mortality, the human body, or the animal-human boundary. The philosopher Jacques Derrida reflected on the biblical account of creation and life in the garden, which was brought to his mind as he began to dress. He noticed his cat looking at him and was surprised to find that, for a brief moment, he experienced embarrassment. Why should he feel ashamed or embarrassed, “when caught naked, in silence, by the gaze of an animal?” 1 His cat cannot be aware of his nudity, because she herself is naked and unashamed. Ashamed of what and before whom? Ashamed of being as naked as an animal. It is generally thought . . . that the property unique to animals and what in the final analysis distinguishes them from man, is their being naked without knowxi

xii

Introduction ing it. Not being naked therefore, not having knowledge of their nudity, in short without consciousness of good and evil. 2

In turning to reflect on the relationship between shame, nakedness, clothing, and the recognition of animal nature, Derrida focuses on the movement from the beginning of “this awful tale of Genesis,” where immodesty is unknown, to the end, where the animal that is human knows itself, “the only [animal] to have invented a garment to cover his sex”; for the human, “knowing himself would mean knowing himself to be ashamed.” 3 In “crossing borders or the ends of man I come to surrender to the animal—to the animal in itself, to the animal in me and the animal at unease with itself.” 4 Derrida draws our attention to a radical existence in Genesis 2, one in which the human animal is unaware of its animality and, therefore, unaware of its nakedness. There is no nudity “in nature.” There is only the sentiment, the affect, the (conscious or unconscious) experience of existing in nakedness. Because it is naked, without existing in nakedness, the animal neither feels nor sees itself naked. And it therefore is not naked. 5

It is the awareness of that animality that compels humans to invent clothing. In telling us of his embarrassment when being seen naked by his cat, Derrida emphasizes the fact that a human who is unashamed of his animality is as otherworldly as conversant snakes or trees whose fruit can give knowledge or immortality. Now more than 150 years ago, Darwin made it impossible for us to ignore our relationship with animals. More to the point, he clarified our relationship to animals. On the Origin of Species was immediately controversial. In the popular account of the public debate at the meeting of the British Association in Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce asked Thomas Huxley if Darwin knew whether the apes were on his grandmother’s or grandfather’s side. 6 As Darwin actually proposed, and as our understanding of genetics now puts beyond such quips, the other great apes are not our ancestors but our cousins, a fact that theological and religious discussions must now take into consideration. The matter of death and dying, which Darwin rightly recognized as the driving force behind natural selection, is clearly no exception. Like every other animal, each of us will die. While we may recognize that we are destined to “go the way of all the earth” (Josh 23: 14; 1 Kgs 2: 2), humans also tend to view themselves as somehow special, different from other animals. 7 This difference is felt so deeply that it seems to demand a permanence that, in a perfect world, should extend even to the physical body, but obviously does not. 8 This is, as the cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker has termed it, the “impossible paradox” of human existence. 9 Becker and this paradox—perhaps plight is a better word—are central to the discussion of human mortality, for it is this paradox that we will see at the center of terror

Introduction

xiii

management theory and the role of death anxiety in the process of reading, writing, and storytelling. Throughout this discussion, we will see many ways in which humans have tried to categorize or organize our species, not just in terms of difference, but in terms of exceptionalism. How is our one species different over and against every other species? How are humans different from animals? Perhaps the uniqueness that humans feel is simply one of superiority. We have become the apex predator, the most successful species ever to emerge from a complex evolutionary web. One might consider the breakthrough for our species to have occurred some 2.5 million years ago with the first toolmaking primates, Homo habilis, whose fossils have been brought to light in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge. 10 It was there that our cognitive development allowed for the technological leap that enabled us to remake the face of the planet, inaugurating the era some geologists now refer to as the Anthropocene. 11 The very name we have given ourselves, Homo sapiens, acknowledges that we are more cognitively advanced than all other animals. This goes beyond our ability to fashion tools, however, and so some have suggested that it is the presence of a mind distinct from simple cognitive processing that separates us from animals. Descartes said that animals are automata with “no intelligence at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs.” 12 Humans, on the other hand, act in unique ways, functioning on advanced levels of communication and reason, including the imaginative and pro-social behavior of storytelling. Heidegger acknowledges that humans have an animal nature, but also have a secondary nature, epitomized by language that permits “a single sharp line to be drawn between human beings and members of all nonhuman species.” 13 Literary scholar Jonathan Gottschall has taken this idea a step further, suggesting that our species be rebranded as Homo fictus. 14 He asserts that, “story—sacred and profane—is perhaps the main cohering force in human life.” 15 Pro-social behaviors have been key to the success of many species, and many play, or develop hierarchies or other complex social structures. Yet humans are able to communicate in a very particular way, telling and consuming stories almost constantly. 16 The first chapter of Genesis tells a very particular story of human uniqueness. As with other ancient accounts and religious traditions, it asserts that humans are distinct from other animals by virtue of a special relationship to a divine being. In this opening account, creation reaches its culmination with the deity pronouncing, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image,

Introduction

xiv

in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26–27) 17

Whether we consider our position at the top of the evolutionary pile to be due to our technological advances of tools and weapons, or our advancement through stories and communication of cultural ideas, or as a result of a special relationship to a divine being, it is evident that our religious, philosophical, and scientific traditions clearly express our belief that we humans are distinct from the rest of the animal world. In addition to sharing the same ultimate end as all animals, humans also experience terror in the face of death. A deer faced with a mountain lion freezes or flees, just as the mountain lion encountering a bear flees or fights. When the danger passes, so does the terror and the animal returns to life as before. Like the deer or mountain lion, our autonomic nervous system kicks into high gear when encountering danger. Unlike these animals, however, we make weapons in preparation for such encounters, devise religious rituals and stories to help avoid them in the first place, and can ruminate on the question, “What if?” 18 It is this ability to reflect and experience the terror of imminent death in anticipation that led the psychologists Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski to suggest that we refer to ourselves as Homo mortalis: 19 On one hand, we share the intense desire for continued existence common to all living things; on the other, we are smart enough to recognize the ultimate futility of this fundamental quest. We pay a heavy price for being self-conscious. . . . And here’s the really tragic part of our condition: only we humans, due to our enlarged and sophisticated neocortex can experience this terror in the absence of looming danger. 20

This conflicting experience is what they, taking their cue from Ernest Becker’s paradox, describe as the “worm at the core” of human existence. 21 Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski are the developers of terror management theory, the approach to understanding death anxiety that shapes the present project. Proponents of terror management theory are far from alone in noting the importance of our awareness of death. Whether we are talking about the Greek origins of Western philosophy or twentieth-century existentialists, ancient stories or contemporary graphic novels, the topic pervades literature and philosophy. 22 Just as the discussion of religious matters must account for Darwin’s insights, so we should also consider the fact that we anticipate, ruminate upon, prepare for, and deny our own death. Although we know death is an absolute certainty, we rarely consider this fact in our daily lives. 23 “We act as if we are exceptions to the fact of mortality,” as if we are the one of whom the psalmist wrote: 24 A thousand may fall at your side,

Introduction

xv

ten thousand at your right hand; but it will not come near you. (Ps 91: 7)

Death surrounds us, in our lives, news, and entertainment, but it is never me who is dying. It is always someone else’s death that we see so frequently. 25 In being aware of mortality, humans are in some ways responsible for “the invention of death.” 26 Though Wittgenstein might be correct when he contends that death is not an event in one’s own life, for it is not an event that one lives through, the death of others is a significant factor in our lives. 27 We mourn, care for corpses, pray, and map “geographies for the dead to travel to.” 28 Hand in hand with “the invention of death comes the invention of continuous life. We all go somewhere else. . . . We move on.” 29 Literary and philosophical reflections on death and dying are helpful for understanding death anxiety, but they do not describe what is happening cognitively during the process of reading, writing, and telling stories that remind one of one’s own mortality. Recent interdisciplinary use of the insights from cognitive science can help shed light on this process because we now know that death anxiety can influence the cognitive processing of the story. For most people, thoughts of their own death are infrequent and do not seem to bring great anxiety. Even so, as studies cited in support of terror management theory have demonstrated, though we may not generally recognize a distinct feeling we can attribute to death anxiety, it is present. Moreover, mortality awareness increases stress, decreases well-being, and influences our behavior. 30 Terror management theory was developed to understand the many behaviors that are influenced by death anxiety and is demonstrably effective at explaining the impact of death anxiety on human behavior. 31 At its most basic, terror management theory suggests that humans distance themselves from death-related thoughts by the development of defensive cultural systems that allow humans to symbolically separate themselves from the rest of the animal world. Hundreds of experimental studies have demonstrated the relationship between thoughts of death and the perceived boundary between humans and other animals. To oversimplify: if one is reminded of death, one more forcefully negates human creatureliness by emphasizing the uniqueness of human beings; if one is reminded of the similarities between humans and other animals, death thoughts become more accessible. Lastly, if one is reminded of the superiority of humans over other animals, or of the impressiveness of human society, death anxiety recedes, and death thoughts are less accessible. In addition to the knowledge of our own mortality, another uniquely human trait, related yet most likely evolutionarily distinct, is the emotion of disgust. Although disgust originated as a mechanism to prevent eating or to force the ejection of certain foods, it evolved to include the rejection of ideas. As the emotion of disgust evolved, it diversified such that several types of disgust can now be said to govern

xvi

Introduction

different domains. Animal reminder disgust is the aspect of the emotion disgust which has appropriated the food ejection response and utilizes it as a way of rejecting ideas that remind humans of their animality. Animal reminder disgust is an essential corollary to terror management theory because it also impacts the cognitive acts involved in the processes of reading, writing, and storytelling. My initial interest in applying the insights of cognitive science to reading and interpretation was from an interest in emotion, particularly that of disgust. Few would dispute that reading triggers emotions. Aside from it being scientifically demonstrated, it is part of our regular experience as readers of news, scholarship, poetry, and fiction. 32 Most of us have had the experience of crying, cringing, or laughing out loud while reading, and we might generally notice emotions like happiness or anger when we read. Disgust is also a powerful emotion that can also be elicited while reading. The passage that first brought my attention to the visceral experience of reading was an account of the Buddhist scholar Edward Conze. On his morning train, Conze opened the newspaper on August 7, 1945, to the headline that Hiroshima had been bombed. He wrote, I have a very deep stomach, and normally cannot be sick. But on this occasion I vomited straight out the window. This was prophetic insight. For at that moment, human history had lost its meaning. 33

I doubt that many of us have ever had such a powerful physical response to something we have read, but the simple fact that words on a page can induce vomiting is itself astonishing enough to lead one to keep this in mind when interpreting the biblical text. Moreover, the emotional response of disgust has cognitive effects that are more subtle but perhaps more significant than being physically ill. As literary theorist David Cave points out, the act of reading and writing by ancient storytellers utilizes the same brain architecture, cognitive processes, and emotional systems that we use today, for with only 6,000 years or so since the invention of writing, not enough time has passed for our brains to have evolved in any meaningful way with regard to reading and writing. 34 This neurobiological connectedness can be an aid to interpretation. That is, cognitive research not only tells us about ourselves, but about the working of the human brain, which includes the brains of the authors of scripture. There has been surprisingly little done to integrate terror management theory into the study of religion. This oversight is surprising because religion appears to be the paradigmatic means by which to manage our terror of death in which we can belong to something larger than ourselves that will live on past any individual believer, but also due to the promise of an immortal afterlife. . . . Recently, TMT theorists have also claimed that “religious world-

Introduction

xvii

views provide a uniquely powerful form of existential security. Indeed, there may be no antidote to the human fear of death quite like religion.” 35

A 2018 issue of the journal Religion, Brain, and Behavior, from which the above quote was taken, has attempted to draw attention to this oversight with an entire issue devoted to issues such as afterlife beliefs. The journal has published articles which demonstrate a correlation between death anxiety and religiosity, that beliefs increase with that anxiety, and that artificially increasing religious belief can increase death anxiety in the non-religious and decrease it in those who are already believers. 36 There is certainly still much more research to be done in these areas. It is my view, and the goal of this project, to demonstrate the value of accounting for the role death anxiety might play when reading the Bible. By using the Jahwist’s narrative of creation and life in the garden, we can see that those elements which have been demonstrated to interact with death anxiety—such as animals, the emphasis of the animal-human boundary, and concern for body covering—are present in the narrative and should be taken into consideration. In Genesis 2–3, we see the author’s integration of the issues of life, knowledge of death, and the interaction of human beings with animals. The themes of the knowledge of mortality and human status vis-àvis other animals are also found in other mythological literature, most notably Genesis 1 and Gilgamesh. However, the scholarly literature on the subject tends to treat these issues atomistically, isolating the inferiority of the animals, human mortality (or lack thereof), the acquisition of knowledge, and the need for clothing, treating these as separate concerns with their own significance and contribution to the narrative. However, the expanding field of cognitive science demonstrates that human death anxiety and human interaction with animals have deep cognitive connections, and many of the insights drawn from that field can contribute to a better understanding of these texts when one recognizes the integral relationship among these issues. By exploring terror management theory and animal reminder disgust, I hope to demonstrate that Genesis 2 and 3 are artfully crafted to deal with the stress of human awareness of its own creatureliness and mortality by creating a great gulf between humans and the rest of the animal world. Humans separate from the animals, and this separation is hardened as they move from being at ease with their nakedness to being, as Derrida puts it, “an animal that is at unease with itself.” 37 The first chapter will examine the cognitive turn in the humanities and the emerging field of the Cognitive Science of Religion. In the last decade, cognitive science has begun to make its impact felt in biblical studies, having already made interdisciplinary inroads into other aspects of the humanities, such as literature studies. This process is necessarily interdisciplinary, with art and literature now being studied as a cognitive act, not just an aesthetic

xviii

Introduction

product. In addition to literature, cognitive insights have been applied to the study of religion and religious texts. The Cognitive Science of Religion is a discipline that attempts to understand religion and religious practice primarily through understanding the cognitive constraints that shape them. This approach is largely directed to examining the origins of religious thought, the transmission and perseverance of these ideas, and religious acts or rituals. I will note here two concepts, the Theory of Mind (mentalizing) and Agency Detection, which are important to the discussion of human embodiment and the intuitive dualism that impacts religion and religious texts. An increasing number of scholars and research programs are endeavoring to study the Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christian origins by focusing on the insights that have been brought to the study of rituals and the transmission of ideas from cognitive science. This opening chapter concludes by examining several of these approaches. The second chapter then moves from the broad aspects of cognitive science of religion and the cognitive turn and looks at the specific area of terror management theory and the emotion of disgust in regard to animals. Building on Becker’s The Denial of Death (1973), Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski have concluded that death anxiety does indeed drive humans individually and corporately to seek transcendence. Even though I might die, I will indeed live forever symbolically (e.g., through patriotism), genetically (e.g., through descendants), or actually (e.g., through afterlife). Animal reminder disgust is specific to those things that remind humans of their animal origins and involves issues of purity and sanctity. While the origins of disgust in pathogen avoidance and food ejection are clearly related to death, the proponents of terror management theory suggest that when our attention is drawn to our bodies, and their animality, we seek to separate ourselves from other animals through beautification, modification, and adornment. The naked body is shameful (even disgusting) because it is an animal body. The many studies supporting terror management theory and animal reminder disgust allow us to conclude that the animal-human boundary is comforting when we are presented with reminders of our mortality and that animal reminder disgust is a powerful emotion reinforcing the animal-human boundary. Animal reminder disgust and terror management theory are separate, though interrelated and, taken together, call for us to recognize their impact on any reading that involves human death, nakedness, and animals. While these first two chapters are heavy on the scientific information and light on biblical references, I hope to show that the human experience of death anxiety, and death anxiety’s peculiar interaction with animals, should prompt us to consider the cognitive implications of reading any story that involves the themes of mortality, human creatureliness, and the relationship of humans to animals. The development of Genesis 2–3 was a cognitive process, as is our reading of it. At every stage, any thought of death or

Introduction

xix

animals is a reminder of mortality (a mortality salience prime) which effects cognition and behavior, as terror management theory predicts and studies demonstrate. These features should be accounted for in the reading and can serve as an aid to interpretation. The third chapter turns to religious responses to problems presented by the corporeality shared by humans and non-human animals. We begin by introducing some of the various religious responses to human evolution, focusing particularly on the situation in the United States of America, followed by a discussion of various religious responses to death, such as views of afterlife, immortality, or other aspects of culture that provide individuals with meaning in the face of death. Of particular importance is how religions have considered personal identity as embodied or disembodied. There are two fundamental questions around which this chapter is organized. The first is posed to us by the unhappy central character of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, who during the process of dying, wonders, “Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” He seeks a solution in various philosophies and scientific and religious views. However, he is continually confronted by the limitation of his own embodiedness. The second question was posed in the context of the challenge which Darwin’s book proposed to his society: What is the place of humanity within the natural order? The two questions combine in an existential threat: if we humans are not meaningfully separate from the rest of nature, then, in truth, our deaths are not particularly meaningful. Moreover, our lives might not provide for anything that is meaningfully lasting. Insights with regard to mentalizing and the mind-body problem help us to understand the persistent dualistic anthropology in religious thought. This intuitive dualism provides a buffer against death anxiety by allowing us to see ourselves as more than just an animal body. Evolutionary sciences, however, challenge this dualism and erode the animal-human boundary. This has had the result of making for an uneasy relationship between science and religion, particularly in the United States, which has a strong tradition of biblical literalism. Here I use the schema proposed by Ian Barbour, which posits four models for the relationships between science and religion to better understand how religious traditions have navigated the tension between the intuitive or explicit dualism of most religious traditions and the scientific approaches which call that dualism into question. Staying on the topic of the human body and human death, the fourth chapter turns to these topics in the Hebrew Bible. Intuitive dualism is not simply a contemporary phenomenon but can help to better explain the widespread rejection of the previously held view of a major distinction between Greek and Hebrew worldviews with regard to dualism. While the Hebrew Bible does not have a systematic anthropology, it is a complex presentation of the human being that considers, bundles, and connects various aspects, but

xx

Introduction

does not attempt to separate or unify them. Most often, various Hebrew terms such as bāśār, népeš, and rûaḥ seem to be referring to various perspectives or aspects, rather than components of a human being. Instead of describing what comprises a human, the biblical text presents a normative human that is whole, male, and well. The body which is not whole, male, and well becomes heavily regulated because of the danger it poses to the social body. Social structures are required to regulate and enforce conditions imposed on the non-normal body. The corpse represents the greatest departure from the normative body and is therefore heavily regulated. However, death itself is not an unnatural event: a non-violent death, in old age, and surrounded by family is a good death that is the best one can hope for. Immortality is neither expected nor necessarily even assumed to be possible. Recognizing that various religions and the Bible itself have responded to the problems of embodiment and mortality in many different ways, chapter 5 will return to the cognitive and psychological responses to human corporeality, which demonstrate that many elements in our lives have the effect of drawing attention to human embodiment and therefore become existentially threatening. In other words, many common elements of human existence are existentially problematic as elicitors of animal reminder disgust and as mortality salience primes and therefore generate thoughts and behaviors that function as death anxiety buffers. As a result, the cognitively integrated concepts regarding our bodies which are united by their relationship to mortality awareness, such as clothing, hair, sex, gender, food, and relationships with animals, are highly regulated by religious and secular cultures. Social structures are required to maintain a system that establishes a normative body, and enforces compliance to that norm, along with the marginalization of those with non-normative bodies. Social control over the body is important because the body, as the site of social interaction, also represents the social body. Terror management theorists also recognize this relationship; but instead of focusing on the threat of unruly bodies to society, they assert that society exists to help us cope with our animal bodies, allowing us to transform them into cultural symbols of beauty and power. The body is a “cultural costume,” which is constantly communicating. Before moving on to a more detailed discussion of the role of clothing, it is useful to see exactly how the body is used to communicate, how it is controlled, and how the lack of control can elicit animal reminder disgust and increase death anxiety. As an example, we can examine the role of hair as communication and the emphasis on hair removal in many societies and across time. It is adherence to the cultural norms and regulations concerning the body, such as the shaping or removal of hair or the wearing of clothes, which help to assuage death anxiety by separating humans from other animals. Because the body itself is the problem, the covering up and manicuring of the body is essential to our identity as humans, and not animals.

Introduction

xxi

Having already examined the existential crisis when confronted with our animal bodies, chapter 6 addresses certain methodological concerns brought to light by contemporary animal studies and the animal turn in the humanities. The bright line dividing humans from other animals is shown to be methodologically problematic because it divides the world’s creatures into an unsustainable human/not-human binary. Although one might think that the sciences and theology have different approaches, one only has to recognize the dichotomy of anthropology and zoology to recognize that the sciences as well implicitly uphold an animal-human boundary, which is sometimes called human-separatism, exceptionalism, or speciesism. Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow), which forms the background (and title) of this project, has been an important catalyst for the animal turn in literary studies and some of its impact will be examined in this chapter. Two changes that have been brought about because of this critique from animal studies is a new emphasis on the shared evolutionary history among all animals and the emerging field of anthrozoology. Humans have a complicated relationship with other animals, whom we eat, keep as pets, protect, hunt, enslave, and observe. These behaviors are both ubiquitous and culture-specific. From domesticated animals to parasites, the modern human animal is one that has been shaped by its interactions with other species. An important development in the study of animal-human interaction is the cognitive impact of these relationships. I am referring specifically to animal reminder disgust and the increase in death thought accessibility. We seek to understand ourselves as something more than animals and often de-humanize (or animalize) those we oppose in the process. After addressing certain methodological concerns with regard to animal studies, in chapter 7 I turn to the animal-human boundary as found in the ancient Near East and the Bible, with specific regard to clothing. The human relationship to non-human animals is complicated, with both ubiquitous and culture-specific attitudes. In the ancient world as today, different animal species held particular meaning or value. Some were symbols of wealth, cared for and collected, while others were despised and avoided. Surveying the ancient attitudes to animals, we see that most animals that were regularly encountered were involved in the mundane realities of daily life and related to the necessities of food, agriculture, and labor. Other species, however, were deeply meaningful and imagery such as the bull, large birds, or pets of the gods, gave expression even to the apex of religious thought and practice. Animals played a role in many religious rituals, with animals being directly involved or with humans mimicking behaviors or displaying attributes of non-human animals. Aside from the realities of life, we also see the literary presence of animals, both real and imagined. Here we will examine the role of animals in some of the literary works of the ancient world. The narratives of the Bible’s historical books give small glimpses into the interactions of

xxii

Introduction

ancient Israelites with domesticated and wild animals. Apocalyptic texts sometimes present symbolic elements of animals and monsters. The wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible enmeshes humanity in creation. Animals are central to the issue of purity, both in causing impurity and in restoring purity. Finally, animals in Ancient Israel served some of the same functions as they did for their Egyptian and Mesopotamian neighbors, and it is important to note areas of connection and distinction. Just as with the study of animals, a great deal of work has been done on clothing that is outside the field of biblical studies, and it is important to be familiar with the methodologies used in such discussions. Humans engage with clothing as a source of information. Appearance and presentation is an essential aspect of how we function, for a society of strangers requires the ability to know one’s relationship to another at a glance. We read clothes as signs, and therefore very much like a language; because we can read clothing, it is even possible to develop a “hermeneutics of dress,” in which one can read social concepts regarding identity, power, sex, gender, etc. 38 Clothing, then, is fundamental to knowing ourselves and our place in the world around us. Because this aspect of clothing is so foundational, clothing is dangerous and heavily regulated. In the ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible, society engages clothing with regard to issues such as status, gender, and honor. There are many examples of how clothes operate within the larger society, and we can see how clothing can be used to distinguish humans from other animals. The goal of this book through its first seven chapters is to demonstrate the basis for the claim that the continued maintenance and social enforcement of the unsustainable animal-human boundary is the result of a cognitive response due to a concern for our own mortality. In light of this, we should not be surprised to find expressions of these cognitively linked elements within an account whose primary concern is arguably the mortality of human beings. The final two chapters turn to the text of Genesis 2–3, which provides a striking constellation of those very elements which terror management theory asserts are impacted by death anxiety. In reading the many commentaries on Genesis 2–3, we see that these authors generally fail to connect important elements such as the concern for mortality, the relationship between the humans and the other animals, and the nakedness and eventual clothing of the humans. I am suggesting that we can indeed see unity among these elements and should not be surprised to find them all brought together in a narrative like Genesis, since the relationship to non-human animals and the concern to cover our animal bodies are, after all, cognitively linked to death anxiety as terror management theory demonstrates. The final two chapters then turn to the text of Genesis 2–3 and attempt to draw together these elements linked by death anxiety. In chapter 8, I begin with a big picture view and, using the work of selected commentators on the

Introduction

xxiii

text, seek to understand how the unit as a whole has been constructed and previously interpreted. I follow the structure outlined by the commentator Claus Westermann and divide the text into three narrative units. The first describes the account of the creation of the human, the animals, and a search for a suitable partner (Gen 2: 4b–5a, 7–9, 15–24). The second account concerns the humans moving from being naked to clothed (Gen 2: 25–3: 7). The final account is expulsion from the garden (Gen 3: 8–24). In each of the three accounts we find references to death, the superiority of the human(s) and the creation or reinforcement of the animal-human boundary. We see elements such as sex, clothing, the animals, the human body and even death are often subsumed under larger categories by commentators. We also see how often these categories have failed to account meaningfully for some of these elements. I suggest that the texts’ repeated and highlighted references to death as continually drawing the mind toward mortality. The final chapter then turns to the individual elements of the Genesis text, focusing on the human body, animals and the animal-human boundary, and clothing, to see how terror management theory can help to better account for their presence in the text. While I assert that commentators fail to make certain significant connections among the elements and motifs that are united by means of terror management theory, these authors do present many valuable insights that can be even further elucidated by understanding the issues of death anxiety and animal reminder disgust. I believe that not only can accounting for death anxiety help us to better understand the passage in question, it also enables us to better understand many of the approaches commentators have taken to the text. By recognizing this cognitive connection as described by terror management theory, we are able to draw together the human interaction with non-human animals and the wearing of clothes by seeing these elements as interacting with and reinforcing the animal-human boundary, necessitated by our awareness of mortality. At the end of the account, the humans know that they will die. It is this new understanding that all human beings now share. Although we desire immortality, it is unattainable and we know that our bodies, like those of other animals, are destined to return to the ground. The cost of knowledge was the humans’ awareness of their animal bodies. They moved from being at ease with their nakedness and unaware of the inevitability of death to one of a state of anxiety, hiding, exerting dominance, and covering their bodies. Unlike other animals, humans are ill at ease with their bodies, with sex, with exposure, and with natural bodily functions. We seek to control all things that remind us of our animal bodies; we dominate our bodies and dominate each other because of the anxiety that we feel towards our bodies. The lengths we go to modify or hide our bodies, even beyond clothing, demonstrates just how much the awareness of our animal bodies disconcerts us.

xxiv

Introduction

NOTES 1. Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 3. 2. Derrida, The Animal, 4–5. 3. Derrida, The Animal, 5. 4. Derrida, The Animal, 3. 5. Derrida, The Animal, 5. 6. W. F. Bynum, Introduction to On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin (London: Penguin, 2009), np. This account of the debate between Huxley and Wilberforce is probably not true, although the legend was firmly established by 1900 and presented in anecdote form the growing divide, and the conflict model, of the relationship of science to religion. Alister E. McGrath, “Darwinism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, eds. Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 686. 7. The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, 1989, by the division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA and are used by permission. All rights reserved. 8. Simon Howard, Dawn of Death: The Bible and Our Mortal Bodies (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016), 6. 9. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (London: Souvenir Press, 2011), 17. 10. Robert Dalling, The Story of Us Humans, from Atoms to Today’s Civilization (Lincoln, NB: iUniverse, 2006), 89. 11. Ken Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018), 166–167. Stone embraces the term Anthropocene and concludes his book with a reading of the Hebrew Bible in an age of anthropogenic extinction. The Elsevier journal Anthropocene publishes articles “addressing the nature, scale, and extent of interactions that people have with Earth processes and systems. The scope of the journal includes the significance of human activities in altering Earth’s landscapes, oceans, the atmosphere, cryosphere, and ecosystems over a range of time and space scales.” From https://www.journals.elsevier.com/anthropocene/. 12. Angelique Richardson, “Introduction,” in After Darwin: Animals, Emotions, and the Mind, ed. Angelique Richardson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013), 1. 13. Stephen Mulhall, Philosophical Myths of the Fall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 73. This is a quote by Alasdair MacIntyre, taken from Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals—Why Human Beings Need the Virtues (London: Duckworth, 1999), 50. MacIntyre goes on to criticize Heidegger, arguing for a spectrum between humans and other animals with no stark divisions. Other philosophers engage in the effort to eliminate, rather than emphasize or describe the difference between humans and non-human animals. For example, Olson and Snowden use thought experiments such as cloning machines and brain transplants to build logical cases against the suggestions that there is some human nature that is distinct from animal nature. Eric T. Olson, The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). Paul F. Snowdon, Persons, Animals, Ourselves (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 14. Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal; How Stories Make Us Human (Boston: Mariner Books, 2013), xiv. 15. Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, 138. Emphasis in the original. 16. Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, xiv. 17. It is interesting to contrast this with the Egyptian conceptions of humanity as images of God. Cf. Erik Hornung, “Der Mensch als ‘Bild Gottes’ in Ägypten,” in Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen, Schriften des Deutschen Instituts für Wissenschaftliche Pedagogik, ed. Oswald Loretz (Munich: Kösel, 1967), 123–156. 18. Risto Uro, “Towards a Cognitive History of Early Christian Rituals,” in Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition Through the Ages, eds., Istvá n Czachesz and T. S. Biró (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 112–114. Uro notes Pascal Boyer’s emphasis on rituals as a way to ward off dangers, which Boyer sees as a potential origin of ritual behavior. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001).

Introduction

xxv

19. Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Thomas A. Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life (New York: Random House, 2015), 63. 20. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 7. 21. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, vii. The authors draw their title from William James: “Back of everything is the spectre of universal death . . .” and a weak moment can “bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.” William James, Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902), 140. 22. Three anthologies on death have been helpful for this project: Robert F. Weir, Death in Literature (New York: Columbia University, 1980); D. J. Enright, The Oxford Book of Death (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992); David Meltzer, Death: An Anthology of Ancient Texts, Songs, Prayers, and Stories (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984). 23. Becker, Denial of Death, 17. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 167. 24. Weir, Death in Literature, 2. 25. Meltzer, Death, 5–6. 26. Meltzer, Death, 6. 27. Meltzer, Death, 34. Heidegger also makes this point, going so far as to suggest that death is not open to analysis in existential terms, see Mulhall, Philosophical Myths, 64. 28. Meltzer, Death, 6. 29. Meltzer, Death, 7. 30. Jacob Juhl and Clay Routledge, “Putting the Terror in Terror Management Theory,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 25 (2016): 99–103. Clay Routledge, Jacob Juhl, and Matthew Vess, “Mortality salience increases death-anxiety for individuals low in personal need for structure,” Motivation and Emotion 37 (2013): 303–307. 31. Jamie Goldenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon, “Fleeing the Body: A terror management perspective on the problem of human corporeality,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4 (2000): 200–218. 32. Arthur C. Graesser and Sydney D’Mello, “Moment-To-Moment Emotions During Reading,” The Reading Teacher 66 (2012): 238–242. 33. David Duncan, The Brothers K (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 135. For information on Edward Conze, see Edward W. Bastian, “Edward Conze,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 2 (1979): 116. 34. David Cave, “Reading the Body, Reading Scripture: The implications of Neurobiology on the Study of Scripture,” in Religion and the Body; Modern Science and the Construction of Religious Meaning, ed. David Cave and Rebecca Sachs Norris (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 22–23, 28. Stanislas Dehaene, Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (New York: Penguin, 2009), 6. Lévy-Bruhl made a similar point in 1923: “We shall no longer define the mental activity as primitives . . . as a rudimentary form of our own.” Quoted in, Luther Martin, “Towards a Scientific History of Religions,” in Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History and Cognition, ed. Harvey Whitehouse and Luther Martin (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004), 8. 35. Robert B. Arrowood, Jonathan Jong, Kenneth E. Vail III, and Ralph W. Hood, ”Guest editors’ foreword: On the Importance of Integrating Terror Management and Psychology of Religion,” Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8 (2017): 1. The goal of Arrowood et al., is necessarily limited in scope, and so does not engage with how terror management theorists are defining religion, or indeed even qualifying their statements about studying religion. The work of scholars such as Clifford Geertz and Christian Smith do not seem to be accounted for in their statements about religion. The quote by Arrowood et al., includes a quote from Kenneth E. Vail, Zachary K. Rothschild, Dave R. Weise, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski, and Jeff Greenberg, “A Terror Management Analysis of the Psychological Functions of Religion,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (2010): 65. 36. Arrowood et al., “Terror Management,” 2. 37. Derrida, The Animal, 3. 38. Peter Corrigan, The Dressed Society; Clothing, the body and some meanings of the world (London: Sage, 2008), 155.

Chapter One

The Cognitive Turn

The study of the Bible is heavily influenced by other disciplines, even if it often takes a good deal of time before insights from other scholarly approaches can make meaningful inroads. Literary methods such as Marxist and feminist readings, for example, only began to be significantly used by biblical scholars two decades after they became commonplace in the study of other literature. 1 With this in mind, it might not seem surprising that biblical studies lags behind other fields within the humanities in utilizing and adapting insights from various cognitive approaches. Within the last decade, however, there have been a few notable exceptions and much more material is being produced. Many of these efforts have greatly influenced this project with regard to method, if not necessarily direct content. One of the first and most important examples is Ellen J. Van Wolde’s 2009 work which uses cognitive linguistics and cognitive relationality to examine several texts from the Hebrew Bible. 2 More recently, scholars have produced several books, articles, and edited volumes that attempt to draw from the various approaches, with a particular focus on rituals. Here we find important texts such as Cognitive Science and the New Testament and Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, which seek to understand religion and religious practice primarily through the study of the cognitive constraints that shape them, largely directed at examining the origins of religious thought, the transmission and perseverance of these ideas, and religious acts and rituals. 3 The work of several scholars will be discussed further in this chapter, which will first examine the emergence of cognitive science, the cognitive turn in the humanities, and then the cognitive science of religion. I will also introduce two important aspects of cognition, the theory of mind (mentalizing) and agency detection, which are important to the discussion of human 1

2

Chapter 1

embodiment and the intuitive dualism that impacts religion and religious texts discussed in later chapters. Finally, I will cite examples of how insights from cognitive science are helping to better understand religion, and religious texts and practices. THE COGNITIVE REVOLUTION Cognitive science is the scientific interdisciplinary study of the mind, with its origins in computer sciences and Chomskyan linguistics, and drawing on technological developments, such a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). It should not be understood as a distinct discipline, but rather as the intersection of many disciplines. In order to see how the cognitive sciences are being used in biblical studies, it is necessary to outline some of the main approaches, themes and scholars working in cognitive science, how it is applied more broadly to the humanities, and the study of religion in particular. Because many working in cognitive science are focused on different aspects and in numerous fields, they have various definitions or approaches to cognitive science. Also, because their readers may be unfamiliar with cognitive science, they regularly spend significant space on definition and explaining methods before outlining its role in their specific discipline. One very simple view of the work of cognitive scientists is to describe the brain as a machine or computer that they are trying to understand. 4 In this approach, the focus is directed toward computation or information processing. 5 Similarly, Justin Barrett defines cognitive science as “consider[ing] what the human mind is and how it functions; how people think.” 6 While this definition could seem so broad as to cover almost all human behavior, it does not. For example, bodily functions such as sneezing and yawning would not be included in this definition. 7 However, this still leaves much undefined. A more complete definition of cognitive science describes it as an attempt to explain the kinds of perceptual and conceptual representations that the mental processing of sensory input allows, the memory, the transmission and transformations of these mental representations, the relationships among them, and the ways in which some of these mental representations become public. 8

Luther Martin goes on to elaborate the different aspects of mental function as non-conscious, conscious, and metarepresentational. An example of nonconscious mental functionings is our ability to see color through the discernment of the light-reflective qualities of objects in our environment and the construction of a mental representation coded for color. 9 These functionings can also be conscious, as when we recognize and represent objects in our environment to others. We can also represent non-existent objects, such as

The Cognitive Turn

3

those not present, those with no existence (e.g., unicorns), or those that only exist as future possibilities. 10 Humans can even represent our own representations. This metarepresentation allows us to reflect upon our representations, categorizing and comparing them, making critical judgments and discerning fact from fiction. 11 These definitions raise several issues that must be discussed in greater detail, namely the interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science and the relationship between the mind and the brain or, even more broadly, the mind and body. The origins of cognitive science lie in many fields. In fact, cognitive science should be understood as a collaboration rather than a discrete field of study. It is the “fruitful synergies” of philosophy, psychology, linguistics, computer science, anthropology, and neuroscience, none of which alone could hope to address the pressing open questions of cognitive science. 12 While not everyone in these diverse fields who works on these issues would consider themselves scientists, they generally could be regarded as cognitive scientists when they utilize scientifically collected data to evaluate “claims and predictions about how humans think and the character of the human mind, and attempt to discover naturalistic explanations for the phenomena the data reveal.” 13 One of the constituent fields of cognitive science is neuroscience. Cognitive science and neuroscience are often used incorrectly as interchangeable terms, a lack of distinction that mirrors the equally incorrect interchangeability of the terms brain and mind. The rise of cognitive science is roughly contemporary with the development of personal computing and drawing analogies between the brain and the computer have proved very helpful. 14 One can easily find many news articles referring to some aspect of human behavior as being ‘hardwired.’ 15 In this analogy, the brain is hardware, and the mind is software. While it is useful to know where in the brain certain types of processes occur, as Barrett points out, “cognitive science . . . isn’t really about brains at all. It is about minds.” 16 However, just because the brain and mind are conceptually distinct, this does not mean that they are meaningfully separable. 17 Some of the greatest advances in cognitive science have occurred when brain injuries, surgeries, or non-neurotypical conditions have significantly impacted individual personalities or abilities. For example, a traumatic brain injury can cause a significant change in behavior, such as inducing pathological gambling. 18 An example perhaps more to the point for this project, individuals on the autistic spectrum can find it difficult to understand the thoughts and intentions of others, an aspect of what we will discuss below as theory of mind. This skill, which is essential both for reading works of fiction and for developing religious beliefs, is frequently studied. 19 But one does not even need to examine such significant examples to recognize the everyday experience of the body impacting the mind. Physical events and feelings

4

Chapter 1

affect the cognitive processing of information. Hunger and tiredness, or substances such as caffeine and alcohol can affect performance of simple tasks, memory, and personality. These are obvious examples that most of us have experience with. Others are less common and perhaps more surprising. For example, following Botox (botulinum toxin A) injections, subjects reading sentences that stimulate negative emotions process those thoughts more slowly than those who have not had their facial muscles impaired. 20 An example that impacts all of us, but of which we are generally unaware, is the impact of gut bacteria on our brain, an area of research which is now exploding. 21 Moreover, it is not only the body that affects the mind, the mind can also affect the body, as is seen in examples of anxiety-induced muscle tension or spasms. Here again I am reminded of the account cited in the introduction in which the act of reading induced vomiting. One of the foundational tenets of cognitive science asserts that the mind is embodied and affected by the body, particularly the brain. While the mind-body problem and its unsurprising spectrum ranging from monism to dualism is not the primary concern of our study, suffice it to say it is beyond question that our minds are both constrained and enabled by our bodies. 22 The theory of mind, sometimes called the theory of mind mechanism, is an essential concept within cognitive science and is a useful concept for work in the humanities as well. The theory of mind is the ability to attribute a mental state, also referred to as mentalizing, to oneself and to others. 23 While my ability to recognize that other people are having their own thoughts that are distinct from my own might seem so obvious and simple as to need little attention, it is a very important ability that non-human animals largely lack. Even young children lack the ability to mentalize. To demonstrate the development of the theory of mind, much work has been done with both children and autistic individuals. One important demonstration of this ability is the false-belief test, which has many iterations but essentially runs as follows. A young child is shown a crayon box and asked what it contains. Crayons is the obvious answer. However, when the box is opened, it surprisingly contains candy. The experimenter puts the candy back in the box, closes it, and asks, “What did you first think was in the box?” Children three and under will generally respond that they had believed that the box contained candy. The child’s parent is brought into the room, and the child is asked, “What do you think mom thinks is in the box?” The child is unable to recognize that her mom would normally assume that a crayon box would hold crayons, and answers, “Candy.” By the age of four or five, children pass the test, recognizing that mom would expect crayons, even though her belief is wrong. By seven or eight, children can pass false belief tests to several orders. For example, they will know not only that mom is wrong about the crayons, but that she would wrongly believe that the child is wrong if she were to tell her that the box has candy. We can readily see the importance of this social skill.

The Cognitive Turn

5

Not only does a child recognize the wrong belief, but understands that in expressing what is true, he will wrongly be thought to be wrong. The false belief test has garnered significant attention from literary scholars and is a great example of how the work of cognitive scientists has been productively used in literary analysis. As Boyd puts it, understanding “why others do what they do matters so much in both human life and literature.” 24 One must be able to pass the false belief test to be a competent reader, for it is an essential skill to be able to navigate complex literary situations in which characters, including the narrator, have various levels of knowledge and accuracy of beliefs. While some animals, such as chimpanzees, can infer intentions from others’ behavior, only cognitively mature neurotypical humans have the ability of metarepresentational thought; in other words, only a human can think about what Sally thinks that John thinks about her, while knowing that John is wrong. A simple example from Genesis 27:18–29 shows the importance of being capable of passing the false belief test. The passage is meaningless to readers if they are unable to see through Jacob’s hairy disguise while also understanding that Isaac cannot. Another important insight in the cognitive science of religion draws upon our knowledge of theory of mind and the attention humans pay to agency. We have already seen that children develop a theory of mind, in which they recognize that other humans have minds. Even earlier, even in the case of infants, another skill becomes present, that of agency detection. Infants very quickly develop categories in which they separate those things which have agency and those which do not. Once this has happened, they attend more closely to those which do. For example, infants are much more attentive to people and pets than they are to furniture. Moreover, they are easily startled when something that should not have agency appears to behave like an agent. This is easily demonstrated in studies, where infants are startled by objects that are made to appear to move on their own, such as a remote-control toy. The human agency detection device is a naturally selected trait with survival benefits. Assuming agency when encountering ambiguous stimuli can save a life if correct and has little downside if wrong. Agency detection sacrifices accuracy for speed which leads to over-identification of agency. For example, if hearing a noise in the bushes causes one to be on guard against a predator, it could save one’s life. Conversely, if the noise was simply the wind, there is little consequence to one’s being wrong. As one scholar puts it, “it’s better to have a fast device that occasionally gets it wrong than a slow device that is always accurate.” 25 In addition to natural agency detection, as children get older, they begin to impute teleological explanations and purposeful action where none exists. 26 For example, when shown images of pointy rocks, they might explain that the rocks are pointy so that no one will sit on them. When agency detection has been activated, theory of mind comes into play because agents

6

Chapter 1

have minds. 27 Barrett, like Pascal Boyer, has studied agency detection. Noting the human tendency toward liberal attribution of agency, he uses the term hypersensitive agency detection device. 28 Our over-attribution of agency and our proclivity to attribute mental states come together in the belief in gods, ghosts, and other supernatural beings. We attribute mind to everyone and to many things, often including animals and objects. 29 Essentially, then, cognitive scientists are studying the embodied mind. This embodiment can cause complications, but one of the greatest assets humans have is the ability to recognize that others have minds, even when we only see their bodies. Moreover, we readily assign agency to movements and events, often even when no agency is involved. These concepts are essential for applying the insights of cognitive science in the humanities. THE COGNITIVE TURN Since the 1990s, the humanities, particularly literary analysis, has broadened its scope of research to include what some refer to as cognitivism. Although the approach is itself challenged by what some view as “neuromania,” it is an important development. 30 As Hogan says, a theory of the human mind which cannot account for art is a poor theory. 31 Conversely, and more to the point of this project, analyses of the creative products of the human mind should also consider the workings of the human brain. A great deal of work in literary analysis is now focused on the cognitive processes involved in reading, writing, and storytelling. The cognitive revolution has had a significant impact on literary and cultural studies. The humanities struggled in the early 1990s. Literary analysis in particular was threatened, as a committee studying the field of comparative literature put it, with finding itself in the “dustheap of history.” 32 The dominance of deconstruction and post-structuralist methods left many feeling that meaningful insights were no longer the focus. It was clear to many that the various sciences were achieving results, real data, in a way that was not possible for literary analysis as it was currently being practiced. One response to this crisis was the incorporation of the insights of cognitive science into the study of literature. The expansion of the cognitive revolution into literary studies and other fields within the humanities should not come as a surprise since interdisciplinarity and “fuzziness of boundaries” is an essential characteristic of cognitive cultural studies. 33 Communication had long been studied by cognitive scientists, analyzing elements such as patterns of speech, meaning making, and the use of metaphors. With the introduction of the cognitive study of culture, it became clear that art is a form of communication and not a separate system, and so art and literature are now being

The Cognitive Turn

7

studied as cognitive acts. 34 Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker sees in this process a great merging of the sciences and the humanities. 35 In paraphrasing William James, one scholar refers to this type of work as trying to turn on the light fast enough to see what the dark looks like. 36 The study of stories is in some sense an attempt to understand our own understanding. The arts are not marginal to human existence and storytelling is an integral part of our lives. We tell stories constantly, sometimes habitually and unintentionally. 37 We are “marinating ourselves in fiction,” consuming and creating stories, often spending more time with books, movies, and television than we do on other activities such as work or relationships. 38 The study of cultural interactions such as storytelling recognizes that these actions are cognitive actions rooted in the body itself. As Maryanne Wolf puts it, “reading is a neuronally and intellectually circuitous act,” that is impacted by the text, but also by the “unpredictable indirections of a reader’s inferences and thoughts.” 39 A pioneer in the cognitive study of culture, Ellen Spolsky articulates the goal of the field in terms of a question to be answered: How does the evolved architecture that grounds human cognitive processing, especially as it manifests itself in the universality of storytelling and the production of visual art, interact with the apparently open-ended set of cultural and historical contexts in which human find themselves, so as to produce the variety of social constructions that are historically distinctive, yet also often translatable across the boundaries of time and place? 40

Several scholars, including Boyd and Gotschall, view storytelling as essential to the nature of human beings. 41 Boyd seeks to understand stories as an important aspect of the evolution of human beings, suggesting that the origins of fiction lay in its many social and individual benefits. For example, there is social capital to be gained through sharing information and even gossip. 42 It is also easy to see how deception and invented stories could be used for manipulation and material gain. 43 Finally, fiction and storytelling evolved as a source of entertainment and play. 44 Boyd also recognizes that theory of mind is essential to fiction and storytelling, recognizing that point of view, irony, and the gap between reality and appearance is so widespread in storytelling. 45 While Gottschall and Boyd seek the evolutionary origins of stories, and the ways in which they distinguish humans from other animals, David Herman seeks to promote the increased interaction of literary and cognitive studies. Herman points out that most projects that bring together cognitive science and humanities involve the utilization of the sciences of mind to better interpret a text. 46 In doing so, scholars who take this approach are aware of disciplinary differences, pragmatically adopting useful insights and critically appropriating them for use in their own field. 47 The goal of this type of work “has been to demonstrate the relevance of developments in the cognitive sciences for problems of narrative understanding.” 48 This is not the

8

Chapter 1

only approach, however. Herman seeks, in the end, to go beyond this interdisciplinary approach, which amounts to the “unidirectional transfers of terms and concepts from one discipline to another,” to develop a “transdisciplinary” approach to understanding storytelling and cognition. 49 This approach, which seeks to inform both disciplines, is an ambitious goal, which is not the purpose of most of those working to understand the humanities better through the insights of cognitive science. THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION The cognitive science of religion is part of the cognitive revolution already described. Those working within this field attempt to understand religion and religious practice primarily through understanding the cognitive constraints that shape them. Here we will see what the goals of the cognitive science of religion are, and how they utilize insights from the study of the mind to study religion. One of the originators of the cognitive science of religion, E. Thomas Lawson asserts that “people are equipped to create and employ religious ideas, because they are equipped to create and employ ideas.” 50 In other words, the cognitive processes essential for religious thinking are the same processes used for other kinds of thought. Therefore, just as art and literature can be studied in the same manner as other forms of communication, religious thoughts and actions can be studied in the same manner as non-religious ones. Just as not all actions are possible for humans due to physical constraints, there are also cognitive constraints; “not everything is possible to think or even to imagine.” 51 Scholars of the cognitive science of religion see these universal cognitive constraints as aiding in interpretation. 52 Moreover, it is not sufficient for an action to be done or a concept to be thought for it to become meaningfully religious; the action or concept must also be conveyed to others for emulation or shared belief. This emphasis on the transmission of religious thoughts and their enactment draws the topic of rituals into the discussion. William James, in the Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), thought epileptic seizures were at the root of mysticism and an important part of the development of religion. In this regard, his work is in some ways a precursor of the cognitive science of religion. However, the cognitive science of religion differs from James because it instead holds that religious practices and beliefs are rooted in neurotypical cognitive capacities present in nearly all humans, and which develop very early in childhood. 53 In this way, the cognitive science of religion is more concerned with regular cognitive features rather than atypical differences for explaining the prevalence of religious belief and actions. 54 Religious belief is universal; it is not universal in the sense that all humans hold religious beliefs,

The Cognitive Turn

9

but that features of human behavior that are regarded as religious (e.g., belief in supernatural beings, engaging in rituals) are present in all human cultures, and almost everyone has some knowledge of one or more particular religious beliefs and practices, such as the dates and meanings of religious festivals and the properties of supernatural beings. 55

This universality once served as a consensus gentium argument, with the prevalence of belief used as evidence for the existence of God. Circularly, the assumed existence of God provided an explanation for the universality of religious beliefs and practices. 56 The cognitive science of religion tries to distance itself from these previously held views and studies religion as a “natural, evolved product of human thinking.” 57 Because cognitive constraints shape their content, form, development, and perseverance, we can examine and test these beliefs and actions, thereby providing meaningful data by which to examine the previously nebulous and anecdotal study of religion. 58 General scientific approaches were largely resisted in the nineteenth century by scholars of religion who tended to have theological and confessional concerns. Some scholars did adopt Darwinian approaches to religion, but these views were discredited in the early twentieth century, which led to an increase in the apprehension about the scientific study of religion. 59 Unrelatedly, political interests during the Cold War led to the development of area studies, analyzing the cultures of particular regions. These scholars came to recognize that some aspects of cultures were universal. Cognitivists argued from this that, like the panhuman operation of other bodily organs, the constraints of the brain and the process of human evolution led to certain behaviors and beliefs now considered to be religious. 60 Most cognitive scientists do not believe that the brain has necessarily evolved to think religious thoughts, but that the ability to think religious thoughts or to behave religiously is an evolutionary byproduct of other mental functions. Often referred to as preadaptation, there is often a change in function without a change in physical structure. In these instances, a behavior or skill can be learned without the human having evolved for that purpose. For example, driving a car is not an evolved function but draws upon many different skills or traits which evolved for other purposes. Similarly, religion is not usually understood to be the type of formation upon which natural selection could act significantly enough to develop as its own evolved function. 61 Barrett succinctly outlines the benefits of a cognitive study of religion in that it, first, avoids the need to define religion. Rather than provide grand definitions of religion as a whole, scholars are able to identify individual aspects of human thought or action and explain why that particular aspect recurs across cultures. 62 Second, the cognitive science of religion has a “stance of explanatory non-exclusivity,” providing cognitive structure of a

10

Chapter 1

thought or act which then can be used by other scholars to discover the underlying reasons for any given religious phenomenon. 63 Barrett’s last point is that this approach is marked by methodological pluralism. Apart from more traditional methods for the study of religion, the cognitive science of religion has allowed for an analysis that includes data from ethnographies, historical research, archaeology, computer modeling, clinical studies, and many other methods of data collection. 64 An introduction to several significant scholars and their work in the cognitive science of religion will serve to demonstrate how the insights of cognitive science have benefited the study of religion, particularly its emphasis on embodiment and the theory of mind. Their work is primarily directed at examining the origins of religious thought, the transmission and continuance of these ideas, and religious acts or rituals. One of the earliest examples of this approach is found in the work of Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley, who provided the first fully developed theory of the cognitive science of religion, a cognitive account of ritual. 65 A ritual is a human act; although it is religiously directed, it is understandable as an action with a cognitive basis. As they put it, “ritual drummers ritually beating ritual drums are still drummers beating drums.” 66 Within their schema, rituals are construed within a human “action representation system” and are reducible to agent, instrument, and patient. 67 The basic structure of a ritual is that someone (agent) does something to or for someone (patient), often with something (instrument). What distinguishes a ritual from an ordinary act—baptism is different from playfully splashing water—is the role of a superhuman agent, which makes the action ritualistic and determines its features. 68 Special agent rituals are those in which the superhuman agent is the one who brings about the change, often through a proxy human. Because the superhuman agent is the force behind the rituals, they tend to be highly efficacious, therefore permanent and infrequent. Special patient rituals are those in which the superhuman agent is the recipient and the humans are the agents. These tend to be less efficacious, therefore impermanent and frequent, such as sacrifices. Special instrument rituals are those in which the superhuman agent is most closely aligned with the material used in the ritual. These also are less efficacious, because a human is the agent driving the ritual, and therefore these are also often repeated. An example of this could be a blessing with holy water or Jewish ritual self-immersion. Levels of pageantry are in accordance with the efficacy and frequency of the rituals. Infrequent special agent rituals involve higher levels of pageantry than do the more frequent and temporary special patient rituals. Dan Sperber began to study the transmission of ideas from one individual to another in a manner analogous to the field of epidemiology, which he termed the epidemiology of representations. 69 Wondering why some beliefs are more “contagious” than others, he concluded that some ideas fit more

The Cognitive Turn

11

naturally with panhuman mental structures. 70 Memories that are easily transmitted are those that easily fit into the brain’s natural processing or those that are surprising or attention-grabbing by being counterintuitive. 71 In other words, ideas that make perfect sense or contain some unexpected, but easily grasped, element of surprise are readily transmitted. Boyer, picking up on Sperber’s work, developed minimal counterintuitiveness theory. Here he proposes that ideas that violate our intuitive understanding of the world are attention-demanding and therefore memorable, but only if they are also readily understood. To illustrate this idea of minimal counterintuitiveness, Barret asks that we imagine several stories about a brown dog. The first story is about a brown dog that is barking on the other side of wall. The second is a barking brown dog that can pass through the wall. The barking dog in the first story is completely intuitive and uninteresting. The second dog is slightly counterintuitive and therefore requires more attention, but is not radically difficult to imagine. Barret then tells us about a third brown dog. This dog “passes through solid objects, is made of metal parts, gives birth to chickens, experiences time backwards, can read minds, and vanishes whenever you look at it[.]” 72 Assuming that this description is even coherent, it is a maximally counterintuitive concept, and will not be remembered. Boyer’s view is that the second dog will be better remembered and more faithfully transmitted than the first or third. 73 This is supported by research on memory, which has shown that accounts with minimally counterintuitive elements are remembered better than wholly intuitive or wildly counterintuitive narratives. 74 For example, when asked to remember lists, subjects better remembered counterintuitive word pairings such as “thirsty door” and “closing cat” than wholly intuitive pairings such as “thirsty cat” and “closing door.” 75 Harvey Whitehouse, using the work of Sperber, Boyer, and Lawson and McCauley, developed the theory known as the modes of religiosity. In this, he seeks to further explain why some religious ideas and behaviors persist and are successfully transmitted while others are not. He agrees with Sperber and Boyer that, “our cosmologies, eschatologies, ethics, ritual exegesis, and so on, are all firmly constrained by what we can encode, process and recall.” 76 With ritual, however, we have additional constraints with regard to authority and the distribution of information, and the social status of those with and without information and authority. Drawing on Boyer, he concludes that some concepts regarding supernatural agency are much easier than others for us to create, encode, store in our memory, and then later recall. 77 Following Boyer and using language from the field of epidemiology, some ideas are more contagious and easier for us to catch. Unlike the division of ritual into special patient and special agent, Whitehouse’s modes are differentiated by the type of memory on which they rely, namely episodic and semantic. The rituals that rely on semantic memory are

12

Chapter 1

termed “doctrinal.” They are frequent, with minimal emotional arousal, and the meaning of the event is heavily scripted and reliant on repetition in order to be passed along. This repetitive nature allows for establishing verbal knowledge in the semantic memory, such as long and difficult narratives and doctrines, something which could not be accomplished by the infrequent repetition of rituals. 78 This successful transmission strategy has a major drawback, however, since repetition can result in a loss of motivation. Having empirically demonstrated this problem, Whitehouse terms it the “tedium effect.” 79 To combat this tedium effect, successful religions seek balance, including “imagistic rituals.” Imagistic rituals rely on episodic (flash-bulb) memory, and are infrequent and emotionally arousing, with the meaning of the event primarily being internally generated rather than scripted. Highly emotional rituals cannot be repeated frequently enough to convey scripted or complex nuance. Whereas the doctrinal mode of ritual risks tedium, the imagistic mode is too costly in terms of resources and emotional energy to be enacted frequently. EXAMPLES OF USE OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE IN BIBLICAL STUDIES Perhaps the essential insight that gave rise to the cognitive turn in biblical studies is that while our ability to study the past is complicated by the differences between our current economic, social and political models and those of the ancient world, what makes cognitive science special [is that] we can make the assumption that the basic mental architecture of ancient people was very close to ours. . . . Since we share the anatomy of our brains and bodies with ancients, we can understand their thoughts and feelings by studying how brain, body, thoughts, and feelings are related in general. 80

What connects these variegated studies is an interest in the human cognitive capacities that we share with people living in the ancient Near East, and an appreciation and utilization of the scientific tradition that studies the minds and brains hosting these cognitive structures. 81 Two related points can be made, in that within biblical studies both the text itself and the religious phenomena described provide material to be examined. Because the texts and archaeological data we study are artifacts of human cognitive activities, understanding these cognitive processes can aid our study of these artifacts. Further, cognitive theories can also help explain the religious phenomena reflected in the Bible or in the archaeological data. 82 The following brief survey will provide an example of how an increasing number of scholars and research programs are endeavoring to study the

The Cognitive Turn

13

Bible, Second Temple Judaism, and early Christian origins by focusing on the insights that have been brought to the study of rituals and the transmission of ideas. 83 Here we will examine how these two scholars, Kimmo Ketola and Risto Uro, are utilizing the work on rituals by Lawson, McCauley, and Whitehouse to examine sectarian differences in both Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity. Then we will see how Uro examines the transmission of ideas utilizing the work of Whitehouse and that of Boyer and Sperber on minimally counter-intuitive narratives. Within the cognitive approach to rituals, as briefly discussed above, two related but distinct schemas have been developed to understand their form. It is necessary here to note the basic ways in which ritual systems can be either balanced or imbalanced. The first, by Lawson and McCauley organizes rituals according to the role of the superhuman agent. If the superhuman agent is the one doing the act (a special agent ritual), efficacy is greater than if the superhuman agent is the one receiving the act (a special patient ritual). Correspondingly, greater efficacy is generally accompanied by greater pageantry and lower frequency. 84 The second schema, proposed by Whitehouse, relies on the types of human memory and distinguishes between doctrinal (lowarousal, high frequency) rituals that engage the semantic memory, and imagistic (high-arousal, low frequency) rituals which engage the episodic memory. Whitehouse, and Lawson and McCauley view religions as usually requiring both types of rituals to achieve long-lasting success. Religions which are clearly unbalanced risk fracturing or losing adherents. For example, religious systems that rely only on frequent low arousal rituals risk losing adherents through tedium. 85 Conversely, systems that rely solely on infrequent high arousal rituals might lose adherents because those rituals are not sufficient to cement relationships or generate distorted memories. These are examples of balanced rituals within an unbalanced system. A different type of imbalance could occur when the rituals themselves are not appropriately balanced. For example, a ritual which is low-arousal and infrequent is unlikely to be memorable enough to endure. Conversely, a high-arousal and frequent ritual can be too costly in terms of resources or emotional energy to be tolerated. One last point to make before moving on to the work of Ketola and Uro is that balanced religious systems can change over time so as to become unbalanced. This can lead to schisms. Another danger is that balanced rituals can become inflated or deflated. In other words, the pageantry associated with a frequent ritual can become excessive or, conversely, the pageantry associated with an infrequent ritual can become insufficient. Unbalance of this sort can lead to ritual reform. Within balanced systems, splintering may be expected to be either conceptual or political. 86 A balanced system can become deflated of its pageantry or meaning and then the splintering comes from an impetus toward ritual innovation. 87

14

Chapter 1

In seeking to understand the splintering of Second Temple Judaism into sectarian divisions, such as the movements exemplified by the community at Qumran, the followers of John, and the Jesus Movement, Ketola adopts the schema set forth by Lawson and McCauley and asks if the evidence for these movements can help one better understand the ritual balance of first-century Judaism. 88 Ketola notes that first-century Judaism had a ritual system comprised mainly of special patient rituals. The meals, the sacrifices, perhaps even circumcision, was not something done by God through the priest, but done by a human being for God. Ketola focuses here on meals, noting that whereas most meals were low pageantry, the Passover was the most significant festival and would have indeed been a high pageantry affair for those able to travel to Jerusalem. There, in the context of nationalistic fervor, many thousands of animals would be slaughtered to feed the feasting crowds. The community that resided at Qumran had chosen to segregate itself. While Ketola works with the assumption that the Qumranites removed themselves to the wilderness because of political and religious disputes with the temple leadership, their actual reason for doing so is unimportant. What is essential to the argument is that they were thereby prevented from experiencing the high pageantry of the annual Passover pilgrimage. As a result, the ritual system of the Qumran community became deflated, which Lawson and McCauley predict should lead to ritual innovation. Ketola agrees, suggesting that it is this deflation which led to the emphasis on the Pure Meal. Attendance at this meal was highly restricted and was seen as the height of communal inclusion. It was used to manage behavior, as misdeeds could lead to exclusion from the meal. Its frequency is unclear, as it could have been daily or less often. It is unlikely though to have been as infrequent as the annual Passover. 89 The levels of purity required for participation lead to the conclusion that the Qumranites saw their Pure Meal and its level of emphasis as helping to replace the pageantry and importance of festivals connected to the temple. 90 Similarly, the schism brought about by the Jesus movement also involved meals. In contrast to the Qumran community, which focused on mealtime exclusivity, Jesus and his followers seemed to practice scandalous inclusivity. Moreover, whereas the Qumran community saw their desert refuge and its related meal pageantry as representing a new temple or a substitute temple, Jesus’ view of the temple and ritual purity were focused on himself. 91 Meals for both the Jesus movement and the Qumran community represent ritual intensification, more than innovation. This finding leads Ketola to the conclusion that Judaism was essentially a deflating, but balanced system: 92 They both developed a form of special communal meal with potent ritual and political significance in the context of purity-conscious and temple-centered Judaism. In the context of a (deflated) balanced system, even minor issues

The Cognitive Turn

15

could have become contentious and therefore capable of triggering mutual hostilities between the splinter group and the rest of society. 93

Ketola’s conclusion is that whether by self-segregation, lack of means, or geographical distance, “the high arousal rituals were, in practice, out of reach for many ordinary people, especially for those living in the diaspora,” and so firstcentury Judaism was “most likely in the process of becoming deflated.” 94 Rather than focusing on meals and temple, Uro attends to the purity concerns related to immersion. While Qumran and the Jesus Movement seem to have intensified ritual immersion as well, Uro looks at the baptism of John and asks why his practice seems to have been so significant that John even gained the title of the Baptist or the Immerser. In Second Temple Judaism, ritual washing was self-administered. Using the schema developed by Lawson and McCauley, Uro notes that Jewish ritual immersion might be considered a special instrument ritual. In other words, the ritual’s superhuman being is most closely associated with the material involved in the ritual, which in this case is naturally flowing and undrawn water. Because special patient and special instrument rituals are less efficacious than special agent rituals, this purification immersion was done frequently and accompanied by little to no pageantry. The baptism of John, however, seems to belong to the category of special agent ritual. This is demonstrated both by his title “Immerser” and by the fact that people understood themselves to be baptized by John, not simply as immersing themselves in his presence. As a special agent ritual, with the superhuman agent identified with the ritual agent, the perceived efficacy of the ritual increases. Although it is unclear if the baptism by John was a singular or repeatable ritual, it is clear that it was considered more significant than regular ritual washing. 95 Switching schemas from that of Lawson and McCauley to the work of Harvey Whitehouse, Uro shifts from the perceived efficacy of the baptism of John to focus on the way in which the associated teaching of John was transmitted and remembered. The gospels and Josephus understand John to be a teacher of religious and moral knowledge and not simply a practitioner of a religious rite. 96 Because of the ritual’s increased efficacy, which resulted in a decrease in frequency, John’s associated teaching risked being forgotten. If he were working in doctrinal mode, re-baptizing people frequently, then his teaching could be remembered through repetition in the hearers’ semantic memory. But in this case, the infrequency of his ritual meant that his hearers might only experience his teaching once. This imagistic mode of transmission requires increased arousal. Imagistic rituals (infrequent, high arousal) can invigorate a movement, or “provide energy for an emerging movement, motivating its members and supporting its ideology.” 97 Uro notes that despite the little information we have about John, we are still able to see that he was a striking figure. John’s diet, garments and lifestyle are remembered because

16

Chapter 1

they were a “credibility enhancing display” 98 which added to their imagistic impact. The people who encountered him were struck by his appearance and charisma, which helped to create a lasting impression. “John’s immersion may be seen as a high-arousal ritual, creating long-term—though not necessarily uniform—memories for the participants.” 99 His teaching could therefore be transmitted even via a low frequency experience. While the teaching of John may have utilized the imagistic mode of transmission, Uro notes that the early Christian movement leaned heavily toward the doctrinal mode. 100 Even baptism, although it was singular and included a night-long vigil and fasting that could create lasting memories, was the culmination of a three-year process that included regular sermons and readings intended to “encode religious knowledge in semantic memory.” 101 Uro suggests that this was a ritually imbalanced system, which was later exploited by gnostic movements that incorporated more imagistic modes of ritual. 102 Of more interest to biblical scholars, Uro notes that this struggle regarding the limits of doctrinal modalities is present even earlier in Christianity. Paul seems to be relying on doctrinal teaching, with low levels of arousal. For example, Paul opposed the charismatic practices of the Christians in Corinth and insisted that practices, such as glossolalia, “be regulated by instruction (oikodome, katechesis) and by reasoned interpretation (nous, diermenia)” (1 Cor 14:5, 13–15). 103 Though Uro does not mention the incident, the author of Acts has immortalized the danger of the tedium effect with the incident of poor Eutychus who falls from the window as Paul’s teaching drones on (Acts 20:9)! CONCLUSION From my survey of some of the major concerns of cognitive science, as well as its use in the humanities, religion, and biblical studies, I hope that the reader recognizes the importance of cognition in the process of telling, writing, and reading stories. In varying degrees, biblical scholarship today requires that one be an archaeologist, historian, linguist, anthropologist, and literary critic. Increasingly, I suggest that cognitive science needs to be a part of this discussion as well. Not only the events of history and the workings of a society, but also the way in which religious thoughts, texts, events, and concepts are cognitively processed have increasingly become useful tools in understanding the biblical text. NOTES 1. J. Cheryl Exum, and David J. A. Clines, The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993), 12.

The Cognitive Turn

17

2. Ellen van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies: When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009). 3. Istvá n Czachesz, Cognitive Science and the New Testament: A New Approach to Early Christian Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Istvá n Czachesz and Risto Uro, eds., Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies (Durham: Acumen, 2013). 4. Jay Friedenberg and Gordon Silverman, Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2012), 3. 5. Friedenberg and Silverman, Cognitive Science, 2. 6. Justin L. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2011), 5. 7. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 5. 8. Luther Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” in The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, ed. John R. Hinnells (London: Routledge, 2010), 526. 9. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 526. 10. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 527. 11. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 527. 12. Friedenberg and Silverman, Cognitive Science, 2, 11. 13. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 12. 14. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 16. 15. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 27. Barrett finds this term a little problematic, as an appliance such as a light fixture is hardwired (rigid in place and power source) or not, like a lamp (movable and “unplugable”). “For those of us who think that we think through our brain (or more strongly, that our brain thinks), it is a little odd to say that some cognition is part of our brain circuitry whereas other cognition is not: it is all part of our electrical system. So, the emphasis added by hard-wired just means degree of rigidity, automaticity, or invariance. But this is an issue of degree whereas to be hard-wired (in electrical systems) is a discreet concept—either hard-wired or not.” 16. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 7. 17. Barrett, Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology, 23. 18. Marianne Regard, Daria Knoch, Eva Gütling, and Theodor Landis, “Brain Damage and Addictive Behavior: A Neuropsychological and Electroencephalogram Investigation with Pathologic Gamblers,” Cognitive & Behavioral Neurology 16 (2003): 47. 19. Aya Norenzayan, W. M. Gervais, K. H. Trzesniewski, “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God,” PLoS ONE 7 (2012): 1–8. 20. D. Havas, A. Glenberg, K. Gutowski, M. Lucarelli, and R. Davidson, “Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-a Affects Processing of Emotional Language,” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 895. 21. There are far too many studies to list. For examples, see, Lindsay Bruce and Sarah Lane Ritchie, “The Physicalized Mind and the Gut-Brain Axis: Taking Mental Health Out of Our Heads,” Zygon 53 (2018): 356–374; M. Hasan Mohajeri, Giorgio La Fata, Robert E. Steinert, Peter Weber, “Relationship between the Gut Microbiome and Brain Function,” Nutrition Reviews, 76 (2018): 481–496; Emeran A. Mayer, Rob Knight, Sarkis K. Mazmanian, John F. Cryan, and Kirsten Tillisch, “Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience,” The Journal of Neuroscience 34 (2014): 15490–15496. 22. For an overview of the positions regarding mind-body monism and dualism, see John Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000). 23. Alvin Goldman, “Theory of Mind,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, eds. Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels, and Stephen Stich (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 402. While theory of mind researchers are in essential agreement as to the definition of theory of mind, they do have competing theories regarding the way in which mentalizing is accomplished. Goldman (403–409) outlines the three theories. The “theorytheory,” in which intuitive theory of behavior is refined over time with experience and cognitive maturation; the “modularity nativist theory,” in which innate understandings need cogni-

18

Chapter 1

tive maturation; and the “rationalist teleological theory,” in which we calculate events, developing rational expectations based on our perceived evaluation of others’ situations. 24. Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 141. 25. Todd Tremlin, Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 77. 26. For example, see Deborah Kelemen, “Are Children ‘Intuitive Theists’? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature,” Psychological Science 15 (2004): 295–301. 27. Tremlin, Minds and Gods, 80. Studies have also shown that people are more likely to detect agency in nature when given religious primes. See, Wieteke Nieuwboer, Hein van Schie, and Daniël Wigboldus, “Priming with Religion and Supernatural Agency Enhances the Perception of Intentionality in Natural Phenomena,” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 2 (2015): 97–120. 28. Justin Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004), 32. Also, Tremlin, Minds and Gods, 78. 29. Tremlin, Minds and Gods, 81. 30. “Neuromania” claims to provide a neurologically based answer for everything; it is marked by the use of cognitive science research but often makes sensational claims or is implicitly affected by Cartesian dualism. For an example of the debunking of neuromania, see Gregory Hickok, The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2014). Also, L. Mudrik and U. Maoz, “‘Me & My Brain: ’ Exposing Neuroscience’s Closet Dualism,” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27 (2014): 211–221. 31. Patrick Colm Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists (New York: Routledge, 2003), 3. 32. Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, 1. 33. Lisa Zunshine, “Introduction,” in Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010): 3. 34. Zunshine, “Introduction,” 9–10. 35. Hogan, Cognitive Science, Literature, 3. The comment by Pinker was made in an interview, in which he said: “We may be seeing a coming together of the humanities and the science of human nature. They’ve been long separated because of post-modernism and modernism. But now graduate students are grumbling in emails and in conference hallways about being locked out of the job market unless they perpetuate postmodernist gobbledygook, and how they’re eager for new ideas from the sciences that could invigorate the humanities within universities, which are, by anyone’s account, in trouble. Also connoisseurs and appreciators of art are getting sick of the umpteenth exhibit on the female body featuring mangled body parts, or ironic allusions to commercial culture that are supposed to shake people out of their bourgeois complacency but that are really no more insightful than an ad parody in Mad magazine or on Saturday Night Live.” Edge.org. “A Biological Understanding of Human Nature: A Talk with Steven Pinker.” Accessed March 14, 2017. www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker_blank/pinker_blank_print.html. 36. Peter Mendelsund, What We See When We Read: A Phenomenology (New York: Vintage Books, 2014), 9. The reference is from William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: H. Holt, 1918), 224. “The attempt at introspective analysis in these cases is in fact like seizing a spinning top to catch its motion or trying to turn up the gas quickly enough to see how the darkness looks.” 37. Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, xiv. 38. Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal, 153. 39. Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (Cambridge: Icon Books, 2010), 16. 40. Ellen Spolsky, The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity (London: Routledge, 2017), viii. 41. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 1–3. 42. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 167. 43. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 170.

The Cognitive Turn

19

44. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 171. 45. Boyd, On the Origin of Stories, 149. 46. David Herman, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017), 2 47. Lisa Zunshine, “Introduction to Cognitive Literary Studies,” in Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, ed. Lisa Zunshine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2. 48. Herman, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, 2. 49. Herman, Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, 7. 50. E. Thomas Lawson, “Cognition,” in Guide to the Study of Religion, eds. Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon (London: Cassell, 2000), 81. 51. Luther H. Martin, “Past Minds: Evolution, Cognition, and Biblical Studies,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, eds. Istvá n Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013): 18. Referencing E. Thomas Lawson, “Cognitive Constraints on Imagining Other Worlds.” SciFi in the Mind’s Eye: Reading science through science fiction (Chicago: Open Court, 2007). 52. Martin, “Past Minds,” 18. 53. Helen De Cruz, A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion (Boston: MIT, 2015), 14–15. 54. De Cruz, Natural History,13. 55. De Cruz, Natural History, 12. 56. De Cruz, Natural History,14–15. 57. De Cruz, Natural History, 13. 58. Tremlin, Minds and Gods, 11. 59. Martin, “Religion and Cognition” 528. 60. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 529. 61. Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 529. 62. Justin Barrett, “Cognitive Science of Religion: What is it and why is it?” Religion Compass 1 (2007): 768. 63. Barrett, “Why is it?,” 769. 64. Barrett, “Why is it?,” 769. 65. E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley, Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See also Luther Martin, “Religion and Cognition,” 529–530; Also, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, “The Cognitive Science of Religion,” in Evolution, Religion & Cognitive Science, eds. Fraser Watts and Leon Turner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 21–37. 66. E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley, “The cognitive representation of religious ritual form: A theory of participants’ competence with religious ritual systems,” Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion (2002): 157. 67. Lawson and McCauley, Rethinking Religion, 87. 68. Lawson and McCauley, as do others, require here that religious actions have some relationship to a superhuman agent. Not all scholars share this view. Lawson and McCauley acknowledge this and write that if it is the case that a religious action can be done without a relationship to a superhuman agent, then their model is no longer a model applicable to all rituals, but applicable to all rituals that have a relationship to a superhuman agent. Previously, they used the term “culturally-posited superhuman agent,” but they have changed this to a “counter-intuitive superhuman agent,” or superhuman agent. Robert McCauley and Thomas Lawson, “Cognition, religious ritual and archaeology,” in The Archaeology of Ritual, Evangelos Kyriakidis, ed. (Los Angeles: UCLA), 209–254. 69. Barrett, “Why is it,” 4. See also Dan Sperber, La Contagion des idé es: thé orie naturaliste de la culture (Paris: O. Jacob, 1996). 70. Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), 51. Pyysiä inen, “The Cognitive Science of Religion,” 22. 71. Petri Luomanen, “How Religions Remember: Memory theories in biblical studies and in the cognitive study of religion,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 24–26. 72. Barrett, “Why is it?,” 4.

20

Chapter 1

73. E.g., Ara Norenzayan, Scott Atran, Jason Faulkner, and Mark Schaller, “Memory and Mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives,” Cognitive science 30 (2006): 531–553. 74. István Czachesz, “Rethinking Biblical Transmission: Insights from the cognitive neuroscience of memory,” in Mind, Morality and Magic, eds. István Czachesz and Risto Uro (London: Routledge, 2014), 58–59. 75. Norenzayan et al., “Memory and Mystery,” 537. 76. Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004), 16. 77. Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 18. 78. Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 66. 79. Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 66. 80. Istvá n Czachesz, New Testament, 9. See also István Czachesz, “The Gospels and Cognitive Science,” in Learned Antiquity: Scholarship and Society in the Near-East, the GrecoRoman World, and the Early Medieval West, ed. Alasdair A. MacDonald, Michael W. Twomey, and Gerrit J. Reinink (Leuven: Peeters, 2004), 25–36. 81. István Czachesz and Risto Uro, “The Cognitive Science of Religion; A New Alternative in Biblical Studies,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, eds. István Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 13. 82. Czachesz and Uro, “A New Alternative,” 5. 83. A list of significant research centers with information on each can be found at iacsr.com/ csr-links/centres-programmes. Examples are: The Centre for Anthropology and Mind, Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology (Oxford); Religion, Cognition, and Culture Research Unit in the Department of the Study of Religion (Aarhus University); Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture (University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University); International Cognition & Culture Institute (London School of Economics); Institute of Cognition and Culture (Queen’s University, Belfast); Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (Emory University); and Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion (Boston). 84. Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 18–27. 85. Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity, 97. 86. Kimmo Ketola, “A Cognitive Approach to Ritual Systems in First-Century Judaism,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, eds. Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 105. 87. Ketola, “Cognitive Approach to Ritual Systems,” 106. 88. For similar examples, see Tamás Biró, “Is Judaism Boring? On the lack of counterintuitive agents in Jewish rituals,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, eds. István Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 120–143. Also, Jutta Jokiranta, “Ritual System in the Qumran Movement: Frequency, boredom, and balance,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, eds. István Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 144–163. 89. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 108. 90. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 109. 91. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 110. 92. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 110–111. 93. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 112. 94. Ketola, “Ritual System,” 110–111. 95. Risto Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 86. 96. Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings, 89. cf. Luke 3:12; John 3:26. 97. Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings, 78. 98. Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings, 91. 99. Uro, Ritual and Christian Beginnings, 92. 100. Risto Uro, “Gnostic Rituals from a Cognitive Perspective,” in Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, eds. Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127.

The Cognitive Turn

21

101. Uro, “Gnostic Rituals,” 127–128. 102. Uro, “Gnostic Rituals,” 127–128. The Valentinians, for example, appeared to have some success because of ritual innovation that provides imagistic rituals such as the participation in the “mirrored bridal chamber,” which reflects a celestial bridal chamber. Moreover, it seems that the Valentinians may have introduced what Irenaeus and Tertullian refer to as magic tricks into the liturgy to increase arousal. 103. Luther Martin, “The Promise of Biblical Studies,” Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, eds. Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 49.

Chapter Two

The Hero Who Faces Death

A Sumerian epic poem introduces us to one of the great heroes of ancient literature, Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. Heroic and overpowering by his very nature, Gilgamesh’s hubris is noticed by the gods who respond by creating a man who could be his equal. This man, Enkidu, is created as a wild creature and lives naked among the other wild animals. After losing his virginity, however, Enkidu begins to wear clothes and becomes simultaneously accepted by humans and rejected by other animals. 1 Gilgamesh befriends Enkidu and they go on heroic adventures together, including killing the Bull of Heaven. In response to this outrageous act, Enkidu is made sick by the gods and dies, leaving Gilgamesh bereft. He remembers their adventures and laments his loneliness. Pacing, weeping, and unable to turn his mind from both the death of his friend and his own impending death, Gilgamesh cries: My friend has died and half my heart is torn from me. Won’t I soon be like him, stone-cold and dead, for all the days to come? 2

In mourning for the loss of his friend, Gilgamesh only now recognizes his own mortality and is no longer satisfied, or indeed able, to continue living life ignoring his own death. 3 In response to this new distress, Gilgamesh embarks on a new quest, searching for immortality. Through his now lonely adventure of searching for the immortal Utnapishtim, the survivor of the great flood, and the subsequent retrieval and loss of a life-giving plant, Gilgamesh comes to see that immortality is unattainable for him. He then returns home to Uruk, aware and accepting that the only form of immortality available to a king is the building of enduring monuments, walls, and buildings. Aside from all the battles and adventures, Gilgamesh has become truly heroic, at least in the terms of Ernest Becker. For Becker, the hero is one who has learned to face death, not as one might in a battle, but in the acceptance of 23

24

Chapter 2

what can and cannot be achieved. In these various forms of heroics, Gilgamesh shows us a range of human attitudes toward death. 4 THE DENIAL OF DEATH In The Denial of Death (1973), Becker asserts that the most powerful force driving human action is the anxiety brought about by human knowledge of their own mortality and finitude. Running throughout his book are three types of humans: the normal man (as Becker puts it), whose primary characteristic is the “the refusal of reality,” is bounded on either side by the neurotic man and the heroic man. 5 The normal person easily ignores the problems created by the awareness of mortality. A neurotic individual is marked by his or her inability to ignore what the normal person can, and is overwhelmed by the “miscarriage of clumsy lies about reality.” 6 On the other hand, the hero can stand and look at the truth about reality, and withstand the consequences of recognizing them. The hero, according to Becker, is able to handle “the ache of cosmic specialness” that paralyzes the neurotic and is ignored by normal people, who only unconsciously seek to fulfill this role through bank accounts and luxury goods, religion, political power, or other means of distancing death anxiety. 7 Becker fit the role of the 1960s liberal professor, and he typified his time in his early writings in which he examines the parallels between psychoanalysis and Zen, exploring existential approaches to psychological questions. He became a student favorite, even delivering lectures from a stage set for Macbeth. His peers and the administration at Berkeley were less impressed and his contract was not renewed. 8 Even though the student government offered to pay him a stipend to remain as a visiting scholar, Becker left and eventually settled at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University. Following the publication of The Denial of Death, the psychology journalist Sam Keen called to ask Becker for an interview, and he was informed by Becker’s wife that the forty-nine-year-old scholar was in the final stages of terminal cancer. Keen interviewed Becker on his deathbed and provided a chance for him to reflect on his most recent work. Even though Becker believed that religion evolved out of the human need for solace from the terror brought about by our own mortality, he also believed in God and was concerned with the theological implications of his work. 9 In this final interview that Keen entitled “The Heroics of Everyday Life,” Becker said that his greatest contribution was that he had delivered the science of man over to a merger with theology. . . . By showing that psychology destroys our illusions of autonomy and hence raises the question of the true power source for human life. . . . And this picture of the human

The Hero Who Faces Death

25

conditions coincides with what theology has traditionally said: man is a creature whose nature is to try to deny his creatureliness. 10

Becker argued that culture was a construction organized primarily as a way to allow humans to live their lives focusing on symbolic concerns rather than physical ones. This symbolic focus allows us to divert our attention from the lurking knowledge of our own impending deaths. While The Denial of Death received significant public attention, it was considered to be too theoretical by anthropologists and not Freudian enough by psychologists, and it therefore fell “between the academic cracks.” 11 Although Becker was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize, he did not receive significant acceptance from his peers during his lifetime. Since then, however, Becker and The Denial of Death have gained more attention and become the basis of terror management theory. Aside from this specific growing interest, there is not much secondary literature regarding Becker’s work. 12 One of the few such works does not even mention terror management theory, while noting that there are no disciples or school of Becker. 13 This seems to be an oversight, since Solomon and his colleagues have been publishing their work on terror management theory since the mid-1990s. 14 Even though there is much in The Denial of Death that is applicable here, there is much more that is beyond the purview of my project and so does not require much attention. For example, Becker’s book covers oedipal complexes, penis envy, the usurpation of the heroic individual by society, and narcissistic children who develop exceptional skills in manipulation. Moreover, where he does touch on matters that are applicable, they bear the hallmark of his time and come across as dated. Therefore it is the work of terror management theorists who used the Denial of Death that is more useful for my purposes. For example, both Becker and terror management theorists study the importance of self-esteem as a social indicator, but Becker is more reflective of the psychology of Victor Frankel or the theology of Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Schuller, which were very influential in the 1970s. 15 Three researchers studying at Kansas in the early 1980s wondered if Becker’s work could help them to explain their own areas of interest, namely, what is the evolutionary background behind the individual drive for selfesteem and the corporate drive for ideological (not just economic) dominance. Using Becker’s work as a basis, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski developed terror management theory. They concluded that death anxiety does indeed drive humans to seek transcendence individually and corporately. Even though I might die, I will indeed live forever symbolically, genetically, or literally. As summarized by one of the above authors, terror management theory posits that in order to manage the terror produced by the awareness of certain death, humans have created and sustain worldviews that generate the sense of enduring significance in a meaningful world, and elimi-

26

Chapter 2

nate the fear that we are simply animals whose only fate is death. 16 Their original research interest, self-esteem, is the experience of properly belonging within the society which provides for the needs in question. Because these worldviews are almost always exclusive in nature, both individuals and groups seek to exert ideological dominance over others who have competing notions of transcendence that threaten their own. The theory has not only been used to better understand self-esteem, but it is also used to reflect on the origins of culture, as well as to describe present behavior with regard to religion, sex, politics, economics, and other aspects of human social behavior. In the evolution of our species, growing cognitive abilities afforded our ancestors “a heightened self-reflective awareness of themselves within a symbolic universe.” 17 This attainment had advantages, of course, such as allowing for long-term planning and strategizing. However, this forward-looking ability also made humans aware of their own mortality. 18 The risk of this type of awareness is the possibility of crippling anxiety. We are further disconcerted by our own corporeality, which is a constant reminder of our mortality. As Greenberg and his colleagues bluntly remind us, we humans are, fornicating, defecating, urinating, vomiting, flatulent, exfoliating pieces of meat. As such, we are destined, like ears of corn, to wither and die, but only if we are lucky enough to have dodged a predator’s grasp, an enemy’s lunge, or the benignly indifferent (to human concerns) battering of a tidal wave or earthquake. 19

In the face of this potentially overwhelming anxiety and the constant reminders posed by our creatureliness, humans needed to develop ways to overcome these anxieties. They did so through the construction of worldviews, “beliefs about reality shared by individuals in a group . . . that provid[e] its constituents with a sense that they are valuable members of a meaningful universe.” 20 This may all sound very grandiose, but put simply, worldviews offer immortality through either a symbolic or literal afterlife. Children, cultural or artistic production, service to the larger community, reincarnation, or life in heaven are all possible means through which one could understand oneself as living on beyond the bounded lifespan imposed by our creatureliness. 21 It is these cultural worldviews that serve to “provide a symbolic reality structure . . . which embeds [humans] in a world of meaning that elevates them above mere animal existence.” 22 Like Becker’s work, that of Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski was not initially accepted. Clinical psychology at the time was reacting against Freud and did not care for grand theories that seemed too philosophical. Moreover, Solomon and his colleagues did not have data from clinical trials to support their theory. In an effort to provide the necessary data to support

The Hero Who Faces Death

27

their claims, they developed testable hypotheses that have since been subjected to hundreds of variations and replications. Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon continue to advocate for the acceptance of terror management theory and frequently publish studies in support of it. Although there are those who find it less than compelling, it has gained significant acceptance due to the impressive body of clinical data supporting it. 23 Pascal Boyer has added newly gathered data to terror management theory bringing the insights of what was essentially a psychological model into the realm of cognitive science. 24 After a brief introduction to the role of disgust, I will turn to examine the supporting research more thoroughly. ANIMAL REMINDER DISGUST Because terror management theory has at its core a dilemma posed by human cognizance of the shared mortality of all animals, human attitudes toward non-human animals are an important aspect. Here I will particularly focus on the emotion of disgust, and its particular importance for understanding human behavior. The emotion of disgust evolved as a food expulsion response to distaste and pathogen avoidance but grew to include other non-food offensive items and ideas, including animals. Animal reminder disgust is a specific type of disgust response directed toward those things that remind humans of their animal origins, and involves issues of purity and sanctity. 25 The most visceral way humans have developed to distance themselves from their own creatureliness is the emotion of disgust. While the study of disgust goes back as far as Darwin, it has only recently begun to receive significant attention from psychologists and neuropsychologists. 26 Currently, disgust is understood to be a significant component of human social and neuropsychological functions, one of the basic emotions along with happiness, surprise, fear, anger, and sadness. The Rozin-Haidt-McCauley model dominates the field. 27 This model theorizes that disgust originated as a rejection response to distasteful, thereby potentially harmful, food. Through the process of preadaptation, this defensive response was applied to other threatening phenomena, including offensive ideas. 28 The reaction to a disgusting idea maintains the physical characteristics of food expulsion: wrinkling of the nose which constricts the nasal passages to avoid odor, opening the mouth agape to allow for food to be ejected, and nausea to prevent hunger or induce vomiting. However, the categories have changed and are no longer simply concerned with distaste or pathogen avoidance but have come to have social implications as well. 29 Or, as another author puts it, “Somewhere along the way there was a transformation of the basic idea, from ‘get this out of my mouth’ to ‘get this out of my soul.’” 30

28

Chapter 2

Disgust is a particularly complicated emotion because although it is panhuman, it is also culturally conditioned; while the emotion of disgust is ubiquitous, the elicitors of disgust may change. Rozin and his colleagues “place animals at the center of the evolved functions of disgust.” 31 This makes a lot of intuitive sense, for if disgust is originally concerned with pathogen avoidance, it is clear that animals are pathogen carriers when eaten and vectors of disease. 32 A broad cultural survey has shown meat to be the most socially regulated food item. 33 Animals can also be a source of fear, a closely related defensive emotion. There are animals that we fear such as tigers, and there are animals such as maggots which elicit disgust. Interestingly, all cultures also have animals which elicit both fear and disgust, such as mice or cockroaches. The animals vary across cultures, but the categories remain. 34 Disgust of this kind is a defensive reaction, guarding against the recognition of our creatureliness, which then serves as a defensive posture to keep death anxiety at bay. The result of the disgust reaction is to aid humans by strengthening the animal-human boundary through the emotional enforcement of cultural norms. 35 Culture is expressed in a variety of norms and it is adherence to cultural norms that allow one to be present in civilized company. The violations of these norms might cause one to suffer the embarrassment or shame of being accused of having been raised in a barn. 36 Far beyond the embarrassment of a social faux pas, the use of animal descriptors is often used to viciously dehumanize outgroups. The cognitive distancing of humans from animals lends itself easily to propaganda that attributes animal qualities to outgroups. 37 For an example, we can look to British Prime Minister David Cameron, who referred to the Syrian refugees as a “swarm” attempting to enter the United Kingdom. 38 Even more recently, US president Donald Trump repeatedly referred to migrants attempting to cross the southern border as animals. 39 Certainly, egregious examples can be found from Nazi Germany or the Vietnam War. 40 It is worth mentioning here a subject to which I will later return, namely that the dehumanizing characteristic of these terms can give a clue to the humanizing quality of the inverse. An example, and particularly important for our discussion of Genesis 3, is the way in which clothing and particularly the stripping of clothing can dehumanize. The dehumanizing effect of forced nakedness is only possible because of the humanizing quality of clothing itself, as it functions as a disguise for our animality. Moreover, recalling the theory of mind from the previous chapter, disgust interferes with the process of mentalizing and agency. That is, those natural human tendencies to attribute a mind, and therefore agency as well, to others is reduced when we are disgusted. When someone disgusts us, we have a harder time viewing them as agents with intentions, which should come naturally. 41

The Hero Who Faces Death

29

While the origins of disgust in pathogen avoidance and food ejection are clearly related to death, the proponents of terror management theory suggest that “as awareness of death emerged, disgust extended to a broader range of reminders of our animality, such as guts, bones, blood, and bodily emissions.” 42 Moreover, and importantly for this study, they draw our attention to the practice of separating ourselves from animals through body modification or beautification methods. Bodies which are not shaved, sculpted, pierced, tattooed, covered in cosmetics or jewels or other means of body modification are too much like those of animals, and therefore can elicit disgust. 43 Here terror management theorists make a brief and specific literary allusion to our very passage in question: The biblical story of Adam and Eve . . . makes this point quite eloquently and explicitly. Eating the apple from the Tree of Knowledge reveals the worm at its core, awareness of mortality, which in turn makes the naked human body shameful. The fig leaf was the first body adornment. 44

So far, we have considered the theoretical basis for the relationship between human knowledge of their own mortality and their manner of dealing with the ensuing anxiety by the production of cultural systems which reinforce the boundary between humans and non-human animals. Perhaps the most significant cognitive aspect of this process is the evolution of the emotion of disgust, which in the form of animal reminder disgust, serves to distance humans not only from pathogens in food, but from certain sexual acts, poor hygiene, and violations of the body envelope. As Rozin and his colleagues assert, all of this functions to separate us from those things that remind us of our creatureliness and therefore our own deaths. 45 The authors of the RozinHaidt-McCauley model summarize their view this way: though it originated as a rejection response to foul-tasting food, disgust expanded into a system that allows humans to distance themselves from offensive concepts. That is, we can now reject ideas instead of food. Occurring naturally and developing within cultures, disgust evolved “from a system to protect the body from harm to a system to protect the soul from harm.” 46 SUPPORTING STUDIES A theory such as terror management theory, which suggests that the animal-human boundary is important for managing death anxiety, should be testable and demonstrably validated. While it has been conceptualized in several different ways, clinical support for terror management theory has been developed around two hypotheses. First, the mortality salience hypothesis predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, reminding people of death should increase the sub-

30

Chapter 2

ject’s need for that structure. Second, the anxiety buffer hypothesis predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, strengthening that structure will reduce death anxiety. 47 Kenneth Vail and his colleagues have added a third important hypotheses, which has also been tested. The death-thought accessibility hypothesis predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, then weakening that structure will cause death-related thoughts to be increasingly accessible. 48 Among these many studies, I am particularly interested in those which have a focus on animals and the human tendency to create a distinction between ourselves and other animals. Stated simply, if one is reminded of death, one will tend to more forcefully negate human creatureliness by emphasizing the uniqueness of human beings; likewise, if one is reminded of the similarities between humans and other animals, death thoughts become more accessible. There are many studies supporting terror management theory and animal reminder disgust. Generally, then, we can conclude that terror management theory studies present compelling evidence that the animal-human boundary provides comfort from the death anxiety that arises when we are presented with reminders of our mortality. 49 Moreover, reminders of our animal bodies is an elicitor of death anxiety and animal reminder disgust is a powerful emotion reinforcing the animal-human boundary. Animal reminder disgust and terror management theory are separate but interrelated; taken together, these elements call us to recognize their impact on any reading that involves human death, nakedness, and animals. A survey of the studies done in order to investigate terror management theory is useful not only for providing evidence in support of the theory, but also for providing better understanding the behaviors that are influenced by death anxiety. The theory provides a structure by which predictions can be made and for which researchers can create appropriate experiments to see if the behaviors predicted by the theory are borne out in fact. Nearly all the experiments which will be discussed here involve the priming of the subject. Priming is the giving of information to the subject, which will impact their response to a later stimulus. This priming can be either subliminal or conscious. Subliminal priming is when the subject is provided with stimuli of which he or she is unaware. For example, non-African American subjects were given a tedious task of counting objects on a computer screen. Interspersed with the objects was a face, either African American or white, that presented itself too quickly to be consciously registered. When, as part of the experiment, the computer crashed and lost the data, those subconsciously exposed to an African American face reacted more angrily to the wasted effort. 50 Conscious priming is when the subject is aware of the prime, but unaware of its later subconscious effects. As an example of this, subjects

The Hero Who Faces Death

31

who were first asked to write an essay about the life of a professor went on to perform better at trivia games. 51 First, many studies have been conducted in order to examine the mortality salience hypothesis and do, in fact demonstrate that reminding people of death increases the subject’s need for death-denying structures. Subjects in a variety of experiments were primed for mortality salience. There are a variety of ways this can be done, such as a street survey done in front of a funeral home or by giving the subject a reading or writing assignment or word game that presents them with thoughts, words, or images about death. 52 These studies then tested a variety of responses concerning matters such as disgust, bodily functions, sex, animal-human relationships, and religious beliefs. For example, subjects were asked, “Please briefly describe the emotions that the thoughts of your own death arouses in you,” and then, “Jot down, as specifically as you can, what you think will happen to you as you physically die and once you are physically dead.” 53 After doing this, which they believed was the point of the experiment, the subjects were asked to evaluate student essays. The mortality salience priming led to lower scores on the essay that emphasized human creatureliness while an essay that emphasized human uniqueness went up in score, compared to the control group who was primed for dental pain instead of mortality salience. 54 Similar studies have demonstrated that priming for mortality salience also increases disgust sensitivity toward animals, increases use of euphemisms for sex and bodily waste elimination, decreases the desire for sex, and increases pre-existing belief in afterlife and other religious concepts. 55 Taken together, these studies demonstrate that priming for mortality salience does, in fact, cause people to exhibit death-denying behaviors, particularly with regard to the bolstering of the animal-human boundary. The second hypothesis tested in support of terror management theory, the anxiety buffer, primes for human uniqueness or self-esteem. The reasoning is that if the animal-human boundary exists to buffer against death anxiety, then bolstering that boundary should alleviate existential concerns. In fact, this is just what the studies demonstrate. In some experiments, self-esteem is artificially generated, while others use questionnaires to select those who already have high self-esteem. Through studying the effect of anxiety-inducing images or even the anticipation of electric shock, it was demonstrated that these positive primes decreased death-related anxiety, common death-denying biases, and the vehemence with which subjects felt the need to defend cultural worldviews such as death-denying religious beliefs or political views. These vulnerability-denying biases often include unconscious manipulation of information, such as statistics regarding death and disease. For example, heavy coffee drinkers have been shown to find scientific studies about negative effects of caffeine less credible than non-coffee drinkers. 56 In one study, researchers experimentally inflated the subjects’ self-esteem through bogus

32

Chapter 2

personality tests. They then primed the individuals for mortality salience and had them evaluate essays that were critical of the United States. Terror management theory would predict that the subjects would be biased against the essays. Those with inflated self-esteem, however, did not display bias against such essays, demonstrating that self-esteem reduced the impact of the mortality salience. 57 The third important hypothesis which has also been tested is the deaththought accessibility hypothesis. This predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, then weakening that structure will cause death-related thoughts to become increasingly accessible. 58 The accessibility of death thoughts is generally measured by activities such as a word completion exercise, in which person is given incomplete words such as COFF__ or SK _ L_, which could be completed as either death-related (COFFIN and SKULL) or non-related (COFFEE and SKILL). 59 The primes for these sorts of experiments might be images that generate animal reminder disgust, essays about the similarities between humans and animals, essays that in some manner attack the subject’s religious, scientific, or political worldviews or even manipulate the situation to make the subject feel that they have performed poorly on an exam or that they are unprepared for a speech, thus lowering self-esteem. For example, a study on Canadian subjects demonstrated that reading a website critical of Canada increased death thought accessibility, although reading anti-Australia information did not. 60 Another aspect of this finding that is important for this study is that priming animal reminder disgust provides the same results. Subjects primed with graphic images such as feces, urine, or vomit also experienced an increase in death thought accessibility. 61 To summarize the results across many studies, as well as share a few important points of additional research, there is a demonstrable relationship between the perception of one’s position in the world and death anxiety. If one is reminded of one’s creatureliness and its natural and inevitable end, then one seeks relief from that anxiety by emphasizing aspects of human culture that are distinctive markers of human difference from the rest of animals. This can be expressed as religious beliefs or patriotic solidarity, or the belief that we are somehow qualitatively different in our behavior or social structures. Weakening the animal-human boundary or otherwise attacking the cultural worldviews that buffer against death anxiety leads to an increase in death thought accessibility, and disgust sensitivity. 62 Moreover, it increases female preference for men with less body hair and increases desire for romance over physical sex. 63 These last few points deserve a brief discussion. First, with regard to hairlessness, it is obvious that humans are the only primates without significant body hair. When given a mortality salience induction prime, women rated men with less body hair more attractive than when given a control prime (dental pain). This leads the researchers to sug-

The Hero Who Faces Death

33

gest that the hairlessness in humans is sexually selected as a result of human anxiety regarding death. 64 Being visibly distinct from other animals can be understood then as a means of managing the animal-human boundary. I suggest also that clothing should be considered in this same way. Studies have demonstrated that mortality salience induction increases conspicuous consumption regarding luxury goods such as unneeded clothes. 65 Clothing is a social construct, marking identity and status. 66 We regularly see appropriate clothing as an identifying boundary marker between the civilized and uncivilized, whether in societal situations or in art and film. 67 Moreover, the dead often join the uncivilized as those marked by nakedness, as shown in the Sumerian account in which Inanna disrobes before descending to the world of the dead. 68 EXAMPLES OF USE IN BIBLICAL STUDIES The point that I hope I have conveyed is that the human experience of death anxiety, and death anxiety’s peculiar interaction with animals, should prompt us to consider the cognitive implications of reading any story that involves the themes of mortality, human creatureliness, and the relationship of humans to animals. The development of Genesis 2–3 was a cognitive process, as was the writing of it, and our reading of it. At every stage, any thought of death or animals can function as a mortality salience prime. As terror management theory predicts and the supporting studies demonstrate, these primes will have an effect on cognition and behavior. This effect should be accounted for in the reading of Genesis 2–3 and can serve as an aid to interpretation. While the main proponents of terror management theory recognize the literary value of Genesis and its relationship to their theory, in that they use excerpts from Genesis 2 and 3 as an epilogue to one of their articles, to my knowledge no work has been done by biblical scholars to apply terror management theory to the passage. 69 In fact, it does not appear that anyone has utilized terror management theory as an aid in interpreting any biblical text, or provided an overview of how the theory could be applied to biblical studies. A good deal of significant work has been done with regard to disgust, however. Thomas Kazen and Istvá n Czachesz have noted the usefulness of disgust in the study of magic and issues of purity and pollution. The use of the term “magic” is viewed by some to be pejorative. It has often been used in contradistinction to religion, with magic viewed as primitive and religion as more developed. It has also been used in an ethnocentric manner, presenting magic as being found in others’ religions, but miracles in one’s own. 70 However, those working on the cognitive science of religion have found magic to be a

34

Chapter 2

useful category in analyzing human behavior and rituals that are directed toward a desired effect. 71 One way in which magic can be studied is as a counterintuitive element embedded within a narrative that conveys religious teaching. Within Whitehouse’s schema, teaching is doctrinal and therefore requires greater effort so as to be conveyed in a way that is memorable. Repetition can be one such method, but so can attention-grabbing counterintuitive elements. The incorporation of magic can provides minimally counterintuitive elements which can help to overcome some of the disadvantages of the doctrinal mode of transmission. 72 Moreover, disgusting elements, such as the repulsive nature of the diseased, maimed, or even dead, add emotional valence, further activating memory-enhancing elements. 73 Of related significance, cognitive approaches to the study of sympathetic magic, pollution and purity have lead to a better understanding the matter of ritual purity. For example, there are clear cognitive tendencies toward contagion and similarity. 74 People do not want to wear laundered clothes that once belonged to someone they disliked. People do not want to eat food that looks like something undesirable. Further, impurity contamination is more powerful than the purifying contact. 75 When we draw these elements together, for example, we note in Mk 5:25–34 (parallels in Lk 8:43–48 and Mt 9:20–22) that Jesus is not shown to be contaminated by the bleeding woman. This is surprising because the pollution contagion is more powerful, that is more easily contracted, than purity. Yet the account is telling us that since the woman’s impurity “poses no difficulty for the cleansing power of Jesus, Jesus must be superlatively holy.” 76 Taking this point further, Kazen focuses on disgust as the most comprehensive explanation for the wide variety of conceptions of impurity found in the Priestly legislation. Importantly, he notes that viewing disgust as the primary factor overcomes the problems with the theories of both Mary Douglas and Jacob Milgrom who, intentionally or not, proposed concepts that required religious ideas to precede behavior. Mary Douglas has famously studied purity and pollution, viewing them as connected to category violations (out of place, between categories) or boundary violations (particularly of the body envelope). For example, the pig is unclean because it is not a ruminant. Jacob Milgrom analyzed the same topics in relation to death. For him, the pig is unclean because it is related to chthonic deities. 77 Using the Rozin-Haidt-McCauley model of disgust and Rozin’s nine disgust triggers, Kazen suggests that Israelite purity concepts relate to “food, body products, animals, sexual behaviors, contact with death or corpses, violations of the exterior envelope of the body (including gore and deformity), poor hygiene, interpersonal contamination (contact with unsavory human beings), and certain moral offences.” 78 By analyzing disgust language, particularly the terms “abominable” (tô’ēbâ) and “detestable” (šeqeṣ), Kazen

The Hero Who Faces Death

35

sees that non-disgust-inducing animals are associated with the emotion of disgust. Regularly disgusting animals (slimy or rapidly reproducing, which are universal elicitors) are disgusting. Edible animals (pigs, camels) are not more disgusting intuitively or naturally than cows, but are associated with disgust by the culturally-specific disgust-by-association through the secondary use of disgust language as a value judgment. Kazen finds that the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) abounds with terminology related to disgust, especially in those passages concerning various sexual offenses, such as “incest, sex between men, sex during menstruation, sex with animals, etc.” 79 CONCLUSION To conclude this section, as well as this chapter, we have seen that work is currently being done in biblical studies utilizing the insights from the study of cognition and emotion, particularly the emotion of disgust. There has not yet been, however, any biblical study which applies the work of terror management theorists, nor has animal reminder disgust been utilized to better understand the opening chapters of Genesis. The following chapters will seek to combine these approaches so as to highlight the problematic nature of human knowledge of their creatureliness and mortality, as well as underscore the importance of the relationship to non-human animals in the human selfunderstanding. NOTES 1. Susan Ackerman, When Heroes Love: The ambiguity of eros in the stories of Gilgamesh and David (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 143. Ackerman notes that the civilizing of Enkidu is later replicated with Gilgamesh himself, when Siduri rehumansizes the exhausted hero through “a clean body, clothing, and sex.” 2. Danny P. Jackson, The Epic of Gilgamesh (Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2009), 71. Tablet X, lines 141–155. 3. Jeffrey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Mundelein, IL: BolchazyCarducci, 2002), 7. 4. Geoffrey Stephen Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 144. 5. Becker, The Denial of Death, 178. 6. Becker, The Denial of Death, 178. 7. Becker, The Denial of Death, 4. 8. Stephen W. Martin, Decomposing Modernity: Ernest Becker’s Images of Humanity at the End of an Age (Lanham, MD: Institute for Christian Studies, 1997), 6. Martin seems to attribute the claim that Becker was “wildly associative, dramatically existential,” and “less than systematic,” to Lifton. I read Lifton instead to be saying that some think this of Becker. R. J. Lifton, “Further Intimations of Immortality,” New York Times. December 14, 1975. 9. For a terror management view on the evolution and function of religion, see Vail et al., “A Terror Management Analysis of the Psychological Functions of Religion,” 90–91. 10. Sam Keen, “The Heroics of Everyday Life; A theorist of death confronts his own end,” Psychology Today 11 (1974): 71.

36

Chapter 2

11. Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, “The Cultural Animal,” in Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology, eds. Jeff Greenberg, Sander Koole, and Tom Pyszczynski (New York: Guilford Press, 2004), 16. 12. For examples of such works, see Ronald Evans, The Creative Myth and the Cosmic Hero: Text and Context in Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death” (New York: P. Lang, 1992); Ernest Becker and Daniel Liechty, The Ernest Becker Reader (Seattle: Ernest Becker Foundation; University of Washington Press, 2005); Daniel Liechty, Transference and Transcendence: Ernest Becker’s Contribution to Psychotherapy (Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1995). 13. Martin, Decomposing Modernity, 6. 14. Jonathan Jong, “Ernest Becker’s Psychology of Religion Forty Years On: A view from social cognitive psychology,” Zygon 49 (2014): 875–889. Jong outlines some of the uses of Becker’s work, notably, Hall and Kenel. Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989). Sally Kenel, Mortal Gods: Ernest Becker and Fundamental Theology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988). Perhaps surprisingly, in his conversation with Keen, Becker spoke more about Paul Tillich than Freud or Otto Rank. 15. Viktor Emil Frankl and Ilse Lasch, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946); Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking (New York: Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1952); Robert H. Schuller, SelfEsteem, the New Reformation (Waco, Tex: Word Books, 1982). 16. Jeff Greenberg and Jamie Arndt, “Terror Management Theory,” in Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, vol. 1, eds. Arie W. Kruglanski; Paul A. M. van Lange; Tory E. Higgins (Los Angeles: Sage, 2011), 399. 17. Kenneth E. Vail, Jacob Juhl, Jamie Arndt, Matthew Vess, Clay Routledge, and Bastiaan T. Rutjens, “When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 16 (2012): 304. 18. Vail et al., “When Death is Good,” 304. 19. Solomon et al., “Cultural Animal,” 14. 20. Solomon et al., “Cultural Animal,” 16. 21. Solomon et al., “Cultural Animal,” 16–17. 22. Jamie L. Goldenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Benjamin Kluck, and Robin Cornwell, “I Am Not an Animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 130 (2001): 428. The proponents of terror management theory have also argued, further complicating the theory, that the proximal and distal defenses against death-related thoughts are different in the context of whether the death related thoughts are conscious or unconscious. For example, conscious thoughts can be set aside through intentional mechanisms (proximal) while distal mechanisms occur when the thoughts are unconscious. See, Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon, “A Dual-Process Model of Defense against Conscious and Unconscious Deathrelated Thoughts: An extension of terror management theory,” Psychological Review 106 (1999): 835. This distinction is not necessary for the purposes of this paper, although it may make an interesting avenue for further research. 23. For examples of critiques of terror management theory, see Travis Proulx, “Absurdity as the source of existential anxiety: a critique of terror management theory,” (PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2003); Lee Kirkpatrick and Carlos David Navarrete, “Reports of my Death Anxiety Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: A critique of terror management theory from an evolutionary perspective,” Psychological Inquiry 17 (2006), 288–298; Mark R. Leary and Lisa S. Schreindorfer, “Unresolved Issues with Terror Management Theory,” Psychological Inquiry 8 (1997), 26–29; David M. Buss, “Human Social Motivation in Evolutionary Perspective: Grounding Terror Management Theory,” Psychological Inquiry 8 (1997), 22–26; Paul T. P. Wong and Adrian Tomer, “Beyond Terror and Denial: The positive psychology of death acceptance,” Death Studies 35 (2011). 24. Mark Landau, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski, and Jeff Greenberg, “On the Compatibility of Terror Management Theory and Perspectives on Human Evolution,” Psychology 5 (2007): 496–497; Also, Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained.

The Hero Who Faces Death

37

25. Paul Rozin and Jonathan Haidt, “The Domains of Disgust and their Origins: Contrasting biological and cultural evolutionary accounts,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (2013): 367–368. 26. Before 1990, there are only ten instances of the term appearing in an article title or keywords in the relevant literature. B. Olatunji, J. Haidt, D. McKay, and B. David, “Core, Animal Reminder, and Contamination Disgust: Three Kinds of Disgust with Distinct Personality, Behavioral, Physiological, and Clinical Correlates,” Journal of Research in Personality 42 (2008), 1243. Rozin and his colleagues offer a suggestion as to why disgust research lags that of other emotions: “Thus psychologists’ weak attention to disgust may be a result of some combination of the following factors: disgust was lost in Darwin’s long list of emotions; disgust lost out to fear and anger in the race to be relevant to human problems; disgust was seen as relevant to only that narrow part of human behavior related to food and eating; and disgust research is avoided as disgust is avoided.” Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and C. R. McCauley, “Disgust: The body and soul emotion in the 21st century,” in Disgust and its Disorders, eds. D. McKay and B. Olatunji (Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2008), 11. 27. J. D. Tybur, Lieberman, R. Kurzban, and P. DeScioli, “Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure,” Psychological Review 120 (2013): 66. The theory that describes the evolution of disgust is termed the “body-to-soul preadaptation theory of disgust.” See also Rozin et al., “Body and Soul Emotion,” 9–29. 28. Paul Rozin, “Towards a Psychology of Food and Eating: From Motivation to Module to Model to Marker, Morality, Meaning, and Metaphor,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 5 (1996): 21. Even the language of morality and social acceptance has co-opted the language of food, with certain actions seen as distasteful or disgusting. See also Benedict Robinson, “Disgust c. 1600,” ELH 81 (2014): 553–583. 29. Rozin, “Psychology of Food,” 22. 30. Dan Gelman, “Developing The Gift Of Gag,” Newsweek 122 (1993), 78. 31. Tyler Joshua Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” Biology & Philosophy 30 (2015): 167. 32. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 168. 33. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 168. 34. Kasperbuaer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 172–173. 35. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 174; Many other researchers make similar points: Bassett et al., write that “. . . disgust is a distal defense activated by reminders of human corporeality and vulnerability to death. By evidencing disgust, people try to elevate themselves above the status of other organisms in hopes of symbolically transcending their fate.” Nussbaum investigates how the categories of disgust elicitors can be used to marginalize outgroups, since disgust functions to distance us from animality and mortality. Herz notes the relationship between sex and our view of animality, which adds a distinctly problematic layer on top of an act that already triggers disgust with regard to pathogen avoidance. Rozin and his many colleagues regularly note the cultural development of disgust elicitors, which expanded from a food rejection system related to pathogen avoidance to avoidance of reminders of humans’ animal nature, especially death, and then on to some aspects of the moral domain, keeping us from “inappropriate sexual acts, poor hygiene, violations of the ideal body ‘envelope’ or exterior form, and most critically, death.” Tybur et al. agree with Rozin’s view of the purpose of disgust, but are critical of animal reminder disgust, instead seeing it as an aspect of core disgust. Jonathan F. Bassett and Michael E. Sonntag, “The Effects of Mortality Salience on Disgust Sensitivity among University Students, Older Adults, and Mortuary Students,” Open Psychology Journal 3 (2010): 2. Also, Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 347. Rachel Herz, That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion (New York: Norton, 2012). Rozin and Haidt, “Domains of Disgust,” 367–368. Tybur et al., “Disgust.” 36. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 200. 37. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 204. 38. Jessica Elgot and Matthew Taylor, “Calais crisis: Cameron condemned for ‘dehumanising’ description of migrants,” The Guardian, July 30, 2015.

38

Chapter 2

39. Julie Hirschfeld Davis. “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant.” New York Times 16 (2018). 40. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 204. 41. Lasana T. Harris and Susan T. Fiske, “Social neuroscience evidence for dehumanised perception,” European Review of Social Psychology 20 (2009): 192–231. Lasana T. Harris and Susan T. Fiske, “Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups,” Psychological Science 17 (2006): 847–853. 42. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 152. 43. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 155. 44. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 155. 45. Rozin and Haidt, “Domains,” 367. 46. Rozin, “Psychology of Food,” 21. 47. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 202. 48. Vail et al., “Death is Good,” 304. 49. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 181. 50. Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor, Social Cognition: From brains to culture (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013), 33. 51. Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, 35. 52. Joseph Hayes, Jeff Schimel, Jamie Arndt, and Erik H. Faucher, “A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the Death-thought Accessibility Concept in Terror Management Research,” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 701. 53. Goldenberg et al., “I Am Not an Animal,” 433. 54. Goldenberg et al., “I Am Not an Animal,” 433. The response to mortality salience is markedly different from the control conditions of “pain, failure, uncertainty, social isolation, paralysis and meaninglessness,” which do not produce the same results as mortality salience priming. Vail et al., “A Terror Management Analysis,” 85–86. 55. Matt Motyl, Joshua Hart, Douglas P. Cooper, Nathan Heflick, Jamie Goldenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski, “Creatureliness priming reduces aggression and support for war,” British Journal of Social Psychology 52 (2013): 650. Nancy McCallum and Matthew S. McGlone, “Death Be Not Profane: Mortality salience and euphemism use,” Western Journal of Communication 75 (2011): 565–584. Jamie L. Goldenberg, Cathy R. Cox, Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon, “Understanding Human Ambivalence About Sex: The effects of stripping sex of meaning,” Journal of Sex Research 39 (2002): 317. Vail et al., “A Terror Management Analysis,” 86. 56. Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, Elizabeth Pinel, Linda Simon, and Krista Jordan, “Effects of Self-esteem on Vulnerability-denying Defensive Distortions: Further evidence of an anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 29 (1993): 233. 57. Eddie Harmon-Jones, Linda Simon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Holly McGregor, “Terror Management Theory and Self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduced mortality salience effects,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72, 1 (1997): 27. 58. Vail et al., “When Death is Good,” 304. 59. Jeff Schimel, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams, and Jesse Jahrig, “Is Death Really the Worm at the Core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 792. 60. Schimel et al., “Is Death Really?,” 793. 61. Cathy R. Cox, Jamie L. Goldenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and David Weise, “Disgust, Creatureliness and the Accessibility of Death-related Thoughts,” European Journal of Social Psychology 37 (2007): 504. 62. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 176; Cox et al., “Disgust, Creatureliness,” 501, 504; Goldenberg et al., “Ambivalence About Sex,” 315. 63. Jordan Clemens, Jeff Schimel, and David Webber, “Death and Hairless Creatures? Elucidating existential factors in the evolution of human body hair.” Eureka 3 (2012): 8; Goldenberg, “Ambivalence About Sex,” 315. 64. Clemens et al., “Death and Hairless Creatures?,” 8.

The Hero Who Faces Death

39

65. Jamie Arndt, Sheldon Solomon, T. Kasser, and K. M. Sheldon, “The Urge to Splurge: A terror management account of materialism and consumer behavior,” Journal of Consumer Psychology 14 (2004): 198–212. 66. Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 251. “Dress,” in Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception Online (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), np. 67. Bruce Bennett, “Loving the Alien: Indigenous protest and neo-colonial violence in Avatar,” in Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent, eds. Katarzyna Marciniak, and Imogen Tyler (New York: SUNY Press, 2014), 97. 68. “Dress” in Encyclopedia of Biblical Reception Online, np. 69. Tom Pyszcynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg, “Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory: From Genesis to Revelation,” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 52 (2015): 2. 70. István Czachesz, “Magic and Mind: Toward a New Cognitive Theory of Magic, With Special Attention to the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 24 (2007): 295–321. 71. Czachesz and Uro, “A New Alternative,” 9–10. Also, Czachesz, “Magic and Mind,” 295–321. 72. Czachesz, “Magic and Mind,” 309–310. 73. Czachesz, Cognitive Science and the New Testament, 135. 74. Paul Rozin, Linda Millman, and Carol Nemeroff, “Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and other Domains,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 (1986): 703. 75. Risto Uro, “From Corpse Impurity to Relic Veneration,” in Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, eds. István Czachesz and Risto Uro (Durham: Acumen, 2013) 192. 76. Dan Demetriou, “There’s Some Fetish in Your Ethics: A Limited Defense of Purity Reasoning in Moral Discourse,” Journal of Philosophical Research 38 (2013): 383. This view is not without contention, as Kazen points out, the purpose of the story is not to make a comment on purity, and Jesus is not said to be made unclean or not. Thomas Kazen, Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity? (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010), 129–134. 77. Thomas Kazen, “The Role of Disgust in Priestly Purity Law,” Journal of Law, Religion and State 3 (2014): 63. 78. Kazen, “Disgust in Priestly Purity Law,” 64. 79. Kazen, “Disgust in Priestly Purity Law,” 68.

Chapter Three

Embodiment and Meaning

The corporeality we share with non-human animals creates many problems for us humans. Here I turn to some of the various religious responses to these problems, as well as to those presented by human evolution. The discussion focuses primarily on the situation in the United States, followed by an overview of various religious responses to death, such as views of an afterlife, immortality, or other aspects of culture that provide individuals with meaning in the face of death. Of particular importance is the way in which religions have considered personal identity as embodied or disembodied. Human beings strive to extend their lives and find meaning that exceeds the capacities of our mortal human bodies. These existential concerns of meaning and desires which we know cannot be fulfilled because they extend beyond our bodies and our place within nature create a paradox, which terror management theory theorists suggest shapes our whole existence. In this way, many of the religious objections to recognizing the relationship between humans and non-human animals can be seen to be rooted in the anxiety produced by the death and its threat to a meaningful existence. Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a novella which reads like an introduction to terror management theory. As the titular character goes through a lengthy, degrading, and painful death following a fall from a ladder, he contemplates his experience and is still able to observe those around him. As people come to see him, talk to and about him, discussing mundane matters as though he were not sick, it becomes clear to Ivan that those around him are relieved that it is not they who are dying. They are playing a game with him in which no one admits that there is anything more serious than an illness, and that he will soon be back at work, even though his coworkers are already considering their next moves and promotions should he die. For Ivan,

41

42

Chapter 3

worse than all this, is the unbearable humiliation when he needs to make a bowel movement: Special contrivances had to be made for excretion, and every time this was torment for him. A torment because of the uncleanliness, the loss of decorum, and the odor, from the consciousness that another person had to take part in this. 1

Throughout, we are never far from the awareness that this is the story of a decomposing body. In true dualist fashion, however, one scholar also sees here the story of an “awakening soul.” 2 Ivan Ilyich’s only solace during his slow death is through the ministrations of a peasant servant, Gerasim, who is not disgusted by Ivan’s body or scandalized by his weakness. Gerasim has seen so much death that he understands it to be an integral part of life. When the end finally arrives, Ivan becomes aware that death is not real for him anymore. Echoing the words of Jesus, he is able to declare that it is finished. 3 However, this is not the case for everyone because death is not for the dead and death is worthless as a learning experience. 4 In her introduction to the book which pairs The Death of Ivan Ilyich with Tolstoy’s short memoir Confession, historian Mary Beard sees the novella as the answer to the question posed in Confession: “Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” 5 Tolstoy’s memoir outlines his search for this answer. In studying the latest scientific advances (writing in the early 1880s), he discovered that science only provided him with the theological equivalent of a math formula, simply an affirmation concerning the existence of things that exist. Science supplied him with meaningful answers only to questions he was not asking. 6 He turns then to philosophy, and examines the wisdom of Socrates, Buddha, King Solomon, and Schopenhauer. These authors, however, led him only to conclude the logical end to the contemplation of life would be suicide. 7 Finally, Tolstoy realized that it was only irrational faith that could provide meaning. Faith and superstition sufficed for millions of his countrymen, but not for those of his class. It was only the theology of the peasants that genuinely affected lives and provided meaning, allowing them to accept their fates, including deprivation and death. 8 The wealthy and famous Count Tolstoy took to wearing peasant clothes, “but it’s one thing to wear their clothes; quite another to live their lives.” 9 Through these explorations, Tolstoy lived out his own version of what Becker meant by the human lives that are normal, neurotic, and heroic. Every person’s death is sui generis, “a literal once in a lifetime event.” 10 We have little or no control over our own deaths and, in comparison to the changing of seasons or the coming and going of day and night, death is unpredictable. This has led to the widespread view that the events surround-

Embodiment and Meaning

43

ing death are the domain of another authority. Whether this is God or Karma or some other power, such a supposition leads to the belief that one should not “play God” and interfere in the matters of life and death. 11 Just as Tolstoy searched through science, philosophy, and religion to find meaning that could survive his death, Ernest Becker also wanders through these three fields. He finds differently, however, in that it is not so much that these fields of inquiry can tell us about meaning beyond our death, but that our anxiety of how to endure the end of life is at their foundation. 12 THE MORTAL HUMAN BODY In The Denial of Death, Becker asserts that matters of embodiment and mortality have always been part of religious thinking, specifically, in rituals. For example, Jews and Christians have emphasized ritual immersion as “an immunity bath” to protect one against the danger of mortality. 13 Philosophers took over this theme and death became the muse of philosophy from the Greeks to the existentialists. Finally, since Darwin, various scientific disciplines have studied concerns surrounding human mortality. 14 Drawing upon Kierkegaard, Becker argues that the “existential paradox” of human existence, that is, our desire to continue to live while we know that we will not, is at the origin of religion. Here, to find the beginning of religion, Becker turns to the beginning of the Bible: The foundation stone for Kierkegaard’s view of man is the myth of the Fall, the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. In this myth is contained, as we saw, the basic insight of psychology for all time: that man is a union of opposites, of self-consciousness and of physical body. Man emerged from the instinctive thoughtless action of the lower animals and came to reflect on his condition. 15

The first humans were given an understanding of their individuality, but also knowledge of their own death. The problematic ambiguity of consciousness and an animal body—Becker bluntly refers to humans as “gods with anuses”—becomes terror with the judgment of death when the human eats from the tree. 16 The terror that comes from the knowledge of our own death is unique to humans among animals. The meaning of the Garden of Eden myth has been rediscovered by modern psychology: “death is man’s peculiar and greatest anxiety.” 17 Although Sheldon Solomon and his colleagues first turned to Becker to try to better understand the often contradictory and costly human need for self-esteem, they also found there what they view to be a compelling argument for death anxiety as the impetus for the origin and evolution of religion. Paralyzing terror in the face of death would have been an evolutionary dead-

44

Chapter 3

end, limiting one’s ability to adventurously move about, hunt, compete for mates or protect offspring. So, using the imaginative abilities that allowed them to plan and prepare for future activities, our ancestors adapted by creating an imaginative world where death was not absolute or inevitable. 18 Terror management theorists posit similar explanations for the origins of art, rituals, and myth, all of which are in some way driven by existential dread. They conclude with the grand statement, that, because paralysis due to death anxiety was a “recipe for extinction,” early humans created an eternal, symbolic universe, with themselves at the center: “psychologically fortified by the sense of protection and immortality that ritual, art, myth, and religion provided, our ancestors were able to take full advantage of their sophisticated mental abilities.” 19 Theories about human origins are necessarily speculative, and one should be cautious about theories that seem to posit only a single cause. So, rather than speculating too much on the origins of religion, I want to draw attention to the root of the death anxiety itself, one that is reflected in the opening chapters of Genesis. As Becker concludes: Man’s anxiety is a function of his sheer ambiguity and of his complete powerlessness to overcome that ambiguity, to be straightforwardly an animal or an angel. He cannot live heedless of his fate nor can he take sure control over that fate and triumph over it by being outside the human condition[.] 20

This human specialness may be one of subjective experience rather than a reality emerging from some objective difference. If one were to ask Darwin, this is clearly the case. According to evolutionary theory, there are no fundamental biological distinctions in terms of origin and development that can be drawn between humans and non-human animals. 21 Because evolution is not teleological, and we are part of evolution rather than observers, humans are not the goal of evolution. 22 In the Descent of Man, Darwin wrote: Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale[.] . . . We must, however, acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities . . . still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. 23

Unsurprisingly, with these consequences of Darwinism in the background, some see the same problems we encountered in the famous debate between Huxley and Wilberforce in Oxford; namely, if we are enmeshed in evolutionary process, what is the “place of humanity within the natural order?” 24

Embodiment and Meaning

45

RELIGION AND THE MORTAL HUMAN BODY This chapter is centered upon the dialogue concerning humanity’s place in the natural order with Tolstoy’s question about death-defying meaning. These questions are distinct, but they are also undoubtedly related. The existential threat of evolutionary science introduced by Darwin is that, if we humans are not genuinely separate from the rest of nature, then, in truth, our deaths are not particularly meaningful. Moreover, our lives might not provide for or contribute to anything that is meaningfully lasting. We might as well agree with David Hume, who suggested that, as far as the universe is concerned, the life of a human is “of no greater importance . . . than that of an oyster.” 25 This loss of meaning constitutes the existential threat of evolution and this, in terms of terror management theory, increases death thought accessibility and weakens those worldviews which serve as a buffer against death anxiety. As mentioned in chapter 1, the attribution of a mind to others as described in the theory of mind is a human trait. Moreover, there is good reason to suppose that mentalizing leads to an intuitive mind-body dualism. Even in infants, the actions of humans are perceived to be different than those of nonhuman actors. As Barrett puts it, “the default stance is to see bodily and mental phenomena as occupying separate causal domains.” This intuitive dualism can therefore help to explain the cross-cultural belief in ghosts, spirits and a continuation of the human mind after the death of the body. 26 Even if one argues that this mind-body dualism is not a cognitive default, but rather an easily acquired idea, it is apparent that ideas related to the mind and soul are easily disassociated from the workings of the body; therefore, the fact that one’s body no longer works is not a conceptual barrier to the view that one’s thoughts and emotions can continue after death. 27 Part of the anxiety buffer which terror management theory places at the root of religion is a dualistic anthropology, which appears to be either an intuitive or easily acquired concept. The evolutionary sciences, which are continually and increasingly drawing attention to our corporeality and the characteristics of primates and other animals that they share with humans, continue to erode both the animal-human boundary and the intuitive dualism which serve as a buffer against death anxiety. All of this has had the result of making for an uneasy relationship between science and religion. Not only do religions tend toward anthropocentrism, but even paleoanthropology has traditionally focused on searching for the factors that are unique to humans. Characteristics such as bipedalism, the helplessness of infants, and brain size have been examined to see if they are essential aspects of human uniqueness. 28 Other characteristics more commonly studied, such as language, consciousness, or religion, are often seen as the elements which make humans distinct from other animals. Unfortunately, these are elements

46

Chapter 3

that have left little prehistoric record. 29 This anthropocentric bias which impacts even the sciences might be at the heart of opposition to Darwinism. The fact that humans are not biologically special can be a devastating blow to one’s worldview, and, in terms of terror management theory, this would be existentially threatening in that it erodes buffers created to assuage death anxiety. This is not simply conjecture, but has been demonstrated in studies. For example, subjects were shown an article by Stephen Jay Gould, which described how strongly the fossil remains of ambulocetus (the so-called walking whale) supported evolution of whales from land mammals to marine mammals and undercut the creationist view that there is no fossil evidence linking species. After reading this article, death thought accessibility increased in creationists, but not in subjects who already accepted evolution. 30 In the twentieth century, there has been a tenuous relationship between science and religion. Various schemes have been offered as ways to understand the relationship between the two, or the ways in which discussion of each subject can be understood in relation to the other. 31 The most familiar is that proposed by Ian Barbour, who offers a fourfold schema organizing the various approaches. The schema begins with the conflict model, which supposes two ends of a spectrum in discussion. In the case of evolutionary debate, we have creation science and scientific materialism which are incompatible. Each party in the debate “gains a following partly by its opposition to the other.” 32 The second model, independence, sees the two domains of science and religion as “employ[ing] differing languages [and] fulfilling contrasting functions in human life.” 33 Whereas the independence model focuses on differences between religion and science, the third model of dialogue attempts to focus on those points involving similarities. 34 Finally, the integration model, assumes that “both science and religion contribute to the development of an inclusive metaphysics.” 35 In large part, particularly regarding evolution, the model best describing the situation of contemporary public discourse is that of conflict. Because this project accepts evolutionary science based on Darwin’s explanation of natural selection, it is important to recognize that religious approaches, particularly in the United States, have often had a problematic relationship to evolutionary sciences. Perhaps outside of the condemnation of Galileo, the most famous conflict between religion and science is the Scopes Monkey Trial. While the “Trial of the Century” is long past, and evolution is taught in schools throughout the country, anti-evolution views are still strong in the United States. 36 Although it is now at its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question, nearly four in ten American adults still assert that God created humanity in its current form, rejecting any idea of human evolution. The same percentage of people (38%) believe that although there was human evolution, God guided the process. This leaves just under two in ten (19%) of adult Americans who believe that humans evolved, with no assistance from

Embodiment and Meaning

47

God. 37 Virtually all those who object to human evolution are religious individuals, primarily Christians. 38 While the actual objections to evolution may be multitudinous, the aspects I focus on here are the problems created by evolutionary theory with regard to biblical authority, soteriology, and theological anthropology. There is a tradition of biblical literalism in the United States, primarily among groups that self-identify as Protestant Fundamentalists. Fundamentalism, which emerged in the U.S. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was in large part a reaction to liberal Protestant biblical scholarship. 39 Many groups in the United States today are committed to not only to a literalist reading of scripture, but also to apologetic and evangelistic outreach, promoting either some form of intelligent design or, even more radically, Young Earth Creationism. 40 The primary reason stated by those committed to these views is their belief that the Bible is truthful and accurate in all details: “If God did not mean what He said in the very first chapter of His book, then why should we take the rest of it seriously?” 41 While this view of the Bible, and of the history of the earth, might be compared to a form of fideism or a “paper pope,” it involves in fact a concern for salvation. 42 If one cannot believe God’s Word concerning the origins of life, how can one be certain of the truthfulness of the Gospel concerning the incarnation of Christ or his death and resurrection enabling human salvation? Aside from problems of biblical interpretation, Darwinism presents problems for systematic theologians with regard to the origins of sin and death. The account of the garden in Genesis 3 provides an explanation for these existential crises and the human need for salvation. 43 An important element of this is that the so-called Fall of Adam in Genesis 3 provides an explanation for the current condition of the world, in which although created and declared good, is full of evil, suffering, and death. Eschatological hopes which saw the future as a recreation of the past idyllic state offer a vision of how creation was always meant to be. For example, Isaiah’s vision of the wolf laying down with the lamb and lions eating straw can be a seen as a restoration of pre-lapsarian existence before sin, death, and enmity between animals entered the picture (Isa 11:6–7). 44 One important implication is that while we were intended for immortality and our bodies were not meant to break down and fail us, the resulting divine curse to die and return to the ground, as well as the expulsion from the garden, are the due wages of sin. Darwinism changes many things, not least in the realm of systematic theologies concerning humans and salvation. For example, the evil of animal suffering is a necessary part of the process of natural selection. For some then, it becomes difficult to harmonize this schema of an idyllic creation, bookended by an equally idyllic eschaton, while we have this current period of existence in which nature, and humanity with it, is at war with itself. Natural selection is largely driven by a situation of overpopulation, which creates a necessarily

48

Chapter 3

competitive environment in which the majority of a species dies before reproducing. Animal suffering and death then, including human suffering, is part of the process, not an aberration. 45 Although Hegel was not referring to natural history, his description of history as a “slaughter bench” is apt, in that much of natural selection is driven by predation and the avoidance of predation. 46 Some of the ‘uglier’ aspects of nature caused Darwin serious concerns regarding the possibility of any benevolent design behind creation: With respect to the theological view of the question: This is always painful to me. I am bewildered. I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars. 47

Many biblical literalists would answer Darwin that this type of behavior is as a result of the fall, thereby denying the millions of years of animal death and predation. 48 One scholar who focuses specifically on the theological problems raised by the suffering of non-human animals wonders how it is that creationists marvel at the beauty of nature but never “rhapsodize about the wondrous, irreducible complexity of AIDS viruses, or tapeworms[?]” 49 For others, human evolution creates systematic problems with regard to the human soul. For example, if one accepts that modern humans evolved from earlier species of primates, at what point do we consider people to have souls? Did earlier primates also have souls? What of related but contemporaneous primates, such as H. neanderthalensis? In a discussion about current Christian perspectives concerning the body, Keenan writes without support or argument that, despite disagreements regarding when an embryo becomes a human body, “all agree nowadays, just as medieval writers did, that the condition of ensoulment is the presence of a true human body.” 50 On the contrary, there is current Christian discussion about the soul, how to explain an immaterial soul while affirming human evolution and how to theologically discuss related homo species. 51 In some respects, we should not be surprised that evolution tends to bring the conflict model to the fore, because Darwin was controversial even in his own day. The controversy even in Darwin’s time was seen as a battle between science and religion. 52 For example, Alfred Wallace published an essay in 1864 admitting that while the human body could be accounted for by means of natural selection, this is not the case with the mind, which must have been created by a “higher intelligence.” 53 Darwin himself came from a family whose members were mostly Unitarian, although his father was an atheist. They were not hostile to the Church of England, however, because they saw it as a positive social force which provided stability. Reflecting that

Embodiment and Meaning

49

of his family, Darwin’s own approach to religion was skeptical, pragmatic and tolerant. Even though he seems to have had no belief in the personal God of Christianity by the 1840s, he was still interested in religion, its origins, and the reasons for and against belief. He also seems to have applied to himself the label “agnostic,” a term coined by his friend Thomas Huxley, and clearly believed that anything other than the material is simply unknowable. Although he was at the center of this firestorm, with clergy on both sides of the debate, Darwin continued to support the Church of England both financially and with his reputation. When he died in 1882, he was essentially claimed by the Church as one of their own, given great honors and buried in Westminster Abbey, a few yards from Isaac Newton. 54 Among American Christians who do not hold to a literalist reading of the Bible, researchers have distinguished several different approaches to reconciling faith and human evolution. These approaches reflect Barbour’s second model, independence. Some use literary techniques to understand the Bible’s creation narratives in a way that allows them to accept human evolution. For example, they may interpret these passages with attention to metaphor or allegory, or in ways that are more akin to literary approaches to poetry. 55 Many also demarcate strict boundaries between the roles of religion and science, noting that they concern distinct realms and address distinct aspects of reality. 56 A third approach by non-literalists is the appeal to God’s power to use natural processes such as evolution to develop life. Those who espouse this view emphasize the role of God as creator, regardless of the process involved. 57 The third and fourth of Barbour’s models call for those in the fields of religion and science to have greater respect and understanding of each other’s work and worldviews. In fact, the model of integration requires a single worldview with contributions from both religion and science. We can see these two models at work in the growing attempts by some Christian theologians working toward a soul-less Christianity. When dealing with the problem of human corporeality, one distinction among different religious approaches has concerned the matter of identity, which is another way of posing the mind-body problem. This matter of identity concerns the subjective self and whether one should be directly identified with one’s body. In other words, religious and philosophical approaches have differed in their answer to the question, Do I have a body? or, Am I a body? While there is a long history of theological discussion regarding the soul, the view of most Christians concerning corporeality can be termed substance dualism, with humans having both substantial bodies and substantial souls. Even those who understand themselves to be working within what could be understood as a scientific monistic tradition are actually sustaining a dualistic view, in which the mind has replaced the soul. 58 In contrast to the view of substance dualism, the materialist view is that humans are material bodies

50

Chapter 3

without a soul or any non-material aspect. 59 One important attempt to bring together these worldviews is the work of the research team of Warren Brown and Brad Strawn. 60 These scholars are developing a position that, while holding a view of the body that is shaped by materialistic monism, is still theistic. In other words, they accept of the scientific view which sees no room for a non-materialistic soul but at the same time maintain a belief in the power of God to bodily resurrect the dead to eternal life. Brown and Strawn examine those characteristics that anthropologists and theologians alike see as separating humans from other animals and demonstrate their cognitive basis. For them, rationality, relationality, morality, and religiosity are evolved cognitive traits, and in no way attributable to a human soul. 61 They do not find anthropological physicalism to be incompatible with a rejection of universal physicalism; that is, there is a spiritual world which includes God, and will include resurrected human bodies. 62 CONCLUSION The study of religious traditions has often neglected the body as an essential aspect of that study, but as we see in the views discussed above, some today are attempting to better understand the implications of the human body for the study of religion. In some ways, in keeping with Barbour’s models of dialogue and integration, we should also expect some to be studying religion to better understand the human body. In a presidential address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Meredith McGuire notes that the social sciences of religion have been impoverished by an epistemological tradition that divides spirit and body, assigning the former to the social scientists and the latter to the biologists. Instead, she calls for a reconceptualization of the mind, body, and society into a “near-unitary phenomenon.” 63 I think she is still hedging here, for everywhere else in her address, we find the descriptions of thought and bodily experiences to be fully unified somatic experiences. We do not objectively think about things being done to our body as though it were another entity; rather we experience things done to our body as being done to us. 64 McGuire calls for the scientific study of religion to be more aware of embodied experiences, and to begin with the assumption that humans are “mindful bodies,” as opposed to minds with bodies or bodies with minds. 65 We see this call anticipated in the work of scholars such as Mary Douglas, who attempts to fully integrate the body into an understanding of Israelite legal traditions. Mary Douglas went so far as to say, “just as it is true that everything symbolizes the body, so it is equally true that the body symbolizes everything else.” 66

Embodiment and Meaning

51

NOTES 1. Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession, trans. Peter Carson (New York: Liveright, 2014), 81. Sandra L. Bertman, Facing Death: Images, Insights, and Interventions: A Handbook for Educators, Healthcare Professionals, and Counselors (New York: Hemisphere, 1991). The Death of Ivan Ilyich runs throughout Bertman’s book, serving to highlight the indignity, the embarrassments, the loneliness of death. 2. William Giraldi, “The Way of All Flesh: On Tolstoy and Mortality,” Virginia Quarterly Review 90 (2014): 212. 3. Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich, 110. 4. Giraldi, “Tolstoy and Mortality,” 213. 5. Mary Beard, “Tolstoy and his Translator,” in Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession, trans. Peter Carson (New York: Liveright, 2014), 21. The full quote is found in Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich, 140. 6. Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich, 147. 7. Tolstoy, Ivan Ilyich, 156. 8. Tolstoy, Confession, 177. Also, Giraldi, “Tolstoy and Mortality,” 216. 9. Giraldi, “Tolstoy and Mortality,” 216. 10. John Bowker, Why Religions Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 244. 11. Bowker, Why Religions Matter, 244. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2280) reads: Everyone is responsible for his life before God who has given it to him. It is God who remains the sovereign Master of life. We are obliged to accept life gratefully and preserve it for his honor and the salvation of our souls. We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of. 12. Becker, Denial of Death, 12. 13. Becker, Denial of Death, 12. 14. Becker, Denial of Death, 12. 15. Becker, Denial of Death, 68–69. In addition to an important role in Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety, which may be what Becker is referencing here, according to Timothy Dalrymple, there are frequent references to Adam throughout Kierkegaard’s notes and journals. Only Job and Abraham are written about as frequently. Timothy Dalrymple, “Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness,” Volume 1, Tome I: Kierkegaard and the Bible–The Old Testament (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2016), 23–62. 16. Becker, Denial of Death, 51. 17. Becker, Denial of Death, 69. 18. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 67. 19. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 80–81. 20. Becker, Denial of Death, 69. 21. McGrath, “Darwinism,” 685. 22. McGrath, “Darwinism,” 688. 23. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New York: Appleton, 1878), 619. Quoted in part by McGrath, “Darwinism,” 688. 24. McGrath, “Darwinism,” 688. A good overview of what Van Huyssteen calls “the canonical core” of Darwin’s views on humanity are summarized in six points. The overriding theme of these points is the superiority of humans over non-human animals is a matter of degree and not kind. For example, human communication is not unique, just the best example of communication to have so far evolved. Wentzel Van Huyssteen, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology; the Gifford Lectures, the University of Edinburgh, Spring 2004 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 74. 25. David Hume, “On Suicide,” in Selected Essays, eds. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 319. 26. Barrett, From Divine Minds, 82. 27. Barrett, From Divine Minds, 104. 28. Alice M. Roberts and S. K. S. Thorpe, “Challenges to Human Uniqueness: Bipedalism, birth and brains,” Journal of Zoology 292 (2014): 281–289. See also Joshua M. Moritz, “Hu-

52

Chapter 3

man Uniqueness, the Other Hominids, and ‘Anthropocentrism of the Gaps’ in ‘The Religion and Science Dialogue,’” Zygon 47 (2012): 65–96. 29. Van Huysteen, Alone in the World?, 167. There is a record of prehistoric art that can be examined, although this is limited 30. Solomon et al., The Worm at the Core, 35. There are many other examples one could point to, as one of the main hypothesis supporting terror management theory is the death thought accessibility hypothesis. For example, five such supporting studies are reported in Schimel et al., “Is Death Really?,” 789–803. 31. John Haught and Ted Peters have both offered schemas to organize this discussion. John Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 9. Ted Peters offers eight ways in which science and religion make both war and peace. Ted Peters, “Science and Theology: Towards Consonance,” in Science and Theology: The New Consonance, ed. Ted Peters (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 13. 32. Ian Barbour, “Science and Religion, Models and Relations,” in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, ed. J. Wentzel Van Huyssteen (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2003), 760. 33. Barbour, “Science and Religion,” 761. 34. Barbour, “Science and Religion,” 762. 35. Barbour, “Science and Religion,” 763. 36. Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 197. 37. Art Swift, “In US, Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low,” Gallup, May 22, 2017. Accessed 2/1/18 http://www.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humansnew-low.aspx. 38. Pew Research Center, “Religious Landscape Study,” 2017. Accessed 2/1/18 http://www. pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/. Pew Research also aggregated surveys, research, and media reports concerning the views of various religious groups in regard to human evolution. They note that adherents to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism tend to see no inherent conflict between their religious views and human evolution. Islamic leaders are divided regarding human evolution. The Catholic Church as well as many non-Catholic Christian denominations accepts human evolution with a caveat such as “natural selection is a God-directed mechanism of biological development and that man’s soul is the divine creation of God.” More rarely do we see a Christian acceptance of human evolution without an explicit reference to the role of God, as with the United Church of Christ’s call for evolution to allow members “to see [their] faith in a new way.” Pew Research Center, “Religious Groups’ Views on Evolution,” Feb 4, 2009 (updated Feb 3, 2014), Accessed 5/28/17: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/02/04/ religious-groups-views-on-evolution/. Regarding Muslim views on evolution, see also Martin Riexinger, “Islamic Opposition to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution,” in Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science, eds. J. R. Lewis and O. Hammer (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 483–510. The Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science includes articles on many religious traditions, as well as groups within religions. 39. Richard Briggs, “The Hermeneutics of Reading Genesis After Darwin,” in Reading Genesis after Darwin, eds. S. C. Barton and D. Wilkinson (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 59–60. An interesting confluence of events among the British intelligentsia preceded and impacted what some refer to as the third Great Awakening in America. In 1871 Darwin published his immediately controversial work, On the Origin of Species. The following year, Assyriologist George Smith announced the finding of a flood narrative on a cuneiform tablet housed in the British Museum. This narrative would come to be known as Gilgamesh. This was followed three years later with his publication of Enuma Elish, an Assyrian creation account. At that point, nineteenth-century conservative readers of Genesis found themselves pressed on two sides, with Darwin and biologists on one side, and archaeology and ancient literature on the other. 40. Originally called “Flood Geology” because the flood of Noah was used to explain the geological and fossil record. Flood geologists did not reject science, but rather believed, as do current young earth creationists like Ken Ham, the founder of Answers in Genesis and the Ark Encounter theme park, that the scientific evidence was supportive of their view rather than evolution. Ronald Numbers, “Creationism,” in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and

Embodiment and Meaning

53

Evolutionary Thought, ed. Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013), np. A recent example of this type of approach is the Ark Encounter theme park, in Williamstown, Kentucky, which allows visitors to explore a $102 million replica ark, complete with dioramas and videos explaining how Noah was able to feed and care for all the animals, including dinosaurs. See, Laurie Goodstein, The New York Times, “A Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, Dinosaurs Included,” June 26, 2016 Accessed 5/28/17: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/us/ noahs-ark-creationism-ken-ham.html. The Evangelical biblical scholar Wayne Grudem has offered a list of eight anti-biblical positions that the one who accepts evolution must hold, such as, Adam was not formed from the ground by God but had human parents. Wayne Grudem, “Foreword” to Nevin Norman Cummings, Should Christians Embrace Evolution?: Biblical and Scientific Responses (Nottingham, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009), 9–10. Another scholar suggests that Christians who accept evolution have to wrestle with many questions: Was Adam just one Neolithic farmer among many others at the time? Was this one Neolithic farmer among many other homo sapiens set apart as Homo divinus? Were the cities and cultural achievements that Cain and his descendants founded erased from the archaeological record during a time of “catastrophic degeneracy?” Andrew Ter Ern Loke, “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program,” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160–174. 41. Ronald Osborn, Death Before the Fall; Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 44 (quoting Henry Morris, the founder of the Institute for Creation Research). The quote in its full context can be found at http:// www.icr.org/article/literal-week-creation/. 42. Osborn, Animal Suffering, 45, 58. 43. Of particular note for Christian theology is the importance of Paul’s soteriology, which some argue requires that the account of the first couple and the first disobedience to be a historical reality. In other words, for Jesus to be a second Adam there really needs to be a first. Sin and death come as a result of the first Adam’s trespass and the salvation from that sin and death come as a result of Jesus’ obedience (e.g., Rom 5:9–19). 44. For an ancient example of this view, Irenaeus wrote that “in the resurrection of the just [the words shall also apply] to those animals mentioned. For God is rich in all things. And it is right that when the creation is restored, all the animals should obey and be in subjection to man and revert to the food originally given by God that is, the productions of the earth.” Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, Christian Theology and the Status of Animals: The Dominant Tradition and Its Alternatives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 61. 45. Jeff Astley, “Evolution and Evil,” in Reading Genesis after Darwin, eds. S. C. Barton and D. Wilkinson (Oxford: Oxford University, 2009), 164. 46. Osborn, Animal Suffering, 14. Hegel’s slaughter bench (Schlachtbank or altar) was in the context of political history. George W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (New York: American Home Library, 1902), 66. 47. Charles Darwin, “Letter to Asa Gray,” in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Vol 8, ed. Frederick Burkhardt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 224. Gray was Darwin’s most theologically significant correspondents. See Mark Pallen and Alison Pearn “Darwin and Religion,” in The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, ed., Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013) online, np. 48. Eugene Merrill, “Pre-Human Death and the Effect of the Fall,” Criswell Theological Review 14 (2016): 15–22. Merrill, for example, argues from Qoheleth, that since human and animal death are essentially the same, then animal death could not have preceded the Fall as depicted in Genesis 3. 49. Osborn, Animal Suffering, 14. 50. James F. Keenan, “Christian Perspectives on the Human Body,” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 330. 51. For example, Joel B. Green, What About the Soul?: Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004); Neil Messer, Theological Neuroethics; Christian Ethics Meets the Science of the Human Brain (London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2019); Joel B. Green, Stewart Goetz, William Hasker, Nancey C. Murphy, and Kevin Corcoran, In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem (Eugene, Or: Wipf & Stock, 2010).

54

Chapter 3

52. Many sources support this claim. See, for example, Marie Vejrup Nielsen, “Answering Job’s Challenge: Reception and transformation in evolutionary theory,” Acta Jutlandica (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2009): 120. See also Eve-Marie Engels, “Darwin’s Philosophical Revolution: Evolutionary Naturalism and First Reactions to his Theory,” in Thomas F. Glick and Eve-Marie Engels, The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe (London: Continuum, 2008), 22–53. 53. Van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?, 70. 54. Pallen and Pearn “Darwin and Religion,” np. 55. Esther Chan and Elaine Howard Ecklund, “Narrating and Navigating Authorities: Evangelical and mainline Protestant interpretations of the Bible and science,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55 (2016): 61. 56. Chan and Ecklund, “Navigating Authorities,” 60. Although most of the subjects interviewed for this study were not aware of it, they were clearly presenting the so-called argument of “nonoverlapping magisteria.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (1997): 16–22. 57. Chan and Ecklund, “Navigating Authorities,” 61. 58. Chad Meister, “Death and the Afterlife,” in Philosophy of Religion, ed. Chad Meister (Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2014), 295. Louise Hickman notes that although the history of thought concerning the soul in Christian theology can be traced with some merit in two straight lines, the reality is less cleanly organized. Most see these two lines of thought as running, first, a dualist tradition from Plato to Augustine to Descartes. The second, a monist tradition runs from Aristotle to Aquinas to contemporary readings of the Hebrew Bible. Early Christians debated the topic of the soul, rejecting the preexistence of souls and affirming the resurrection of the body. So, if there was a separation of the body and soul, it was not permanent. It can be seen that much of contemporary theology is derived from Aquinas, with a return to the Hebrew Bible, but the influence of Decartes has been profound. Hickman sees this as having had terrible ecological and ethical implications, since we are now free to view ourselves as “lords and masters” over nature. Having separated thought from body, Descartes thus increased the “radical dichotomy between humans and non-humans.” Modern thought concerning this matter has been deeply influenced by Descartes, who put in more philosophical terms what was often believed in earliest Christianity. This position of substance dualism views the soul as “an unextended, non-spatial, non-physical substance.” With regard to how this nonphysical substance can interact with physical substances, it is argued that just as God, who has the same characteristics, can interact with matter, so can the soul. This position has been derisively referred to as the “ghost in the machine.” Throughout the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and the Qur’an we can clearly find this view, or at least many passages that can be used in support of this view. Many now working within what could be understood as a scientific monistic tradition are actually sustaining a dualistic view, in which the mind has replaced the soul. Louise Hickman, “The Nature of the Self and the Contemplation of Nature: Ecotheology and the History of the Soul,” in The Concept of the Soul: Scientific and Religious Perspectives, ed. Michael Fuller (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 5; 17–24. 59. Although not well-accepted historically among philosophers, this is the position that most biologists hold, for evolution would seem to support the position that humans are “a wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process.” Meister, “Death and the Afterlife,” 297. This materialist position can be further subdivided into type-type identity, in which mental states are equated with brain states, and functionalist views that assert that mental states depend on functionings and not states (computational processes could reproduce mental states). While these first two positions are essentially opposing views held by those in the Abrahamic traditions (or those who are culturally surrounded by those religions but reject them), the position of monistic pantheism is a view embraced by the world’s one billion Hindus. This view is that the universe is one divine substance, and reality is illusory. Therefore the individual person is also part of this reality and part of the illusion. Meister, “Death and the Afterlife,” 298. There are other forms of monistic pantheism, such as the divinization of nature, yet demographically speaking, these are relatively minor views. The final view regarding the nature of identity, or the mind-body problem, is the Buddhist concept of Anatman, which is the belief that there is no self. The self is illusory because there is no continuity within the person from moment to

Embodiment and Meaning

55

moment. In contrast to monistic pantheism, reality is not illusory, for what we experience is real. While the self is illusory, experiences are real. Meister, “Death and the Afterlife,” 299. 60. Warren Brown and Brad D. Strawn. The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 61. Brown and Strawn, Physical Nature, 30–46. 62. Brown and Strawn, Physical Nature, 161–163. For another theologian who is working along these same lines, see Joel Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008). 63. Meredith B. McGuire, “Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the human body in the social sciences of religion,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (1990): 285. 64. McGuire, “Religion and the Body,” 284. 65. McGuire, “Religion and the Body,” 294. 66. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 2003), 123.

Chapter Four

The Bible and Death

The writer of Ecclesiastes, traditionally identified Solomon but also frequently referred to as the Preacher or Qoheleth, draws on the ancient motif of the creation of human beings from earthly materials. The creation of human beings and other animals from dust or clay is a common motif in the ancient Near East, with the raw materials sometimes described as being vivified by blood or, in the case of the Gen 2:7, by the breath of the creating god. Qoheleth may be thinking specifically of the account of Genesis, where not only is the human created from the dust, but is also told that he will return to the dust (Gen 3:19). We have throughout Ecclesiastes a wonderful reflection on human mortality with a surprisingly frank view of the certainty of death and the relationship of humans to both the earth and other animals. Nowhere is this clearer than when Qoheleth writes: I said in my heart with regard to human beings that God is testing them to show that they are but animals. For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animals; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the human spirit goes upwards and the spirit of animals goes downward to the earth? (Eccl 3:18–21)

Qoheleth is here pointing out our limitations. Not only are we faced with limitations because of our mortal bodies, there are also limits to our knowledge and to what we can learn by observing the deaths of those around us. While the teaching of Ecclesiastes is often regarded as pessimistic, there does seem to be a vague sense of hope here; although the writer claims ignorance about the spirit of the human whose body has become dust, he is also suggesting a tentative possibility for continued existence after death. The differ57

58

Chapter 4

ence between what Qoheleth knows and does not know is in some ways similar to what we know and do not about the topic of death in the Hebrew Bible in general. That humans and other animals are made from the earth and destined to die is clear. What is not so clear is what happens next, or whether there is something that makes humans different from other animals. While scholars once posited a clear distinction between a Greek dualistic anthropology and a Hebrew view which presented a more holistic understanding of the human being, it is now apparent that this is distinction is not so easy to maintain. 1 Remembering that dualistic beliefs are either intuitive or easily acquired, one should not be surprised to see that dualistic views and imagery are present in the Hebrew Bible, even if not so clearly as in later Christian texts. The Hebrew Bible does not present a systematic anthropology, but rather uses a variety of terms and metaphors, often vague and sometimes contradictory, that appear in differing configurations and from various angles, and display an anthropological complexity that does not sit well visà-vis the previously utilized categories of monism or dualism. 2 Nor does the Hebrew Bible present a single view on the body, the soul, or death. In its various books and genres, it displays the beliefs of diverse communities at various times and for different purposes. Because of this, theologians have generally abandoned the attempt to develop an overall biblical anthropology and instead turned to human characteristics as presented in individual books or to particular topics or emotions across a given corpus. 3 My approach in this chapter will seek to better understand the Hebrew Bible’s view of the human body and death by focusing on the relationship between the body and death. After Durkheim, scholars came to view bodies—both alive and dead—as social constructs as well as biological entities; that is, society is constituted by human bodies while, conversely, human bodies are constituted by society. 4 Unlike Mary Douglas’ view, which saw societal control of the individual human bodies as essential for protecting the larger social body, terror management theorists prefer to move in the other direction, and consider the social body as a mechanism for helping individuals control their anxiety regarding their own biological bodies. That the body is both social and biological is particularly apparent in the ways in which society conceives of a normative body, deviations from the normative body, and the corpse. As the furthest deviation from the normative body, the treatment of the corpse has much to tell about how the writers of the Bible viewed the body and death. 5 The goal of this chapter is to elucidate the connections between the outward appearance of the body and its connections to concerns regarding mortality. To summarize, studies supporting terror management theory demonstrate that awareness of our bodies creates death anxiety, and that our worldview and societal norms enable humans to think positively about our place in a meaningful system, thereby providing an anxiety buffer. Moreover, we strongly enforce social structures to protect this

The Bible and Death

59

system, including the ways we hide or disguise our animal bodies. The human body must fit properly within this worldview in order to be regarded as a human rather than an animal. It must fit a certain normative pattern, and any deviation from this pattern needs to be properly managed by society in order to uphold the structures that provide the death anxiety buffer. As the most obvious and greatest example of the animality of the human body, the corpse comes under heavy strictures. This chapter relies significantly on the recent work of Matthew Suriano, who has demonstrated that just like the living body, the corpse in the Hebrew Bible is managed by society so that death could be controlled, in spite of the fact that it could not be denied outright. 6 THE NORMATIVE HUMAN BODY There are many passages in the Hebrew Bible which, if taken in isolation, could suggest the possibility of a bi- or tri-partite construction of the human being. For example, in Deut 6:5 we read that you are to love God with your heart (lĕ bāb), your soul (népeš), and your strength (mĕ ’ō d). While some might interpret passages such as this as providing justification for understanding the human being as composed of a body and a soul, or even a body, a soul, and a mind, this is not the overall witness of the Hebrew Bible. Most diversity in the Bible’s imagery and vocabulary can best be understood as emphasizing various aspects of the person. Although we find a range of terms such as bāśār, népeš, and rûaḥ that could lead one to view the human as a composite being, when viewed collectively, the various terms do not seem to provide support for views that are comparable to later Cartesian substance dualism. 7 Complicating the matter is the poetic use of various human aspects and body parts. Terms such as heart, spirit, soul, and flesh, mouth, ear, arm, and hand, are poetically interchangeable, and frequently presented synecdochally. 8 Some scholars, such as James Barr, are skeptical about whether a philological analysis can provide meaningful insight into the Hebrew Bible’s view of the human body, except perhaps in terms of a statistical analysis to see which terms are most often used in which context. 9 Others, however, view an analysis of the vocabulary as providing an important insight into the ancient Israelite view of humanity, as long as one does not try to use these components to reconstruct a systematic view of the human person. 10 Translating népeš as “soul” has always created problems, evoking as it does a metaphysical sense of the term. But the Hebrew conception of népeš is different than our typical use of “soul,” because the népeš can perish (Exod 21:23; Lev 24:17; Num 23:10). Suriano points out that népeš can also be used to describe a corpse, and even refers to it as a “defunct soul” as the corpse decays in the tomb. 11 References to the spirit or soul are often seen as

60

Chapter 4

emphasizing the person as a corporeal creature. The human being’s bāśār is joined to his rûaḥ or népeš in such a way to indicate a whole being. This is not to say that the népeš is separable from the body, nor that it is immortal. 12 Népeš then is best understood as the whole person. In Genesis (e.g., 1:30; 2:7) the person is a népeš, rather than possessing a népeš. Adam (Gen 2:7) becomes (rather than acquires) a népeš. The népeš can be understood to be the seat of spiritual and physical needs (e.g., Ps 42;1) and emotions (Deut 28:65). There is a strong connection between the népeš and the blood, as the népeš resides in the blood (Deut 12:23). Some passages in the Hebrew Bible seem to refer to a soul, but these can equally well be understood as being parallel to the body (Ps 84:2; Isa 10:18). Moreover, the népeš can act, as when it offers sacrifices, for example (Lev 2:1). 13 Bāśār, “flesh,” does not have a negative connotation in the OT, although it can be sometimes used to indicate frailty. More often than not, when not referring to meat to be eaten (e.g., Exod 12:8) or sacrificed (e.g., Lev 4:11), flesh is a neutral term used to refer to corporeal existence and the solidarity of all humans and animals. 14 For example, Gen 6:12 refers to “all flesh” being destroyed by the flood. Bāśār is sometimes set in contrast with other terms for varying purposes. For example, it is decidedly weak in contrast to God’s strength (Ps 65:2). On the other hand, a “heart of flesh” is a desirable condition when compared with a heart of stone (Ezek 11:19). Our embodiedness draws attention to our transitoriness and to our creaturely status and dependence on the natural world and on God. 15 Isaiah announces that all bāśār is grass and destined to wither (40:6–7). Although the body is whole, it also has individual bodily components. Internal organs were understood to play specific roles in the life of an individual, even as they still do today. Unlike many cultures today which use the heart to symbolize the seat of emotion, the Hebrew Bible presents the heart as the center of rationality or the will. For example, Deut 29:3 provides a litany of organs and their roles: “Yet to this day, the LORD has not given you a heart to understand, or eyes to see or ears to hear.” The heart can also be understood as the impetus for conduct, as we see in the evaluation of the last generation before God determines to bring about the flood, as “every inclination of their hearts was only evil continually.” 16 With regard to the body, many of these biblical terms, which might be viewed as components within a composite being, are in fact much more complex. Given the ambiguities of these anthropological terms, and their frequent poetic and complicated uses, the best approach is to focus on how the body is conceived of as a social entity and constructed socially through behaviors. Moreover, our understanding of the biblical evidence is hampered by our own views concerning mortality. So here, I will approach the biblical view of death and anthropology by focusing on the normative body. The fact that the non-normative body is so tightly controlled by legislation and social

The Bible and Death

61

practice makes the normative body fairly well understood. The body, its necessary attributes, and its external accessories, are tightly controlled by society. Any deviation from the normative body needs to be properly addressed because such deviation is dangerous. Therefore, the Bible prescribes various ways of controlling bodily aspects such as hair and clothing, illness, injury, deformity, blood, sex, and the female body. The normative body is whole, male, and well. Any deviations from this normative body necessarily result in restrictions, for the human body is integrally part of the social body. The ideal body is whole, with no missing parts or deformities. A scholar on the subject, Saul Olyan, points out that while there is no specific Hebrew term equating to “disability,” the Bible is replete with examples and specific cases. 17 In all instances, the whole body is privileged over the body that differs in some way from the norm and is therefore considered to be in some way defective. This normative body, which another scholar refers to as the “Priestly Norm,” is based on binaries, which enable the construction of a hierarchy. 18 In the case of priests, those with mûm (‫ )מום‬cannot offer sacrifices. The Holiness Code uses the term mûmî m to refer to instances of nonnormativity such injuries, illnesses, or disabilities to impose limitations on those who are permitted to offer sacrifices. The list of such conditions (Lev 21:17–23) is not exhaustive, and sometimes unclear, but includes blindness, lameness, improperly healed bones, uneven limbs, hunches in the back, certain eye abnormalities, skin conditions, genital damage, and several now unidentifiable conditions. 19 As an obvious but categorically odd exception, circumcision would seem to be the type of body modification which would cause exclusion. Functionally, circumcision is very much like the loss of a lip or eyelid, being the removal of a naturally occurring skin covering, but it is considered differently from other such procedures. 20 Even though the lack of foreskin was not considered to make one unwhole, the lack of a penis did [Deut 23:1]. The ideal body is therefore actually constructed on the body of a minority, that is, on males with healthy and sexually functioning penises. This excludes not only women, but also impotent men or those with injuries. 21 One can think here of the elderly King David, whose reign survived wars and coups, but the end of which was marked by impotence (1 Kgs 1:1–4). Further, the male ideal excludes those who do not fit neatly into the socially constructed gender binary of male and female. Although Olyan does not mention intersex individuals, he does mention what is likely to be some form of gender-nonconformity, with the male who “holds a spindle,” ûmaḥăzîq bappelek (2 Sam 3:29). 22 Elsewhere he notes that the eunuchs of Isa 56:3–7 ideally have special temple privileges. 23 Much later reflection from the rabbis made many distinctions among intersex individuals. Those neither male nor female, or those that are both male and female, have various rights and obligations, or lack thereof. 24

62

Chapter 4

Finally, the ideal body is well. Many bodily states that could make one considered to be unwell are socially disqualifying but not considered mûmî m. For example, while blindness is mûmî m, deafness and muteness are not. 25 Similarly, but also of a different category because of their potential for contamination are polluting skin disease (ṣāraʿ) and genital flows (zô b), 26 although these conditions could lead to a level of ostracization greater than deafness, for example (Lev 13:45–46). 27 This organizing principle, in which the normative body is modeled on a minority, has to be upheld by a society’s interrelated ideological structures and patterns of behavior. 28 These structures include the legal tradition regarding who is and who is not whole. Taken in its entirety, this legal tradition favors the “hot, dry, unleaking and, therefore, superior male.” 29 The body which is not whole, male, and well becomes heavily regulated because of the danger it poses to the social body. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find even stricter regulations. For example, in the Temple Scroll (11Q19 45:12–14) we find that blindness is polluting: As for any blind persons, they shall not enter into [the city] all their days. They shall not pollute the city in the midst of which I dwell, for I, YHWH, dwell in the midst of the children of Israel forever. 30

Berquist proposes a single ideal of biblical wholeness: a whole person has his parts and is functioning well and within natural boundaries. 31 This definition excludes women, men without functioning penises, most intersex individuals, and those with certain illnesses, excretions, or wounds. Moreover, the body that deviates from the normative body can be viewed metaphorically in terms of nonbodily defects, such as sinfulness and ignorance. 32 The prophets often make use of this trope, such as accusing their rhetorical target of blindness (e.g., Isa 56:10). 33 I would like to emphasize several points here. First, while the conception of the body in the Hebrew Bible is not the same as that of the Greeks, which itself was not simply dualistic, the conception of the body reflected in the Hebrew Bible is not a simple monism. Those categories are too constraining for the present discussion. A second, and related, point is that while the body is a biological entity, it cannot be understood solely as such because it is also constructed socially. The normative body gives us a way of understanding these social aspects, particularly with regard to purity and impurity. The corpse is the most non-normative body, and the “father of impurities.” 34 Suriano critiques the oppositional categories of monism and dualism, and what previous scholars have referred to as a psychosomatic, or even a “biopsychospiritual” unity, between the népeš and body because these ultimately fail to account for the complexities that result when the corpse ceases to exist. 35 Suriano further argues that the failure to properly or fully understand

The Bible and Death

63

terms such as népeš with regard to the body is primarily a failure to understand the Bible’s conception of death. Likewise, the failure to understand death concepts such as Sheol stem from a failure to understand the socially constructed aspects of the body. DEATH IN THE HEBREW BIBLE More than is the case in the Hebrew Bible, much of the relevant Mesopotamian literature contains reflections on the underworldly realm of the dead, the condition of the dead, the origins of death, the search for immortality, and apotropaic rituals to fend off evil or death. First of all, the gods themselves are immortal, in that they do not experience what we would consider natural deaths, due to old age or succumbing to disease. They are not, however, invincible. The gods can in fact die and they sometimes do at the hands of another god. Unlike these deities, humans can die both natural and violent deaths. Their deaths can be unexpected and out of their own control. Some humans, however, hasten their own death through sin or prolong their life through service to a deity. For example, a king could build a temple and in so doing affect his fate. 36 The dead go to the underworld, the west, the land of no return, the great place below. To get there, one travels on a journey, crossing the River Hubur to a necropolis. 37 The condition of the dead in the afterlife depended largely upon their status and deeds in life. For example, the more sons one had, the more plentiful his post-mortem food supplies were. 38 Grave goods were also important in this context, consisting not only of food and beer, but also of creature comforts such as furniture and a head rest. 39 Those who were dead were generally understood to be quiet and calm, but active enough to eat. They could also be invoked in ways that benefited the living. 40 Regarding the origin of death, it seems that although one could seek immortality, mortality was the natural condition. In the Sumerian tradition, which seems to reflect more on disability than on mortality, Enki created imperfect (e.g., barren women and eunuchs) and mortal human servants from clay. In Enuma Elish, Marduk created human servants from the blood of Kingu. Death was part of their origin, and they were created as mortal creatures. When Gilgamesh seeks the flood survivor Utnapishtim to learn about immortality, he encounters a wine-maiden who tells him that mortality was established at creation: For mankind [the gods] established death, Life they kept for themselves. 41

The gods made us mortal from the beginning, and therefore, the woman tells him, you should rejoice, and eat and drink. Although these texts seem to present death as part of human nature, there is also a reflection on the attempt

64

Chapter 4

to gain immortality. Gilgamesh seeks to be immortal after grieving the loss of his friend Enkidu, but although amazingly strong and able to swim to the bottom of the sea, he is, in the end, too weak to maintain possession of the plant that could bring immortality. Adapa also seemingly has a chance at immortality, but listening to the advice of Enki, he refuses to eat and drink food from Anu’s table that would have brought him such immortality. 42 Turning to reflections on death in the Hebrew Bible, although some say a biblical thanatology is not possible, others see a great deal of material one can mine for information on the subject. 43 The most common term for “death” is māwet. Although they are etymologically related, it is important not to confuse this Hebrew common noun with the Canaanite deity Mot. It is possible that in some instances when death is personified, the Hebrew writer has in mind a mythological context, but this is not common and limited to perhaps a dozen instances (e.g., Hos 13:14). 44 Most of the uses of māwet are simply descriptive, such as in the phrase PN died, or the death of PN. These statements, even when they occur in a narrative and not just genealogical context, have more familial than theological significance. 45 To say that death is the opposite of life verges on the tautological, but it does convey the important point that death can be seen to entail the loss of the good things of life, presenting a “theological vacuum,” in which remembrance and joy and the praise of God are no longer possible. 46 Death in the Hebrew Bible has generally been viewed by scholars as a dreary affair, with the afterlife described as non-life, or even after-death. 47 Impending death can, of course, be terrifying, but the Hebrew Bible does not always present death as something to be feared. 48 It is not desirable, but it is more often seen as a simple inevitability. As the opposite of life, which offers the opportunity to praise God, death is the silencing of that praise, which sometimes engenders anger (Psalms 6, 102). 49 On the other hand, death was sometimes welcomed, or even wished for, whether due to great distress as in the case of Jonah (Jon 4:3), Elijah (1 Kgs 19:4) and Moses (Num 11:15), or in the hope of avoiding humiliation or torture as in the case of King Saul (1 Sam 31:4). 50 Tobit, like Job, wishes for death as a relief from his social and physical oppression (Tob 3:6). 51 Death is often used as a poetic metaphor for distress, particularly in the Psalms. For example, Psalm 88:3–8: For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol. I am counted among those who go down to the Pit; I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead, like the slain that lie in the grave, like those whom you remember no more, for they are cut off from your hand.

The Bible and Death

65

You have put me in the depths of the Pit, in the regions dark and deep. Your wrath lies heavy upon me, and you overwhelm me with all your waves.

There are many examples of this poetic usage, which can be both individual and communal. 52 In addition to distress brought on by the forsakenness by God, death may be used to describe the distress caused by the threat of enemies. Death has rich metaphorical use in other contexts, as well, and death can be used to describe any situation which is seen as being in opposition to life, such as poverty (e.g., 1 Sam 2:6–8). 53 Metaphorically speaking, one can even come up from Sheol. While actual death is a radical break with life, in metaphorical death “the discontinuity lay between a healthy and successful life and one marked by adversity, in physical health or otherwise,” which can be overcome or reversed. 54 He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. (Ps 40:2)

While suffering and troubles are often referred to as a metaphorical death, actual death is often referred to euphemistically. For example, death is sometimes referred to as being gathered to one’s people (e.g., Gen 25:8), to lie down with one’s ancestors (Gen 47:30), or to go the way of all the earth (Josh 23:14). With the possible narrative exceptions of Enoch and Elijah (Gen 5:24 and 2 Kgs 2:11), the Hebrew Bible is clear that death is universal in scope. While God controls life and death, there is a death that is common to all humans (Num 16:29) for death is a characteristic of being human, as it is for all animals. Qoheleth writes of it as a matter of fact, just as there is a time to be born, there is a time to die (Eccl 3:2). Although everyone dies, not everyone dies in the same way, for there are good deaths and bad deaths. As with the above mentioned Korahites of Numbers 16, who are swallowed into Sheol alive, one’s manner of living can determine the manner of one’s death. The types of deaths that the Hebrew Bible present as bad can be premature, violent, or without leaving one’s name behind. 55 In contrast, Hezekiah was able to avoid a premature death by praying to God, who healed his illness and gave him another fifteen years (Isaiah 38). Untimely deaths, such as that of Ahab (1 Kgs 22:37), can also be violent, a sign of divine disfavor. Premature deaths due to disease or weakness, or a death at the hands of one’s enemies can be viewed as a humiliating death. The prayer which saved Hezekiah was not a cry to God to save him from normal mortality, but to save him from departing “in the middle of my days.” 56 Violent deaths are especially humiliating for those in power, as they

66

Chapter 4

are also indicative of defeat, as seen in the prophecy of the humiliation of the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28. Finally, a bad death may be marked by childlessness. Leaving one’s name through one’s lineage is a significant marker of blessedness and is one of the ways in which one could continue life in the face of death. 57 Dying without a name is a mark of cursedness. Although she does this in an act of subterfuge, the widow of Tekoa who comes to David expresses a real fear of childlessness when her only son is threatened: “Thus they would quench my one remaining ember, and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth” (2 Sam 14:7b). We can also recognize the essentialness of lineage in the legal obligations of levirate marriage that provided an heir for dead relatives. 58 For example, we see these obligations play out in the life of Tamar, who, having lost her husbands, acts to ensure that her father-in-law provide for the lineage of his son Er (Gen 38). Moreover, Genesis provides us with many examples of the shame and distress brought about by barrenness. As Abraham makes clear (Gen 15:2), nothing, even money and long life, can compensate for childlessness. 59 The barren womb is, along with Sheol, never satisfied (Prov 30:16). 60 On the other hand, good deaths are timely, peaceful, and in the context of family. There are many biblical examples of good deaths, such as Abraham, who died old and content, buried by his sons Isaac and Ishmael (Gen 25:7–11). Moses died, reaching the old age of 120, full of energy and with eyes undimmed (Deut 34:7). Although in a foreign land, Joseph died surrounded by family and his bones were carried out of Egypt by his descendants (Exod 13:19). The initial prospect for hope in the face of death seems grim. Qoheleth has a distinct interest in death, unlike any other biblical text. The best one can do is to simply attend to what one can control (possessions, enjoyment, food, etc.) because one certainly cannot control the greatest forces in life, particularly death. 61 Job (14:7, 10), likewise, highlights the lack of hope by comparing humans unfavorably to a tree: For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. But mortals die, and are laid low; humans expire, and where are they?

Yet, even Job, who recognizes that death is the “house appointed for all the living” (30:23) died, old and full of days surrounded by four generations of his offspring (Job 42:16–17). Just as God rescued Job from his metaphorical Sheol, Isaiah affirms that God can swallow up death, as Mot is swallowed up, and deliver his people (Isa 25:8). Although no human can overcome death,

The Bible and Death

67

much later texts affirm that God can, by reflecting on an afterlife and including aspects of reward or postmortem existence (e.g., 1 Macc 7:9). The condition and location of the dead receive some comment in the Hebrew Bible, but there does not seem to be the extensive theological reflection that we find in other ancient literature. This lack of information makes it difficult to draw insights regarding the ancient Israelites view of the dead. Moreover, as with many aspects of the Hebrew Bible, one should not assume that a given text reflects the views of the entirety of Israelite society. 62 Still just as looking at the treatment and social control of the body can tell us about beliefs and values, so too looking at the behaviors toward a corpse, and even the bones after the corpse is gone, can help to uncover the ancient Israelites’ beliefs. Evidence for the cult of the dead is important because it has implications for that society’s understanding of the human being. Durkheim emphasized that there is no cult of the dead in the absence of some belief about the persistence of humans, or at least some humans, after death. Hays notes that in comparison to nearby cultures, one has to assert that in ancient Israel either the dead were not viewed as divinized or active, or one must argue that the text was purged of any such reference. 63 Since it is difficult to find strong evidence for views that humans persisted after death in the Hebrew Bible, archaeological evidence of the cult of the dead might provide a way of accessing these views. From both archaeology and texts, we know that cultic practices with regard to the dead were widespread throughout the ancient Near East, but in the Hebrew Bible we find little to no emphasis on the cult of the dead except to prohibit it (e.g., Lev 19:28, 31). 64 Many, however, view prohibition of a practice as evidence of its presence and assume then that it is likely that there were cultic practices surrounding death and the care of the dead. 65 Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, for example, suggests that the evidence of tombs and the abundant grave goods are significant evidence for a widespread cult of the dead as an “integral aspect of Israelite and Judahite society.” 66 Moreover, she asserts that the evidence from Ugarit can be used as further support for this position. 67 Since we find clear evidence of a significant cult of the dead in Ugarit, many find it likely that we should see the same practices in Israel and Judah as well. Some who agree with Bloch-Smith go even further and suggest that we do even have significant textual evidence in the Bible for a cult of the dead in the form of a ritual feast known as a marzē aḥ, which John McLaughlin notes can be found in the Bible several times by name or inference. 68 While some see these references as definitive evidence of Israelite cult of the dead, Bloch-Smith sees them as “a drinking club” that provided an opportunity for people to grieve. 69 Brian Schmidt also rejects the view that the marzē aḥ was a cultic institution, and points out that the most obvious reference to the practice (Amos 6:1–7) lacks any funerary connection. 70 Hays

Chapter 4

68

often uses the term “cultic” to refer to the feasting attached to funerary rites; Suriano, though, cautions us to be wary about referring to all mortuary practices, including feeding and caring for the dead, as cultic. 71 Schmidt also argues along these lines, departing from Bloch-Smith’s view, and asserts that we do not have evidence for a pre-exilic Israelite belief in a meaningful interaction between the living and the dead. 72 The grave goods found in Israelite tombs are interpreted in terms of funerary practices that are distinct from cultic activity. 73 Returning to Durkheim’s view, although cultic activity might be evidence of a belief in the persistence of some humans after death, funerary rites do not. While I will shortly return specifically to Suriano’s discussion of this matter through the archaeological evidence of the rock cut tomb, it seems likely that throughout most of Israelite history there was not a meaningful view of a persistence of some aspect of the human long after death. At least until the very latest texts which begin to reflect a growing concern with postmortem judgment, it seems that Sheol is the resting place of the dead, subterranean, a pit or the grave. The imagery of Sheol and the grave are inseparable, “since the dead are in both at the same time” rather than in separate places. 74 Some have referred to Sheol as an “ur-grave,” or the “afterdeath.” 75 The Septuagint generally renders the term as Hades. 76 Unlike the conceptions found among Israel’s ancient neighbors, Sheol in the Hebrew Bible is neither a deity nor ruled by chthonic deities. 77 Moreover, one’s existence in Sheol was not marked by a journey, various stages, or encounters. Rather, the common view of the Hebrew Bible’s usual presentation of Sheol “suggest[s] a somnolent, gloomy existence without meaningful activity or social distinction.” 78 This chapter began with an observation and a question from Qoheleth. The observation is both obvious and depressing: there is no difference between the bodies of humans and those of animals. All are dust, all return to the dust, and that is all that can be known by observing the biological facts about human bodies. Qoheleth’s accompanying question concerns what cannot be seen: is there something different between animals and humans at the point of death? If the biological aspects of the body cannot help us with this question, then perhaps the social dimensions of the body can. At the point of death, how do other humans create a distinction between a human body and the body of an animal? Saul Olyan lists various options for burial with varying degrees of honor or shaming attached to them. 79 I am here going to examine two of these, one of which is dehumanizing, and the other ideal. As an example of a dehumanizing burial, we see Jeremiah prophesying regarding Jehoiakim: Therefore thus says the Judah:

LORD

concerning King Jehoiakim son of Josiah of

The Bible and Death

69

They shall not lament for him, saying, “Alas, my brother!” or “Alas, sister!” They shall not lament for him, saying, “Alas, lord!” or “Alas, his majesty!” With the burial of a donkey he shall be buried— dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem. (Jer 22:18–19)

Olyan sees here a rhetorical move, a scenario in which Jehoiakim’s burial— the burial of an ass—is a ritual reclassification of the king as an animal rather than a human. 80 There are to be no accompanying lamentations and his body is not to be treated respectfully, but simply as the carcass of another animal. Because human bodies are social entities, then how they are treated by others is meaningfully constructive; if the human corpse is treated as an animal carcass, then it is one. The burial of an ass is the opposite of an ideal burial, with the corpse placed on a bench in a family’s rock-cut tomb. Suriano surveyed the archaeology and texts surrounding rock-cut bench tombs and has illuminated the social nature through which this burial process allowed this society to control death. 81 Here, instead of classifying the corpse as an animal carcass, entombment and its accompanying actions are essential to the process guiding an individual through the decomposition of the body to the status of an ancestor. The corpse is laid on a bench and given provisions, which demonstrates that the process of dying extends beyond the time of death. 82 Through the process of secondary burial, the corpse’s transition is marked, as the bones are gathered and placed with the bones of other ancestors. It is only once the body is no longer recognizable as an individual, or even recognizable as a human body, that the dead person can be understood to be no longer a népeš. Even so, the bones are important, and need to be collected and properly stored in a depository within the tombs. We see in the Bible a concern with the proper treatment and collection of bones (e.g., 2 Sam 21:14; 2 Kgs 23:20; Amos 2:1). 83 The tomb is a ritual space and the rituals surrounding entombment and secondary burial allowed Israelite society to control the naturally uncontrollable process of decomposition. 84 This process makes clear that the népeš has decayed along with the body, and that the person is no longer in Sheol, having now gained ancestor status. The difficulty in understanding both népeš and Sheol is made easier by understanding both in terms of relationship status rather than as a location and as an anthropological component of the body, respectively. 85 In the liminal status of a decaying body, the impurity needs to be controlled by entombment. At this stage, the individual is neither a népeš ḥayyāh nor an ancestor, but in Sheol. After secondary burial, the bones are gathered up and the person becomes an ancestor. On this basis, we can make much more sense of the seemingly contradictory and metaphorical uses of Sheol and of the népeš in terms other than simple monism.

70

Chapter 4

CONCLUSION To conclude this chapter, which has largely focused on aspects of death and the non-normative body in the Hebrew Bible, we can draw those aspects together with the concepts of death anxiety and animal reminder disgust discussed and elaborated upon by Thomas Kazen. Because knowledge of our mortal bodies elicits anxiety, humans moved to the point where our bodies are not just biological entities but also social entities, allowing us to shift our focus. Society does this by creating a normative body and enforcing social norms with regard to appearance and behavior. The corpse is the epitome of the animal body, and its decay risks eliciting animal reminder disgust and so must be managed. This is done through entombment as the social body moves to a new status and the biological body ceases to exist. Moreover, we can see how the social construct of a normative body, as well as the treatment of the corpse as a deviation from the norm, can be viewed as upholding an anxiety-buffering worldview. Kazen, whom I introduced in chapter 2, has recognized this point and has placed the Israelite conceptions of purity within the framework of disgust and a set of disgust elicitors. 86 Of these, contact with corpses is the most significant for our discussion here, although violations of the body envelope, which are deviations from the normative body, are also very important. In the Holiness Code (Leviticus 17–26) we see an emphasis on corpse impurity, which Kazen rightly connects to animal reminder disgust. 87 The regulations surrounding the treatment of the corpse is not for the sake of the corpse but as a way of controlling the impurity that results from corpse contamination. The status of the dead depends on the condition of the corpse, which, in turn, depends on actions of the living. In the Hebrew Bible death is part of life, but the boundaries between them are maintained through ritual and through burial. 88 Perhaps here we find an answer to the question from Ecclesiastes. The difference between an animal carcass and a human corpse is dependent upon the social structures and the actions of those living. The living manage the process of decay, and thereby provide a social meaning for the body. In the practices carried out in the rock-cut tombs in ancient Israel we can see how the dead are enabled to become ancestors. This process allows us to view our bodies as more than animal bodies. For both Kazen and Suriano, the treatment of the corpse is an essential form of social protection. But we also see that this process, which elevates the human body over that of an animal, can also be used intentionally to reclassify an individual as an animal through the withholding of proper burial. The control of the corpse by those still living is a mirror of the control that society has over the living body as well, as we will see in the next chapter.

The Bible and Death

71

NOTES 1. Matthew J. Suriano, A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 136. 2. Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli, “Bodily and Embodied: Being human in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible,” Interpretation 67 (2013): 6. See also Silvia Schroer and Thomas Staubli, Biblische Menschenkunde (Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 2013); Suriano, A History of Death, 3. 3. Schroer and Staubli, “Bodily and Embodied,” 7. 4. For examples of this, see Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1995), 125, 138. 5. Suriano, History of Death, 6. 6. Suriano, History of Death, 54. 7. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 1992), 109) lists nearly a dozen terms used to refer to the dead. Suriano, History of Death, 4–5. 8. Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974), 7. 9. James Barr, “Hebraic Psychology,” in Bible and Interpretation; Collected Essays of James Barr, Vol 2, ed. John Barton (Oxford: Oxford University, 2013), 146–147. 10. Schroer and Staubli, “Bodily and Embodied,” 8. 11. Suriano, History of Death, 135, 141. 12. Suriano, History of Death, 5. 13. Suriano, History of Death, 138. 14. Cooper, Body, Soul, 44–45. 15. Cooper, Body, Soul, 44–45. 16. Cooper, Body, Soul, 46. 17. Saul Olyan, Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting mental and physical differences (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008), 1. 18. Rebecca Raphael, Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2008), 33. 19. Olyan, Disability, 27. 20. Olyan, Disability, 36–37. 21. Jon L. Berquist, Controlling Corporeality: The Body and the Household in Ancient Israel (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002) 36. 22. Olyan, Disability, 55, 149 fn 22. 23. Olyan, Disability, 11–12. For a more extensive view of this, in which it is argued that the temple privileges of the eunuchs are a sign of an idyllic state, see Helena M. Bolle and S. R. Llewelyn, “Intersectionality, Gender Liminality and Ben Sira’s Attitude to the Eunuch,” Vetus Testamentum 67 (2017): 546–569. 24. John Hare, “Hermaphrodites, Eunuchs, and Intersex People: The Witness of Medical Science in Biblical Times and Today,” in Intersex, Theology, and the Bible, ed. Susannah Cornwall (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 79–96. 25. Olyan, Disability, 48. 26. Olyan, Disability, 54. 27. Oylan, Disability, 5. 28. Berquist, Controlling Corporeality, 36. 29. Kristin De Troyer, Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003), 110. While De Troyer’s comment is made in the context of a discussion of Christian baptism, the phrase is useful here as well. 30. Olyan, Disability, 104. For a full discussion of disability in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Olyan, Disability, 102–114. 31. Berquist, Controlling Corporeality, 19. 32. Berquist, Controlling Corporeality, 26–27. 33. Olyan, Disability, 7.

72

Chapter 4

34. Hyam Maccoby, Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in Judaism (New York: Cambridge University, 1999), 214. 35. Suriano, History of Death, 6, 136. 36. Alexander Heidel, The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels: A Translation and Interpretation of the Gilgamesh Epic and Related Babylonian and Assyrian Documents (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989) 139–140. 37. Heidel, Gilgamesh, 171–172. 38. Heidel, Gilgamesh, 192. 39. Heidel, Gilgamesh, 151. 40. Heidel, Gilgamesh, 193. 41. Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, vol 1 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2003), 279. 42. Samuel G. F. Brandon, “The Origin of Death in Some Ancient Near Eastern Religions,” Religious Studies 1 (1966): 224–225. 43. Toby Jennings, Precious Enemy: A Biblical Portrait of Death (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017), 8–9. Here he references Karl Rahner, On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder and Herder, 1961). 44. For information regarding Mot, see Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 598. 45. Simon, Dawn of Death, 26. 46. Simon, Dawn of Death, 27. 47. Roland Murphy, “Death and afterlife in the Wisdom literature,” in Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Four: Death, Life-after-death, resurrection and the World-to-come in the Judaisms of Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2000): 101. 48. Suriano, History of Death, 11. 49. Artur Weiser, Psalms, trans. Herbert Hartwell, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 132. 50. Devora Wohlgelernter, “Death Wish in the Bible,” Tradition 19 (1981): 131–140. 51. Aron Pinker, “Job’s Perspectives on Death,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 35 (2007): 73. Job frequently wishes for death (3:11, 21–22; 6:8–9; 7:8–10, 15, 20–21; 10:1, 18–19; 14:13; 17:13–16). 52. Craig C. Broyles, The Conflict of Faith and Experience in the Psalms: A Form-Critical and Theological Study, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 1989), 86. 53. Simon, Dawn of Death, 26. 54. Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 39. 55. Simon, Dawn of Death, 27. 56. Levenson, Resurrection, 170. 57. Levenson, Resurrection, 74. 58. See, for example, Dvora E. Weisberg, Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism (Waltham, MA: Brandeis, 2009). 59. Levenson, Resurrection, 115. 60. Levenson, Resurrection, 114. 61. Matthew S. Rindge, “Mortality and Enjoyment: The Interplay of Death and Possessions in Qoheleth,” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 73 (2011): 265–280. 62. Hays, Death in the Iron Age, 166; Levenson, Resurrection, 46–47. 63. Hays, Death in the Iron Age, 167. 64. Hays, Death in the Iron Age, 167. 65. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “The Cult of the Dead in Judah: Interpreting the Material Remains,” JBL 111 (1992): 222–224. Hays (Death in the Iron Age, 135–147) outlines the history of scholarly views on this. 66. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 146. See also Bloch-Smith, “The Cult of the Dead,” 213.

The Bible and Death

73

67. Mark Smith and Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “Death and Afterlife in Ugarit and Israel,” JAOS 108 (1988), 283. 68. John McLaughlin, The Marzeah in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the Extra-Biblical Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 103–104. McLaughlin himself does not necessarily view the feast as cultic, and asserts that the preconceived notions of the marzē aḥ are too often read into the text. 69. For a cultic view of the feast, see Philip King and Lawrence Stager, Life in Biblical Israel (Louisville: WJK, 2011), 355–357; Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 125. 70. Schmidt, Beneficent Dead, 146. 71. Levenson, Resurrection, 46–47. “Those [psalms], they in fact argue, do not reflect the whole reality of the Israelite construction of death. In particular, it has been conjectured that a cult of the dead had been long and widely practiced in ancient Israel, as in other ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean societies, before various biblical sources finally acted to proscribe it.” See also Alan F. Segal, Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 124. Hays provides an overview of the swinging pendulum of alternative views in 20th century study of Israelite and Judahite cultic practices regarding the dead. Christopher B. Hays, Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah, FAT (Tü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 135–147. 72. Schmidt, Beneficent Dead, 275–276. 73. Suriano, History of Death, 156–157. 74. Levenson, Resurrection, 37. 75. Suriano, History of Death, 4. 76. Jennings, Precious Enemy, 73–75. 77. Jennings, Precious Enemy, 75. 78. Jennings, Precious Enemy, 75. Finney examines several texts with regard to Sheol including 1 Sam 2:6–8 and Isaiah 26. He also provides an excursus on the work of Philip S. Johnston and his statistical approach to the more than 60 passages relevant to the study of Sheol. Mark T. Finney, Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife: Body and Soul in Antiquity, Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Routledge, 2018), 25–40. See Philip Johnston, Shades of Sheol (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002). Those in Sheol might be considered rĕpāʾî m (‫)רפאים‬, shades under the earth (e.g., Ps 88:10–12). The rĕpāʾî m are shadowy and insubstantial. The life of the rĕpāʾî m is one of conscious awareness, but certainly less desirable than being alive on earth. This is not a particularly common term and is found only in four books of the Hebrew Bible. Job 26:5; Ps 88:10; Prov 2:18; 9:18; Isa 14:9; 26:14, 19; Prov 21:16. Jennings, Precious Enemy, 77. 79. Saul M. Olyan, “Some Neglected Aspects of Israelite Interment Ideology,” JBL 124 (2005), 601–616. See also Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, “From Womb to Tomb: The Israelite family in death as in life,” In The Family in Life and in Death: The Family in Ancient Israel, ed. Patricia Dutcher-Walls (New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 122. Bloch-Smith organizes burials into eight categories. 80. Saul M. Olyan, “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment as a Ritual Act of Reclassification,” JBL 133 (2014): 271–279. 81. Suriano, History of Death, 54. 82. Suriano, History of Death, 40, 47. 83. Suriano, History of Death, 50. 84. Suriano, History of Death, 43. 85. Suriano, History of Death, 54–55. 86. Kazen, “The Role of Disgust,” 65. 87. Kazen actually uses the term animal nature disgust, but since he is relying on the RozinHaidt-McCauley model, he means the same thing by this. The terms are used interchangeably by researchers. Kazen, “The Role of Disgust,” 65–66. 88. Suriano, History of Death, 53–55.

Chapter Five

I Am Not an Animal

That humans spend a great deal of time, energy, and resources on their appearance is unquestionable. Terror management theorists have explored this reality and connect humans’ concern for appearance with death anxiety. For example, researchers have demonstrated that subjects who are primed for mortality salience express stronger concern for their appearance, even influencing to the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery. 1 Other studies have demonstrated that mortality salience primes led subjects to spend more on clothing, cosmetics, and hair products. 2 Cultures develop various outward appearances that are favored over others and enable members of that society to be meaningful participants by exhibiting that appearance. 3 Moreover, failure to participate in this social construct leads to societal rebuke or stigmatization. A great observer of the lengths that people went to make themselves attractive, Jonathan Swift seemed particularly to enjoy pointing out when people failed to do so. Presumably, misogynists were not exactly hard to come by in eighteenth century England, but even so, Swift is considered to be one of the great misogynists of his day. He frequently wrote about what he considered to be the disgusting aspects of female behavior and bodies. In a poem describing a surreptitious inspection of “The Ladies Dressing Room,” 4 Swift examines the social façade and the truth about the animal bodies that hide behind it. Prepared to encounter the world, the beautiful Celia emerges from the dressing room: Five hours, (and who can do it less in?) By haughty Celia spent in dressing; The goddess from her chamber issues, Arrayed in lace, brocades and tissues.

75

Chapter 5

76

Seeing that the coast was clear, and seizing his opportunity to find how it is that Celia is so beautiful, Strephon “stole in, and took a strict survey, of all the litter as it lay.” He soon discovered that not all was as it appeared. Celia’s hair was far from natural, for in the dressing room he found, . . . greasy coifs and pinners reeking, Which Celia slept at least a week in? A pair of tweezers next he found To pluck her brows in arches round, Or hairs that sink the forehead low, Or on her chin like bristles grow.

Even more horrifying to him, among sweat-stained undergarments and dirty dental implements Strephon saw an ominous chest. Hoping against everything he knew to be true, He lifts the lid, there needs no more, He smelled it all the time before. As from within Pandora’s box, When Epimetheus op’d the locks, A sudden universal crew Of human evils upwards flew;

With the release of the chest’s foul odors, the young man is almost driven mad by the confirmation of his worst fears: Disgusted Strephon stole away Repeating in his amorous fits, Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!

The horror of recognizing that beautiful women are in fact animals with natural bodily functions and imperfections seemed to delight Swift and he frequently returned to the topic. Several times his character Gulliver encounters giant women, whose size makes it possible to closely examine and describe their bodies in details intended to elicit disgust. By recounting their toilet habits or by enlarging them in order to expose them to closer scrutiny, Swift dehumanizes women—he wrote, “I cannot conceive you [women] to be human creatures”—by describing them in ways that will elicit animal reminder disgust in his readers. 5 Although Swift’s writings are noteworthy for their casual suggestions of violence and clear disgust and dehumanization of women, his view is hardly atypical. As noted in the preceding chapter, women’s bodies come under intense social control because they are deemed non-normative, that is, whole, male, and well. Overlapping social structures are required to maintain a system that establishes a normative body, and enforces compliance to that

I Am Not an Animal

77

norm, along with the marginalization of those with non-normative bodies. Cultures use speech to value and evaluate human bodies, thereby drawing everyone in a particular culture, regardless of their own body, into the common discourse regarding bodies. Specific body parts are assigned certain meanings and bodily behaviors are categorized. In this way, society speaks about bodies in ways that regulate them. 6 In this brief chapter, I will examine the social pressures which dominate the appearance of the body, calling for members of a society to present themselves in proscribed ways, and I will use hair as an example to demonstrate how this control is exercised. This is particularly important for woman, whose outward appearance is more tightly controlled than that of men. The demands with regard to female clothing and grooming are significant, for her very humanity is at stake. To return one last time to Jonathan Swift, the message is clear: the job of a woman is to disguise herself, hiding her animal body, to avoid disgusting the men around her. SOCIAL CONTROL OF THE BODY In the Hebrew Bible, issues of purity are conceived of in ways which hierarchically determine which people are and are not allowed to be connected with God’s presence. 7 Because unwholeness of individual members can lead to unwholeness of society unwhole individuals are often isolated or ostracized. 8 Everyday activities of moving around, eating, what is worn, and how one cares for one’s body, are imbued with meaning and become “a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of culture are inscribed,” serving as a “direct locus of social control.” 9 Terror management theorists also recognize this relationship; they point out that the issue is not so much that unruly bodies threaten society, but that society exists to help us rule our animal bodies. Cultural worldviews exist to prevent the recognition of our animal bodies from “undermining our pretensions of meaning and significance. So we transform our bodies into cultural symbols of beauty and power.” 10 A great deal of this control revolves around sex and the female body. Very often, cultural values are displayed by the way in which women are required to publicly present themselves and women are often vilified, or worse, for flouting conventions regarding bodily displays which might be interpreted as presenting themselves as sexually available. Terror management theorists note the problematic impulses that are involved in sexuality. Sexual thoughts and behaviors elicit death anxiety by drawing attention to our bodies, threatening to weaken the animal-human boundary we work hard to maintain. It is easier to maintain our dualistic views of self when we are not seeing ourselves, as the terror management

78

Chapter 5

theorists crudely put it, “as naked, pulsating pieces of fornicating finite species meat.” 11 Studies have supported this view. They show that mortality salience primes increase the preference in both men and women for nonphysical, romantic aspects of love, while making sex itself less appealing. These primes lead men to rate women as less attractive in general, and to favor modest attire over provocative clothing. Moreover, priming for romantic aspects does not lead to increased death thought accessibility while overtly sexual primes do. 12 The results of these studies are so strong that terror management theorists even see here a factor operative in misogynist attitudes of verbal and physical abuse. The ambivalence that arises because of the conflict of sexual urges and the denial of our animal nature makes men ambivalent about sexual arousal. They blame women for their own arousal, which leads to derogation and abuse of women for being the trigger that reminds them of their animality. 13 Becker asserted that sex and death are twins. Studies demonstrate that thoughts about death make sex unappealing, while thoughts about sex make death thoughts all the more accessible. Becker takes this to the mythological level, when he writes that, Sex is of the body, and the body is of death. As [Otto] Rank reminds us, this is the meaning of the Biblical account of the ending of paradise, when the discovery of sex brings death into the world. As in Greek mythology too, Eros and Thanatos are inseparable; death is the natural twin brother of sex. 14

While I am not of the opinion that sex is at the heart of the nakedness and clothing at the end of Genesis 3, this is a common interpretation. This is unsurprising, really, if as the whole of this project asserts, mortality salience is primed by the reading of this text. Commentators are not immune to such primes and so it is to be expected that they might see a negative view of sex as a key aspect of the passage. The control of female sexuality often involves particular forms of public presentation, whether in clothing, cosmetics or hair. In most cultures, there are distinguishing characteristics that serve to publicly and clearly indicate which women are or are not sexually available. This might be the wearing of a ring on a particular finger, the presence or absence of a head covering, or the length of a skirt. Throughout, the emphasis on culturally appropriate presentation is necessary for the continued maintenance of their subordinate status. 15 For example, one study has shown a relationship between women and clothing. A woman with a child is morally evaluated by observers differently from a childless woman wearing similar clothes. Mothers are perceived to be asexual and revealing clothing leads to embarrassment and the moral judgment that the woman is selfish. 16 Moreover, the women in the study even tended to self-censor, worried that they might send the “wrong mes-

I Am Not an Animal

79

sage.” 17 The social control of clothing and appearance, and making judgments as to whether a woman is moral or immoral based on her clothes is indicative of cultural values and fears about female bodies. 18 In the New Testament, and in many churches today, we see an emphasis on modesty (e.g., 1 Cor 11:5–10; 1 Tim 2:9), often explicitly stated as a caution against eliciting male sexual arousal. 19 The body is a “cultural costume” which is constantly communicating. 20 How we style our hair can communicate our social group or even our hopes and ambitions. Although we tend to know very well those closest to us, we encounter strangers every day; clothing and hair are not just mere appearances, but are clues to how we are to function in a society of strangers, which requires us to know our relationship to others at a glance. 21 Before moving on to a more detailed discussion of clothing in chapter 7, it is useful to note here exactly how the body is used to communicate, how it is controlled, and how the lack of control can elicit animal reminder disgust and increase death anxiety. A ubiquitous trait of cultures is the obscuring of the human relationship to other animals through disguise, so as to make clear that humans do not belong to the animal world, but to the world of culture. 22 HAIR AS SOCIAL CONTROL I will take a moment here to illustrate the principle of social control with the consideration of the role of hair as a form of communication, and the emphasis on hair removal in many societies and across time. The topic of clothing, which is more at the center of this project, will be taken up in a later chapter. Unadorned or unmodified bodies, particularly hairy bodies, are almost always viewed as “too ‘natural’ and therefore potentially disquieting.” 23 Ovid, for example, wrote that women should be careful to keep their legs smooth and to “let no rude goat find his way beneath your arms.” 24 I think that Ovid’s crude remark equating human body hair to an animal is telling. Both men and women react strongly to body hair. In one study, participants watched women, some of whom had unshaven legs, perform simple tasks. The women with unshaven legs were rated as less intelligent and competent than women without visible leg hair. Both men and women used words such as “gross” and “disgusting.” 25 Hair removal among women is so common that 96 percent of university females have shaved leg and armpit hair, while 76 percent have shaved pubic hair. 26 Moreover, the relationship between hairiness and death anxiety has been demonstrated. When shown images of men after a mortality salience prime, women find men with less hair to be more attractive than hairy men. 27 Hair and clothing are regulated by virtually all societies, whether formally through legislation or informally through familial and social pressure. 28 While

80

Chapter 5

hairstyles vary wildly across cultures, hair is used within a particular culture to denote status or to communicate to others. For example, in the 1960s in the United States, long hair on white men or naturally curly afros on African Americans was used to signify the wearers’ counter-cultural attitudes. 29 Likewise, today, while people have a great variety of socially-acceptable hairstyles, a man with a handlebar mustache is communicating to others that he is a hipster, while a woman with long hair on top and shaved sides may be telling others about her sexual identity. Although people in many societies now have more freedom to use their hair to communicate to others as they please, there are still social ramifications, as openly communicating through hairstyle provides others with the information they need to act on their prejudices. In the ancient world, hair was no less communicative. Hair removal of the armpits, legs, and pubic regions is ancient and culturally ubiquitous. 30 Head hair often marks the individual as special in some way. Long hair on women might be regarded as particularly beautiful. As we read in the Song of Songs, far from Ovid’s “rude goat,” the lover’s hair is descending down the curves of her body like a lovely flock of goats moving down a hillside (Song 4:1). Likewise, long hair on a man could be considered beautiful, as in the case of David’s son Absalom (2 Sam 14:25–26). As Judith prepares to lure the enemy commander into her tent, she “arms herself for the mission” by arranging her hair with a ribbon (Jdt 10:3). 31 The gray hair of old age can be sign of wisdom and blessedness, providing the wearer with a “crown of glory” (Prov 16:31). 32 Bad hair, or the lack of hair, could also be a source of ridicule, as in the case of bald Elisha (2 Kgs 2:23). Hair is also a marker of status and gender. Because genitals are rendered invisible by clothes, some see hair and haircutting is a “visible symbolic displacement of the invisible genitals.” 33 Just as in many modern societies, many men in the ancient world would keep their hair shorter than women. Egyptian art depicts Semitic men as having hair of moderate length. In the case of Absalom, he would cut his hair annually (2 Sam 14:26). The evidence is clearer in the New Testament, where Paul seems to consider it natural that men’s hair should be shorter than women’s (1 Cor 11:14). A change in hair style is often indicative of a change in status or a rite of passage. For example, shaving the head is required at the end of a Nazirite vow (Num 6:18) and the preparation for first temple service by a Levite (Num 8:7) 34 The hair and finger nails of female prisoners of war taken as wives were to be cut (Deut 21:10–14). 35 Hair could be forcibly shaved as a punitive measure. 36 Isaiah 7:20 predicts the forcible shaving of the head, beard, and genitals of the Israelites by the Assyrians, a practice reminiscent of the insulting shaving of David’s emissaries by the king of the Ammonites (2 Sam 10:1–5). 37

I Am Not an Animal

81

CONCLUSION Matters related to the control of the human body by the ancient society are bound together by disgust and terror management theory. We have seen that clothing, hair, sex, gender, food and relationships with animals are cognitively integrated, united in their relationship to mortality awareness, and therefore highly regulated by religious and even secular culture. Moreover, the awareness of one of these elements often impacts the understanding of the others. It is therefore unsurprising that religious systems as a whole, or a religious narrative in particular, should feature many or all aspects of these interrelated elements. This is all the more true when an overriding theme of a given narrative concerns mortality. As discussed earlier, animal reminder disgust is but one aspect of the complex matrix of the emotion of disgust. In the history of human evolution, core disgust was the food ejection response to rotten or bitter foods, which protects all primates against poison and pathogens. While the origins of disgust in pathogen avoidance and food ejection are clearly related to death, the growing awareness of mortality allowed disgust to be extended to other reminders of our mortality, such as blood and bodily emissions. Further, disgust became attached to ideas, not just external objects, and so became moralized. The cultural development of disgust elicitors, which expanded from a food rejection system related to pathogen avoidance to avoidance of reminders of humans’ animal nature, especially death, and then to some aspects of the moral domain, served to keep humans from “inappropriate sexual acts, poor hygiene, violations of the ideal body ‘envelope’ or exterior form, and most critically, death.” 38 It is very clear from clinical research that the human body is bound up with the emotion of disgust as a way of preventing contact with any objects that can cause harm, or even with harmful ideas. Of course, all emotions are bodily; but disgust is self-referential, in that it is experienced in and because of the body. As shown in chapter 1, it is now clear that being reminded of our bodies affects our reactions to our own thoughts, to others, and to our environment. The list of items which have been demonstrated to increase death thought accessibility is lengthy and consistent with concerns for disgust and in-group cohesion. The list includes menstruation, sex, breast feeding, injections, injuries, birth defects, obesity, poor hygiene (including hair and clothes), conspicuous foreignness, rotten food, corpses, and failure to respect gender norms, as with cross-dressing. Food, bodies, and cultural presentations rank high on the lists of disgust elicitors, and therefore mortality reminders. Kazen senses this point and, although not referring to terror management theory, argues that it is disgust that provides the best lens for understanding Israelite purity laws. Rejecting Douglas and Milgrom, he argues that core disgust, animal reminder disgust, and moral disgust are all present in

82

Chapter 5

Israel’s purity regulations. Not only purity but also social control of hair and clothing with regard to status and gender are part of the matrix of disgust and the control of death. 39 Terror management theorists would agree and note that items such as those listed above are societally controlled because of the need to control death anxiety. The adherence to the cultural norms and regulations concerning the shaping or removal of hair and the wearing of clothes helps to assuage death anxiety by separating humans from other animals: 40 [T]he body is a problem because it makes evident our similarity to other animals; this similarity is a threat because it reminds us that we are eventually going to die. . . . [C]ultural worldviews transform the body from a creaturely flesh and blood biological entity to a cultural symbol. 41

Because the body itself is the problem, the covering up and manicuring of the body is essential to our identity as humans, rather than animals. Because it is cognitively tied to death anxiety, the enforcement of these norms becomes an existential issue. NOTES 1. Jill M. Chonody and Barbra Teater, “Why do I dread looking old?: A test of social identity theory, terror management theory, and the double standard of aging,” Journal of Women & Aging 28 (2015): 11. 2. Arndt et al., “Urge to Splurge,” 9. 3. Arndt et al., “Urge to Splurge,” 206. 4. Jonathan Swift and Thomas Roscoe, The Works of Jonathan Swift Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published; in 2 Volumes (London: Bohn, 1843), 637–638. 5. Celia begins the poem as a goddess and ends with a previous admirer disgusted by her. Swift’s dehumanization of women is not simply suggestive or presented for a laugh; it was clearly his view of them. Neither did he keep his criticisms directed vaguely at half the population, but included views such as this in personal correspondence. In a letter to the fiancé of a man he highly regarded, Swift listed what he considered to be the duties and weaknesses of wives and tells this young woman his view of women in general. Elsewhere, Swift approvingly shares an overheard comment made by a husband concerning his wife: because he was annoyed by her talking and disgusted by the smell of her hair and breath, “nothing could make her supportable but cutting off her head.” Barnett, In the Company of Women, 129–130. 6. Berquist, Disability, 5. 7. Berquist, Disability, 11. 8. Berquist, Disability, 20. 9. Dietmar Neufeld, “The Rhetoric of Body, Clothing and Identity in the Vita and Genesis: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Rhetoric and Scripture,” Scriptura: International Journal of Bible, Religion and Theology in Southern Africa 90 (2005): 680. 10. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 151. 11. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 159. 12. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 159–161. 13. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 165–166. 14. Becker, Denial of Death, 162.

I Am Not an Animal

83

15. Beth Montemurro and Meghan M. Gillen, “How Clothes Make the Woman Immoral: Impressions given off by sexualized clothing,” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 31 (2013): 179. 16. Montemurro and Gillen, “Clothes Make the Woman,” 177. 17. Montemurro and Gillen, “Clothes Make the Woman,” 172. 18. Montemurro and Gillen, “Clothes Make the Woman,” 169. 19. Examples of anecdotal evidence abound, even in official church discipline publications. For example, in the discipline of the South Atlantic Mennonite Conference one can read: “Any clothing or style that unduly displays the female form . . . violate the teaching of the Scripture (I Tim. 2:9, 10; I Pet. 3:3, 4). A Christian woman will always avoid any exposure of her body that provokes lustful thoughts in the minds of men.” southatlanticmennonite.org/rules--discipline.html. 20. Neufeld, “The Rhetoric of Body,” 680. 21. Corrigan, The Dressed Society, 6. 22. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 154. 23. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 154. 24. Solomon et al., Worm at the Core, 155. Taken from Ovid, The Art of Love (3.193). 25. Marika Tiggemann and Suzanna Hodgson, “The hairlessness norm extended: Reasons for and predictors of women’s body hair removal at different body sites,” Sex Roles 59 (2008): 890. Disapproval of body hair increases with increased levels of disgust sensitivity. Marika Tiggemann and Christine Lewis, “Attitudes toward women’s body hair: Relationship with disgust sensitivity,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 28 (2004): 381–387. 26. Tiggemann and Hodgson, “Hairlessness Extended,” 894. 27. Jordan L. Clemens, Jeff Schimel, and David Webber, “Death and Hairless Creatures? Elucidating existential factors in the evolution of human body hair,” Eureka 3 (2012): 7–8. 28. “Hair is just there as a product of our biological inheritance; but it cannot be just left there. Hair must be dealt with; thus everywhere there is cultural control of hair.” Alf Hiltebeitel and Barbara D. Miller, Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), xii. 29. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (New York: Routledge, 2015), 77. Douglas spends several pages on how “shaggy hair” is a “protest against represented forms of social control.” 30. Solomon et al., “Worm at the Core,” 156. 31. Philip Francis Esler, Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Old Testament Narrative with Its Ancient Audience (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2012) 280. 32. Berquist, Disability, 125–126. 33. Henri Trau, Nissan Rubin, and Shmuel Vargon, “Symbolic Significance of Hair in the Biblical Narrative and in the Law,” Koroth 9 (1988): 175. 34. Trau et al., “Hair in the Biblical Narrative,” 178. 35. Don C. Benjamin, The Social World of Deuteronomy: A New Feminist Commentary (Eugene: Cascade, 2015), 134. 36. Saul Olyan, “Ritual Inversion in Biblical Representations of Punitive Rites,” in Worship, Women and War: Essays in Honor of Susan Niditch, eds., John Collins, Tracy Lemos, and Saul Olyan (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015), 135–144. 37. Olyan, “Ritual Inversion,” 139–140. 38. Rozin and Haidt, “The Domains of Disgust,” 367. 39. Kazen, “Role of Disgust,” 66. 40. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 204. 41. Goldenberg et al., “Fleeing the Body,” 214.

Chapter Six

The Animal Turn

Although non-human animals have long been the subject of scientific study, they have only recently become the focus of many scholars in the humanities. Animal Studies is emerging as an important element of literary criticism and has also generated a serious critique of scientific approaches that reify the animal-human boundary through the separation of the disciplines of anthropology and zoology. Two problems confront us with regard to our bodies. The first, as already discussed in chapter 2, is that humans tend to have an existential crisis when confronted with our animal bodies. As studies related to terror management theory have shown, this causes death anxiety. Chapter 3 introduced the cognitive and religious responses to the mortal human body and the existential need for meaning that is impacted by the awareness of mortality. As studies have also demonstrated, awareness of mortality also impacts the relationship between humans and non-human animals, as the search for meaning is threatened by the awareness of our shared corporeality. The solution has been to create social structures that develop bodily norms and are able to control non-normative bodies (including corpses), thereby distancing humans from other animals. With the foregoing as a basis, I now turn more directly to the animal-human boundary, and the second problem which emerges from the boundary’s artificiality: the bright line dividing one particular species from all others is problematic because it creates a bifurcation that is methodologically unsustainable. In this chapter, I will address certain methodological concerns in contemporary animal studies in seeking to better understand how cultural norms and societal structures demarcate the animal-human boundary, determining who is a human and who is an animal. In the chapter to follow, I will turn more specifically to the same category in the context of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible. There I will further show how the animal-human boun85

86

Chapter 6

dary can be manipulated through clothing for the purpose of dehumanization. Such manipulation is important to note, for it is clear that any aspect of the human body that can be manipulated to dehumanize can only be used in this way because it has a parallel humanizing quality. That is, the removal of clothing is dehumanizing because clothes themselves are humanizing, separating us from animals. These two chapters, then, prepare for the concluding chapters of my study, in which I examine these issues specifically in Genesis 2–3, where we see the animal-human boundary emphasized specifically in the context of mortality awareness. Although the point has already been made several times that evolutionary science makes this line of thinking problematic, running throughout this project is the question addressed by many of what makes humans different from other animals. We saw in chapter 1 how some suggest we refer to ourselves using terms such as homo fictus or homo symbolicus. We saw in chapter 2, with the illustration of the final days of Ivan Ilyich, a strong argument for homo mortalis, as the terror management theorists suggest. The novelist Umberto Eco adds to these categories of human distinction, suggesting that it is the capacity for laughter that marks humans as different from other animals. The source of amusement in The Name of the Rose are the fantastic creatures created in the marginalia of medieval manuscripts. This was a psalter in whose margins was delineated a world reversed with respect to the one to which our senses have accustomed us. As if at the border of a discourse that is by definition the discourse of truth, there proceeded, closely linked to it, through wondrous allusions in aenigmate, a discourse of falsehood on a topsy-turvy universe, in which dogs flee before the hare, and deer hunt the lion. Little bird-feet heads, animals with human hands on their back, hirsute pates from which feet sprout, zebra-striped dragons, quadrupeds with serpentine necks twisted in a thousand inextricable knots, monkeys with stags’ horns, sirens in the form of fowl with membranous wings, armless men with other human bodies emerging from their backs like humps, and figures with tooth-filled mouths on the belly, humans with horses’ heads, and horses with human legs, fish with birds’ wings and birds with fishtails, monsters with single bodies and double heads or single heads and double bodies, cows with cocks’ tails and butterfly wings, women with heads scaly as a fish’s back, twoheaded chimeras interlaced with dragonflies with lizard snouts, centaurs, dragons, elephants, manticores stretched out on tree branches, gryphons whose tails turned into an archer in battle array, diabolical creatures with endless necks, sequences of anthropomorphic animals and zoomorphic dwarfs joined, sometimes on the same page, with scenes of rustic life in which you saw, depicted with such impressive vivacity that the figures seemed alive, all the life of the fields, plowmen, fruit gatherers, harvesters, spinning-women, sowers alongside foxes, and martens armed with crossbows who were scaling the walls of a towered city defended by monkeys. 1

The Animal Turn

87

In the topsy-turvy world of the marginalia, the monastic artist attempts to illustrate the truth of the biblical text through examples drawn from bestiaries, humans with animal characteristics, and animals with human characteristics. Eco’s novel is exceedingly detailed, with many examples in which the human and animal worlds are entwined, and it is so thorough that one could well organize a fantastical bestiary from its pages. The narrator explicitly announces his love of these protracted passages: “The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.” 2 I think that, in the end, Eco is telling us not that laughter is what separates us from other animals, but the making of lists. When asked about the matter, he gives what is by now a familiar answer: The list is the origin of culture. . . . We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That’s why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It’s a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don’t want to die. 3

Eco sees the list as foundational to our self-identification, and as foundational, lists have rules. The list can only be properly understood if one knows the “criterion of assembly that governs it.” 4 The bestiary, whose criterion identifies it as a list of all animals that are not human, is a prominent example in this regard and one that Eco favors. These lists divide the world into human and non-human. Eco laments the bestiary proposed by Jorges Luis Borges, another great admirer of lists, which includes the list itself in its list of nonhuman entities: “With Borges’ classification the poetics of the list reaches the acme of heresy and blasphemes all preconstituted logical order.” 5 The problem of the list of animals—or even Borges’ expansive list—is that although we have criteria, our categorization involves only the single criterion of non-humanity. HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM Derrida, in the essay which began this paper, suggests that, Whenever “one” says, “the Animal,” each time a philosopher, or anyone else says, “the Animal” in the singular and without further ado, claiming thus to designate every living thing that is held not to be man . . . he utters an asininity [bêtise]. 6

When the name “the animal” is spoken in the singular and with a single voice and in doing so we reduce the world of variety into a singularity and the many different animals are reduced to a chimera. 7 In a “war on species . . . we do violence to animals not with a butcher knife, but by refusing to name them

88

Chapter 6

properly.” 8 Like the monkeys with bishops’ heads in Adelmos’ medieval marginalia, the chimera named “the animal” serves to convey a truth, namely that lists such as these are concerned only with human self-identification. The bestiary, then, is a human product designed to tell us more about ourselves. In Genesis 2 we will see that the animals are brought to the human, who names them. The human takes the time to name each one, but our narrator does not. He simply lumps all of them into the single category of unsuitable partners for the human. Like the human, they are living beings (népeš ḥayyâ ), but here we see the world divided as in a bestiary. It is not simply religious thought that creates such divisions. The scientific divisions of anthropology and zoology reflect the same tension, brought about by the obvious diversity of the world and the relatedness of humans with non-human animals on the one hand, and the scientific and religious divisions of humans from all other creatures on the other. As Derrida points out, surely a baboon is closer to a human than to a sponge, yet the baboon and the sponge are both categorized together as non-human. 9 Umberto Eco’s fascination with lists, and the problems that he and Derrida perceive in categorization, highlights an important failure of both theology and the sciences in looking at the question of human relationships with other animals, as both explicitly maintain the animal-human boundary, sometimes called human-separatism, human exceptionalism, or speciesism. The animal-human dichotomy is problematic in two significant respects. First, as we have seen earlier in this paper, the biological basis for such a distinction is problematic. The second problem, highlighted by Eco and Derrida and explored further here, is that the distinction lacks methodological coherence. The field of anthropology concerns a particular species, although even the category of species is itself problematic. The field of zoology, however, does not have a meaningful ethos, since it is the study of all species that are defined by the virtue of their not being human. 10 Even as we notice the problems with human exceptionalism, we have been reflecting extensively on those elements that make humans unique. These elements can more generally be categorized with regard to culture. 11 Whether it is the presence of culture itself, or the rationality and language that requires and facilitates that culture, it is often culture that is primarily considered as constituting the “unbridgeable hiatus” between humans and non-human animals. 12 Enlightenment thinkers saw themselves in terms of “man’s ascent from animality” and philosophers such as Descartes and Heidegger were emphatic in affirming this dichotomy. 13 In so doing, they noted that while animals behave instinctually—Descartes called them automata— humans need to be taught by previous generations. This learned behavior was seen as the greatest expression of superiority over animals, and the human being came to be called the “culture-bearing animal.” 14 This line of thinking did not begin in the in the eighteenth century; Pliny, for example, thought similarly and reflected on it with what seems to me to be a deep melancholia

The Animal Turn

89

lacking in his more optimistic Enlightenment counterparts. Pliny wrote that while all other animals have instinctive abilities, such as flight or speed, an infant human, can neither speak, nor walk, nor eat, and, in short, he can do nothing, at the prompting of nature only, but weep. . . .To man alone, of all animated beings, has it been given, to grieve . . . he is the only one that troubles himself about his burial, and even what is to become of him after death. 15

As Darwin did by focusing on matters of biology, Derrida draws our attention to the problems inherent with the animal-human boundary in terms of the concern for identity. As he stood before his cat, and as the first human in Genesis stood naked before the animals brought to him, we see that the impetus of human exceptionalism is the definition of every other animal as not human. 16 The most influential philosophical category—the human—is founded on the ideological subjugation of the animal. This is conceptual framework is itself enacted in the subjugation, “even annihilation, of the animal on an unprecedented scale.” 17 With all non-human animals simply labeled as “the animal,” the ethical response or perceived duty to a nonhuman primate is the same as that towards to a sponge. THE ANIMAL TURN The phrase “animal turn” is a term used to describe a recent movement in the humanities that seeks to take account for the role of animals in human lives, art, and literature. In many ways, this turn is similar to the reflexive turn of earlier decades in which it was shown that the commitment to understanding and maintaining the status of anthropologists was greater than the actual anthropological interest in the objects of their study. In other words, nonwhite cultures were studied to better understand white culture. 18 Following the development of post-colonial, post-androcentric approaches, the role of an ‘other’ was still required and so non-human animals were often studied from this perspective. The animal turn, in similar fashion, calls for a posthumanist approach which seeks to undo the othering of non-human animals. Post-humanists assert that animals are “are polysemic representations in the process of human autopoiesis”; 19 that is, to generate definitions of humanity, it is essential to categorize the non-human. The study of non-humans has been to “polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves.” 20 Such scholarship, however, is done in a “distorting mirror,” and the animal loses any meaning aside from its non-humanness. 21 The approach of othering non-human animals, of maintaining this division and using them to understand humans, is criticized by post-humanists and those engaged in animal studies. They assert that the binary categorization of human/animal is violent because it estab-

90

Chapter 6

lishes and justifies dominance, considering any ethical response to animals to be a category mistake, and making it “impossible to commit a crime” against non-human animals. 22 These scholars assert that, given how much we now know about the intellectual and emotional lives of animals, we must look to the previous changes in the humanities that took seriously the differences of among those involved in our field. As with issues of race, gender, and sexual orientation, animal studies is only the latest permutation of a socially and ethically responsive cultural studies working to stay abreast of new social movements (in this case, the social movement often called “animal rights”), which is itself an academic expression of a larger democratic impulse toward greater inclusiveness of every gender, or race, or sexual orientation, or—now—species. 23

The term speciesism, a bias favoring the interests of one’s own species over those of others, first gained prominence in Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation. 24 As Lynn White, Jr. did a decade before with regard to ecology, Singer addresses with the opening chapters of Genesis, critiquing the creation narratives as establishing the Bible as a “speciesist manifesto.” 25 However, the question is raised if the animal turn can accomplish what earlier reflexive turns accomplished with other communities of concern. Those approaches sought to move the objects of study to the place of a subject, providing them with a voice and their own autonomy. How can this be done with animals? The “animal question,” then, is how to hear without distorting or appropriating the meaning of the one who has moved from object to subject. 26 Derrida’s The Animal that Therefore I Am (More to Follow), has been an important catalyst for the animal turn. 27 In order to emphasize his rejection of Descartes’ dismissive attitude toward animals, his title (L’animal que donc je suis) intentionally recalls Decartes’ famous dictum, “Je pense donc je suis.” 28 Derrida notes the othering of non-human animals, utilizing much of the same language and concerns of previous critiques of both the humanities and the sciences that led to the recognition of the racist and colonialist underpinnings of earlier literary and anthropological approaches. Derridean deconstruction has exposed unstable foundations and binarisms on which the very conception of the human have been built. 29 In an effort to counter this approach, Derrida notes that it is difference, not similarity, which should provide the foundation for the ethical relationship to non-humans. He seeks to reverse the order and declares that we follow animals. 30 In front of his cat, Derrida becomes aware that the very basis of the relationship must emphatically be placed on the otherness of the non-human, because it is the “not that” that makes me “me.” 31 He writes, but here not of his cat, “The animal looks at us, and we are naked before it. Thinking perhaps begins there.” 32 For Derrida, not only is the bestiary the origin of philosophy, the encounter with

The Animal Turn

91

an animal is the beginning of ethics, in the space between the animal I am and the animal I am not. Keri Weil writes that, “our very notion of ethical relating has been grounded in a humanism that gives permission to act unethically toward animals—sacrificing them as food, clothing, medicine.” 33 This statement does not even mention the relationship between humans and animals when it comes to matters of cultic sacrifice. The formerly clear lines are increasingly blurred, as newly understood similarities between humans and non-human animals problematize the issue of human uniqueness. 34 Perhaps the most important step in the development of animal studies has been the growing understanding of animal cognition and culture. 35 Previously, behaviorism in psychology and reductionist approaches in biology precluded researchers from investigating animal thought and consciousness. The cognitive revolution and developments in this area such as its emphasis on the role of memory in decision making has helped to overcome this impediment. 36 For example, we have seen a shift in the designation of comparative psychology to evolutionary psychology. 37 Remembering that culture in some form tends to be viewed as the dividing line between humans and non-human animals, even the discussion of animal culture can raise objections. Primatologist Jane Goodall, for example, sparked outrage when she reported the use of tools by chimpanzees in Gombe, Tanzania. 38 Goodall’s claim is no longer debatable, however, as we even have evidence of macaque monkeys inventing and teaching effective food gathering techniques. 39 It is now clear that invented behaviors in non-human primates can emanate from an individual to the rest of the animal community, through imitation, and social transmission. 40 Furthermore, animal language skills are now understood to be much greater than previously thought. Chimpanzees are regularly taught hundreds of signs, can understand and create novel sentences, and grasp syntactical differences. They can learn and teach signs, and have meaningful inter- and intra-species conversations. 41 Chimpanzees who use keyboards to communicate with their caregivers (“chimpers”) quickly turn to using the keyboard to communicate with other chimps, once they realize the other chimp also has keyboard skills. 42 Dolphins recognize symbols on cards, gestural symbols, and auditory cues, even understanding syntactical difference due to the order of the cues. 43 Cognitive process that can be called thinking, such as the generation of if-then possibilities, has clearly been demonstrated in primates, dolphins and even birds. 44 Moreover, it has been shown that some non-human animals demonstrate a theory of mind (mentalizing) has been demonstrated in non-human animals, a trait that is almost always presented as a mature human characteristic. For example, some researchers attribute a rudimentary theory of mind to birds that will relocate hidden food if they were observed stashing it away. 45 These categories that have previously been used to create the separation between human and non-human animals can be meaningful heuristic models. Those engaged in animal studies, however,

92

Chapter 6

remind us that such categories should not be essentialized; they should not be understood as realities but rather as epistemological devices that are contingent and historically and culturally determined. 46 Several changes in both the humanities and the sciences have emerged due to the animal turn. One is a new emphasis on the shared evolutionary history of humans and non-human animals. Another is the emerging field of anthrozoology, or the study of the interaction of humans and non-human animals in a way that attempts to avoid human exceptionalism. 47 Humans coevolved with innumerable other organisms who have shaped us and share our environment. 48 We tend to consider only our pets when thinking of those animals which cohabitate with us, but it is this type of thinking which fails to genuinely account for the reality of the co-evolution and cross-species sociality which is the history of evolution. 49 We are surrounded by other animals, and always have been. The domestication of goats changed the nature of the savannahs. 50 Some of the earliest human art displays a fascination with animals, even if primarily as prey. 51 Much earlier from an evolutionary perspective, we also recognize the various bacteria and viruses that populate our body. A growing question in modern philosophy (and in science as well) is the role of the human microbiome and the recognition that very little of the DNA in our bodies actually belongs to us. One post-humanist questions: How do I even think about myself apart from the 90 percent of ‘me’ composed of various microbes; how do I understand any fundamental notion of identity if I cannot even draw an unambiguous line between “me” and “not-me” within my very body? 52

Humans have a complicated and inconsistent relationship with other animals. We eat, keep, protect, hunt, enslave, and study them. These behaviors are both ubiquitous and culture-specific. In some cultures, there is little difference between the animals we eat and those we keep as pets, while other cultures make strong distinctions between the two. 53 The industries surrounding food production and animal experimentation, and the distance we tend to put between our food and the animal it once was, demonstrates much about our attitudes toward other animals. For Ernest Becker, this attitude is the result of the discomfort with our own creatureliness, reminding us of our biological nature and mortality. 54 Regardless of societal norms, animal studies have demonstrated that our relationship to animals has always been human-centered. Kant stated that we have no ethical obligations, “no direct duties,” to other animals. The only reason for not harming or being cruel to them is that it could escalate into cruelty to other humans. Locke earlier held the same view, noting that one who is cruel to animals will lack compassion for humans as well. 55 Even now with the development of animal law, categories such as companion animal have demonstrated that the role of animal is subordinate to its relationship to a hu-

The Animal Turn

93

man. 56 Although societal norms are changing, there is still a lack of recognition of the reality that animal-loss counselors have long known, that the loss of a loved companion animal produces grief very much like that at the loss of a loved human. 57 Even animal rights movements cannot escape the humancentered nature of our relationships with other animals. 58 The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals began with thinking that very much reflected that of Locke and Kant, noting that cruelty to animals would degrade humans “to the level of the brutes.” 59 In another movement which seeks to extend human rights to other primates, the Great Ape Project bases its arguments on the similarities of non-human primates to humans. 60 Attempts at codifying animal rights and legal status have made advances, but critics argue these changes have failed to challenge the underlying binarism, and have only succeeded in occasionally shifting the animal-human boundary to include certain charismatic megafauna. 61 While anthropomorphism is a necessary component of literary study, either to use it oneself as an author or to recognize it in a text or work of art, it is considered very detrimental in scientific research. 62 Further complicating the matter, many scientists do not simply study animals from afar, but work very closely with them as well. One study looked at the various ways in which the relationship between the chimpers and chimps were colored by anthropomorphism. 63 These anthropomorphisms led to a hybridity, in which human and animal traits were mixed, with chimpers attributing human emotions and will to the chimps. 64 This type of thinking is considered unacceptable in scientific research, since it threatens the animal-human boundary and questions human exceptionalism. 65 Observations that attribute these types of emotion or will to non-human animals are manipulated or redacted from the published research in a process called “distorting into clarity,” thus maintaining the fictional boundaries that do not actually exist. 66 Several scholars now call for a new approach which recognizes the reality of anthropomorphism and accepts it as a cultural practice. Called anthropo-interpretivism by one scholar, this approach then allows us to engage with animals in a way that does not assume human exceptionalism and allows animals to emerge with subject status. 67 CONCLUSION An important development in the study of the animal-human boundary is the recognition of the impact other species have had on humans and of the study of the cognitive implications. I am referring specifically to animal reminder disgust and the increase in death thought accessibility. Much of the current thinking regarding disgust and death thought accessibility with regard to the animal-human boundary has already been addressed in the first few chapters. Here it suffices to reiterate that all animal-human interactions have the poten-

94

Chapter 6

tial to elicit disgust and increase death thought accessibility. Even intrahuman interactions have such potentials. Because any interaction that involves the biological necessities of sex, food, bodily waste and odors, has the potential to illicit disgust, these phenomena have been enculturated in ways specifically designed to avoid disgust. Although the world’s cultures have incredible variety with regard to table manners, toilet privacy, and sexual mores, they all seek to regulate bodily functions in ways that separate humans from other animals. 68 Becker wrote that, “culture is in its most intimate intent a heroic denial of creatureliness.” 69 Clothing, as we will see in the next chapter, plays a significant role in this process. Whether it is wearing the proper clothes for a given occasion, elaborate costumes, or clothes to accentuate or hide certain aspects of the body, we wear clothes as a meaningful way of covering or distracting from our creatureliness. Our relationship with animals can be symbolically managed as well. Various cultures associate qualities with certain animals that are to be appropriated or rejected. While we are familiar with someone being called strong as an ox or slippery as an eel, these qualities often extend far beyond metaphorical language. 70 Although one can gain prestige through the symbolic appropriation of animal qualities, this is a complex matter that can easily be turned on us. In relating so closely with these creatures, we risk “[exposing ourselves] as humans by stripping us of those clothes and thinking caps with which we have claimed to stake our difference from animals.” 71 The same principle that can be used to extol the qualities of an individual can also be weaponized as a means to dehumanize others. As noted earlier, to call someone an animal is to deny their humanity, and increases the likelihood that one will not mentalize, or attribute a mind to the one labeled an animal. 72 Studies have shown that when the animal-human boundary is diminished, both animals and the humans associated with them become treated as an out-group. 73 Marginalized humans are almost universally dehumanized in this way. Indeed, one scholar asserts that “animal terms seem implicated in all systemic human oppression.” 74 There are many examples to point to, such as the bestiary used to describe heretics, Muslims and Jews in the Middle Ages, the treatment of African slaves in America who were branded, collared, transported and used as horsepower, and the cattle-like transportation of Jews in Europe during the Shoah. 75 In our subsequent study of the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible more specifically, we will see the animalhuman boundary, the appropriation of symbolic animal qualities, the common necessity of using and interacting with animals and the abuse of humans through the disgust-eliciting dehumanizing of the blurring of the animalhuman boundary.

The Animal Turn

95

NOTES 1. Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (New York: Warner Books, 1984), 50. 2. Eco, The Name of the Rose, 48. 3. Susanne Beyer and Lothar Gorris, “Spiegel Interview with Umberto Eco: ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die.’” Der Spiegel Online International, November 11, 2009. https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-umberto-eco-welike-lists-because-we-don-t-want-to-die-a-659577.html (Accessed December 12, 2017). 4. Umberto Eco, The Infinity of Lists: from Homer to Joyce (London: MacLehose, 2012), 116. 5. Eco, Lists, 396. Jorge Luis Borges and Margarita Guerrero, The Book of Imaginary Beings (New York: Avon Books, 1970). 6. Derrida, “The Animal,” 31. 7. Derrida, “The Animal,” 23. Some writers in animal studies note the impossibility of speaking of non-human animals without reinforcing human domination over all other living things. For example, Glen Mazis has adopted Derrida’s neologism animot “as a red flag” to draw attention to our use of the word animal “as a way to keep them outside, below, as if they are a (lower) ‘nature’ that shores up our human ‘nature’ held in opposition to it. Animot is a word that points to the fact that it is a ‘word’ (mot) meant to refer to one whom we follow after. . . .” Glen Mazis, “Animals, before Me, with Whom I Live, by Whom I Am Addressed: Writing after Derrida,” in Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology, ed. Stephen D. Moore (New York: Fordham, 2014), 23. 8. Alison Suen, The Speaking Animal: Ethics, language and the human-animal divide (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 78. 9. Derrida, “The Animal,” 31, 34. 10. Sabrina Tonutti, “Anthropocentrism and the Definition of ‘Culture’ as a Marker of the Human/Animal Divide,” in Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments, ed. Rob Boddice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 184–185. See also Tonutti, “Anthropocentrism,” 184, fn 2. Even the concept of species is problematic, being a human construct. As early as Darwin, it was recognized that species, like genera, are “merely artificial combinations made for convenience.” See also Joshua Moritz, “Natures, Human Nature, Genes and Souls,” Dialog 46 (2007), 267. Moritz notes that for more than thirty years, neo-Darwinists have rejected the concept of a nature that is specific to a species: “Species, and the genomes of species, are localized in both space and time in the same way an individual organism or person is. Biological species, like individuals, are historical entities. . . . Species names should thus be considered as proper names, like ‘Moses’ or ‘Mars,’ rather than as generic names which correspond to a universal class or type, like ‘organism’ or ‘planet.’” Organisms belong to a species, not because of a nature, but because they are “part of that genealogical nexus.” 11. Samantha Hurn, Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on HumanAnimal Interactions (London: Pluto Press, 2012), 4. 12. Tonutti, “Anthropomorphism,” 183. 13. Nik Taylor, “Anthropomorphism and the animal subject,” in Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments., ed. Rob Boddice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 271. 14. Tonutti, “Anthropomorphism,” 190. Culture is learned, not instinctual. “The degree to which human achievements are dependent on this kind of learned behavior is man’s great claim to superiority over all the rest of creation; he has been properly called ‘the culture-bearing animal.’” 15. Plin. Nat. 7.1. 16. Mazis, “Animals, before Me,” 21. 17. Stephen Moore, “Ruminations on Revelation’s Ruminant, Quadrupedal Christ; or, the Even-Toed Ungulate That Therefore I Am,” in The Bible and Posthumanism, ed, Jennifer L. Koosed (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 305. 18. Hurn, Humans and Other Animals, 3. 19. Tonutti, “Anthropomorphism,” 184. 20. Hurn, Humans and Other Animals, 3.

96

Chapter 6

21. Boria Sax, “What is this Quintessence of Dust? The concept of the ‘human’ and its origins,” in Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments, Human-Animal Studies, ed. Rob Boddice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 26. See also Rob Boddice, who tries to define homo sapiens primarily in terms of self-recognition: “The human defies anatomical classification, but exists solely in the human capacity to distinguish itself from apes.” In this way, all references to nonhumans are reflexively human and are oriented around political and ideological goals. Rob Boddice, “End of Anthropomorphism,” in Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments, Human-Animal Studies, ed. Rob Boddice (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 2–3. 22. Keri Weil, Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? (New York: Columbia, 2012), xviii. This view endorsing the divide was specifically given sanction in the past. For example, Philo writes that, “to raise animals to the level of the human race and grant equality to unequals is the epitome of injustice.” (Anim. 100). Moore, “Revelation’s Ruminant,” 310, fn 27. 23. Carey Wolfe, “Human, All Too Human: Animal Studies and the Humanities,” PMLA 124 (2009): 568. 24. Jennifer Koosed, “Humanity at its Limits,” in The Bible and Posthumanism, Semeia Studies, ed. Jennifer L. Koosed (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 3–4. 25. Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Random House, 1975) See also Lynn White Jr. (“The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 [1967], 1205) who wrote that Christianity provided the justifications for human exploitation of the world and was the “most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen.” 26. Weil, Thinking Animals, 4–7. 27. Moore, “Ruminations,” 302. Many animal studies publications take Derrida’s posthumous essay as the starting point for their reflection. See Hannah Strømmen, Biblical Animality after Jacques Derrida (Atlanta: SBL, 2018), 20. Also, Dawne McCance, Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction (Albany: State University of New York, 2013), 57. McCance frames Derrida’s contribution in terms of “the death of ‘The Animal.’” Also, Hannah Strømmen, “Beastly Questions and Biblical Blame,” in The Bible and Posthumanism, ed. Jennifer Koosed (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 13. 28. Derrida, “The Animal,” 369. 29. Weil, Thinking Animals, 17. 30. Mazis, “Animals, before Me,” 17. 31. Weil, Thinking Animals, 22. 32. Derrida, The Animal, 29. 33. Weil, Thinking Animals, 21. 34. Malcolm A. Jeeves and Warren S. Brown, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities About Human Nature (West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press, 2011), 93. 35. Wolfe, “All Too Human,” 564–575. Animal research is certainly responsible for the overwhelming amount of this growing body of information. Animal studies proponents are quick to point out also the importance of the growing awareness by the public of the wide variety of animal abilities, through the public outreach work of researchers such as Diane Fossey and Jane Goodall and television shows such as PBS’ Nature. 36. Donald Griffin, “From Cognition to Consciousness,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau (New York: Columbia University, 2006), 481. For arguments against animal consciousness, see 490–494. 37. Jeeves and Brown, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion, 93. 38. Tonutti, “Anthropocentrism,” 195. 39. Tonutti, “Anthropocentrism,” 196. Ontogenetic acquisition of behaviors is now widely reported and some now see the possibility for true ethnographies of individual animal communities. For example, Koshima monkeys invented and teach the practice of wheat sluicing. Grain for the monkeys is deposited on the beach, and they would spend hours picking grain out of the sand. One monkey devised the tactic of dumping armfuls in the water, allowing the wheat to float and the sand to sink. 40. Tonutti, “Anthropocentrism,” 197. 41. Weil, Thinking Animals, 4. See also Duane M. Rumbaugh, Language Learning by a Chimpanzee: The Lana Project (New York: Academic Press, 1981).

The Animal Turn

97

42. Griffin, “Cognition to Consciousness,” 490. 43. Griffin, “Cognition to Consciousness,” 490. 44. Griffin, “Cognition to Consciousness,” 486. 45. Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton, “The Mentality of Crows: convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes,” Science 306 (2004): 1903–1907. See also Hélène Meunier, “Do Monkeys Have a Theory of Mind? How to answer the question?,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 82 (2016): 110–123. 46. Tonutti, “Anthropomorphism,” 198. Author’s emphasis. 47. Hurn, Humans and Other Animals, 4. Some make further distinctions between the fields such as post-humanism, anthrozoology, and animal studies. Post-humanism often also includes technological concerns, and animal studies tends to focus on the perspectives of non-human animals. These distinctions are of course important, but not particularly necessary for our purposes. See also Harriet Ritvo, “On the Animal Turn,” Daedalus 136 (2007), 118–122. 48. Weil, Thinking Animals, 18. 49. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 265–280. 50. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 278. 51. Kimberly Patton, “Caught with Ourselves in the Net of Life and Time,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau (New York: Columbia University, 2006), 29. Patton argues that the theories of hunting magic cannot account for the Paleolithic paintings in France’s Chauvet Cave, which includes non-game animals, predator animals, and even a chimeric human/bison. 52. Koosed, “Humanity at its Limits,” 9–10. The ten-to-one ratio alluded to here is often found, but almost certainly not accurate. Ed Yong suggests that probably closer to the truth is the (still shocking) numbers of 39 trillion microbial cells to our 30 trillion human ones. 53. Hurn, Humans and Other Animals, 6–7. 54. Ruth M. Beatson, and Michael J. Halloran, “Humans rule! The effects of creatureliness reminders, mortality salience and self-esteem on attitudes towards animals,” British Journal of Social Psychology 46 (2007): 620. 55. Paul Waldau, Animal Studies: An Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University, 2013), 261. 56. Waldau, Animal Studies, 118, 263. For example, companion animals can be included in domestic violence orders of protection. 57. Patton, “Net of Life,” 28. For example, Wallace Sife, The Loss of a Pet (Nashville: Howell/Wiley, 2014). See also Margo Demello, Animals and Society (New York: Columbia University, 2012), 146–159. 58. Timothy Clark, The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2014), 179. Animal ethics is not simply part of ecological ethics; for example, we often acknowledge the need to cull invasive species to protect a natural habitat. 59. Waldau, Animal Studies, 261. 60. Weil, Thinking Animals, 21. 61. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 271–272. see also G. Feldhamer et al., “Charismatic Mammalian Megafauna: Public Empathy and Marketing Strategy,” The Journal of Popular Culture, 36 (2002): 160–167. 62. Berger, “Why Look at Animals?,” in The Animals Reader ed. Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), 255. “Until the nineteenth century, however, anthropomorphism was integral to the relation between man and animal and was an expression of their proximity. Anthropomorphism was the residue of the continuous use of animal metaphor. In the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them. And in this new solitude, anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy.” 63. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 268–269 64. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 270. 65. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 267–268. 66. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 269. 67. Taylor, “Anthropomorphism,” 268, 279. See also Marc Bekoff, “Wild Justice, Social Cognition, Fairness, and Morality,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau (New York: Columbia University, 2006), 463. Other attempts at

98

Chapter 6

defining a less anthropocentric approach have been termed ecocentrism and biocentrism. Ronald A. Simkins, “Anthropocentrism and the Place of Humans in the Biblical Tradition.” Journal of Religion and Society, Supplement 9 (2013): 17. Simkins goes on to conclude: “Anthropocentrism is not the biblical worldview” (p. 27). This seems right, if only for its challenge to the idea that there is a biblical worldview. 68. Beatson and Halloran, “Humans Rule!,” 620. See also the work of Norbert Elias on the history of manners, which will be discussed below with regard to the production of meat and its impact on understanding sacrificial systems. 69. Becker, Denial of Death, 159. 70. Calvin W. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” in Animals and Human Society: Changing perspectives, eds. Aubrey Manning and James Serpell (London: Routledge, 1994): 36. 71. Weil, Thinking Animals, xv. 72. Sax, “Quintessence,” 26. 73. Beatson and Halloran, “Humans Rule!,” 629. 74. Clark, Introduction, 184. 75. Waldau, Animal Studies, 275–276. See also Beverly Kienzle, “The Bestiary of Heretics: Imaging Medieval Christian Heresy with Insects and Animals,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau (New York: Columbia University, 2006), 106. Cf. Matt 7:15, which warns against ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Chapter Seven

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

The human relationship to non-human animals is complicated, with both ubiquitous and culture-specific elements. In both the ancient world and today, certain species hold particular meaning or value. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss noted that certain animals become cultural symbols not because they are good to eat, but because they are “good to think.” 1 Some non-human animals were symbols of wealth or power, cared for or collected, while others were despised and avoided. 2 Surveying ancient attitudes to nonhuman animals, we see that they affected all aspects of life, from mundane tasks to the apex of religious thought and practice. Animals play a role in many religious rituals, either with animals being directly involved or with humans mimicking behaviors or displaying attributes of non-human animals. We also see the literary presence of animals, both real and imagined. 3 Here, we will examine the role of animals in the ancient Near East, focusing on those animals which were most connected with humans due to their roles in husbandry and hunting. 4 We will also survey their symbolic value, for to view animals only in terms of their use as meat, leather, and milk, is to view animals through a utilitarian lens. 5 Finally, clothing, which is often made from the bodies of animals or their secondary materials, constitutes one of the major points of contact as well as distinction between humans and other animals. Therefore, in this chapter, I will look at the social role of clothing in the ancient Near East, as well as some contemporary concerns regarding methods for the study of clothing. ANIMALS IN THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST Taxonomy is an ancient and universal impulse and, although all societies classify living things, these taxa are idiosyncratic. 6 For example, studying 99

100

Chapter 7

ancient interactions with animals led one scholar to suggest the categories of pets, livestock, game, and wild animals. 7 A simpler classification is that proposed by Brian Hesse, who suggests animals be divided into wild, managed, and domesticated. 8 Using this tripartite division, we see an inverse relationship with the imagination and the evidence available to us. For example, wild animals such as the lion appear as vivid in the imagination of the ancient world, as evidenced by the literature and iconographic record, but left virtually no archaeological evidence. The evidence that is available shows that lion hides were luxury goods and there is one example of lions buried in an Egyptian tomb. 9 Managed animals were important for food and as secondary resources. These might include those creatures that were hunted such as hares and deer, birds such as pigeons, geese, chickens, and ostriches, and fish. Hesse also includes in this category the more surprising cases of cats, dogs, and equids. 10 These animals also left little evidence in the archaeological record. Finally, the category of domesticated animals constitutes the bulk of the archaeological evidence. The majority of all human encounters with animals would have been with just a few species, namely pigs, goats, sheep, and bovines. 11 Domesticated and managed animals provided food, raw materials, and service. Equids and camels were certainly familiar and important, but it was sheep and goats that predominated. 12 These “gregarious ruminants” have long been part of the landscape of the ancient Near East and are so docile that they were practically self-domesticated. 13 Gazelles were the primary source of meat from non-domesticated animals, although many other animals and fowl would be eaten when available. 14 Cattle (bovines) were also important, but much less common than the ungulates just mentioned. 15 While the origin of domestication lies in the need for primary animal products of meat and hides, many of these animals were domesticated precisely for the purpose of, or later adapted for, their secondary products of milk, hair, and wool, and service (traction). The scale of animals kept for secondary uses is astonishing. An analysis of Neo-Sumerian records (ca. 2100 BCE) regarding textile production suggests that 2.35 million head of sheep were kept to provide the necessary wool. 16 The king of Ebla in the mid-third millennium had a personal flock of 67,000 head. 17 These animals also served as a means of exchange, and so functioned as a form of wealth storage. 18 Animals played a role in many religious rituals, either with animals being directly involved or with humans mimicking behaviors or displaying attributes of non-human animals. 19 Cattle provided the most pervasive religious imagery, particularly with regard to fertility and male power. 20 Many celestial bodies and deities are associated with bulls and cows, and theriomorphic deities abound. In Egypt, for example, Hathor was frequently presented as a cow goddess with a sun disc between her horns. 21 In Mesopotamia we also see Anu and Ninhursag represented as a bull and cow. 22 On Crete, Zeus was

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

101

portrayed as an earthquake-inducing bull. 23 The gods were also presented regularly not as animals themselves, but rather with animals as mounts or pets. For example, Marduk and Baal were portrayed as having bovine mounts. 24 Sometimes, the lion had many of the same characteristics as bovines, as in the case of Ishtar and her accompanying lions, for example. 25 Because larger cattle were less common, smaller ruminants such as sheep served as a more economical substitute, particularly in the context of magical rituals such as divination and in sacrifices. 26 The widespread use of horses emerged too late in the ancient Near East to achieve deep symbolic significance, but did serve as a metaphor for military might. 27 Grave goods can also provide insight into the relationship of ancient humans with non-human animals. Most of the evidence for this is found in Egypt, where cats, cattle, birds, and crocodiles were mummified by the thousands. 28 Even aside from grave goods, however, animals played a role in the imagination of death. Many cultures particularly feared dog dismemberment. The Mesopotamians came to view dogs as bearers of death omens, and the Egyptian conception of Anubis probably had a similar background. Paradoxically, in many societies the role of the dog in death eventually morphs into the dog as a symbol of healing. Some Zoroastrians, for example, sought dog dismemberment after death. Snakes also underwent a symbolic transition and developed similar associations, such that Anubis was joined to Hermes (Hermanubis) in Hellenistic Egypt and carries the serpentine healing caduceus. 29 Although magic is a nebulous term in religious studies, there are clear examples of animals playing an important role in ancient magical practices. 30 Apotropaic animal charms (sometimes referred to as zoomorphic or theriomorphic amulets) might provide magical protections. For example, charms in the form of a suckling calf being licked by its mother epitomized motherly care and created a magical circle of protection. 31 Dog figurines were buried under thresholds with the inscription, “Don’t think it over, bite!” 32 Various animals were also important in many forms of divination. For example, extispicy involved the examination of the entrails of sacrificed animals. 33 Not all forms of extispicy required the death of the animal though, as omens could be sought by observing flight patterns of birds. Some omens were noted even though they were not sought, but were the result of a chance occurrence. Omens could be read from a goat eating your garment, a scorpion killing a snake in your house, or if “a roof rodent takes a lamp up onto the rafters,” among many others. 34 Another form of zoological divination was derived from anomalies in the animal, with meaning being ascribed to the occurrence of atypical births such as an animal born with only one horn, or two animals born conjoined. 35 In many instances, animals were seen as absorbing the impact of an evil directed toward a person. For example, birds gathering over an individual could be understood as an evil omen; in response, one could feed two birds with flour that was rubbed on oneself, and then release the

102

Chapter 7

birds, thereby sending away the evil. 36 In other instances, it was required to kill an animal. One might slaughter an animal to absorb the evil influences in the dark corners of a house and then throw the carcass into a river, carrying those evils away. 37 Figurines, although less preferable, could serve the same purpose. 38 In another instance, a woman who feared a stillbirth could kill a lamb, swaddle it, and hold it to her breasts. 39 An obvious and important use of animals in the ancient Near East was sacrifice. Annette Yoshiko Reed and Jonathan Klawans both warn of the difficulty in studying sacrifice, as has been shown in the last two centuries of research. Klawans helpfully provides a thorough history of theories of sacrifice by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars. 40 Reed points to Jonathan Z. Smith’s succinct summary: evidence for the primitivity of sacrifice is based on our view of sacrifice as primitive. 41 Reed goes on to note that the separation of meat production from consumption has hindered our study of animal sacrifice. “The violent alchemies by which ‘animal’ becomes ‘meat’” happens far from us and our food is usually unrecognizable as the animal it once was. 42 Relying on the work of Norbert Elias (reminiscent of Becker and terror management theorists), Reed suggests that the distancing of meat from its animal source is a way to deny in our eating habits those things which express an “animalistic character.” 43 Klawans argues that the study of sacrifice in the ancient world has been and is still hampered by bias and methodological confusion. He points to the separation of the study of purity and sacrifice, as well as the separation of our churches and synagogues from our kitchens. 44 Purity has often been understood symbolically, and research into sacrifice has focused on its origins and evolution over time. 45 Were sacrifices meant as food for the gods, as gifts, or a way to commune with the gods? 46 Klawans suggests that these previously disparate areas of study need to be brought into conversation with one another, for purity is a prerequisite for sacrifice. 47 Seeing sacrifice as primitive, nineteenth century sociologists and anthropologists posited sacrifice at the very origin of religion. 48 That may or may not have been the case, but it is clear that sacrifice is very early and widespread. Most theorists regard at least some forms of sacrifice as food for the gods; it is unquestionable that those sacrifices were food for those who worked in the temple and in the royal court. Sacrificial obligations in the ancient Near East were a mechanism for providing livestock for the urban center. 49 Records from Ebla showed that cattle destined for sacrifice were systematically sorted and managed. Those destined for the city’s temples were marked “receipt of the central administration,” and sacrificed meat was bureaucratically distributed among Ebla’s elites. Other cattle were marked “to be dispatched” and sent to peripheral sanctuaries in satellite cities. 50 Recht draws our attention to the iconographic evidence for sacrifice, through

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

103

which one can better understand the occasions, the manner of killing, the participants and equipment, the function and location of the practice. 51 While animals played very concrete roles in the economic and social systems of the ancient Near East, they could also be symbolically utilized and were part of the imagination and political vocabulary of the time. Humans could take on animal aspects and imagery, appropriating their symbolic attributes. For example, a king could be a shepherd to his people, and shepherding analogies abound. 52 While the king’s people are his sheep, his enemies are deer, pigeons, fat steers, or pigs. 53 Very often, almost counterintuitively to the thinking of terror management theorists, the performance of masculinity is characterized in terms of specific animal qualities. With their enemies depicted as prey or domesticated animals, kings rage and slay like lions, killing their inferiors and enemies like animal prey. 54 In the Armant Stela of Thutmose III, for example, the king combines hunting and combat, announcing that he killed rebels after killing a rhino and trampled cities after killing elephants. Tracy Maria Lemos suggests that we find here a deeply rooted metaphor: War is a Hunt. In this metaphor, conquering kings are predators and conquered people are prey. Thus, for example, Sennacherib is a lion and his enemies are hinds. Thutmose III’s royal inscription relates in the very same sentence that he killed elephants and Mesopotamians. One could even posit the existence of a more expansive metaphor: Conquest is a Hunt; or, broader still: Power is a Hunt. 55

The role of the king thus involves the hunting of inferiors, both animals and enemies. Just as we see that people can appropriate animal imagery in a positive way, such imagery can also be appropriated to rhetorically or physically dehumanize. In his work on misothery, a term he coined for the contempt of animals, Jim Mason suggests that animals enable and empower our speech and asks us to consider the following descriptors: Jackass, bitch, worm, weasel, dog , pig, rat, turkey, chicken, snake, horse’s ass, leech, shrimp, shark, toad, bird brain—nouns used to insult. Mousy, horsey, fishy, crabby, batty, catty, lousy, goosey, mulish, brutish, bestial, sheepish—adjectives for undesirable traits and situations. To hog, to dog, to crow, to skunk, to badger, to duck, to bug, to hound, to flounder, to parrot, to grouse—verbs for undesirable behavior. 56

There are more than 5000 similar expressions in Joseph Clark’s Beastly Folklore. 57 Our contempt for non-human animals, in Mason’s terms, or at least our self-serving view of our own superiority, has deep roots in our

104

Chapter 7

language and metaphors. If being human is to be something more than an animal, then describing humans as animals is dehumanizing. Lemos notes that ancient sources do not just demonstrate rhetorical animalization, but also violent physical animalization. Ancient kings asserted “ontological vehemence” and animalized their subordinates through dehumanizing practices of violence and humiliation. 58 In ancient accounts, we find Sennacherib cutting down Elamites “like fat steers who have hobbles on them.” He has the king of Babylonia caged “like a pig” in the city gate of Nineveh. Ashurbanipal treated his enemies “like pigs” on actual slaughtering tables. The maltreatment and mutilation of enemies is so common that it becomes clear that such violence was ritualized, and served to shift the victim’s status from that of human to that of a non-human animal. 59 In a particularly vivid example, Sennacherib collars the king of Babylon, chaining him to the city gate along with a bear and dog, forcing him to guard the entrance. He treats Ammluadi of Qidri in a similar fashion. 60 THE ANIMAL-HUMAN BOUNDARY IN THE HEBREW BIBLE By and large, non-human animals in ancient Israel served the same functions as they did for their Mesopotamian and Egyptian neighbors. The organization of these animals in Israelite thought involved between three and six different primary taxa. The organization of these taxa is not consistent, but are generally concerned with habitat, with the most fundamental distinction being whether a creature is aquatic, terrestrial or aerial. 61 Very often this schema is truncated and omits aquatic animals altogether. 62 Some texts, while still referencing habitat, seem to further divide the taxa. For example, Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 divide aerial creatures by their number of legs, or perhaps their manner of locomotion. 63 Land animals could also be subdivided with regard to their legs or style of locomotion. Many passages (eg., Gen 1:26) distinguish between animals that have high carriage and low carriage. 64 Finally, some passages divide land animals with regard to whether they are domesticated or not (e.g., Gen 1:20). 65 Animals in ancient Israel, just as everywhere else, were important aspects of the economy and daily life. The formulaic descriptions of wealth which we find in the Bible include mentions of sheep, cattle, donkeys, and sometimes camels (e.g., Gen 12:16). 66 Donkeys, and later camels, were important for transportation of goods and quite common. Horses were much less common and served as prestige animals. Large cattle provided needed traction for field work, as is reflected in the saying, “Where there are no oxen, there is no grain” (Prov 14:4). 67 Of course, some animals were eaten, but by and large, this was not the primary use of most domestic animals. A later rabbinic

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

105

saying demonstrates the importance of animals to the Israelite way of life: “a goat for its milk, a ewe for its fleece . . . [and] oxen for ploughing.” 68 As already noted, the Israelite diet was not focused on animals. Their diet centered rather around bread, oil, and wine, though they were not vegetarians. Ovine milk was an important part of the diet, but was seasonal and probably consumed mostly in the form of ghee. 69 As far as meat is concerned, this primarily consisted of goats, sheep, and, yes, even pigs. 70 Although permitted, wild game contributed very little to the diet. 71 Most meat would have been eaten only after it had been properly sacrificed. This was the ideal; however, Deuteronomy 12 provided the possibility of eating domestic meat slaughtered in the same manner as wild game such as deer or gazelle, which could not be sacrificed. 72 Meat that was sacrificed would have been primarily served as festival food and not regularly eaten by the nonelite. Meat could be roasted, as was the case with the Passover lamb, but it was more often boiled to make a stew. Cuneiform recipes provide a good evidence of this, and suggest boiling the meat with garlic, onions, leeks, cumin and coriander. 73 Birds and fish were part of the ancient diet as well. McDonald lists geese, chickens, duck, and pigeons as domestic birds, but these would have been few in number and fairly late. 74 There is no list of permitted birds, but only a list of twenty prohibited species (Lev 11:13–19). 75 Fish remains are found at virtually all sites. 76 Analysis of the remains shows that smoked, dried, or cured fish were imported from Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the Red Sea. 77 Along with the sacrificial regulations regarding meat discussed earlier, many foods are regulated or forbidden. The most well-known of these restrictions is the prohibition of eating any part of the pig. Even though there does not seem to be an equivalent to the Israelite dietary laws in Mesopotamia and Egypt, those societies also had a low opinion of pigs. 78 Throughout the whole of the Middle East, pig remains are associated with wet climate and decreased urbanization. This can perhaps be linked to the competition for grain resources, as pigs are large consumers of grain. 79 Even in these wellwatered areas where we find pig remains, such as in Dan, porcine bones are absent from the site’s sacred rubbish, which indicates that pigs were eaten but not sacrificed. 80 Animals seem to have played a much smaller role in Israel than among its neighbors with regard to magic and divination. In Israel, as the Bible presents it, divination was more likely to have been performed with the use of lots or the interpretation of dreams. Of course, dreams could contain symbolic animals, as in the case of Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream of cows (Gen 41). 81 The roles of priest and prophet seem to usurp that of the locals who might have served as diviners or mediators as they did in other societies, although the witch of Endor provides us with a dramatic exception (1 Samuel 28).

106

Chapter 7

Because the Hebrew Bible is so varied in its purposes, the biblical presentation of animals is varied. While it is true that the Bible does not present human exceptionalism unequivocally, this is its dominant approach. 82 The legal material is concerned with how animals are interacted with, sacrificed, and/or eaten. Animals are central to the issue of purity, both in becoming impure and in the process of restoring purity, as has been noted frequently by scholars such as Douglas, Kazen, and Klawans. The narratives of the historical books give small glimpses into the interactions of ancient Israelites with domesticated and wild animals. Apocalyptic texts often present politically potent symbolic figures of non-human animals and monsters. 83 But most of the Bible’s discourse about animals is found in wisdom and prophetic texts, where animals serve pedagogical or metaphorical purposes. Compared to other ancient literature, the Bible presents animals as particularly lowly beings, which are rarely personified or given voice. 84 The wisdom tradition in the Hebrew Bible frequently enmeshes humanity in creation. 85 The vantage point of Qohelet is different from other biblical texts in many ways, including the author’s recognition of human animality. The author recognizes the common fate of both animals and humans, and that a living dog is better than a dead lion. 86 Other wisdom literature uses animals to teach, comparing the fool to a dog which returns to its vomit (Prov 26:11), or a bird chasing after a snake to a young man pursuing a woman (Prov 7:22). 87 In prophetic literature, animals often serve as negative metaphors, with lazy watchdogs (Isa 56:10), or cows who lie on couches (Amos 4:1). 88 In addition to these prophetic metaphors, ancient Israelites also adopted symbolic attributes of animals, just as their neighbors did. For example, the ovine imagery that was common in Mesopotamia was common in Israel as well. We read of the king, or even God, as a shepherd over his people, the sheep, as a common metaphor. 89 The lion and eagle were positive images, while the dog was a particularly negative one. The Israelites seemed not to have used animals as grave goods, but they did regard dog dismemberment as a particularly shameful end (1 Kgs 14:11, 21:23; Psalm 22). 90 As was noted in our look at other ancient societies’ views and interactions with animals, the animal-human boundary was of significant concern for ancient Israel as well. Generally, the Hebrew Bible makes a significant distinction between humans and animals, perhaps more than most cultures. Just as a symbols can be appropriated to heighten status, they can be turned on others to diminish them. As a clear example, we can look to the treatment of Jehoiakim, who is threatened with the burial of an ass (Jer 22:18–19). Olyan, who previously described proper burials as requiring lamenting, processing with the body, and interment, notes that this Jeremiah text calls for withholding lamentation, dragging the body and leaving it exposed. He argues that this is therefore ritually reclassifying Jehoiakim as an animal. 91 He compares this to the dehumanizing treatment of Neo-Assyrian foes. 92 In another exam-

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

107

ple, we find God to be the one who dehumanizes, when he gives Nebuchadnezzar the mind of a beast (Dan 4:13). Until Nebuchadnezzar recognizes God’s power, he eats grass, lives outdoors, and grows animal-like hair and claws. 93 CLOTHING AND THE ANIMAL-HUMAN BOUNDARY Just as with the study of animals, a great deal of theoretical work that has been done on clothing outside of the field of biblical studies. We engage clothing as information; “mere appearance” is how we function, for a society of strangers requires the ability to know one’s relationship to another at a glance. Because we read clothing as signs, and therefore very much like a language, it is even possible to develop a “hermeneutics of dress,” which enables one to read social concepts regarding identity, power, sexuality, and gender. 94 This unspoken language has its own vocabulary and grammar, and as with language, some words are taboo, humorous, respectful, or foreign loan-words. 95 Wearing a tie to a business meeting is pointless except to make a wordless statement about professionalism. Clothes are not limited to utility, for we have and wear many more clothes than we need to just to cover our bodies. Fashion theorists have utilized the work of philosophers such as Merleau-Ponty and Foucault to understand clothing as signs and as ways in which humans utilize their bodies as a medium with which they experience and engage those around us. Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology asserts that our bodies are not passive receptors, but the “medium though which we experience the world.” 96 Clothing not only communicates to others but produces “modes of demeanor” and so re-clothing is the recreating of the body. 97 Clothing then, is an essential way in which humans know “where we are in the world, who we are in the world, and what the world seems to be.” 98 This aspect of clothing is so foundational that clothing is dangerous and therefore heavily regulated. In the ancient Near East and the Hebrew Bible, clothing reflects the given society with regard to its social order and hierarchy, wealth, and poverty, political concerns, and sexuality and gender. 99 Textiles were not only needed for their strict utility, but to communicate values. 100 Our information about textiles in the ancient Near East come from archaeological and textual evidence. In the case of Mesopotamia, there are relatively few examples of textiles surviving from antiquity and so we are generally reliant on literature and iconographical representations. 101 Wool was used frequently, along with leather. Linen was less common than either. 102 These raw materials and finished goods were traded throughout the region, and evidence for the mass production of textiles is abundant. 103 For example, we see that a Babylonian garment plays a role in the account of

108

Chapter 7

Achan’s stolen spoils from Jericho (Josh 7:21). In Egypt, we find many more examples of surviving textiles because of the climate, and because they were often included among grave goods. 104 Several examples of chests full of folded linen have been uncovered in Egyptian tombs. Tutankhamen’s tomb held a large wardrobe with clothes from his childhood and even clothed statues. 105 Some Egyptian tombs have been dated partially by the fashions depicted in the wall paintings. 106 One also finds examples of materials and garments mentioned in the Amarna letters. 107 In Egypt, linen made from flax was much more common than wool, although it is not the case that wool was forbidden or thought unclean, as Herodotus led some earlier researchers to believe. 108 When researching the ancient Near Eastern literature that references textiles and garments, researchers are often stymied by vocabulary that cannot be clearly connected to physical remains or iconographic images. Further complicating the matter in Mesopotamian literature is the fact that a single Sumero-Akkadian determinative is used for both cloth and clothing, such that what might be a garment could also be a textile. 109 Like hair, as discussed in the preceding chapter, clothing communicates a wide range of social information. The most prominent social information conveyed concerns status and gender. Isaiah tells of the finery worn by elite Judean women: On that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarves; the head-dresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and noserings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils. (3:18–22)

Here we are not only told of the luxury goods that were worn, but also of their role as status markers. The threat that they will be taken away is not indicating theft, but social dislocation. The giving or stripping of clothes is a frequent means to depict social movement. Throughout the Joseph cycle (Gen 37–50), his social standing is on a roller coaster, with the giving and taking of clothes indicating social movement. For example, Joseph receives his elaborate coat, marking his status above his brothers, and then is later stripped of it. He then is even stripped of his slave garments by Potiphar’s wife (Gen 39:13). He is elevated by Pharaoh when he receives a ring, necklace and clothing (Gen 41:42). 110 Finally, Joseph elevates his brothers by giving them garments, favoring Benjamin with five garments (Gen 45:22). 111 Similarly, we see David elevated from an unknown shepherd to one beloved of the king’s son when Jonathan gives over his own clothing (1 Sam 18:4). Whether or not this is to be interpreted as Jonathan giving over his future kingdom, it is clearly demonstrating David’s arrival on the public stage and his deeper involvement with the royal family. In a similar way, Saul is seen

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

109

to be stripped, denoting the loss of his kingdom. During the tumultuous end of Saul’s reign, when he is hunting David, David cuts the hem from Saul’s garment (1 Sam 24:4), signifying the future transition of power and echoing Samuel’s prophecy, when Saul clutched at the prophet’s robe, tearing it and marking the tearing of Saul’s kingdom from him (1 Sam 15:27–28). 112 Status transition is also codified in the legal tradition, and can come with instructions regarding clothing. To return to the example used earlier, captured women who are then married by their captors are not only shorn, but also to be given new clothing signifying their advance in status (Deut 21:10–14). 113 In contrast, women accused of adultery are stripped of clothing, to signify their loss of status (Num 5:11–35). 114 In addition to social status, clothing can also designate one’s role or vocation. Priests, for example, are given particular garments marking them as distinct from others (Exodus 28, 39). The prophet Elijah is closely associated with his mantle, which is passed on to Elisha as a symbol of succession (2 Kings 2). In addition to status, clothing is used to signify gender. At the most basic level, very simple distinctions can be used to mark for gender. For example, some Mesopotamian garments were worn by both men and women but pinned on the left by women and on the right by men. 115 Typically, men wore knee length wool tunics (kuttōneth) with either short or long sleeves. Added to this was a cloak that served a variety of purposes, such as a drape around oneself to protect against sun or wind. One could also wear a loincloth (ʾēzôr) or belt (ḥă gôr). Women also wore tunics, with accessories to indicate their social standing. Iconographic evidence shows that a woman’s right shoulder was sometimes bare. We also have iconographic evidence for men’s clothing, such as the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which depicts Jehu with a fringed kuttōneth, sash and hat. Another Assyrian depiction shows Judeans wearing short sleeved kuttōneth. 116 Societies use clothing to identify and control their members, for societies have gender roles, and clothes are visible evidence of conformity or nonconformity to them. 117 Deuteronomy 22:5 legislates against cross-dressing: “A woman shall not wear a man’s apparel, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does such things is abhorrent to the Lord your God.” The reason for the prohibition is unclear. It might be expressive of a larger concern regarding the mixture of unlike things, such as wool and linen. 118 More likely it reflects a concern with regard to gender as part of a larger societal construct. The assumption is that the wearing of opposite gender clothing is indicative of an attempt by the wearer to mimic aspects of that gender. 119 Moreover, the concern may been to prevent the weakening of masculinity through association with symbols of femininity. 120 Another possibility is that is primarily a cultic concern, since most non-biblical ANE examples of crossdressing were cultic in nature. 121

110

Chapter 7

CONCLUSION To summarize the findings across many studies, there is a demonstrable relationship between the perception of one’s position in the world and death anxiety. If one is reminded of one’s creatureliness and its natural and inevitable end, then one seeks relief from that anxiety by emphasizing aspects of human culture that are distinctive markers of difference vis-à-vis other animals. These might be religious beliefs or patriotic belonging, or the claim that we are somehow qualitatively different in our behavior or social structures. Weakening the animal-human boundary or otherwise attacking cultural worldviews that buffer against death anxiety leads to an increase in death thought accessibility, and disgust sensitivity. 122 Making oneself visibly distinct from other animals can be understood then as a means of managing the animal-human boundary. For, as theorists of clothing and fashion recognize, not only do clothes align humans with each other, they also separate them from non-human animals. Clothing becomes an extension of our body, “an outer layer or shell with which we confront the social world” and emphasize both our humanity and our social values. 123 Studies in support of terror management theory have demonstrated that mortality salience induction increases conspicuous consumption of luxury goods such as unneeded clothes. 124 Humans use clothes to indicate their membership in a society, acknowledge our participation in its rules and structures, and promote ourselves as valuable participants. Because ostracization from society can be dehumanizing, adherence to clothing norms becomes an existential concern. The question of human exceptionalism runs throughout our religious and philosophical discourses, but this history of thought, and the history of interpretation of Genesis 2–3 has neglected aspects of the animal. Derrida reverses this matter of exceptionalism and draws our attention precisely to overlooked aspects. Although terror management theory puts death at the center, and I agree with this, Derrida enables us to recognize the importance of clothing that has been missed, to recognize the importance of non-human animals, and, in the end, to recognize that we are the animal, not the non-animal, at the center of this narrative. Derrida recognizes what many have tried to articulate in describing what is unique to humans. We have noted attempts at identifying laughter, knowledge of mortality, storytelling, and other qualities as that which makes us different from animals. Derrida adds clothing to this list, but even then recognizes that this endeavor of upholding human exceptionalism must be abandoned: Clothing would be proper to man, one of the “properties” of man. “Dressing oneself” would be inseparable from all the other figures of what is “proper to man,” even if one talks about it less than speech or reason, the logos, history,

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

111

laughing, mourning, burial, the gift etc. (The list of “what is proper to man” always forms a configuration from the first moment. For that very reason, it can never be limited to a single trait and it is never closed; structurally speaking it can attract a nonfinite number of other concepts, beginning with the concept of a concept.) 125

Instead of seeking what is unique to humans, which we cannot define, we need to reverse our perspective, following after non-human animals and learning what is unique to them. [T]he property unique to animals, what in the last instance distinguishes them from man, is their being naked without knowing it. Not being naked therefore, not having knowledge of their nudity, in short, without consciousness of good and evil. From that point on, naked without knowing it, animals would not be, in truth, naked. 126

When we see the humans in Genesis 2, naked and at ease, we see humans that belong to another world, for a world in which humans are without clothes and at ease is the world of talking serpents and magical trees. It is a world in which we do not live, because we know too much. The knowledge of mortality brings with it the awareness of nakedness. Many biblical commentators, as I will discuss in the next two chapters, acknowledge the importance of clothing and nakedness in Genesis 2–3, but they often simultaneously downplay its importance by presenting it simply as an etiological note on the progress of civilization. Marianna Vogelzang, for example, appeals to the humanizing aspects of clothes, reminding her readers of Enkidu, who “rubbed the shaggy growth, the hair of his body. He anointed himself with oil, became human. He put on clothing, he is like a man.” 127 At the same time, she asserts that similar passages in Genesis 2–3 function etiologically. Clothing theorists and those working on terror management note that the function of clothing is to effect an ideological separation from animals. As I turn to the text of Genesis 2–3 in the next two chapters, I hope to show that clothing is linked to mortality because it is humanizing and reinforces the animal-human boundary. In writing about this passage, the nineteenth-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, laments that the first “man does not remain in his glory even for one night, as soon as he takes animals to be his model and allows the difference between Man [sic] and animal to disappear.” 128 For Rabbi Hirsch, the account in Genesis of listening to an animal’s advice provides a warning to us today: since it was “animal wisdom which lured the first human beings from their duty,” a human being “is never, and in no ways whatsoever, to be an animal.” 129

112

Chapter 7

NOTES 1. Patton, “Net of Life and Time,” 30. 2. JoAnn Scurlock, “Animals in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Handbook of Oriental Studies, ed. Billie Jean Collins (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 361–387. 3. Jana Toppe, “Bible, Monsters in the,” The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, ed. Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014), np. Thomas Wolman, “Human to Animal Transformations in Literature,” in Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and its Sublimation, eds. Salman Akhtar and Vamik D. Volkan (London: Karnak, 2014), 95–126. 4. Allan S. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna of the Ancient Near East,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Handbook of Oriental Studies, ed. Billie Jean Collins (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 48–75. Gilbert provides an exhaustive chart of the post-glacial, indigenous mammalian fauna that inhabited the ancient Near East. 5. Berger, “Why Look at Animals,” 252. 6. Richard Whitekettle, “Where the Wild Things Are,” JSOT 93 (2001): 18. 7. Benjamin R. Foster, “Animals in Mesopotamian Literature,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, ed. Billie Jean Collins (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 272. Babylonian lexica from the first millennium list animals, categorized in relation to earth, air, and water and subdivided in terms of domestic production. They also listed names for male, female, and young, as well as other terms, such as castrated or shorn, comparable to English: bull, bullock, steer, cow, heifer, bobby, and calf. The Hittites had similar lists, distinguishing between wild and domestic animals. Billie Jean Collins, “Animals in Hittite Literature,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, ed. Billie Jean Collins, (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 238. 8. Brian Hesse, “Animal Husbandry and Human Diet in the Ancient Near East,” Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 203–222. 9. Cécile Callou, Anaïck Samzun, and Alain Zivie, “Archaeology: A lion found in the Egyptian tomb of Maia,” Nature 427 (2004): 211. 10. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 218–220. Columbaria do not occur before Hellenistic times. The goose was a rare food and perhaps primarily sacrificial. 11. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 213. 12. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna,” 15. 13. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna,” 10. 14. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna,” 24. 15. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna,” 15. Cattle descended from the now extinct auroch, which was domesticated and then bred selectively to produce all other species of cattle. 16. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 212. 17. Lucio Milano, “Ebla: A Third-Millenium City-State in Ancient Syria,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 1225. 18. Gilbert, “The Native Fauna,” 10. 19. Edward Foulks, “Animals and Religion,” in Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and Its Sublimation, eds. Salman Akhtar and Vamik D. Volkan (London: Karnac, 2014), 220–221. 20. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 37. 21. For information regarding Hothor, see Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 386. 22. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 42–43. 23. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 45. 24. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 368. 25. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 369. See also Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 47. 26. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 49. 27. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 49.

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

113

28. Gilbert “The Native Fauna,” 8. See also Salima Ikram, “Divine Creatures; Animal Mummies,” in Divine Creatures: Animal Mummies in Ancient Egypt, ed. Salima Ikram, (American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 1–3. 29. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 48. 30. Walter Farber, “Witchcraft, Magic, and Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 1895. Magic is definitionally problematic and magic and divination are a part, not subsystems of religion, which make them harder to isolate for study and discussion. 31. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 367. 32. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 361–364. Evil spirits were often composite creatures with human abilities but animalian characteristics. For example, Alluhappu had a lion’s head, human hands and feet; the child snatcher Lamastu had a dog face, donkey ears and teeth, bird feet, riding a donkey and suckling a pig and a snake. According to an apotropaic ritual, the scorpion was the “wolf of the bedroom, lion of the storeroom.” These all sound scary, but there were creatures that were positive as well. Sedu were winged bull door guardians. Other examples of friendly creatures with composite characteristics could be buried under a room or affixed to a door. 33. Ivan Starr, “In Search of Principles of Prognostication in Extispicy,” HUCA 45 (1974): 17–23. Starr surveys extispicy reports, and the various regions and eras in which they were more or less common. Sheep for extispicy were carefully selected and magically purified, although this option was often replaced by less expensive methods, such as using oil (lecanomancy). See Farber, “Witchcraft,” 1904. 34. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 365. 35. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 366. 36. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 371. 37. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 377. 38. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 383. 39. Scurlock, “Ancient Mesopotamian Religion,” 384. 40. Jonathan Klawans, Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and Supersessionism in the Study of Ancient Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 17–38. 41. Annette Yoshiko Reed, “From Sacrifice to the Slaughterhouse,” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 26 (2014): 119. 42. Reed, “Slaughterhouse,” 111–112. 43. Reed, “Slaughterhouse,” 115. 44. Jonathan Klawans, “Sacrifice in Ancient Israel: Pure Bodies, Domesticated Animals, and the Divine Shepherd,” in A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, eds. Paul Waldau, and Kimberly Patton (New York: Columbia University, 2009), 65. 45. Klawans, Purity, 5. 46. Klawans, Purity, 6. 47. Klawans, Purity, 11. 48. Reed, “Slaughterhouse,” 119. Reed points to scholars who emphasized the primitivity of sacrifices, such as E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, vol 1 (London: J. Murray, 1891) 26–59; James G. Frazer, “Selections from The Golden Bough,” in Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader, ed. J. Carter (London: Continuum, 2003), 76–87; William Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1894), 439–440. 49. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 212. 50. Milano, “Ebla,” 1225. See also Alfonso Archi, “Religious Duties for a Royal Family: Basing the Ideology of Social Power at Ebla,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 76 (2017): 293–294. 51. Laerke Recht, “Identifying Sacrifice in Bronze Age Near Eastern Iconography,” in Defining the Sacred: Approaches to Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, ed. Nicola Laneri (Oxford: Oxbow, 2015), 34. 52. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 49. See also chapter 2, which focuses on pastoral imagery, in Benjamin A. Foreman, Animal Metaphors and the People of Israel in the Book of Jeremiah (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 35–106.

114

Chapter 7

53. Tracy Maria Lemos, Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University, 2017), 46. 54. Lemos, Violence and Personhood, 44. 55. Lemos, Violence and Personhood, 44. 56. Jim Mason, “Misothery,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, ed. Linda Kalof (Oxford: Oxford, 2017), 135. 57. Mason, “Misothery,” 135. Joseph D. Clark, Beastly Folklore (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1968). 58. Lemos, Violence and Personhood, 46. Italics are the author’s. The quoted phrase, “ontological vehemence,” is taken from Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (London: Routledge, 2003), 302. 59. Lemos, Violence and Personhood, 47. 60. Olyan, “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment,” 277. 61. Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 19. See Gen 1:20–25, 28. 62. Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 35. For example, Gen 7:21; 8:19. 63. Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 22–24. 64. Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 24–28. 65. Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 27–28. These schemata were used fluidly depending upon the author’s purposes. For example, in Leviticus 11 we find that for one purpose, animals are divided into land, aquatic, and two types of avian creatures (vv 2–23). After this, land animals are divided into those of high and low carriage. The basic threefold habitat schema can also be subdivided based on need for further specificity within a category. We see this in Gen 7:21, which notes a difference between high and low carriage wild animals. See appendix, Whitekettle, “Wild Things,” 35–36. 66. Oded Borowski, “Animals in the Religions of Syria-Palestine,” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Handbook of Oriental Studies, ed. Billie Jean Collins (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 290. 67. Borowski, “Religions of Syria-Palestine,” 290–291. 68. Nathan McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 35. 69. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 35. The term chalab probably refers generically to dairy products than just milk, and almost all milk would have been quickly converted to longer-lasting ghee. Goats were more likely relied upon for milk, for they provide it in greater quantity and lactate longer than do sheep. 70. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 32. 71. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 34. Borowski (“Religions of SyriaPalestine,” 293) notes that hunting was clearly done, but many kills were probably opportunistic. Although some figures such as Esau are connected to hunting, the kings of Israel and Judah do not seem to have been enamored with the hunt as were their Mesopotamian counterparts. 72. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 34. Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2004), 160–161. Even in nonsacral slaughter, which was that required because of distance from the sanctuary, there is an emphasis on the careful handling and avoidance of blood. 73. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 32. See also Cynthia Shafer-Elliott, Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible (New York: Routledge, 2014). 74. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 36. 75. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat, 36–37. See also Edward S. Gerstenberger, Leviticus, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2003), 160–161. Gerstenberger notes that it is unsurprisingly to find the bat included here, but seems to be astonished that the list should include birds such as the “extraordinarily respectable” raven. 76. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 37. 77. McDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?, 38. McDonald asserts without support that smoked or cured fish would have been expensive. I am not sure why he claims this as it does not seem obvious, that dried fish is particularly onerous to transport.

Humans, Animals, and Clothing

115

78. Gerhard Hasel, “Health and Healing in the Old Testament,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 21 (1983): 195; Walter Houston, Purity and Monotheism, JSOT Supplement Series (London: Bloomsbury, 1993), 191. 79. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 215. 80. Hesse, “Animal Husbandry,” 213. The origin of the pig taboo is uncertain, although some suggest it was an ethnic boundary marker. See Lidar Sapir-Hen, Meirav Meiri, and Israel Finkelstein, “Iron Age Pigs: new evidence on their origin and role in forming identity boundaries,” Radiocarbon 57 (2015): 307–315. 81. Borowski, “Religions of Syria-Palestine,” 294. 82. Strømmen, Biblical Animality, 13. 83. Strømmen, Biblical Animality, 92–94. An important contribution to the study of animals in the Bible, which is so often merely a list or references without significant analysis, is the work of Hannah Strømmen. Engaging Derrida and animal studies, Strømmen particularly focuses on the destabilization of the animal-human boundary in Daniel, where the binary division is between God and “the animality of all the living.” Strømmen, Biblical Animality, 108. See also Toppe, “Bible, Monsters,” n.p. For example, the cockatrice of Isa 14:29 is a political metaphor as are the dragons and beasts (a lion with wings, a bear with rows of teeth, a winged and multiheaded leopard) of the apocalyptic material in Daniel 7. Leviathan and Behemoth in Job (40:15–24) and the dragon of the sea (Isa 27:1) are perhaps chaos monsters. See also Gregory Mobley, The Return of the Chaos Monsters and Other Backstories of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 29, 124. 84. Wolman, “Human to Animal Transformations,” 95. A startling counter example is Balaam’s ass, which is given a voice (Num 22:22–30). Stone notes this passage as significant for human animal relations, for the first words spoken by the animal is, “Why have you beaten me?” Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible, 93–115. 85. Brian R. Doak, Consider Leviathan: Narratives of Nature and the Self in Job (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2014), 12. Doak refers to a distinct Israelite “eco-anthropology” in describing the “intersection of the human self with plants, animals, and the earth.” Job is the literary pinnacle of the biblical engagement with “the floral and faunal worlds.” 86. For an animal studies reading of these passages, see Katharine Dell, Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 68–74. 87. Borowski, “Religions of Syria-Palestine,” 294–295. 88. Borowski, “Religions of Syria-Palestine,” 292. While most view Amos’s phrase the “cows of Bashan” to be an insult to the women of Samaria, Irwin asserts that it is not at all clear if it is an insult or a compliment meant to heighten the ensuing criticism. Brian Irwin, “Amos 4:1 and the Cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria: A Reappraisal,” CBQ 74 (2012): 231–246. 89. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 49. 90. Schwabe, “Animals in the Ancient World,” 47. 91. Olyan, “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment,” 273–276. Davidic kings were buried within the city of David, even if repatriation was needed (e.g., Amaziah, 2 Kgs 14:20; also Josiah, 2 Kgs 23:30). Procession with bier, lamentation, and internment are all specifically noted as being denied for Jehoiakim, with the goal of his ritual reclassification as an animal. See also Saul M. Olyan, “Some Neglected Aspects of Israelite Interment Ideology,” Journal of Biblical Literature 124 (2005): 601–616. 92. Olyan, “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment,” 273. 93. Olyan, “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment,” 276. For another brief example of dehumanizing behavior, see the account of Adonibezek in Judg 1:6, who would cut off the thumbs and big toes of his foes, and force them to eat from the scraps under his table. 94. Corrigan, The Dressed Society, 155. 95. Alison Lurie, The Language of Clothes (New York: Henry Holt, 2000) 4–6. 96. Llewellyn Nigrin, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Corporeal Experience of Fashion,” in Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, eds. Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik (London: IB Taurus, 2016), 115. 97. Nigrin, “The Corporeal Experience of Fashion,” 126–127. Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 16–28. 98. Corrigan, The Dressed Society, 155, 162.

116

Chapter 7

99. Carol Bier, “Textile Arts in Ancient Western Asia” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 1568. 100. Bier, “Textile Arts,” 1567. 101. Dominique Collon, “Clothing and Grooming in Ancient Western Asia” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 503. 102. Collon, “Clothing and Grooming,” 503–504. 103. Collon, “Clothing and Grooming,” 504. 104. Rosalind Janssen, “Costume in New Kingdom Egypt,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 385. 105. Janssen, “Costume in New Kingdom Egypt,” 387. 106. Janssen, “Costume in New Kingdom Egypt,” 384. 107. Collon, “Clothing and Grooming,” 504. 108. Janssen, “Costume in New Kingdom Egypt,” 383. For example, see Rosalie David, Handbook to Life in Ancient Egypt (New York: Facts on File, 2003), 329: “Wool was also worn but has been found less frequently because it was forbidden to include clothing made from animal products among the tomb goods.” 109. Bier, “Textile Arts,” 1580. 110. Victor Matthews, “The Anthropology of Clothing in the Joseph Narrative,” JSOT 20 (1995), 29–30. 111. Matthews, “Anthropology of Clothing,” 35–36. Marianna E. Vogelzang and W. J. van Bekkum, “Meaning and Symbolism of Clothing in Ancient Near Eastern Texts,” Scripta Signa Vocis: Studies about Scripts—Scriptures, Scribes and Languages in the Near East (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1986), 271: Middle Assyrian law provided for the confiscation of clothing as a penalty; in a building inscription, Senacherib notes that the designers and overseers of a canal received garments for its successful completion. 112. Ora Horn Prouser, “Suited to the Throne: The symbolic use of clothing in the David and Saul narratives,” JSOT 71 (1996): 29. 113. Benjamin, Deuteronomy, 135. 114. Benjamin, Deuteronomy, 135. One can also see this dynamic at work in a non-legal setting in the pronouncement of the husband-deity in Hos 2:3. 115. Marten Stol, “Private Life in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 491. 116. Victor Matthews, “Cloth, Clothing,” (NIDB 1): 691–696, 692. For an overview of research on biblical clothing, see Alicia Batten, “Clothing and Adornment,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 40 (2010): 148–159. 117. Linda B. Arthur, “Introduction,” in Religion, Dress and the Body, ed. Linda B. Arthur (Oxford: Berg, 1999), 1–2. 118. Richard D. Nelson, Deuteronomy, 267–268. 119. Harold Torger Vedeler, “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5: gender, society and transvestitism in Israel and the ancient Near East,” Journal of Biblical Literature 127 (2008): 459–476. 120. Vedeler, “Deuteronomy 22:5,” 473. 121. Vedeler, “Deuteronomy 22:5,” 465. 122. Kasperbauer, “Animals as Disgust Elicitors,” 176; Cox et al., “Disgust, Creatureliness,” 501, 504; Goldenberg et al., “Human Ambivalence about Sex,” 315. 123. Samantha Hurn, “Dressing Down; Clothing animals, disguising animality?,” Civilisations. Revue internationale d’anthropologie et de sciences humaines 59 (2011): 110. 124. Arndt et al., “The urge to splurge,” 198. See also Tim Kasser and Kennon M. Sheldon, “Of Wealth and Death: Materialism, mortality salience, and consumption behavior,” Psychological Science 11 (2000): 348–351. 125. Derrida, The Animal, 5. 126. Derrida, The Animal, 4–5. 127. Old Babylonian text, IIiii, 22–27. Vogelzang and van Bekkum, “Symbolism of Clothing,” 268. 128. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch (London: Gateshead, 1959), 78. 129. Hirsch, The Pentateuch, 73.

Chapter Eight

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

The goal of the preceding chapters was to demonstrate the cognitive basis for the claim that the continued maintenance and social enforcement of the unsustainable animal-human boundary is due to a concern for our own mortality. In light of this deep connection, one should not be surprised to find expressions of these cognitively linked elements within a biblical account whose primary concern is arguably the mortality of human beings. Moreover, elements related to the animal-human boundary need to be evaluated and considered even more carefully when found in the context of death and immortality. When discussing death and the mortality of the human body, mentions of animals and clothing are likely to carry meaning. By recognizing this cognitive connection as described by terror management theory, we are able to draw together the interaction with the animals and the wearing of clothes in the Genesis account by seeing them as a reinforcement of the animal-human boundary, necessitated by awareness of our mortality. Since, as studies in support of terror management theory demonstrate, the animalhuman boundary provides an anxiety buffer allowing us to distance ourselves from our animal bodies, then we should not be surprised to find an assertion of human difference in a narrative profoundly concerned with thoughts of death. As a reminder, the research in support of terror management theory revolves around three hypotheses. The first, the mortality salience hypothesis, predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, then reminding people of death should increase the need for that structure. In other words, when someone thinks of death, they need the support of their symbolic worldview even more. The second, the anxiety buffer hypothesis, predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, then strengthening that structure will reduce death anxie117

118

Chapter 8

ty. These studies have shown that reinforcing people’s symbolic worldview reduces their concerns about death. Finally, the death-thought accessibility hypothesis predicts that if a psychological structure aids in protection from death anxiety, then weakening that structure will cause death-related thoughts to be increasingly accessible. This means that when people have their worldview shaken, their thoughts are more easily turned toward issues of death. The focus of my final two chapters is the text of Genesis 2–3, examining it for elements that are central to the concern of death anxiety. The current chapter will examine specifically death and the body, animals, and clothing, reflecting on their presence in the text and on the work of commentators, thereby providing the basis for reading the text in light of death anxiety and its implications in the chapter to follow. I suggest, in line with the thesis of this project, that we can see elements of the animal-human boundary and its reinforcement resulting from the presence of the concern regarding the mortality of human bodies. Genesis’ references to non-human animals and the distinguishing of humans through the use of clothing can be viewed as the reinforcement of the animal-human boundary in response to the presence of mortality salience primes, for awareness of death causes us to seek a more secure boundary. “AND THEY WERE NOT BLUSHING” To return once again to the discussion of those characteristics which might be thought to be unique to humans, Darwin was inclined toward placing such characteristics on a continuum, asserting that qualities such as intelligence were distinctive in degree rather than kind. However, in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Darwin does allow for a uniquely human trait; insofar as he can tell, “blushing is the most peculiar and the most human of expressions.” 1 We have seen throughout this project that the philosophers who have focused on the difference between animals and humans have often felt an ambivalence or antipathy toward the emotions. For example, Aristotle, who rejected the passions as beastly, conflated the emotion of shame with blushing. He argued that in front of animals, humans cannot feel shame and therefore do not blush. For Aristotle then, blushing is only done in the company of other humans and is uniquely human. It is this incongruity of being embarrassed by his cat that surprised Derrida, as noted in my opening account. But Aristotle is here undermining his own argument, in that he is simultaneously attributing emotions only to lesser animals, yet also noting an emotion that sets humans apart. 2 Darwin was a little more expansive than Aristotle in his understanding of the function of blushing. He viewed blushing as the result of the mental states of “shyness, shame, and modesty; the

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

119

essential element in all [these mental states] being self-attention.” 3 While this most often occurs in the context of being looked at by someone else, the recognition of which can increase blushing, this can even occur when one is alone and suddenly taken with a thought or memory. 4 Often, such a physiological response to a mental state is brought about by the concern for others’ opinions of our conduct, but most dramatically and most often with regard to our personal appearance or status, such as inappropriate clothes, bad hygiene, or poor manners. 5 Because of this, Darwin writes, “No happy pair of young lovers, valuing each other’s admiration and love more than anything else in the world, probably ever courted each other without many a blush.” 6 Because blushing is so powerfully expressed in the context of romance, it is unsurprising that it plays a role in the context of romantic literature. Jane Austen’s characters, such as Elizabeth Bennet, are frequently blushing. As one Austen scholar put it, along with her other physical characteristics, blushing is one of Elizabeth’s chief attributes. As a “somatic marker,” Elizabeth’s own body “marks shame” at her family’s social shortcomings, with her “body glow[ing] the red her consciousness feels.” 7 Pride and Prejudice contains dozens of instances in which social interactions are made more or less awkward, clarified or made inscrutable because of blushing. Many characters other than Elizabeth blush, but Elizabeth blushes frequently, even on behalf of others or when she is alone. As a gesture, blushing is a somatic act of communication that reveals emotional concern. 8 Austen uses the blush as a way to make her characters legible, a way to allow the reader to gain access to the interior of her characters and often exposing a dissonance between expression and thought. 9 An example can be found when Mr. Darcy appears unexpectedly: They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immovable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party, and spoke to Elizabeth, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least of perfect civility. She had instinctively turned away; but stopping on his approach, received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be overcome. 10

Here, the blushing is reciprocal and easily understood. Often, though, the reddening of the cheeks is ambiguous and very often misread by both characters and readers. 11 The mention of a blush can convey meaning, but it is so common in Austen—with some characters even “blush[ing] again and again”—that even its absence is notable, possibly connoting comfort, confidence, acceptance of the social situation, ease or unconcern at possible social dangers. 12 More straightforwardly, lack of a blush conveys a sense of harmony between the characters’ feelings, actions, and understanding of the social

120

Chapter 8

obligations or conventions, as when Elizabeth “could not but be pleased, could not but triumph . . . [for it] was consoling that she should know she had some relations for whom there was no need to blush.” 13 The nakedness and eventual clothing of the primordial couple in Genesis 2 and 3 is often treated in terms of shame. More specifically, it is generally read either in terms of guilt and innocence or in terms of the ancient context of an honor-shame culture. We see this in the translation of 2:25, in which English Bibles almost unanimously agree that the naked couple was “not ashamed.” However, we see in the work of Darwin, and in the literary account of Elizabeth Bennet, that blushing can communicate a range of feelings and convey more than shamefacedness, just as the lack of blushing can also be communicative. 14 The text does not comment on the nakedness of the first human, but when the woman is created, we are told that they were naked, and lo yitbō š ā š û . They were not disturbed or embarrassed by their situation, and their nakedness was not disconcerting to them, to use Gordon Wenham’s term. 15 Perhaps one could rephrase Derrida here, and call these humans animals who are at ease with themselves. The Vulgate seems to be moving in this direction, with Jerome translating the verse as: erant autem uterque nudi Adam scilicet et uxor eius et non erubescebant For they were both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not blushing.

We seek to control our bodies, circumstances and how others perceive us, but sometimes our bodies betray us. As a literary clue, mention of the couple’s ease or lack of blushing conveys to us a sense of their comfort or confidence. We hide or cover our bodies to prevent embarrassment or disgust in ourselves or others. In so doing, we are striving to fit meaningfully into a social construct that provides meaning. Here, at the beginning of Genesis, we find humans who are naked and at ease. But, as terror management theory shows, we are deeply disturbed by our own bodies. Before diving more deeply into the literature on the garden narrative, I want to single out the work of James Barr. His work is a good illustration, since my view of the overall thrust of the text is very similar to his, but he fails to make the very point I am trying to make with this project. Barr will appear frequently in this chapter and the next because of his distinctive focus on mortality. Whereas many focus on sin, disobedience, or the loss of paradise, Barr sees Genesis 2–3 as primarily as a story recounting the loss of a chance for human immortality, and I think he is right to focus on the issue of mortality. He also notes the overwhelming consensus in translating Gen 2:25 as “without shame,” but sees this as due to the influence of the focus on sin as the theme of the account. Barr draws our attention to the fact that the word “often means rather ‘be embarrassed,’ ‘be shy,’ ‘have a sense of being let down,’ ‘be disappointed.’” 16 This is an important point to linger over; how-

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

121

ever we understand this verse, it is this very condition that the humans find to be changed after they eat the fruit that brings the knowledge of good and evil. In the beginning the first humans were naked and were not disturbed, not embarrassed by this; they were like the animals (for, remember, Adam was with the animals, was familiar with them, and gave them their names. “That’s a horse,” he said, “That’s a cow.”). 17

While Barr provides a good way for us to understand the humans’ comfort with their own bodies, his book exemplifies an oversight my project is trying to correct. Even though Barr puts an emphasis on the transition from ease to unease with regard to the human body, he completely neglects the importance of clothing in this transition. The clothes, he states, were simply “a matter of propriety . . . [for] Hebrew culture was built upon clothedness as normality.” 18 While Barr sees this entire narrative as revolving around death and immortality, and presents the pair’s comfort with human nakedness as evidence that they were “like the animals,” he sees the wearing of clothes as little more than a matter of a cultural norm. While other commentators have differing views on the matter of clothing, with many seeing these as reflecting either issues of guilt or a sin covering, or an etiological comment on clothing or technology, none that I have found emphasize the significance of clothing as a covering of the body as a guard against death anxiety by the demarcation and reinforcement of the animalhuman boundary. Surprisingly, few even mention that fact that humans are the only animals that wear clothes. Among commentators, Glen Mazis seems to express the greatest interest in clothes as a mark of distinction, although it is important to note that he is explicitly reading this passage in light of Derrida and posthumanism. For Mazis, the conclusion of Genesis 3 indicates that humans are to be defined by the fact that they have left natural enclosures, leaving behind bestiality and animality. 19 His overall view of the passage is one in which the priority of human beings over all other animals is asserted. Mazis concludes that the forcefulness of our assertion of human exceptionalism is revealing and that the long history of humans protesting too much reveals self-loathing, a projection of the disgust we feel towards our own bodies onto other animals. 20 Here I will look at these three aspects, namely, the human body and death, non-human animals, and clothing as they appear in Genesis 2–3. THE EARTHLING The first aspect to be considered is the nature of the human body. There is universal recognition that there is wordplay with the name of the human being (ādām) and the ground (ă dāmâ ) from which the human is formed. Like

122

Chapter 8

the ground of the garden which has not received rain, the body of the human has no vitality until acted upon by God. 21 For the material itself, dust and clay are used interchangeably and may therefore be less significant than some commentators suppose. 22 Although dust (ʿāpār) is often used as a metaphor for mortality and perishability, many do not see a reference to demeaning frailty here, but simply the raw material which constitutes both the beginning and end of the human. 23 The connection between the ground and the human is recalled in the subsequent divine curse, when the human is informed that he will return to the ground (3:17–19). It is recalled again by the narrator at the expulsion of the humans from the garden (3:23). The creation of humans from earth elements is common throughout the ancient Near East. Westermann goes so far as to say that the motif “was widespread and known at all times.” 24 While this statement is so absolute as to certainly be wrong, not only do we find examples of this conception in poetry and wisdom literature in the Bible, it occurs in both Egypt and Mesopotamia as well. For example, a painting of Khnum (ca. 1400) depicts the Egyptian deity at a potter’s wheel, forming Amenhotep III and his ka, or life force. 25 In the Wisdom of Amen-em-opert (chapter 35) we read that “man is clay and straw, and the god is his builder.” 26 In Mesopotamia, we read of Aruru pinching off clay to make Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh and Nintu mixing blood and clay in Atrahasis. Without referring to either account specifically, Berossus, a Hellenistic-era chronicler of Babylonian history, notes that earth and blood are the way all air-breathing animals are made. 27 Genesis’ linking of the ādām to the ă dāmâ raises the question of how to refer to the new creature. The English “human” and “man” are problematic because they either seem gendered or lack the assonantal connection with earth. Many follow the lead of Phyllis Trible and use the term “earthling,” as in “God formed the earthling from the earth.” 28 Others adopt “the earth creature” or even “he-she.” 29 There is quite a well-established Jewish tradition of reading the first human as androgynous. 30 Grammatically, the earthling is male but it is not referred to as such until after the creation of the female. 31 One certain thing that we can say about this human is that it is a “living being,” a népeš ḥayyâ . Although being made from the earth, the human is made alive by being breathed into directly by God. 32 This makes the human different from the other creatures which God will make. However, it also seems that the earthly origin of the human relates him to all other living things, as the trees and the other animals are brought forth from the ground as well. The népeš ḥayyâ is the sum total of the human, and the pun on the word “adam” “solidifies the human’s connections to the earth: he was created from it, his job is to cultivate it (2:5, 15), and at death he will return to it (3:19).” 33 There is strong agreement among the commentators that the human being is not created as immortal, although this has not always been the case among

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

123

Christian exegetes. In fact, a church council in Carthage (418 CE) anathematized anyone who said that Adam would have died “whether he sinned or not.” 34 Westermann deems it “not at all permissible” to read the divine breath as granting the human immortality or a soul, as Philo contends. Rather, the breath is the source of life, and there are “there are no grounds for the opinion that God created humans immortal.” 35 Human beings, in this respect, who are created as servants of the earth, are “on a par with the animals” with regard to mortality. 36 As népeš ḥayyâ , humans are part of the animal world and are equally dependent for life upon the breath of God which can be taken away (see, e.g., Job 27:3; Ps 104:29). 37 Von Rad sees the giving of the breath of life as a melancholy moment, for it immediately anticipates the withdrawal of that breath. 38 Made from the dust, the human is mortal and distinct from God. 39 The source of the human’s origin is also the source of its vocation. Until God produced a creature to till the ground, the earth did not grow food or trees. 40 With the emergence of the human, God causes trees to grow. The trees within the arboreal garden can be categorized in different ways. 41 There are ordinary trees and magical trees. 42 There are those whose fruit is forbidden and those from which it is permitted to eat. There are trees that bring life and sustenance, and one that brings death. Once the human is given trees for food, the narrator is no longer concerned with those that produce ordinary fruit. Sarna notes the importance of the adequacy of the ordinary fruit trees for human sustenance as making clear the humans could not claim deprivation as a motivating factor for eating from the tree whose fruit is forbidden. 43 Without further interest for the narrator, and with little narrative time elapsing, these trees disappear and so there is no need to speculate about whether the humans ate from them or not. Rather, we are immediately drawn to the magical trees which can bestow knowledge or life. The two remaining trees not only indicate those qualities that God possesses, knowledge and immortality, they also indicate what the human lacks. The description of the qualities of the magical trees stands in the context of the creation of the human and orient us to a better understanding of the human as a creature with neither knowledge of good and evil, nor immortality. 44 The first tree, the one in the middle of the garden, is only mentioned here at its planting and at the end of the account, when it is barred forever (2:9; 3:22, 24). Not only are trees in general a symbol associated with life in the ancient Near East, plants and food that provide immortal life are found in other ancient accounts as well. 45 When Gilgamesh, distraught over the death of his friend Enkidu, seeks out the source of eternal life he is directed by Utnapishtim to a plant that lies at the bottom of the sea. If one eats this plant of life then “in his hoary age man shall become young again.” 46 Gilgamesh is exhausted from retrieving the plant, and it is stolen from the sleeping hero by a serpent. Similarly, while Adapa has a banquet of life-bestowing food with-

124

Chapter 8

in his reach, it is fear and not exhaustion that prevents him from eating the food and thereby acquiring immortality. While Gilgamesh’s obsession with death and immortality seems absent from the Genesis account, both accounts conclude that eternal life is inaccessible for humans. 47 The tree of life is found elsewhere in the Bible as well, where it is connected with royal ideology and has mythical origins. 48 Proverbs relates it to righteousness (e.g., 11:30). Ezekiel places it in the garden of God where it is to be tended by the king (28:13; 47:12). The tree’s identity is not developed by the text, and it seems to suggest an earlier, royal story. 49 This fruit of this tree is not initially forbidden to the humans, and it seems that they could have had access to it had they chosen to do so. 50 The tree soon disappears, however, from both the narrative and from the attention of the characters. 51 Moreover, the first human is not told specifically of this tree and so the reader might conclude that he was ignorant of its existence. While this whole story may be, as Barr asserts, an account of the search for immortality, with the Tree of Life now in the background of the narrative, it seems as though Genesis 2–3 becomes a tale of the quest for knowledge. 52 While the Tree of Life is well attested, the Tree of Knowledge is found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. 53 The knowledge of good (tôb) and bad (rāʿ) is usually understood by commentators to refer to sexual awareness, a merism signifying all things, or moral awareness. 54 The opinion that the knowledge is sexual awareness is no longer common as it once was. Westermann lists many who hold this view, who generally note that procreation only begins after the humans attain knowledge of their nakedness. 55 These commentators include discussions that the knowledge which the tree imparts is generally linked to the nakedness of the human, a topic which has not yet been introduced in the narrative. The first human, alone at this point, is not referred to as either naked or clothed. Presumably, this is less important at this point because of his solitary state. Wallace notes that those who tend to focus on issues of sexuality and fertility in the narrative are unduly influenced by its mention of the tree of life, which can function as a fertility symbol. He further holds that the garden is “in effect the garden of God” which also has symbolic weight with regard to fertility. 56 I agree with Wallace that scholars’ attempts to equate the knowledge of the good and evil to a sexual awareness fails. At this point, the human is solitary, God has not yet noted that this state is not good, and when meeting the woman for the first time, the human’s exclamation seems to imply a newfound sexual awareness. 57 Even if the narrative inherited by the editor had a greater interest in sexuality and fertility, Wallace asserts that in the present text the elements are implicit, and that any sexual “emphasis is one that is felt or sensed more that it is explicitly realized.” 58 The fact that almost all English Bibles translate the knowledge that the tree can impart to be the knowledge of “good and evil” leads many to suggest ethical interpretations, particularly since the tree is in the context of a divine

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

125

prohibition and the later transgression of that prohibition. 59 Hartley does not draw on the history of interpretation that reads the expression morally, but he, like Brueggemann, presents the nature of the tree as secondary to the command: “By giving humans such a prohibition, God was mercifully providing them a tangible symbol of their moral nature.” 60 He then comments that the humans did not yet have an inclination to assert themselves above God. This seems a surprising nod to later theologies of concupiscence, and also odd since, if the account is read morally, this is what the humans in fact do. Brueggemann too makes a statement that I find surprising, in asserting that the Tree of Knowledge has become the “tree of command” because “the story is not interested in the character of the tree. The trees are incidental to the point that God’s command is a serious one.” 61 This does not seem to me to be the case, since the focus that follows is not on the transgression, but on the point that the humans now have knowledge (3:22). Some commentators point out the problem with seeing the quality of the tree particularly in moral terms, since if the humans did not already have a moral sense, the prohibition would be incomprehensible to them. They suggest a different translation, such as “good and bad,” to provide the reader with an alternative to the moral interpretation of the phrase. 62 Westermann agrees with this but he then goes on to say that “one can retain the traditional translation ‘good and evil’ only with the reservation that ‘bad’ in the general sense is meant.” 63 In my opinion, to retain a phrase only under the condition that it does not mean what it says seems to defeat the point. Most commentators note the problems associated with seeing the knowledge in question in terms of sexuality or morality and propose some “sort of cognitive enlightenment.” 64 For most, “good and bad” serve as a merism which signify some form of knowledge about everything. 65 Von Rad, for example, notes without elaboration that here we find a tree “whose fruit gives omniscience.” 66 Cotter suggests that the merism means universal knowledge and that it is integral to the penalty that is later imposed; in knowing everything, they evolve and so die as humans. 67 Sarna does not go as far, but does assert that “their intellectual horizons are immeasurably expanded.” 68 It is hard to find support for this in the narrative, and Sarna himself does not attempt to do so. Cassuto—who seems to me to be always overly generous to God in his interpretations—sees in the divine prohibition of knowledge a God that is a loving father who did not want his child to be exposed to the cares of the world. 69 Rottzell lists the common suggestions, but also mentions knowledge of what is beneficial and harmful, and magical knowledge. 70 We see that the nature of the trees and the garden has been commented on extensively. In its pairing with the tree of life, however, the second tree becomes not just the tree of knowledge but also the “tree of death.” 71 This association is further emphasized by the first direct discourse in the narrative. Until this point, the only voice has been that of the narrator. Unlike the first

126

Chapter 8

creation narrative, there is no divine fiat or spoken creative commands. The prohibition and penalty come as a break in the narrative exposition, as “the silence of the narrative is finally and decisively broken.” 72 Death now enters the scene. Vogels suggests, “suddenly and for the first time,” disorder and death appear in the account which had hitherto “spoken exclusively of happiness and life.” 73 I think that this is not the full picture, though, for the introduction of death is building upon the negative tenor of this creation narrative. Although our purpose here is not to compare this material with the account found earlier (Gen 1:1–2:3), the former’s tone is decidedly more negative than the latter’s. The account in Genesis 1 focuses on the success of the creative process, what is and what is good. The account of Genesis 2–3, much like the older Marduk creation account, is dominated by what is not rather than by what is. 74 To this point in the narrative, the negativity highlights that the world is not yet what it will become. This is indicated by the use of four negations at the opening of the account: In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground. (Gen 2:4b–5)

Later we will see additional negative evaluations, as God deems it “not good” that the human is alone (2:18) and that a suitable helper was not found (2:20). Most significantly, while the Genesis 1 is marked by goodness and plentitude, the very first words of direct discourse in the narrative of Genesis 2–3 are regarding human mortality. This suggests that awareness of death is integral to the narrative. 75 At this point, we have to address the nature of the divine statement regarding death in 2:17, for it is not agreed upon by the commentators. Some view the statement as a threat to the human, informing him that the death penalty will obtain if the divine command is disregarded. Others see it as a warning about the nature of the tree, that the fruit itself will bring death with it. 76 The text here utilizes an infinitive absolute: dying, you will die (môt tāmȗt). The Septuagint conveys the Hebrew’s emphasis, by using the cognate dative noun ‘death’ (thanátō) of the verb to die (apothnésko). 77 In the day you eat from it, dying you will die. Barr, among others, points out that this understanding is problematic because the human does not die on the day he eats from the tree. It seems very clear to me that grammatically and in context, the statement should be read as a death threat. It is only in light of the conclusion of the narrative that one might feel the need to reread the threat in light of the fact that they do not die. Speiser, for example, translates the passage, “you shall be doomed to death”:

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

127

The phrase need not be translated “you shall surely die” as it invariably is. Death did not result in this instance. The point of the whole narrative is apparently man’s ultimate punishment rather than instantaneous death. 78

Hamilton also sees the divine statement as referring to a deferred penalty, as in “you are doomed to die [eventually].” 79 Westermann, among others, points out that the formulation used cannot be read as a delayed consequence or as an indication of the loss of a prior immortality. Likewise, Von Rad writes that, “The text does not say, ‘you will become mortal,’ but rather ‘you shall die!’” 80 It is hard not to read this passage backward, from the end of the account, and so to try to explain this as meaning something other than a clear warning. At this point in the first narrative unit, the male human exists as the only living creature among the plant life and trees, for which he has a vocation to care, just as he has a command regarding one particular tree. In virtue of this command, the human becomes aware that death is a possibility for him. Some commentators question how the human could conceptualize death, or in fact wonder how he could even have understood the word: “here is the human, barely brought into being, and now he is being threatened with nonbeing. But death cannot really mean anything to him in this stage.” 81 Good goes even further to say that “even for Yahweh death is hypothetical.” Sarna makes a similar comment, noting that this threat would only be intelligible if the human had already encountered animal death. 82 I find this line of thinking problematic, for at this point in the narrative, there are no animals except the human. Sarna seems to have slipped into a reading that treats the story as history, not recognizing that the narrative requires that the human know the meaning of words; we do not have commentators arguing that the human cannot understand what it means that he may “freely eat,” since he has not yet have encountered other animals eating freely. THE HUMAN AND OTHER ANIMALS The solitary nature of the human at this point of the narrative is important to note and is often overlooked by commentators, or simply conflated with loneliness. For example, Westermann comments that the human is different from the animals because he has been given a command, which opens up a relationship to the command-giver. 83 But, again, Westermann is getting ahead of himself here; the human is not different because he has a command and the other animals do not, but because he is simply the only animal that currently exists. God emphasizes this point in the second instance of direct discourse by noting that it is not good that the human is alone (Gen 2:18). There is no explanation for this statement by either God or the narrator, nor is it described as a subjective opinion on God’s part. God does not inquire of

128

Chapter 8

the human regarding the matter nor does he inform him of the assessment. 84 The human has not expressed anything at this point to indicate that he is lonely, nor does the narrator mention this as being the case. Loneliness is, however, the lens though which most commentators view this situation. Cotter connects the issue of the preceding verse with the statement of 2:18 and writes that “the story teaches that solitude, loneliness is a condition that will cause the human to die.” 85 Although this statement is both strong and unsupported, it does perhaps call attention to the reality that humans are fundamentally social, and the text resonates with the readers’ experiences of loneliness. God seeks to remedy this negative situation by finding a helper for the human. The term ēzer kĕnegdô has received a great deal of attention. Most English translations render it with something along the lines of a “suitable helper,” or, the clumsier but perhaps better, “a helper corresponding to him.” However, it is translated, commentators are generally at pains to emphasize the positive quality of the term and show that it is not demeaning. For example, it is regularly pointed out that elsewhere only God is called an ēzer, as in the name Eliezer, “God is my help.” 86 Trible prefers to see the ēzer as a “companion” and Alter uses even stronger language, “sustainer.” 87 The search for a suitable helper is begun and God forms the animals from the ground and brings them to the human (Gen 2:19). The animals are categorized, as discussed in chapter 3, as cattle, fowl, and beasts of the field. Although the text is terse, we can imagine the “suspense and tension mount[ing] as the long parade of animals moves past the lonely man.” 88 Like the human, they are formed from the earth and called népeš ḥayyâ as well. Unlike the human, we are not told that they are animated by divine breath. Sarna sees here a distinction with regard to status between the human and the non-human animals. 89 Others, including Westermann, do not want to overemphasize this difference and do not see it as important in creating a distinction, viewing the shared designation of népeš ḥayyâ as more significant. 90 This view could be further supported by noting that, near the end of this narrative section, we likewise receive no indication of how the woman is vivified (Gen 2:22). Cassuto agrees with many evangelical commentators in asserting that the world was already populated with animals (Gen 1:20–25), and that God only brought some specific animals to the human for naming. 91 However, the text emphasizes with its five uses of kol in 2:7–25 that it is all the animals that are created in the search for an ēzer kĕnegdô. 92 All of the animals were created and shown to the human (2:19). The narrative strongly implies that the non-human animals might have been a suitable helper, for God creates them in response to what he sees as the problem of the human’s solitariness. This is the view of most commentators, who see here a series of trial and errors in which God, perhaps unsure if any of them will work, brings animals to the man. 93 Pfeiffer recalls the account of Enkidu, and suggests that the possibility of a satisfactory relation-

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

129

ship with the animals should not be surprising. 94 Not all commentators are in agreement on this point, however. Some see here something more than a process of trial and error and hold that the human’s review of the animal world was more self-definitional. Embracing the self-referential nature of viewing the other that is rejected by the animal turn examined in chapter 3, Cassuto writes that the author’s purpose behind the narrator’s mentioning of the animals is to allow the human to “become conscious of his loneliness.” 95 Sarna goes further: The review of the subhuman creation makes the man conscious of his own uniqueness, of his inability to integrate himself into that whole biological order or feel direct kinship with the other animate beings. At the same time, by observing the otherwise universal complementary pairing of male and female, he becomes aware of his own exceptional status and of his solitariness. 96

Sarna does not ignore animal creation, but he explicitly discounts its importance except for its role in teaching the human and as an opportunity to highlight the superiority of the woman. Likewise, Cassuto sees here nothing more than the creation of a few select animals which God uses to teach Adam about loneliness, for God already created the animals in Genesis 1. Comments along this line seem to go far beyond what can be gleaned from the text. Even Westermann, who tries here to be careful in respecting the limits of what can be said on the basis of the text, claims too much when he writes that “the animals retain a positive meaning for the man which is described when he names them.” 97 As much as I wish that this text said more than it does, it is important to note what is and is not actually presented in the text and be aware of the very brief nature of the account. God quickly creates the non-human animals, and the narrator quickly moves past them. Many commentators follow suit, with some simply noting the lack of an ēzer kĕnegdô among the animals, or even calling the creation of the animals “a digression.” 98 Westermann’s view of the unit as focusing on the creation of the human and the search for a suitable partner, suggests that he does not see the creation of non-human animals as essential. 99 Scholarly reading of the animals prior to the development of ecotheology has often seen the creation of animals as impacting the understanding of God and humans. Either it demonstrates the author’s view of God as not omniscient or it is used to create a foil, a lesser example to compare with the man’s joyous “At last!” when the woman is created (Gen 2:23). 100 There is a general consensus that the naming of the animals by the man is in some way constructs the relationship between them. The verb qārāʾ to name, is emphatically used three times. 101 The most common view of the relationship is one of the mastery by the human over the animals, with the name designating or symbolizing human authority or lordship over them. 102

130

Chapter 8

Many make connections of this passage with the account of Genesis 1, with the naming of the non-human animals being symbolic of the “human hegemony,” which that author describes as “dominion” (rādâ, Gen 1:28). 103 Some are less inclined to see something here akin to lordship, and rather view the name giving to be an act of discernment, rather than dominance. 104 Many of these readings result from the problematic situation which arises when one considers the naming of animals to be one of dominance, only to find that the human then also names the woman whom God makes for him (Gen 2:23). To move ahead of ourselves in the narrative, presented with the woman, the human also names her, causing some to connect the woman with the animals and giving the man (now clearly a male) authority over her as well. Barr even refers to the woman as a “super-animal.” 105 The question of human dominance over non-human animals then becomes involved in the issue of patriarchal dominance. 106 Von Rad concludes that the search for a helper for the man among the animals is futile because the non-human animals fail to be “the mirror of himself, in which he recognizes himself.” 107 Others, I think more accurately, even if unintentionally, have pointed out what animals studies critics have demonstrated and criticized, that the animals are, in fact, a mirror which the human uses to perceive his own superiority and difference. In the naming of the animals we are not actually told that the human interacts with them, yet for many, this is the explanation for the author’s conclusion that there is not a helper fit for the man to be found among the animals. Why is this so? White, for example, views the animals as neutral with regard to morality, but “anomalous regarding human speech.” 108 The human speaks to them but they do not reply and cannot be conversation partners. Although not stated, White’s view here is one of homo lingua, in which the human is unique among the animals because of the capacity for language. Apart from the issues of speciesism already discussed with regard to human exceptionalism, this is perhaps problematic in terms of the text itself, as the woman also does not converse when greeted by the man, and chapter 3 presents the reader with a talking serpent. Other commentators have different views regarding the unsuitability of the animals, but generally hold that it reflects some sort of human exceptionalism, summed up by Westermann’s assertion that the biblical author is here emphasizing that the animals are not suitable for the human: the author intends, “if only polemically, to stress the difference between a human being and a beast.” 109 We are also somewhat at a loss to even determine who is the one who makes the determination that the animals are not suitable. Throughout our account, there are few grammatical or textual concerns of note, but here we find a sharp disagreement among commentators with regard to the subject of the verb māṣāʾ (to find). As an example, Westermann is certain that “the subject of lo-māṣāʾ must be the man,” while Good is equally certain that the

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

131

subject “must be yhwh.” 110 Most English translations follow the Septuagint and translate the verb as passive, “there was not found,” presumably to avoid the question since this translation cannot be justified on the basis on the Hebrew text. 111 Some English translations and commentators remove any ambiguity and, again without justification, write that “Adam did not find.” 112 But, moreover, we are not even told why the animals cannot be an ēzer kĕnegdô to the human. The concern with non-human animals shifts to a different approach to creation altogether, and the finding of a helper. In a reversal of what is the expected course of nature, a woman comes from a man. 113 While we have already seen that the creation of a man or of many humans from the ground is a well-established motif in the ancient Near East, the individual creation of a primordial woman seems to be unique to our account. 114 The process by which the woman is created is different from that of either the man or the animals, all of whom were formed out of the ground in some way. The narrator marks the creation of the first human with a pun, and here that same human marks the creation of a woman by his own pun, naming both himself and the woman. 115 This is the first instance of direct discourse by the man, which could lend strength to the argument put forward by White and others that the lack of conversation with the animals was the cause of their unsuitability. 116 However, it is important to note here that the woman does not, in fact, engage the man in conversation either. The man cries out, zōt happaʿam, “this now,” or emphatically, “at last!” This exclamation is generally understood as a backward looking reference, recognizing that this new creature is the right one after the unsuitability of the nonhuman animals. 117 If these animals were a mirror showing the human his superiority, here the man, in naming both himself and the woman, finds his own identity in his likeness to others. 118 There is no mention of nakedness in this section, which Westermann concludes at 2:24. The concern of the passage focuses on the origin of the male human, the unsuitability of the animals as partners, and the closeness of the relationship of the female human to the male human, as a result of her origin from within him. Sarna highlights, as do others, the possible connection with this joyful greeting with sexuality. Here Sarna makes a comment some might consider speciesist that sex does not rise above “animality” unless it is informed by a “spiritual, emotional, and mental affinity.” 119 NAKED AND CLOTHED Connected to both the reflection on the human body and humans’ relationship to the other animals is the nakedness of the humans. The next narrative unit, in contrast to the traditional division of chapters, begins with 2:25. This short section, running to 3:7, begins with a pun. The humans are naked,

132

Chapter 8

ʿărûmmîm, while the serpent of 3:1 is ʿārûm. The author makes the linguistic play unmistakable with the plene spelling of ʿārûm, including the waw. 120 The subtleness or cleverness of the serpent, in some way corresponds to the nakedness of the humans. 121 Van Wolde refers to this as an iconic relation, an important linguistic tie that is both uniting and highlighting difference. 122 Throughout Genesis 2–3, puns are used to draw our attention to important relationships: the human from the ground, the woman from the man, naked and cunning, and Eve as the mother of the living. 123 White views the pun as ironic, with the cleverness of the serpent highlighting the innocence of the humans. 124 The couple’s innocence is a common thread through many commentaries. Whedbee, for example, in line with his deeply narrative approach, refers to the “innocent, idyllic nakedness” of the humans. 125 Others note that because shame is only for the condemned, their lack of wrongdoing to this point provides them with comfort in their nakedness. 126 Many authors draw significant connections between innocence and sexuality. Sarna, whose comments on sexuality I have already noted, writes that the nakedness conveys the “pristine innocence and dignity of sexuality.” 127 This relation of nakedness to sexuality is not a great leap, but it does require some further reflection. Some suggest that the pair had no knowledge of sexuality at all, a position which many reject. 128 Cassuto appeals to the rabbinic tradition that the couple viewed their exposed sexual organs as nonchalantly as we view other peoples’ hands. 129 The statement that the humans were naked and lo yitbō š ā š û , however we translate this, could be set into a semiotic square with their corresponding opposites of clothed and ashamed, and the account relates movement among these qualities. 130 Both terms, naked and unashamed (at ease/undisconcerted), anticipate the coming crisis for both qualities must necessarily change, as they are not the current state of affairs. Knowledge is a “most ambiguous possession” as we see at both the outset and the conclusion. 131 The serpent could be either a helper or foe, but either way knowledge will bring disruption. 132 The connectedness of the motif of nakedness with clothing is very regularly noted, but it is sometimes downplayed to the point of practical negation. For example, Wallace views the statements on clothing as etiological, and sees the nakedness as simply a stage to provide the necessary condition for the later introduction of clothing. 133 The text’s treatment of clothing receives less attention from commentators than I think it deserves, considering the number of times it is referred to and the importance of nakedness in the narrative. Whatever one might make of the knowledge of tôb and rāʿ, it is clear that the humans become aware of their nakedness and seek to remedy their accompanying response to this by covering their bodies. 134 With some overlap, there are

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

133

three main approaches to understanding 3:7 and 3:21, with the clothing seen as symbolic, as a divine gift, or functioning as an etiology. 135 The first view is that the clothing serves as a symbolic covering. Those who hold this view are also those that stress the couple’s prior nakedness as an expression of innocence or naïveté. For example, Sarna, who asserts that their prior nakedness was an expression of “pristine innocence and dignity of sexuality,” sees the clothing as a marker of the loss of those qualities. 136 Hamilton agrees, suggesting that in the face of their loss of innocence, which should have “driv[en] them back to God,” the humans instead resorted to a “self-atoning, self-protecting” set of clothes. 137 Waltke also suggests that the loss of innocence causes the humans to seek to overcome the vulnerability of shame and temptation with a “barrier of clothing.” 138 Beyond the function of clothing as a covering for shame or guilt, White suggests that the clothes are a dual sign of God’s grace and also a “permanent sign of their alienation” from God. 139 The second approach is to consider the clothing as a gift from God. Some commentators find here a similarity to those Mesopotamian accounts in which the elements of civilization are divine gifts, either intentionally given or not. For example, in the Song of the Hoe (COS 1.157) Enlil creates an implement, which he uses to till the soil in preparation for the creation of humans. The tool is then given to the humans in order that they might produce food for the temple. Another account is that of Innana and Enki (COS 1.161), in which Innana steals ninety-four arts of civilization and takes them to Uruk. 140 These arts include “the craft of the carpenter, the craft of the coppersmith, the art of the scribe, the craft of the smith, the craft of the leather worker, the . . . kindling of fire, extinguishing of fire.” 141 Westermann views the giving of clothes to the humans (Gen 3:21) in this light. Because they are a gift from God, they are important. 142 He is quick to add, however, that clothes are also a basic element of our civilization, and so one should not overemphasize their importance or view them symbolically. 143 Other commentators follow this approach, and see the clothes as very utilitarian gifts, not particularly connected to the larger rise of civilization. Many commentators note that the clothes made of skins are special gifts given by God, superior to their own leafy aprons, to protect the humans as they must now venture beyond the protective garden and make their way in a harsh environment. 144 The third significant approach regarding the role of clothing in the account is etiological. This approach is often connected with other etiological texts in Genesis 1–11, such as the development of metalworking (4:22) or viticulture (9:20). The sewing of garments, even garments of leaves, is an act of industry separate from that of gardening or agriculture, which was the original task of the humans. This initiative will then eventually lead to cities, and even great towers, as we see in Genesis 11. “Once humanity have gained the ability to think independently, technological progress cannot be

134

Chapter 8

halted.” 145 Wallace suggests that an earlier form of the narrative was perhaps more symbolic than the text which we now have, with fertility being more of a focus of the narrative inherited by J, who reworked the text into an etiology of clothing. 146 Finally, Coats makes what I find to be a puzzling assertion that the clothing here is to be understood neither symbolically nor etiologically; it is simply “information to show the progress of civilization.” 147 I am unsure how this differs from an etiology. Just as they use language of innocence in relation to the couple’s nakedness, the commentators switch to the language of guilt and sex with the introduction of clothing. This is unsurprising, as we expect movement in the narrative. The innocence suggested by commentators at the account’s opening must now be reversed, just as clothes must be introduced. Guilt occurs simultaneously for both humans, which White suggests shows that the guilt originates not at the moment of eating the fruit, but at the opening of the eyes and recognition of their nakedness. 148 White continues to highlight the sexual connection here, emphasizing that their leafy garments were made to cover their sex organs. 149 It is true that the leafy aprons do this, but the point seems to me almost definitional, in that to be clothed is to cover one’s sex organs; it is true that a hat is clothing, but no one wearing only a hat is considered clothed. Commentators do not regularly point out that the wearing of clothes distinguishes the humans from other animals, although both Whedbee and Westermann do. Mazis also does, but as noted earlier, his approach is posthumanist. More typical are remarks that that the leafy aprons are insufficient and that the later garments produced by God are more efficacious. In reference to these God-given garments, Westermann alludes to their distinctiveness while discussing other passages. Whedbee, however, makes the point more clearly: 150 [P]rovision of new clothing for the humans [is] suggestive of a divine gesture of solicitous care as well as designating them as civilized human beings differentiated from both gods and animals. 151

Whether gods wear clothing or not, he does not venture to say. The clothes given by God follow the curses, in which we find a string of mortality salience and disgust-eliciting primes: bodies, burial, birth, sex, and death. While we do have earlier references to death in the narrative, that death seemed—at least to the human characters—to be contingent and avoidable. But, as Sarna unambiguously states, the humans now live “henceforth in the consciousness of [their] mortality.” 152 They have been told that they will return to the dust which was their origin (Gen 3:19). The pair’s immediate response to the curses laden with mortality salience is a surprising interruption. As many note, Gen 3:20 belongs more naturally in chapter 4, in

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

135

which the woman gives birth for the first time. 153 But here we have an intrusive statement from the narrator that, “Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” The woman, previously called ʾišâ because of her origin in man, ʾiš, is renamed with another pun and called ḥawwâ because of her relationship to ḥayyâ . This second naming only comes in response to the curses announcing their mortality. 154 Sarna affirms here that propagation becomes the “answer of humankind to the quest for immortality; it is a perpetual triumph over death.” 155 CONCLUSION It is surprising that commentators recognize the role of the hope of propagation in Gen 3:20 as a response to death, but do not see that this verse is paired with the following, in which God provides the pair with clothing made from animals: “And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.” Can this verse not also be directly related to the curses and the humans’ new understanding of their mortality? I suggest that the clothing that the humans make for themselves and the garments that God makes for them should be understood as a significant humanizing marker, one that distinguishes them from other animals and intensifies the animalhuman boundary that serves as a buffer to the anxiety that is induced by the awareness of our mortality. Having now examined those elements of the narrative which are integrally related to the awareness of our mortality and those which humans emphasize in order to distance ourselves from our own animal bodies, my final chapter turns to a more holistic reading of the account in light of death anxiety and the animal-human boundary. NOTES 1. Charles Darwin and Phillip Prodger, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: Harper Collins, 1998 [1872]), 310; Brian Cummings, “Animal Passions and Human Sciences: Shame, blushing and nakedness in early Modern Europe and the New World,” in At the Borders of the Human, eds. Susan Wiseman, Erica Fudge, and Ruth Gilbert (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999), 28. 2. Cummings, “Animal Passions,” 28; For comments on blushing, see Aristotle Cat. 8, and EN 4.9. 3. Darwin and Prodger, Expression, 324. 4. Darwin and Prodger, Expression, 323–324. 5. Darwin and Prodger, Expression, 337. The full quote reads, “Finally, then, I conclude that blushing,—whether due to shyness—to shame for a real crime—to shame from a breach of the laws of etiquette—to modesty from humility—to modesty from an indelicacy—depends in all cases on the same principle; this principle being a sensitive regard for the opinion, more particularly for the depreciation of others, primarily in relation to our personal appearance, especially of our faces; and secondarily, through the force of association and habit, in relation to the opinion of others on our conduct.” For a scientific and social analysis of blushing, see W. Ray Crozier, Blushing and the Social Emotions (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

136

Chapter 8

6. Darwin and Prodger, Expression, 325. 7. Kay Young, “Feeling Embodied: Consciousness, Persuasion, and Jane Austen,” Narrative 11 (2003): 81. See also Katie Halsey, “The blush of modesty or the blush of shame? Reading Jane Austen’s blushes,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 42 (2006): 226–238. 8. John Wiltshire, Jane Austen and the Body: the Picture of Health (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 77. Mary Ann O’Farrell, Telling Complexions: The NineteenthCentury English Novel and the Blush (Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 1997), 5–6. 9. O’Farrell, Telling Complexions, 28. 10. Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (London: MacMillan, 1901), 227. 11. Wiltshire, Austen and the Body, 19. 12. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 228. 13. Austen, Pride and Prejudice, 230. 14. Wiltshire, Austen and the Body, 78. Wiltshire notes that Freud referred to blushing as a “temporary erection of the face.” 15. Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commmentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2017), 71. 16. James Barr, The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality (London: SCM Press, 1992), 63. 17. Barr, Immortality, 62. 18. Barr, Immortality, 63. 19. Mazis, “Animals, before Me,” 20. 20. Mazis, “Animals, before Me,” 24–25. 21. George W. Coats, Genesis, with an introduction to narrative literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 51. 22. Westermann, Genesis, 206. See Job 10:8–9; 4:19; Ps 90:3; 103:14; 104:29; 119:73; 146:4; Gen 3:19; 3:23; 18:27. 23. Konrad Schmid, “Loss of immortality? Hermeneutical aspects of Genesis 2–3 and its early receptions,” in Beyond Eden: the Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and its Reception History, FAT 34, eds. Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebek, 2008), 74. See also Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis: The traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation (Philadelphia: JPS, 1989), 18; Hamilton, Genesis, 158. 24. Westermann, Genesis, 203–204. 25. The ka is difficult to define precisely. It is a spiritual component, but just as Khnum molds both individuals and their ka, a person’s statue can be their ka. Leonard Lesko, “Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egyptian Thought,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 1764. 26. COS 1.47. Sarna, Genesis, 17. Sarna’s reference to the passages’ source is incorrect. 27. Umberto Cassuto, Commentary on Genesis. Vol. II (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964), 106. John Van Seters, Prologue to History: The Yahwist as historian in Genesis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992), 69. Blood alone, without earth materials is not used in Enuma Elish. Van Seters, “Prologue,” 50. Without any explanation, but presumably because the use of breath in creation is unique in ancient Near Eastern literature, Arnold concludes that although the accounts are all related, Gen 2:7 is “more powerfully and philosophically stated than any others.” Bill T. Arnold, Genesis. New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2009), 57. 28. Walter Brueggemann, A Bible Commentary on Genesis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982), 44. Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis. Chapters 1–17 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 156. 29. W. Sibley Towner, Genesis, Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 35. 30. See Genesis Rabbah 8:1. 31. David W. Cotter, Genesis, Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2003), 29. 32. Sarna, Genesis, 17. 33. Arnold, Genesis, 58. 34. Schmid, “Loss of Immortality,” 58. 35. Westermann, Genesis, 207. Philo, Op. 135.

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

137

36. Edwin M. Good, Genesis 1–11: Tales of the Earliest World (Stanford: Stanford University, 2011), 26 37. John Hartley, Genesis, NIBC (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 59. 38. Gerhard Von Rad, Genesis: A commentary, Old Testament Library (Westminster John Knox Press, 1973), 77. 39. Westermann, Genesis, 202. 40. Towner, Genesis, 35. I cannot agree with Westermann here, who asserts without support, “Human work is demythologized; civilization, of which agriculture is a constitutive part acquires thereby its own independent significance.” Westermann, Genesis, 222. 41. Susan Brayford, Genesis; Septuagint Commentary Series (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 228. The nature of the garden is unclear. It seems to have in the background a mythical origin in the Garden of God (e.g., Ezek 28:13, 31). The conception of the garden as a paradise is probably based on the LXX use of pardeisos, derived from a Persian loan word for an enclosed park or pleasure park. This concept of paradise is not necessarily implied here, especially if one considers paradise to be a place of rest without work. See also Sarna, Genesis, 18. 42. Cassuto (Genesis, 109) uses the term “miraculous” to describe the trees. Others use terms such as mythical or magical. 43. Sarna, Genesis, 18. 44. Hugh C. White, Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 118. Also, Cassuto, Genesis, 125: “Likewise, there is not the slightest indication that man was already immortal before his Fall” because it is clear he would have had to eat from the tree in order to become so. 45. Arnold, Genesis, 58. 46. Cassuto, Genesis, 109. 47. Westermann, Genesis, 214. William Moran, “The Gilgamesh Epic: A Masterpiece from Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack Sasson (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), 2327–2328. While there are several versions of Gilgamesh that precede the most well-known Babylonian account, they all “manifest a certain unity. Death— the fear of death, everlasting fame as a victory over death, life after death—is a common theme.” The later Babylonian version also is primarily concerned with Gilgamesh’s quest for immortality. 48. Jutta Krispenz, “Wie viele Baume braucht das Paradies? Erwägungen zu Gen ii 4b–iii 24,” VT 54 (2004): 309. 49. Breuggemann, Genesis, 45. 50. Cassuto, Genesis, 124. Krüger suggests that life would have been equally precarious had the the humans eaten from the Tree of Life, for then God would have needed to protect the Tree of Knowledge. Thomas Krüger, “Sündenfall? Überlegungen zur theologischen Bedeutung der Paradiesgeschichte,” in Beyond Eden. The Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception History, eds. Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008): 100. Towner (Genesis, 36) notes that although the tree of life is not prohibited at the beginning, “apparently it too was a no-no; see 3:22.” 51. Westermann, Genesis, 213. 52. Peter Lanfer, Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3:22–24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 70, 99. Westermann (Genesis, 245) has the most detailed exposition of this matter. He (I think rightly) draws in cognate and wisdom literature, noting that humans have the possibility of achieving wisdom, but not immortality. 53. Von Rad, Genesis, 78. 54. Hartley, Genesis, 66. The term “good and evil” is also viewed by some scholars as a hendiadys (e.g., Good, Genesis, 38). 55. Westermann, Genesis, 243. 56. Howard N. Wallace, The Eden Narrative, Harvard Semitic Monographs (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1985), 145. 57. White, Narration, 128. 58. Wallace, The Eden Narrative, 144–145.

138

Chapter 8

59. Walter Vogels, “Like one of us, knowing tob and ra (Gen 3:22).” Semeia 81 (1998): 148. This rendering is not just limited to English-language Bibles. Vogels (148, n 8) lists also German, French, Dutch language Bibles that also use the word “evil.” 60. Hartley, Genesis, 61. 61. Brueggemann, Genesis, 45. 62. Sarna, Genesis, 19. Sarna notes the relationship here to the pronouncements of God in Genesis 1; the recognition of what is good and bad is a divine characteristic. See also Good, Genesis, 24. 63. Westermann, Genesis, 243. 64. Arnold, Genesis, 59. 65. Many commentators base their understanding of this phrase on its use in 2 Sam 14:17. See e.g., William P. Brown, The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 147. 66. Von Rad, Genesis, 78. 67. Cotter, Genesis, 30–31. 68. Sarna, Genesis, 19. Similarly Speiser (Genesis, 26) who views the idiom as meaning to be “in full possession of mental and physical powers.” 69. Cassuto, Genesis, 113. See also Lothar Ruppert, Genesis: ein kritischer und theologischer Kommentar (Würzburg: Echter, 2003), 137. Ruppert sees the command as reflecting the concern of a loving deity. 70. Dirk U. Rottzoll, “Die Schöpfungs-und Fallerzählung in Gen 2 f. Teil 1: Die Fallerzählung (Gen 3),” ZAW 109 (1997): 485. 71. Vogels, “Like One of Us,” 151. Krispenz notes that the meaning of the trees are summed up by the terms eat, death, and life. Krispenz, “Wie viele Baume?,” 310. 72. White, Narration, 120. 73. Vogels, “Like One of Us,” 151. 74. Peter D. Miscall, “Jacques Derrida in the Garden of Eden,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 44 (1990): 3–4. Van Seters, Prologue, 123. The Marduk creation account begins similarly, with negative statements, describing what is not yet: “When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name.” 75. Walter Moberly, “Did the Interpreters Get it Right? Genesis 2–3 Reconsidered,” JTS 59 (2007): 23. 76. James Barr and Walter Moberly engaged in an exchange of articles over this issue. Walter Moberly, “Did the serpent get it right?” JTS 39 (1988): 1–27; James Barr, “Is God a Liar? (Genesis 2–3)—and related matters,” JTS, 57 (2005): 1–22; Moberly, “Interpreters,” 22–40. 77. Brayford, Genesis, 231. 78. Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, Genesis (Garden City, NY: Anchor Bible, 1964), 17. 79. Hamilton, Genesis, 172. Sarna also, seeing that the humans do not die, suggests that this must then be interpreted as the loss of the possibility of immortality. Sarna, Genesis, 20. 80. Von Rad, Genesis, 81. Westermann sees the explanations, “you will become mortal” or “you will die sometime later” as “quite impossible.” Westermann, Genesis, 225. 81. Good, Genesis, 25. 82. Sarna, Genesis, 20. 83. Westermann, Genesis, 224. 84. White, Narration, 124. 85. Cotter, Genesis, 31. 86. Towner, Genesis, 28; Sarna, Genesis, 21. 87. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress Press, 1978), 90. See also Robert Alter, Genesis (New York: Norton, 1997), 9; Speiser, Genesis, 17. 88. J. William Whedbee, The Bible and the Comic Vision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 22. 89. Sarna, Genesis, 17. 90. Westermann, Genesis, 228. 91. Cassuto, Genesis, 129; For evangelical approaches, see, for example, Hamilton, Genesis, 176.

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

139

92. Van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies, 159. 93. E.g., Good, Genesis, 27; Cotter, Genesis, 32; Westermann, Genesis, 228. 94. Henrik Pfeiffer, “Der Baum in der Mitte des Gartens. Zum überlieferungsgeschichtliche Ursprung der Paradieserzählung (Gen 2, 4b–3, 24).” ZAW 113 (2001): 15. 95. Cassuto, Genesis, 127–128. Cassuto explicitly rejects the notion that the animals were failed attempts on God’s part. 96. Sarna, Genesis, 22. Because Sarna views the theme of Genesis 2–3 to be the human condition, the mention of animal creation “is therefore made incidentally, not for its own sake, and is no indication of sequential order in regard to the creation of man.” 97. Westermann, Genesis, 228. 98. Coats, Genesis, 53; Arnold, Genesis, 60. 99. Likewise, Towner, Genesis, 36–40, views this whole unit as focused solely on the humans, specifically as a way to understand the “True Nature of Sexuality.” For alternative views, see Arthur Walker-Jones, “Eden for Cyborgs: Ecocriticism and Genesis 2–3,” Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008): 263–293; Arthur Walker-Jones, “Naming the Human Animal; Genesis 1–3 and Other Animals in Human Becoming,” Zygon 52 (2017): 1005–1028. More recently, ecotheology and creation care theology have begun to emphasize the connectedness of humans and animals, emphasizing aspects such as the shared characteristics of the human with the other animals. 100. Good, Genesis, 27, points out that God did not know if this would work. See also Cotter, Genesis, 32. Towner (Genesis, 37) basically skips over the creation of the non-human animals because their function is to be non-woman; when J is writing about an ēzer, “J is talking about soul mates, people of equal standing, equal merit, and yes, equal pay!” Cassuto (Genesis, 128) is even more romantic, noting the animals will cause the man to yearn for his “soul-mate.” See also Henrik Pfeiffer, “Der Baum in der Mitte des Gartens. Zum überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Ursprung der Paradieserzählung” (Gen 2:4b–3:24),” ZAW 112 (2000): 499. 101. Cassuto, Genesis, 131. 102. Coats, Genesis, 53; Sarna, Genesis, 16; Cassuto, Genesis, 130. 103. Towner, Genesis, 38. 104. Ramsey, “Name-Giving,” 34. Ramsey views the action of the name-giver as not power, but one of discernment. Perhaps, but clearly not always. For example, in Gen 35:16–18 Rachel names her son as an exercise in discernment, but Jacob has the power to renames him. Ramsey is attempting to preserve Trible’s conclusion that the woman is not an animal subordinate to the man, while also pointing out that her analysis of a proper “naming formula” does not work. 105. James Barr, Immortality, 62. 106. Trible, God and Rhetoric, 92. Trible writes that “[t]hrough the power of naming, the animals are subordinated to the earth creature.” However, it may be more accurate to say that the naming is a demonstration of present power, rather than the creation of a power dynamic. In other words, the animals are not made inferior by naming; rather, the human has the authority to name them because they are inferior. Note, for example, Sarna’s use of the term subhuman. Trible makes this important distinction as she notes that the female is not named with the same formulaic construction. See for example, Elizabeth Jane Farians, “Theology and Animals,” in Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice, ed. Lisa Kemerrer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 102–109; Emily Gaarder, Women and the Animal Rights Movement (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 2011. Esp. chapter 1, “Connecting Inequalities,” 1–18. David J. A. Clines (What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament [Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990], 39) seemingly wishes that the text did not express male dominance but has to acknowledge that it does. 107. Von Rad, Genesis, 82. 108. White, Narration, 126. 109. Westermann, Genesis, 228. 110. Westermann, Genesis, 229; Good, Genesis, 27. 111. See Brayford, Genesis, 223: “the passive ‘was found’ (εὑρέθη) makes it impossible to determine who decided that none of the animals were suitable.” 112. See, for example, White, Narration, 126. The only issue here is with the preceding word, and whether it is to be pointed to indicate the presence of the definite article or not

140

Chapter 8

(ûlĕʾādām or wĕlāʾādām). Neither reading would present the human as the subject of the following verb. The preposition would be much more likely to indicate the human as the indirect object, rather than the subject. See Waltke and O’Connor 11.2.10g [p. 210]: “with an active transitive verb, l can mark the object . . . or, very rarely, the subject.” Thanks to the Rev. Eric Wagner, CR for his assistance on this point. 113. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 29. 114. Sarna, Genesis, 21. 115. Sarna, Genesis, 23. The generic name is derived from his own, recognizing equality. At the same point, he also names himself man, being simply human until this point. The Hebrew names for “woman” and “man” are not connected by etymology but by assonance. Trible (God and Rhetoric, 100) argues that this encounter does not qualify as a naming formula, and therefore, the calling of the woman is not an act of domination, but rather, “in calling the woman, the man is not establishing power over her but rejoicing in their mutuality.” Others disagree (e.g., Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible, 41–42). 116. Alter, Genesis, 22. 117. Sarna, Genesis, 23; Cassuto, Genesis, 135. 118. White, Narration, 133. 119. Sarna, Genesis, 23. 120. Cassuto, Genesis, 143. 121. Good, Genesis, 36. Bührer points out that the pun between cleverness and nakedness serves to highlight the pair’s “defizitären Status,” which, however, they do not perceive due to their lack of knowledge. Walter Bührer, Am Anfang . . . : Untersuchungen zur Textgenese und zur relativ-chronologischen Einordnung von Gen 1–3 Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 232–233. 122. Van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies, 165. 123. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 28–29. 124. White, Narration, 130. 125. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 27. 126. Cotter, Genesis, 33. 127. Sarna, Genesis, 23. 128. Ruppert, Genesis, 144. Ruppert sees the mention of nakedness as a highlighting communion, rather than sexuality. 129. Cassuto, Genesis, 137. 130. White, Narration, 128 131. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 28. 132. Van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies, 163. 133. Wallace, The Eden Narrative, 145. 134. Kübel sees the myth of snake rejuvenation behind this account. The humans believe they will become wise (perhaps rejuvenating) like the serpent, but instead only come to recognize that they have skin. Paul Kübel, Metamorphosen der Paradieserzählung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007), 84. 135. Oden, The Bible without Theology, 98. Oden offers a list of various commentators’ views. 136. Sarna, Genesis, 23 and 26. 137. Hamilton, Genesis, 191. I note here that Hamilton is using the language of atonement, and so perhaps his view is influenced by the language of covering and atonement surrounding Yom Kippur. 138. Waltke, Genesis, np. 139. White, Narration, 144. 140. David P. Melvin, “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1–11,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures (10) 2010: 6–7. 141. COS 1.161: 523. Pfeiffer sees the account of the development of civilization in Genesis as reflective of negative anthropology since it originates in a theft from a deity. Pfeiffer, “Der Baum in der Mitte,” 16. 142. Westerman, Genesis, 169. 143. Westermann, Genesis, 170.

Humans, Animals, and Clothing in Genesis 2–3

141

144. Hartley, Genesis, 72; Arnold, Genesis, 72. Ruppert, Genesis, 164. See also Whedbee, Comic Vision, 27. Oden, The Bible without Theology, 95. Van Wolde (Reframing Biblical Studies, 167) emphasizes that the leafy aprons do not solve the problem of nakedness; Sarna (Genesis, 29) cites the intriguing detail from Tg. Jon that the garments were made from the skin of the cunning serpent. 145. Rudman, “A Little Knowledge,” 463. Also, Van Wolde, Reframing Biblical Studies, 167; Pfeiffer, “Der Baum in der Mitte,” 220. 146. Wallace, The Eden Narrative, 144–145, 171–172. 147. Coats, Genesis, 56. 148. White, Narration, 137. 149. White, Narration, 139. 150. Westermann, Genesis, 228. 151. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 27. 152. Sarna, Genesis, 30. 153. E.g., Ruppert, Genesis, 163. 154. Whedbee, Comic Vision, 28. 155. Sarna, Genesis, 30. See also Krüger, “Sündenfall?,” 99, who notes the great lengths to which people must now go in order to eat and produce.

Chapter Nine

Garments of Skin

As the previous chapter demonstrated, commentators tend to view many aspects of Genesis 2–3 as simple etiologies unconnected with the larger themes of the narrative. In so doing, they often isolate and pass over aspects that could well lead to a deeper reading of the whole narrative. James Barr, for example, sees the themes of the story aligning with the two trees which are found at the center of the garden and dominate the center of the narrative. The point of the story is that the humans have chosen knowledge over immortality. 1 However, Barr does not relate the non-human animals and clothing to these themes. 2 Barr acknowledges the narrative eight verses (2:18–25) dealing with the animals with a single sentence, stating that the account of the creation of the animals and the woman serves “to emphasize the distance between the man and the animals” and the closeness between the man and the woman. 3 Krüger tersely notes that this passage tells us that we are both intelligent like gods and mortal like animals. Approaching this same idea from the negative perspective, Westermann writes similarly that these verses tell us that we are neither like God nor are we “beasts.” 4 When reflecting on nakedness and clothing, Barr sees that the primordial couple “were naked and were not disturbed, not embarrassed by this” because “ they were like the animals.” Once they realized their nakedness, clothing became simply a matter of propriety. I suggest, however, that both the relationship of the humans to the non-human animals and the wearing of clothes need to be incorporated into the story’s larger themes of knowledge and immortality. The research that has been done in support of terror management theory demonstrates that the covering of the human body is a deathdenying act, a way to conceal the human body which would otherwise constantly remind us of our animality, mortality, and vulnerability. The garments of skin (3:21), as well as the hope of progeny (3:20), are a way to reach for 143

144

Chapter 9

the immortality that is denied by God with the barring of the fruit of the tree that brings life (3:22–24). To return one final time to Derrida’s little cat, the cat has no awareness of nakedness and so can neither feel shame nor ascribe shame to the human who is naked. It neither needs clothes, nor needs Derrida to be clothed. The clothes we wear are not to hide us from other animals, but are part of a larger lived fiction that allows us to hide our animality from ourselves. The shame felt at being naked before others is our shame of “being naked as a beast.” 5 While some modern commentators take the view that the garments of skin in Gen 3:21 are simply “another detached notice on the origin of clothing,” ancient commentators had more complicated views on the topic. 6 One significant source for this speculation lays with the specific wording of Gen 3:21: “And the Lord God made garments of skins (kotnôtʿôr) for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.” The pronunciation of the phrase “garments of skin” makes it a near homophone for the phrase “garments of light” (kotnôtʾôr). This reading finds itself expressed in the rabbinic text Genesis Rabbah (20:13–15): In the Torah of Rabbi Meir we find written “clothing of light”—these garments of the primordial human resembled a torch: narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Rabbi Yitzchak the Greater says: This clothing was like fingernails, effulgent like pearl. Rabbi Yitzchak says: Like garments of the finest linen, like the kind that comes from Beit Sh’an. “Garments of skin”—because they clung to the skin.

Other ancient sources felt that there was some incongruity with the first humans receiving a gift of special garments while simultaneously being expelled from the garden and so, in some instances we find that the clothing they received from God was somehow a diminishment of their previous condition. In the Apocryphon of John, for example, we read that God “cast them out of paradise and clothed them in gloomy darkness” (24:6–8). Still other ancient interpreters, thinking on similar lines, speculated that the couple had a different type of existence in the garden, where they lived in a spiritual state. Therefore, the garments of skin that they received were not made from the hide of a non-human animal, but “garments of skin . . . that is, the skin which is stretched over the human body, causing the pain that humans feel.” 7 This incarnating movement is the opposite of what is frequently viewed as the desired transition at the end of life or at the end of days, when the clothing of mortality is exchanged for something greater: Then I asked an angel, “Who are these, my lord?” He answered and said to me, “These are they who have put off mortal clothing and have put on the immortal, and have confessed the name of God. Now they are being crowned, and receive palms.” (2 Esdras 2:44–45)

Garments of Skin

145

A similar hope is expressed in the New Testament: For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling—if indeed, when we have taken it off we will not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor 5:1–4)

There is here a hope for disembodiment, or at least for a new body which will not suffer the breakdowns of our animal bodies. Other ancient traditions, when reflecting on the clothing of Genesis 3, do not forget about the non-human animals. In the book of Jubilees (3:28–30) we find that at the time of the expulsion from the garden, from which “all flesh” was expelled, that the non-human animals ceased speaking, and among all of creation, “to Adam alone did He give (the wherewithal) to cover his shame, of all the beasts and cattle.” Considering the tendency of interpreters to isolate the elements regarding non-human animals and clothing from each other, Jubilees provides a good example of an interpreter continuing to read the account without neglecting earlier elements of the story. Similarly, the Aramaic version of the account in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan neatly draws the account to a close, recognizing not only the humans’ new need of clothing, but also not forgetting about the serpent, who now crawls on the ground, sloughing off its skin: And the Lord God made to Adam and to his wife vestures of honor from the skin of the serpent, which [the serpent] had cast from him, upon the skin of their flesh, instead of that adornment which had been cast away; and He clothed them. (Tg. Ps. Jon Gen 3:1)

Here, the bodies of the humans, those of the non-human animals, and their respective coverings are intimately drawn together as inseparable. Here too, in reading the account with an eye to death anxiety and its cognitive implications, I am trying to draw together those elements of the narrative that are so often separated. Bearing in mind that death anxiety causes humans to seek buffering elements, we should not be surprised to find a bolstering of the animal-human boundary in the Genesis account. We should also keep in mind those elements which we know are used in dehumanizing ways, such as the stripping of clothes, are only capable of doing so because of their converse capacity to humanize and cover over one’s animality. That is, the stripping of clothing only has the power of animalizing because putting on clothing is humanizing. Lastly, we should note the importance of disgust elicitors, particularly with regard to animal reminder

146

Chapter 9

disgust, including violations of the body envelope and the ambivalence brought about by the carnality of sex, and the relationship of these phenomena to death. We can also see these tendencies in the work of commentators, who often diminish the role of non-human animals, denying that they could possibly have been legitimately put forward as suitable helpers for the human, and the romanticizing of the man’s response to the woman as the encounter between soul mates, rather than simply as sexual mates. Taking note of animal studies, terror management theory, animal reminder disgust, and death anxiety can open up new possibilities for interpretation and provide ways to incorporate a whole range of elements into the text’s larger theme of (im)mortality. A brief reading of Genesis 2–3 is presented here as a case study for how such research can be incorporated into biblical studies and provide an aid to reading. MORTALITY SALIENCE AND DEATH ANXIETY BUFFERING IN GENESIS 2–3 In preparation for examining the Genesis account in light of the insights with regard to death anxiety and the importance of the animal-human boundary, I will first describe the structure of the account, as proposed by Claus Westermann. I will then relabel his narrative units in terms more in line with our concerns here. Westermann, in his influential commentary, organizes his analysis of this material into three narrative units, which taken together provide an explanation for the origins of hardship, pain and death. 8 The first narrative unit, covering 2:4b–24, is a description of the creation of the male human and the search for a suitable partner. There is broad agreement that the second creation account begins not at 2:1, but at either 2:4a or 2:4b. For example, Hamilton points out that 4b–7 is grammatically a single sentence, with the protasis consisting of circumstantial clauses describing the atmospheric qualities of the earth, and 2:7 the apodosis, recounting the creation of the human. 9 Sarna pushes the opening of the unit further back, making the point that the toledot formula (“These are the generations . . .”), which is found in 4a, is found nine other times in Genesis and always elsewhere refers to what follows rather than what precedes it. 10 I agree with Sarna, but since the toledot formula functions as a non-narrative heading, I am not addressing it here; for my purposes, whether the account begins at 4a or 4b is not consequential. 11 The unusual inversion of the phrase “earth and heaven” in 2:4b indicates that the focus of the account is terrestrial. 12 In addition to the creation of the human, we find the creation of trees for food, knowledge, and life, and of non-human animals. Finally, and very significantly for the integration of this passage with chapter 3, we learn of the possibility of death, should the human eat from the tree that provides knowledge. Although West-

Garments of Skin

147

ermann does provide commentary on what he considers to be interpolations into the more ancient account, in many ways he disregards 2:5b–6 and 2:10–14 which describe the watering of the garden, the various rivers that originate there, and the natural wealth that is to be found in the distant regions which are watered by those rivers. Westermann attaches 2:25 to the verses that follow rather than what precede it and concludes the second unit at 3:7. This unit is the account of how the man and woman move from nakedness to being clothed. 13 The final section, 3:8–24, recounts the expulsion of the humans from the garden. Westermann sees the entire narrative (2:4b–3:24) primarily in terms of punishment for the transgression of the command God had given to the humans. 14 While this material has differing origins in its pre-literary history and despite its “repetitions, lack of agreement, lack of balance, gaps in the line of thought, contradictions,” all its elements have been brought together to provide a compelling and carefully constructed “narrative arch” (Geschehensbogen). 15 Westermann views the whole narrative as one of many Old Testament accounts of the transgression of a command and its punishment. 16 I utilize Westermann’s three narrative units, although my interests are less concerned with the transgression of the command and its consequences, and more with those themes which are elucidated by the research done in support of terror management theory: human mortality, animal-human relationships, and clothing. As Westermann himself notes, the whole account cannot be reduced to a single motif or unlocked via a single hermeneutical key but rather must be viewed in terms of its various elements working together to provide meaning. 17 Whereas Westermann views the entire account as focused on the transgression of a command and its resulting punishment, others emphasize its etiological purposes. Some note small-scale etiologies such as the origins of human work, clothing, marriage, or even human antipathy toward snakes. 18 Along with these though, scholars also recognize the presence of grander etiologies such as those concerning the source of evil and death, and the development of human culture. 19 Nahum Sarna does not even view the text as a creation account, calling it an etiology of evil, motivated by greed and ambition, and a commentary on why work is so often futile, procreation is painful and dangerous, and why our God-given bodies are a source of shame. 20 Westermann’s structure of three narrative units can be utilized and relabeled in terms of death anxiety and the animal-human boundary as a death anxiety buffer: 1. Human exceptionalism (2:4b–8, 15–24) 2. Becoming aware of our animal bodies (2:25–3:7)

148

Chapter 9 3. Lineage and clothing as an anxiety buffer (3:8–24)

Each section contains word play, with puns marking the highlights and transitions between units, as well as elicitors of mortality salience, death anxiety, and attempts to emphasize human exceptionalism in response to that anxiety. In the first unit, humans, animals, and trees emerge out of the ground. The animals are an essential element of the passage, as the human understands himself in relation to them. The first account shows the human superiority over animals in response to the possibility of death (2:4–24). Strømmen sees tension in the biblical account between an animal/human binary and a divine/ animal binary, and that tension is apparent here. 21 Evolutionary science tells us we are interconnected, but terror management theorists note how strongly we rebel against this idea and affirm our exceptionalism. This account, like other creation narratives, gives voice to that urge. The opening of the account presents the reader with a scene that is lifeless. There is water and ground, but nothing is growing because there is no rain and the land is uncultivated (2:5). Then a single human is created from the dust of the ground and vivified (2:7). For the readers, this is the first creative act and therefore sui generis. There is a near total absence of information here, and the reader is forced to supply details from her own imagination. The human is not described as a man, as knowledgeable, or as naked. The human at this point is best understood as a solution to the absence of a cultivator. With the human formed from the ground, as is emphatically reinforced by the wordplay of ādām and ă dāmâ , and given life by the breath of God, we can already begin to see the edges of death anxiety forming in the terrestrial origin of the human’s creation. God then places the human in a garden that he has planted and causes various trees to grow there (2:8). It is here that we are told of the magical trees that can bestow life and knowledge. Death comes a little more sharply into focus at this point as we are told of fruit that can provide life. It is from this feature that Barr draws his themes of knowledge and immortality as the unit’s core. The text as we have it pauses from any action at this point and shifts to a static description of the geography, rivers, and mineral wealth of the lands surrounding the garden (2:10–14). This abundance gives an impression very different from the unit’s opening verses. These five descriptive verses are mostly extraneous to our concerns. While they do not move the story forward in narrative time, these intervening verses do make the repetitive action of placing the human in the garden less noticeable, when for a second time we read that God places the human in the garden (2:15–17). At this point, the human is warned not to eat of the tree of the knowledge, “for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Essentially, at the very moment that the human becomes aware of being alive, the human is also made aware of the possibility of death. There is no period in which the human is allowed to live in a

Garments of Skin

149

paradisiacal garden, blissfully unaware of his mortal nature. Being alive, at least for the first human in Genesis 2, entails this knowledge of death, and readers are now given their first full and unambiguous mortality salience prime. At this moment then, it is intimated that this is a story that involves mortality. The human, a népeš ḥayyâ , a living being, is alone and God’s first words to him include a warning about death; the situation has progressed from one of lifelessness to one of life under threat. Following the introduction of death into the narrative, the story turns to the search for a helper for the human (2:18–24). God, not the narrator, announces that it is not good that the human should be alone. What is not good here? The man has not said anything that might lead God to this conclusion. Indeed, so little has been stated; we read only that the man in is the garden, with plants, one of which brings life and the other which brings both knowledge and death. As for the reader, the man has done nothing except receive the command not to eat from one tree, and permission to eat from all the others. Terror management theorists have demonstrated that the animal-human boundary is a buffer to death anxiety, and after our first mortality salience prime, the narrative turns to non-human animals. The animal-human boundary is created and strengthened through the manner of creation, the naming of the animals, and their unsuitability to be a helper to the man. 22 The text describes three creative acts to this point: the human is formed from the ground and vivified by the breath of God, the trees are caused to grow, and the animals are formed. All have their origin in the ground and all the animals, including humans, are népeš ḥayyâ . The same term is used, ʿāṣar (to form) for humans and other animals. This too can elicit death anxiety, as it has been shown that information regarding the similarities of humans and non-human animals increases death thought accessibility. But we also see here the beginnings of human exceptionalism. First of all, the first human is created and, it appears, that this would have completed creation had God not deemed that it was not good for the man to be alone (2:18). The creation of animals is in response to some unstated problem concerning the man’s aloneness. Their manner of creation is presented differently from that of the human, in that God uniquely breathed into the human in order to animate him. We are told that God formed all the animals and birds from the ground, but not that he breathed into them to animate them (2:19). 23 Moreover, the human is given an actual task to do, to till the garden, while the unrealized potential task for the animals is to be a suitable partner for the human. Further demonstrating his superiority over them the human is given the prerogative of naming the animals (2:19–20). 24 The narrative implies that he named them individually, but the narrator does not take the time to do so, instead simply resorting to taxonomical categories: the cattle, the birds, and animals of the field. The human is not said to dominate the animals, but the difference between them is apparent. Developments in animal studies have

Chapter 9

150

made clear that our evaluation of non-human animals is a self-reflective act and that our interactions with them is a mirror in which we evaluate ourselves; the fact that none of the animals are deemed suitable by either the human or by God is an evaluation of the human as superior to the animals. The last creature, indeed the last of all things created, is a woman, and she alone among all the animals is suitable. By virtue of their being the first and last creations, humans have a unique place in the animal world. The creation of the woman requires, as does human birth, the opening of the body. This is both dangerous and frightening, and the connotations of blood and injury elicit animal reminder disgust. If the opening of the body is to be considered a mortality salience prime, as animal reminder disgust is, then the human quickly recovers his position. For the man (now clearly male) joyously receives the woman in a self-esteem generating, death-denying buffer, proclaiming that he is superior to the animals that were previously brought to him as potential helpers. The man, who began by making a distinction between himself and the non-human animals by recognizing that they are not suitable as his helpers, once again highly evaluates himself by accepting and naming the woman. Now not only does he present himself as exceptional among the animals, but he is self-defining in regard to other humans as well, for the woman is affirmed as what the man sees himself to be: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman for out of Man this one was taken

No poems or wordplay marked the creation or naming of the animals. Their origin was simply stated, but here the man (ʾiš) self-referentially names the woman (ʾišâ). The first narrative unit can be seen as an evolving self-evaluation by the male human, who by virtue of naming and categorizing other népeš ḥayyâ as suitable or unsuitable is shown to view himself as exceptional. For the reader, the account provides buffering human exceptionalism at the very points where mortality salience threatens to induce death anxiety. Unit two (2:25–3:7) focuses on the humans’ movement from nakedness to being clothed. Again, when the account draws too close identifying humans with animals, the boundary is once again reinforced. These verses, in which the humans become aware of their animality, are the heart and hinge of the story. It is the point at which we can talk in terms of a pre- and postlapsarian existence. The focus shifts from the flurry of the creation of life and its singular prohibition with a sentence of death to the matter of knowledge. Had the thought not previously occurred to the reader, we are told explicitly here (2:25) that the humans are naked. This is emphasized by the notice’s location at the head of the narrative unit and is further emphasized and

Garments of Skin

151

reflected upon through more wordplay as the pun draws our attention to those elements that the humans lack: clothes and the knowledge necessary to recognize this state of affairs. Focusing on what the humans lack, the pun highlights the fact that the humans, without clothes, are naked (ʿărûmmîm) but not clever (ʿārûm) enough to be disconcerted by this. Often commentators refer here to the couple as innocent or childlike. 25 Rarely are they compared to the non-human animals in their nakedness. The serpent is described as clever and is, presumably, naked, unless that word cannot be properly applied to a non-human animal. 26 As the text prepares to discuss what it means to die and what it means to gain knowledge, we have a non-human animal demonstrating superiority over other animals. Indeed, for the reader, it might be said that the serpent is superior even over the humans by virtue of having knowledge they do not. 27 Although the animals were deemed to have been unsuitable, the humans are not afraid of them, nor do the animals avoid the humans, at least as far as the serpent is concerned. The serpent, surprisingly for the reader, although apparently not for the woman, speaks to her, a dangerous violation of the animal-human boundary (3:1). Although having taken a back seat to knowledge, death is not distant at this point. The topic of conversation between the serpent and the woman is the prohibition and its sentence of death (3:1–5). The woman knows of the possibility of death, even though this is dismissed by the serpent. Both the beginning and end of account concern the human body, but the central verses focus on the eyes. The serpent tells the woman that her eyes will be opened (3:5) and she and the man will be like gods—they will be exceptional. The woman looks at the fruit and sees its admirable qualities (3:6). Often commentators have taken the view that the humans were intentionally taking something in an attempt to extend themselves beyond their status. Barr rejects this however, pointing out that nowhere do they express anything like a desire to escape their human limitations. He is right in that the woman is not trying to displace God, but to characterize the fruit as providing “educative assistance” is a bridge too far. 28 In the context of an existentially problematic blurring of the animal-human boundary, the possibility of becoming greater is given to the woman, and she and the man choose to accept it (3:6). When they eat from the tree that brings knowledge, they do not die, at least in the manner the reader would likely have assumed, but rather they recognize their nakedness and seek to clothe themselves (3:7). In one fell swoop, our storyteller has given us two defining characteristics of a civilized human being; the term ʿārûm again draws the reader’s attention to both knowledge and nakedness, the very things they lacked at the outset of this narrative unit. In the previous chapter we noted a great deal of scholarly reflection on what the divine death sentence could mean, since the humans do not die; the man lives nearly a millennium after being kicked out of the garden. The result of the knowledge the pair gained was that they recognized their animal

152

Chapter 9

bodies. In reflecting on this, Westermann again shows his inconsistency, but I still agree with him. Having previously rejected any connotations of shame in the nakedness of the humans, Westermann now acknowledges that shame is the feeling of being unmasked, in that the humans now saw their bodies and were aware that they were like “beasts.” 29 Having already asserted superiority over animals in their naïveté, the humans with new knowledge of their animality must once again assert their status as distinct from animals. They do this in the only logical manner, which is to hide or disguise their animal bodies. In doing so, they mark themselves as distinct in a way that goes beyond any self-evaluation. An even greater chasm now exists between the humans and the rest of creation. Life after the acquisition of knowledge is marked by recognition of difference. 30 In knowing that they are naked, they now know something that truly distinguishes them from animals. The cost of gaining knowledge was the awareness of their animal bodies. They have moved from being at ease with their nakedness and, now aware of their animality, move to a state of hiding, exerting dominance, and covering their bodies. Unit three (3:8–24) is filled with elicitors of mortality salience and disgust, highlighting the surety of death—not if, but when. This anxiety-inducing knowledge is buffered by emphasis on lineage and clothing. The whole narrative concludes with the divine pronouncement of the elevation of human beings but also of the inaccessibility of immortality for them (3:22). The opening of the third narrative unit again tells the reader that the humans have become aware of their bodies, as they hide from God (3:8). When they acknowledge that they are naked, God realizes that they have learned something new: “Who told you that you were naked?” (3:11). After a brief conversation, God makes a series of pronouncements, generally viewed as curses (3:14–19). The first curse is directed at the serpent that earlier threatened the animalhuman boundary. The cleverest of all the non-human animals is thereby diminished. Even in the divine curses we can see passages that evince human exceptionalism, as here the boundary is intensified with the cursing of the serpent. While, as we will see, the curses on the man and woman contain very clear mortality salience primes, the curse on the serpent is closer to a buffering statement. Its unusual and threatening human-like characteristics are stripped away and the clever animal becomes one who eats dust, unable to stand upright. The curse on the woman is filled with the themes of pain, birth, and sex. These are elicitors of animal reminder disgust, and the dangers of childbirth loom large over the verse, not only as a reminder of the opening of the body envelope, thereby exposing blood and risking injury. Sex is naturally present in the context of childbirth, but these dangers are unavoidable as the woman will desire her husband, and even if she did not desire sex, he can demand it (3:16). Barr once again is right to see sex as an issue here, but without

Garments of Skin

153

support he assumes that “Milton was obviously right” and that the couple had already engaged in sex. 31 This claim goes far beyond any concern of the text, which I read as presenting sex and the ensuing childbirth as part of a dangerous world. As Becker wrote, “sex and death are twins,” and terror management studies have demonstrated clearly that the physical aspects of sex function as a mortality salience prime. The romantic poem with which the man greeted the woman is replaced here by bare facts about male-dominated sexuality and dangers of childbirth. Barr, whose goal is to read the account in terms of immortality, fails to see this and states that death is not present in the woman’s curse. 32 In the curse directed toward the man (3:17–19), again Barr’s claim that death is absent is unsustainable. 33 Rather, death is clearly referred to in the form of the euphemism of returning to the earth. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Until you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; You are dust And to dust you shall return.

Death is euphemistically referred to twice in 3:19 and again in 3:23, although the bulk of the passage concerns the futility of work. But, with the man’s origin in the ground and the role of cultivator as his purpose for existence, it is difficult to separate the man’s existence from his relationship to the ground, and so I read priming language throughout the passage. The mortality salience prime here is greater than in either of the previous curses. The contingent life that marked the outset of the narrative—if you eat of it you will die—is replaced with an unambiguous statement of mortality. Whatever the storyteller thought about the man’s mortality prior to this—and that ambiguity is shown in the differing opinions of commentators—human mortality is now clearly stated. At the conclusion of these mortality-laden curses, we are presented with two verses which are clearly buffering statements (3:20–21). Here right at the point of greatest mortality salience, rather than at its natural place at 2:23 or near the beginning of chapter 4 with the births of Cain and Abel, the text has the man name his wife Eve (ḥawwâ) because she is the mother of all the living (ḥayyâ ). The last of the narrative’s recurring puns surfaces here. The man was taken out of the earth, to be returned there, the woman was taken out of the man, and returned, and sex and childbirth is the ambiguous threat/ cure. It is procreative, but unavoidably bodily. This verse is followed by another, in which God provides garments of skin to cover the humans. Theorists in animal studies emphasize that we must recognize the interdependence of species. Here with the garments of skin, we

154

Chapter 9

see animals demoted not just to the category of unsuitable, but what Hannah Strømmen labels “killable.” 34 We do not simply mark our distinction and superiority over animals by wearing clothes; we are constantly and continually engaging others species by carrying them with us as we wear their skin and hair to cover our own. CONCLUSION As God acknowledges, the expulsion of the humans from the garden results from the human superiority over all other animals and serves to limit their progress: “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever” (3:22). God now blocks access to the tree, preventing immortality. In considering Genesis 2–3 as a story of immortality almost gained, Barr notes that the “centrality of death is emphasized from the beginning.” 35 God tells the human, you will die if you eat. The serpent talks about death with Eve. But the humans do not die. Rather, they are barred once and for all from access to immortality. Barr integrates death and the loss of immortality throughout his exegesis, but neglects to connect those very points at which, as terror management theory informs us, humans themselves still strive for immortality: the separation of ourselves from animals. Eve is not, as Barr calls her, a “super-animal”; she is portrayed as wholly different from the unsuitable animals that were previously presented to the human before, and she is quickly renamed as the mother of all the living. Moreover, the humans put on clothing, distinguishing themselves from animals by the denial of human embodiment. Seeing that the relationship between death anxiety and the bolstering of the animal-human boundary is clear, and that clothing is also integrally involved in the bolstering of identity-forming worldviews, I suggest that the matter of nakedness and clothing in Genesis 2–3 might well be understood in terms of death anxiety. While most commentators hold that the wearing of clothes is regarding vulnerability, inadequacy or a loss of innocence, I propose that the deeply interconnected cognitive relationships among all the elements considered above should lead us to consider closely all aspects related to the creation and maintenance of the animal-human boundary. 36 NOTES 1. Barr, Immortality, 4. 2. Barr, Immorality, 14. 3. Barr, Immortality, 72.

Garments of Skin

155

4. Krüger, “Sündenfall?,” 98: “Warum sind die Menschen einerseits ähnlich klüg wie die Götter (und klüger als die Tiere), aber andererseits (im Gegensatz zu den Göttern) genau so sterblich wie die Tiere?” See also Westermann, Genesis, 245. 5. Derrida, The Animal, 4. 6. John Skinner, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis, ICC (New York: Scribner, 1910), 87. For a list of ancient references, see James L. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 125–132. See also Stephen Lambden, “From Fig Leaves to Fingernails: Some Notes on the Garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Select Early Postbiblical Jewish Writings,” in A Walk in the Garden, The Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament 136, eds. Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992), 74–90. 7. Kugel, Traditions of the Bible, 133. The above quote comes from the apocryphal text known as The Cave of Treasures. There are multiple traditions, and this text is drawn from what Kugel designates as the Western tradition. 8. Westermann, Genesis, 187, 190. Westermann is analyzing the text structurally because his conclusion of the survey of the history of the scholarship is that source criticism has “led to almost complete anarchy.” 9. Hamilton, Genesis, 156. 10. Sarna, Genesis, 16. 11. Matthew A. Thomas, These are the Generations: Identity, Covenant and the ‘Toledot’ Formula (LHBOTS 551; New York: T&T Clark, 2011). Thomas sees toledot formulas as markers indicating that the following narrative will address specific, rather than universal, concerns. See also Thomas Bolin, regarding the role of paratextual elements within a narrative, such as chapter headings, introductions, colophons, etc. “Job’s Colophon and its Contradictions,” https://www. bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Bolin%20Job%20Bible%20&%20Interpretation.pdf. 12. Sarna, Genesis, 16. See also Walton, “Human Nature,” 877, who sees the second creation account as concerned with the ordering of terrestrial sacred spaces. 13. There are many who prefer to maintain the traditional division, seeing the pun as a connection tying together 2:4–25 and 3:1–7. E.g., Bührer, Am Anfang, 231. Turner-Smith analyzes the commentaries and finds that whether 2:25 is united to chapter 2, to chapter 3, or is taken as a bridge, has little impact on the commentators’ views regarding the verse. Sarah Turner-Smith, “Naked but not Ashamed: A Reading of Gen 2:25 in Textual and Cultural Context,” JTS 69 (2018): 425–446. 14. Ruppert, Genesis, 114. 15. Westermann, Genesis, 190. Van Seters also devotes significant space to organizing and understanding the origins of the text as we now have it. Van Seters, Prologue to History, 109–125. See also Jean-Louis Ska, “Genesis 2–3: Some Fundamental Questions,” in Beyond Eden; The Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception History, edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008), 1–27. Ska calls attention to the textual and interpretive difficulties, such as doublets and disappearing trees. Westermann (Genesis, 190) seems to be of two minds. He continually praises the text as being expertly edited, “well-rounded, clear, and polished.” On the other hand, he also frequently comments on those gaps, contradictions, etc., that enable one to pull the text apart. Again (Genesis, 195), Westermann praises J for creating a “perfect whole,” while claiming certainty that the expulsion and not the curses were originally attached directly to the account of the transgression. 16. Westermann, Genesis, 193. 17. Westermann, Genesis, 189. 18. Cotter, Genesis, 26. 19. Cotter, Genesis, 26; Hartley, Genesis, 58. 20. Sarna, Genesis, 16, 31; Coats, Genesis, 52. Coats also does not see the narrative as a creation account, but rather an “account of paradise gained.” 21. Strømmen, Biblical Animality, 92. 22. Many of these same themes are also found in Priestly creation account, as God delegates the waters to bring forth swarms (1:20) and the earth to bring forth creatures (1:24), but humans are made last, and specifically by God, in the image of God to have dominion over the animals

156

Chapter 9

(1:26). First, we see that although the humans are created on the same day as the rest of the terrestrial animals, they are created last and separately. This pride of place indicates that the humans represent the pinnacle of creation, and that all was done to provide a fitting setting for their existence. They are created in a manner different from the other animals, in that they are explicitly described as being in the image of God. Lastly, they are told that they are superior, for they are given the divine command to subdue the rest of creation. Again, while this passage does not contain all of the themes we are examining, it is worthwhile to note that the Bible’s opening account does in fact highlight the uniqueness of human beings among all the other creatures of the world. 23. The commentaries are fairly consistent on this interpretation. See, for example, Westermann, Genesis, 229–230. 24. Again, the commentaries are consistent. See, for example, Westermann, Genesis, 229–230. 25. Krüger, “Sündenfall?,” 102. 26. Kübel, Metamorphosen, 82. 27. Kübel, Metamorphosen, 82. Kübel suggests that serpent, who, like the humans, lacks fur and feathers, is marked by the knowledge of its own nakedness. 28. Barr, Immortality, 13–14. 29. Westermann, Genesis, 236. 30. Michaela Bauks, “Erkenntnis und Leben in Gen 2–3: Zum Wandel eines ursprünglich weisheitlich geprägten Lebensbegriffs.” ZAW 127 (2015): 36: “Ist das nachher der Verbotsübertretung nicht durch die Erkenntnis von Differenz gekennzeichnet?” 31. Barr, Immortality, 66–67. 32. Barr, Immortality, 9. 33. Barr, Immortality, 9. 34. Strømmen, Biblical Animality, 17. The categorizing of animals as “killable” is a major theme of Strømmen’s work. See also Stone, Reading the Hebrew Bible, 39. Stone notes that the divine creation of garments of skin appears to justify the human killing and use of animals. 35. Barr, Immortality, 8. 36. Wenham, Genesis, 89; Victor Hamilton, The Book of Genesis. Chapters 1–17 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 191, 207; Hartley, Genesis, 68.

Conclusion

An important reference in preparation for this work has been the edited volume Reading Genesis after Darwin. The title of this work is intended to convey the methodological approach of the collected essays, but it is also simply a description of where biblical scholarship now stands. Scholars now need to read the ancient text of Genesis in light of advances in evolutionary science. The opening chapters of Genesis can no longer provide a simplistic view about our origins or the relationship of humans beings to each other, as well as our relationship to non-human animals. Readers have long looked to the man’s joyous welcome to the woman of Genesis 3:23–25 and seen in it the romantic origins of human pro-sociality: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.” Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.

Yet, evolutionary science now clearly tells us that we do not need any such explanation as to why humans are social; all primates are social. The fact that we humans can create stories and elaborate literary texts to share our deepest thoughts with each other is because, in addition to our intense primate prosociality, we also happen to be the most intelligent primates. Just as biblical scholars need to account for the insights of evolutionary science, the process of reading, writing, and storytelling is being studied by cognitive scientists, and their insights can also be an aid to biblical scholars. This process is necessarily interdisciplinary, with art and literature now being studied as 157

158

Conclusion

cognitive acts, rather than just aesthetic productions. For the most part, the cognitive science of religion has been largely focused on the origins of religious thought, the transmission and perseverance of religious ideas, acts, and rituals, yet this interdisciplinary approach is beginning to make itself more apparent in biblical studies as well. I suggest that the research done in support of terror management theory can also be an aid to biblical scholars. As shown in this project, terror management theory and its supporting studies can help in better understanding texts whose contents engage our anxiety about our mortality, remind us of our animality, or existentially threaten us by eroding the animal-human boundary. The applicability of terror management theory, I suggest, is especially useful for texts that elicit animal reminder disgust, which is specific to those things that remind humans of their animal origins and involve issues of purity and sanctity. The proponents of terror management theory assert that when our attention is drawn to the animality of our body, we seek to separate ourselves from other animals through many means, including the beautification, modification, and adornment of our bodies. The naked human body is shameful and even disgusting because it is the body of an animal. There are many studies supporting terror management theory and animal reminder disgust that allow us to conclude that that the animal-human boundary is comforting when we are presented with reminders of our mortality and that animal reminder disgust is a powerful emotion reinforcing the animal-human boundary. Animal reminder disgust and terror management theory—though distinct—are interrelated, evolved human traits that, taken together, call for us to recognize their impact on biblical texts that concern human death, nakedness, and animals. Many elements in our lives have the effect of drawing attention to human embodiment and are therefore existentially threatening. The common elements of human existence such as waste elimination, injury, and illness are existentially problematic as elicitors of animal reminder disgust and as mortality salience primes, which therefore result in thoughts and behaviors that function as death anxiety buffers. Sex and food, although much more ambivalent because of our natural drives toward them, are also problematic. Because these essential needs and unfortunate realities are a constant presence in our lives, yet also existentially threatening, we control what we can. Societies regulate clothing, hair, sex, gender, food, and relationships with animals. Social structures are required to maintain a system that establishes a normative body and enforces compliance to that norm, along with the marginalization of those with non-normative bodies. Social control over the body is important because the body, as the site of social interaction, also represents the social body. Terror management theorists emphasize the reverse relationship, asserting that society exists to enable us to transform our animal bodies into powerful cultural symbols. The body is a cultural costume which is

Conclusion

159

constantly communicating, and it is the adherence to the cultural norms and regulations concerning the body, such as the wearing of clothes, which help to assuage death anxiety by separating humans from other animals and providing the wearer of clothes a meaningful place in society. Because the body itself is the problem, the covering up and manicuring of the body is essential to our identity as humans, who are not animals. We continue to write wonderful stories and religious and philosophical accounts to help us manage the awareness of human mortality; however, ecological ethics and animal studies warn us not to take full credit for such profound work. Yes, they are created, spoken, written and transmitted by humans, but we are only doing so in an interaction with other species. Just like ourselves, ancient authors had a microbiome of bacteria, viruses, and parasites in their own bodies affecting them cognitively and emotionally. There is also the more visible external interaction of ecosystems and animals, human and non-human, some of whom had their skins taken to be made into vellum so that these stories could be transmitted. Moreover, these insights can help us to better understand others who have read the text, allowing for a metacommentary to help explain or better understand the interpretations of other readers. For example, death anxiety is so integrally connected with human exceptionalism, and the animal-human boundary that we should not be surprised to find commentators emphasizing humans over animals or romantic love over sex. Even if unrealized by the authors of commentaries and sermons, mortality salience primes necessarily impact interpretation. Lastly, the research in support of terror management theory has shown us the impact of dehumanization, and how dehumanization elicits disgust, diminishes our ability to attribute mental states to others, reduces empathy and enforces in-group loyalties. Dehumanization is about death; animals die, but humans “pass away,” go to “a better place,” or are “happier now.” Texts and political rhetoric that includes dehumanizing language or actions, like the stripping of clothes, or relabeling with zoological terms is an existential threat, impacting both the one who is dehumanized and the ones who view that person. In Genesis 2–3 we see many elements which might function as mortality salience primes, as well as corresponding elements which act as buffers against death anxiety. The first narrative unit describes the creation of the human, the animals, and a search for a suitable partner (Gen 2:4b–5a, 7–9, 15–24). The second account concerns the humans moving from a naked to a clothed state (Gen 2:25–3:7). The final account concerns the humans’ expulsion from the garden (Gen 3:8–24). In each of the three accounts, we find references to death, the superiority of humans over animals, and the reinforcement of the animal-human boundary. Elements such as sex, clothing, the animals, the human body, and even death have often been subsumed under larger categories by previous scholars. We also see how often these

160

Conclusion

categories have not yet accounted meaningfully for some of these elements. While I assert that commentators have not made certain significant connections between these elements and motifs that I view to be connected by death anxiety, they present many valuable insights that can be even further elucidated by understanding the issues of death anxiety and animal reminder disgust. I believe that not only can accounting for death anxiety help us to better understand the passage in question, but also many of the approaches commentators have taken to the text. By recognizing this cognitive connection as described by terror management theory, we are able to draw together the human interaction with the non-human animals and in the wearing of clothes by seeing these as interacting with and reinforcing the animal-human boundary, necessitated by our awareness of mortality. At the end of the account, the humans know that they will die. This is the new understanding that all human beings now share. Although we desire immortality, it is not permitted; we know that our bodies, like those of other animals, are destined to return to the ground. The price of knowledge is the awareness of our animal bodies. The humans in the garden moved from being at ease with their nakedness to a state of anxiety, hiding, exerting dominance, and covering their bodies. Unlike other animals, we are ill at ease with our bodies, and seek to control all things that remind us of our animal bodies. We see in that in literature, religion, philosophy, and science, there is a strong tendency to emphasize those aspects that “make us human,” and distinguish us from other animals. Since the old dividing lines such as tool use, communication, or theory of mind no longer work, it could be proposed that a distinguishing trait is the fact that our similarities with other animals is disconcerting to us, and we are at unease with our own bodies. The ways we work to disguise our animal bodies in order to distinguish ourselves from other animals is unique to humans.

Bibliography

Ackerman, Susan. When Heroes Love: the ambiguity of eros in the stories of Gilgamesh and David. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Alter, Robert. Genesis. New York: Norton, 1997. Archi, Alfonso. “Religious Duties for a Royal Family: Basing the Ideology of Social Power at Ebla.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 76 (2017): 293–306. Arndt, Jamie, Sheldon Solomon, Tim Kasser, and Kennon Sheldon, “The Urge to Splurge: A terror management account of materialism and consumer behavior.” Journal of Consumer Psychology 14 (2004): 198–212. Arnold, Bill T. Genesis. New Cambridge Bible Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2009. Arrowood, Robert B., Jonathan Jong, Kenneth E. Vail III, and Ralph W. Hood. “Guest editors’ foreword: On the importance of integrating terror management and psychology of religion.” Religion, Brain & Behavior, 8: 1 (2017): 1–3. Arthur, Linda B. “Introduction.” In Religion, Dress and the Body, Dress, Body, Culture, edited by Linda B. Arthur, 1–2. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1999. Astley, Jeff. “Evolution and Evil.” In Reading Genesis after Darwin, edited by S. C. Barton and D. Wilkinson, 163–180. Oxford: Oxford University, 2009. Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: MacMillan, 1901. Barbour, Ian. “Science and Religion, Models and Relations.” In Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, edited by J. Wentzel Van Huyssteen, 760–766. Cambridge: International Society for Science and Religion, 2007. Barnett, Louise. Jonathan Swift in the Company of Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Barr, James. The Garden of Eden and the Hope of Immortality: The Read-Tuckwell lectures for 1990. London: SCM Press, 1992. ———. “Hebraic Psychology.” In Bible and Interpretation; Collected Essays of James Barr, Vol. 2, edited by John Barton, 144–148. Oxford: Oxford University, 2013. ———. “Is God a Liar? (Genesis 2–3)—and related matters.” The Journal of Theological Studies 57 (2005): 1–22. Barrett, Justin L. “Cognitive Science of Religion: What is it and why is it?” Religion Compass (2007): 768–786. ———. Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2011. ———. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004. Barton, Stephen C., and David Wilkinson. Reading Genesis after Darwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

161

162

Bibliography

Bassett, Jonathan F., and Michael E. Sonntag. “The Effects of Mortality Salience on Disgust Sensitivity Among University Students, Older Adults, and Mortuary Students.” Open Psychology Journal 3 (2010): 1–8. Bastian, Edward W. “Edward Conze,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 2 (1979): 116. Batten, Alicia. “Clothing and Adornment.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 40 (2010): 148–159. Bauks, Michaela. “Erkenntnis und Leben in Gen 2–3: Zum Wandel eines ursprünglich weisheitlich geprägten Lebensbegriffs.” ZAW 127 (2015): 20–24. Beard, Mary. “Tolstoy and His Translator.” In Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession, 9–23. New York: Liveright, 2014. Beatson, Ruth M., and Michael J. Halloran. “Humans Rule! The effects of creatureliness reminders, mortality salience and self-esteem on attitudes towards animals.” British Journal of Social Psychology 46 (2007): 619–632. Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. London: Souvenir Press, 2011. Becker, Ernest, and Daniel Liechty. The Ernest Becker Reader. Seattle: Ernest Becker Foundation and University of Washington Press, 2005. Bekoff, Marc. “Wild Justice, Social Cognition, Fairness, and Morality.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau, 461–480. New York: Columbia University, 2006. Benjamin, Don C. The Social World of Deuteronomy: A New Feminist Commentary. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2015. Bennett, Bruce. “Loving the Alien: Indigenous protest and neo-colonial violence in Avatar.” In Immigrant Protest: Politics, Aesthetics, and Everyday Dissent, edited by Katarzyna Marciniak, and Imogen Tyler, 96–119. New York: SUNY Press, 2014. Berger, John. “Why Look at Animals?” In The Animals Reader, edited by Linda Kalof and Amy Fitzgerald, 251–261. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Berquist, Jon L. Controlling Corporeality: The Body and the Household in Ancient Israel. New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 2002. Bertman, Sandra L. Facing Death: Images, Insights, and Interventions: A Handbook for Educators, Healthcare Professionals, and Counselors. New York: Hemisphere, 1991. Beyer, Susanne, and Lothar Gorris. “Spiegel Interview with Umberto Eco: ‘We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die.’” Der Spiegel Online International. Retrieved from https:// www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/spiegel-interview-with-umberto-eco-we-like-listsbecause-we-don-t-want-to-die-a-659577.html (2009). Accessed December 12, 2017. Bier, Carol. “Textile Arts in Ancient Western Asia.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 1567–1588. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Biró, Tamás. “Is Judaism Boring? On the lack of counterintuitive agents in Jewish rituals.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 120–143. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Bloch-Smith, Elizabeth. “The Cult of the Dead in Judah: Interpreting the Material Remains,” JBL 111 (1992): 213–224. ———. “From Womb to Tomb: The Israelite family in death as in life.” In The Family in Life and in Death: The Family in Ancient Israel, edited by Patricia Dutcher-Walls, 122. New York: T&T Clark, 2009. ———. Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead, Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd, 1992. Boddice, Rob. “End of Anthropomorphism.” In Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments, edited by Rob Boddice, 1–20. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Bolin, Thomas. “Job’s Colophon and its Contradictions.” The Bible and Interpretation. https:// www.bibleinterp.com/PDFs/Bolin%20Job%20Bible%20&%20Interpretation.pdf. Bolle, Helena M. and S. R. Llewelyn. “Intersectionality, Gender Liminality and Ben Sira’s Attitude to the Eunuch.” Vetus Testamentum 67 (2017): 546–569. Borges, Jorge Luis, and Margarita Guerrero, The Book of Imaginary Beings. New York: Avon Books, 1970.

Bibliography

163

Borwoski, Oded. “Animals in the Religions of Syria-Palestine.” In A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Handbook of Oriental Studies, edited by Billie Jean Collins, 405–424. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Bowker, John. Why Religions Matter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Boyd, Brian. On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Brandon, Samuel George Frederick. “The Origin of Death in Some Ancient Near Eastern Religions.” Religious Studies 1 (1966): 217–228. Brayford, Susan. Genesis. Septuagint Commentary Series. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Briggs, Richard S. “The Hermeneutics of Reading Genesis after Darwin.” In Reading Genesis after Darwin, edited by Stephen C. Barton and David Wilkinson, 57–74. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Brown, Warren, and Brad D. Strawn. The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Brown, William P. The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999. Broyles, Craig C. The Conflict of Faith and Experience in the Psalms: A Form-Critical and Theological Study. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1989. Bruce, Lindsay, and Sarah Lane Ritchie, “The Physicalized Mind and the Gut-Brain Axis: Taking Mental Health Out of Our Heads.” Zygon 53 (2018): 356–374. Brueggemann, Walter. Genesis: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982. Bührer, Walter. Am Anfang . . .: Untersuchungen zur Textgenese und zur relativ-chronologischen Einordnung von Gen 1–3. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014. Buss, David M. “Human Social Motivation in Evolutionary Perspective: Grounding terror management theory.” Psychological Inquiry 8 (1997): 22–26. Bynum, William F. “Introduction.” In On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, by Charles Darwin. London: Penguin, 2009. Callou, Cécile, Anaïck Samzun, and Alain Zivie. “Archaeology: a lion found in the Egyptian tomb of Maia.” Nature 427 (2004): 211. Cassuto, Umberto. Commentary on Genesis. Volume 1. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1964. Cave, David. “Reading the Body, Reading Scripture: The Implications of Neurobiology on the Study of Scripture.” In Religion and the Body; Modern Science and the Construction of Religious Meaning, edited by David Cave and Rebecca Sachs Norris, 15–36. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Chan, Esther, and Elaine Howard Ecklund. “Narrating and Navigating Authorities: Evangelical and mainline Protestant interpretations of the Bible and science.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 55 (2016): 54–69. Chonody, Jill M., and Barbra Teater. “Why do I dread looking old?: A test of social identity theory, terror management theory, and the double standard of aging.” Journal of Women & Aging 11 (2015): 112–126. Clark, Joseph D. Beastly Folklore. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1968. Clark, Timothy. The Cambridge Introduction to Literature and the Environment. Cambridge Introductions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2014. Clemens, Jordan, Jeff Schimel, and David Webber. “Death and Hairless Creatures? Elucidating existential factors in the evolution of human body hair.” Eureka 3 (2012): 7–8. Clines, David J. A. What Does Eve Do to Help? And Other Readerly Questions to the Old Testament. JSOT Supplement Series. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990. Coats, George W. Genesis; With an Introduction to Narrative Literature. Forms of Old Testament Literature. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983.

164

Bibliography

Collins, Billie Jean. “Animals in Hittite Literature.” In A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, edited by Billie Jean Collins, 237–250. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Collon, Dominique. “Clothing and Grooming in Ancient Western Asia.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 503–515. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Cooper, John. Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000. Corrigan, Peter. The Dressed Society: Clothing, the body and some meanings of the world (Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society). London: Sage, 2008. Cotter, David W. Genesis. Berit Olam. Collegeville: Liturgical, 2003. Cox, Cathy R., Jamie L. Goldenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, and David Weise. “Disgust, Creatureliness and the Accessibility of Death-related Thoughts.” European Journal of Social Psychology 37 (2007): 494–507. Crozier, W. Ray. Blushing and the Social Emotions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Cummings, Brian. “Animal Passions and Human Sciences: Shame, blushing and nakedness in early Modern Europe and the New World.” In At the Borders of the Human, edited by Susan Wiseman, Erica Fudge, Ruth Gilbert, 26–50. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Czachesz, Istvá n. Cognitive Science and the New Testament: A New Approach to Early Christian Research. Oxford: Oxford University, 2017. ———. “The Gospels and Cognitive Science.” In Learned Antiquity: Scholarship and Society in the Near-East, the Greco-Roman World, and the Early Medieval West, edited by Alasdair A. MacDonald, Michael W. Twomey, and Gerrit J. Reinink, 25–36. Leuven: Peeters, 2004. ———. “Magic and Mind: Toward a New Cognitive Theory of Magic, With Special Attention to the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.” Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 24 (2007): 295–321. ———. “Rethinking Biblical Transmission: Insights from the cognitive neuroscience of memory.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 51–69. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Czachesz, István, and Risto Uro. “The Cognitive Science of Religion; A new alternative in Biblical Studies.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 1–14. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Czachesz, István, and Risto Uro, eds. Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Dalling, Robert. The Story of Us Humans, from Atoms to Today’s Civilization. Lincoln, NB: iUniverse, 2006. Dalrymple, Timothy. “Adam and Eve: Human Being and Nothingness.” In Volume 1, Tome I: Kierkegaard and the Bible-The Old Testament, edited by Lee C. Barrett, 23–62. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2016. Darwin, Charles. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Vol 8, edited by Frederick Burkhardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 619. New York: Appleton, 1878. ———. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: Penguin, 2009 [1859]. Darwin, Charles, and Phillip Prodger. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. New York: Oxford University, 1998 [1886]. David, Rosalie. Handbook to life in Ancient Egypt. Handbook to Life Series. New York: Facts on File, 2003. Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “Trump Calls Some Unauthorized Immigrants ‘Animals’ in Rant.” New York Times 16 (2018). De Cruz, Helen. A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion. Boston: MIT, 2015. De Troyer, Kristin. Wholly Woman, Holy Blood: A Feminist Critique of Purity and Impurity. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003. Dehaene, Stanislas. Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read. New York: Penguin, 2009. Dell, Katharine. Interpreting Ecclesiastes: Readers Old and New. Critical Studies in the Hebrew Bible. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2012.

Bibliography

165

Demello, Margo. Animals and Society. New York: Columbia University, 2012. Demetriou, Dan. “There’s Some Fetish in Your Ethics: A Limited Defense of Purity Reasoning in Moral Discourse.” Journal of Philosophical Research 38 (2013): 377–404. Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow). Translated by David Wills. Critical Inquiry 28 (2002): 369–341. Doak, Brian R. Consider Leviathan: Narratives of Nature and the Self in Job. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014. Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. New York: Routledge, 2015. ———. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. New York: Routledge, 2003. Duncan, David. The Brothers K. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Durkheim, Émile. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press, 1995. Eco, Umberto. The Infinity of Lists: from Homer to Joyce. London: MacLehose, 2012. ———. The Name of the Rose. Translated by William Weaver. New York: Warner Books, 1984. Edge.org. “A Biological Understanding of Human Nature: A Talk with Steven Pinker.” Accessed March 14, 2017. edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker_blank/pinker_blank_print.html. Elgot, Jessica, and Matthew Taylor. “Calais crisis: Cameron condemned for ‘dehumanizing’ description of migrants.” The Guardian. July 30, 2015. Accessed March 14, 2017. www. theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/30/david-cameron-migrant-swarm-languagecondemned. Emery, Nathan J.,and Nicola S. Clayton. “The Mentality of Crows: convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes.” Science 306 (2004): 1903–1907. Engels, Eve-Marie. “Darwin’s Philosophical Revolution: Evolutionary Naturalism and First Reactions to his Theory.” In The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe, edited by Thomas F. Glick and Eve-Marie Engels, 22–53. London: Continuum, 2008. Enright, Dennis J. The Oxford Book of Death. Oxford: Oxford University, 1992. Entwistle, Joanne. The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Modern Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011. Esler, Philip Francis. Sex, Wives, and Warriors: Reading Old Testament Narrative with Its Ancient Audience. Cambridge: James Clarke, 2012. Evans, Ronald V. The Creative Myth and the Cosmic Hero: Text and Context in Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death.” New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Exum, J. Cheryl, and David J. A. Clines. The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible. Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1993. Farber, Walter. “Witchcraft, Magic, and Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 1895–1909. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Farians, Elizabeth Jane. “Theology and Animals.” In Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice, edited by Lisa Kemmer, 102–109. Urbana: University of Illinois, 2011. Feldhamer, George, Joseph Whittaker, Anne-Marie Monty, and Clare Weickert. “Charismatic Mammalian Megafauna: Public Empathy and Marketing Strategy.” The Journal of Popular Culture 36 (2002): 160–167. Finney, Mark T. Resurrection, Hell and the Afterlife: Body and Soul in Antiquity, Judaism and Early Christianity. New York: Routledge, 2018. Fiske, Susan T., and Shelley E. Taylor. Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture. Los Angeles: Sage, 2013. Foreman, Benjamin A. Animal Metaphors and the People of Israel in the Book of Jeremiah. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011. Foster, Benjamin R. “Animals in Mesopotamian Literature.” In A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, edited by Billie Jean Collins, 271–288. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Foulks, Edward. “Animals in Religion.” In Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and Its Sublimation, edited by Salman Akhtar and Vamik D. Volkan, 207–224. London: Karnac Books, 2014.

166

Bibliography

Frankl, Viktor Emil, and Ilse Lasch. Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946. Frazer, James G. “Selections from The Golden Bough.” In Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader, edited by J. Carter, 76–87. London: Continuum, 2003. Friedenberg, Jay, and Gordon Silverman. Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Study of Mind. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2012. Gaarder, Emily. Women and the Animal Rights Movement. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 2011. Gallup. “In US, Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low,” accessed 5/24/2017 at http://www.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx. Gelman, Dan. “Developing the Gift of Gag.” Newsweek 122 (1993): 78. George, Andrew. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University, 2003. Gerstenberger, Edward. Leviticus. The Old Testament Library. Louisville: WJK, 2003. Gilbert, Allan S. “The Native Fauna of the Ancient Near East.” In A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, edited by Billie Jean Collins, 3–75. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Giraldi, William. “The Way of All Flesh: On Tolstoy and Mortality.” Virginia Quarterly Review 90 (2014): 212–217. Goldenberg, Jamie L., Cathy R. Cox, Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon. “Understanding Human Ambivalence About Sex: The effects of stripping sex of meaning.” Journal of Sex Research 39 (2002): 310–320. Goldenberg, Jamie L., Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon. “Fleeing the Body: A terror management perspective on the problem of human corporeality.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 4 (2000): 200–218. Goldenberg, Jamie L., Tom Pyszczynski, Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, Benjamin Kluck, and Robin Cornwell. “I Am Not an Animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness.” Journal of Experimental Psychology 130 (2001): 427–435. Goldman, Alvin. “Theory of Mind.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, edited by Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels, and Stephen P. Stich, 402–24. New York: Oxford University, 2012. Good, Edwin M. Genesis 1–11: Tales of the Earliest World. Stanford: Stanford University, 2011. Goodstein, Laurie. New York Times, “A Noah’s Ark in Kentucky, Dinosaurs included,” June 26, 2016. Accessed 5/28/17: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/us/noahs-ark-creationism-ken-ham.html. Gottschall, Jonathan. The Storytelling Animal; How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Mariner Books, 2013. Gould, Stephen Jay. “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (1997): 16–22. Graesser, Arthur, and Sidney D’Mello. “Moment-To-Moment Emotions During Reading.” The Reading Teacher 66 (2012): 238–242. Green, Joel B. Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008. ———. What About the Soul?: Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004. Green, Joel B., Stewart Goetz, William Hasker, Nancey C. Murphy, and Kevin Corcoran. In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. Greenberg, Jeff, and Jamie Arndt. “Terror Management Theory.” In Handbook of Theories of Social Psychology, edited by Arie W. Kruglanski, Paul A. M. van Lange, and Tory E. Higgins, 398–415. Los Angeles: Sage, 2012. Greenberg, Jeff, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, Elizabeth Pinel, Linda Simon, and Krista Jordan. “Effects of Self-esteem on Vulnerability-denying Defensive Distortions: Further evidence of an anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 29 (1993): 229–251.

Bibliography

167

Griffin, Donald. “From Cognition to Consciousness.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau, 481–504. New York: Columbia University, 2006. Grudem, Wayne. “Foreword,” to Should Christians Embrace Evolution?: Biblical and Scientific Responses, edited by Nevin Norman Cummings, 9–10. Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2009. Hall, Douglas John. Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989. Halsey, Katie. “The Blush of Modesty or the Blush of Shame? Reading Jane Austen’s blushes.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 42 (2006): 226–238. Hamilton, Victor P. The Book of Genesis. Chapters 1–17. NICOT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. Hare, John. “Hermaphrodites, Eunuchs, and Intersex People: The Witness of Medical Science in Biblical Times and Today.” In Intersex, Theology, and the Bible, edited by Susannah Cornwall, 79–96. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Harmon-Jones, Eddie, Linda Simon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, Sheldon Solomon, and Holly McGregor. “Terror Management Theory and Self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduced mortality salience effects.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72 (1997): 24–36. Harris, Lasana T., and Susan T. Fiske. “Dehumanizing the lowest of the low: Neuroimaging responses to extreme out-groups.” Psychological Science 17 (2006): 847–853. ———. “Social neuroscience evidence for dehumanised perception.” European Review of Social Psychology 20 (2009): 192–231. Hartley, John. Genesis, NIBC. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000. Hasel, Gerhard. “Health and Healing in the Old Testament.” Andrews University Seminary Studies 21 (1983): 191–202. Haught, John. Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation. New York: Paulist Press, 1995. Havas, David A., Arthur M. Glenberg, Karol A. Gutowski, Mark J. Lucarelli, and Richard J. Davidson. “Cosmetic Use of Botulinum Toxin-a Affects Processing of Emotional Language.” Psychological Science 21 (2010): 895–900. Hayes, Joseph, Jeff Schimel, Jamie Arndt, and Erik H. Faucher. “A Theoretical and Empirical Review of the Death-thought Accessibility Concept in Terror Management Research.” Psychological Bulletin 136 (2010): 699–739. Hays, Christopher B. Death in the Iron Age II and in First Isaiah. FAT. Tü bingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011. Hegel, George W. F. Philosophy of History. Traslated by John Sibree, 66. New York: American Home Library, 1902. Heidel, Alexander. The Gilgamesh Epic and Old Testament Parallels: A Translation and Interpretation of the Gilgamesh Epic and Related Babylonian and Assyrian Documents. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1989. Herman, David. Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. Boston: MIT press, 2013. Herz, Rachel. That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion. New York: Norton, 2012. Hesse, Brian. “Animal Husbandry and Human Diet in the Ancient Near East.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 203–222. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Hickman, Louise. “The Nature of the Self and the Contemplation of Nature: Ecotheology and the History of the Soul.” In The Concept of the Soul: Scientific and Religious Perspectives, edited by Michael Fuller, 5; 17–24. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014. Hickok, Gregory. The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition. New York: Norton, 2014. Hiltebeitel, Alf, and Barbara D. Miller. Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures, xii. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Hirsch, Samson Raphael, The Pentateuch. London: Gateshead, 1959.

168

Bibliography

Hogan, Patrick Colm. Cognitive Science, Literature, and the Arts: A Guide for Humanists. New York: Routledge, 2003. Horn Prouser, Ora. “Suited to the Throne: The symbolic use of clothing in the David and Saul narratives.” JSOT 71 (1996): 27–37. Hornung, Erik. “Der Mensch als ‘Bild Gottes’ in Ägypten.” In Die Gottebenbildlichkeit des Menschen, Scriften des Deutschen Instituts für wissenschaftliche Pedagogik, edited by Oswald Loretz, 123–156. Munich: Kösel, 1967. Houston, Walter. Purity and Monotheism. JSOT Supplement Series. London: Bloomsbury, 1993. Howard, Simon. Dawn of Death: The Bible and Our Mortal Bodies. Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2016. Hume, David. “On Suicide.” In Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, 315–323. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Hurn, Samantha. “Dressing Down. Clothing Animals, Disguising Animality?” Civilisations 59 (2011): 109–24. ———. Humans and Other Animals: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human-Animal Interactions. London: Pluto Press, 2012. Ikram, Salima. “Divine Creatures; Animal Mummies.” In Divine Creatures: animal mummies in ancient Egypt, edited by Salima Ikram, 1–15. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005. Irwin, Brian. “Amos 4: 1 and the Cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria: A Reappraisal.” CBQ 74 (2012): 231–246. Jackson, Danny P. The Epic of Gilgamesh. Mundelein, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 2009. James, William. The Principles of Psychology. New York: H. Holt, 1918. ———. Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1902. Janssen, Rosalind. “Costume in New Kingdom Egypt,” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 383–394. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Jeeves, Malcolm A., and Warren S. Brown. Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities About Human Nature. Templeton Science and Religion Series. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Foundation Press, 2011. Jennings, Toby. Precious Enemy: A Biblical Portrait of Death. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017. Johnston, Phillip. Shades of Sheol: Death and Afterlife in the Old Testament. Downers Grove: IVP, 2002. Jokiranta, Jutta. “Ritual System in the Qumran Movement: Frequency, boredom, and balance.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 144–163. New York: Routledge, 2014. Jong, Jonathan. “Ernest Becker’s Psychology of Religion Forty Years On: A view from social cognitive psychology.” Zygon 49 (2014): 875–889. Jong, Jonathan, and Jamin Halberstadt. Death, Anxiety, and Religious Belief: An Existential Psychology of Religion. Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Juhl, Jacob, and Clay Routledge. “Putting the Terror in Terror Management Theory; Evidence that the awareness of death does cause anxiety and undermines psychological well-being.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 25 (2016): 99–103. Kasperbauer, Tyler Joshua. “Animals as Disgust Elicitors.” Biology & Philosophy 30 (2015): 167–185. Kasser, Tim, and Kennon M. Sheldon. “Of Wealth and Death: Materialism, mortality salience, and consumption behavior.” Psychological science 11 (2000): 348–351. Kazen, Thomas. Jesus and Purity Halakhah: Was Jesus Indifferent to Impurity?, 129–134. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2010. ———. “The Role of Disgust in Priestly Purity Law.” Journal of Law, Religion and State 3 (2014): 62–92. Keen, Sam. “The Heroics of Everyday Life; A theorist of death confronts his own end.” Psychology Today 11 (1974): 71–80. Keenan, James F. “Christian Perspectives on the Human Body.” Theological Studies 55 (1994): 330–346.

Bibliography

169

Kelemen, Deborah. “Are Children ‘Intuitive Theists?’ Reasoning about purpose and design in nature.” Psychological Science 15 (2004): 295–301. Kenel, Sally A. Mortal Gods: Ernest Becker and Fundamental Theology. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988. Ketola, Kimmo. “A Cognitive Approach to Ritual Systems in First-Century Judaism.” In Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro, 95–114. Leiden: Brill, 2007. Kienzle, Beverly. “The Bestiary of Heretics: Imaging Medieval Christian Heresy with Insects and Animals.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, ed. Paul Waldau, 103–116. New York: Columbia University, 2006. King, Philip, and Lawrence Stager. Life in Biblical Israel, 355–357. Louisville: WJK, 2011. Kirk, Geoffrey Stephen. Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures. Berkley, CA: University of California Press, 1970. Kirkpatrick, Lee A., and Carlos David Navarrete. “Reports of my Death Anxiety have been Greatly Exaggerated: A critique of terror management theory from an evolutionary perspective.” Psychological Inquiry 17 (2006): 288–298. Klawans, Jonathan. Purity, Sacrifice, and the Temple: Symbolism and supersessionism in the study of ancient Judaism. Oxford University Press, 2005. ———. “Sacrifice in Ancient Israel: Pure Bodies, Domesticated Animals, and the Divine Shepherd.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau Kimberly Patton, 80–65. New York: Columbia, 2006. Koosed, Jennifer. “Humanity at its Limits.” In The Bible and Posthumanism, edited by Jennifer L. Koosed, 3–12. Atlanta: SBL, 2014. Krispenz, Jutta. “Wie viele Baüme braucht das Paradies? Erwagungen zu Gen ii 4b–iii 24.” VT 54 (2004): 301–318. Krüger, Thomas. “Sündenfall? Überlegungen zur theologischen Bedeutung der Paradiesgeschichte.” In Beyond Eden. The Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception History, edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, 95–109. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008. Kübel, Paul. Metamorphosen der Paradieserzählung. Orbis biblicus et orientalis, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2007. Kugel, James L. Traditions of the Bible. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Lambden, Stephen N. “From Fig Leaves to Fingernails: Some Notes on the Garments of Adam and Eve in the Hebrew Bible and Select Early Postbiblical Jewish Writings.” In A Walk in the Garden, The Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, edited by Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, 74–90. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1992. Landau, Mark J., Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski, and Jeff Greenberg. “On the Compatibility of Terror Management Theory and Perspectives on Human Evolution.” Psychology 5 (2007): 496–497. Lanfer, Peter Thacher. Remembering Eden: The Reception History of Genesis 3: 22–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Lawson, E. Thomas. “Cognition.” In Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, 75–84. London: Cassell, 2000. ———. “Cognitive Constraints on Imagining Other Worlds.” In Sci-Fi in the Mind’s Eye: Reading science through science fiction, edited by M. Grebowicz, N. Griffith, and L. T. Duchamp, 263–274. Chicago: Open Court, 2007. ———. “Forward.” In Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion, edited by Todd Tremlin, xi–xvii. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Lawson, E. Thomas, and Robert N. McCauley. “The cognitive representation of religious ritual form: A theory of participants’ competence with religious ritual systems.” In Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion, 153–176. London: Bloomsbury Academic 2002.

170

Bibliography

———. Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Leary, Mark R., and Lisa S. Schreindorfer. “Unresolved Issues with Terror Management Theory.” Psychological Inquiry 8 (1997): 26–29. Lemos, Tracy Maria. Violence and Personhood in Ancient Israel and Comparative Contexts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Lesko, Leonard. “Death and Afterlife.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 1763–1774. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Levenson, Jon D., Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Liechty, Daniel. Transference and Transcendence: Ernest Becker’s Contribution to Psychotherapy. Northvale, NJ: J. Aronson, 1995. Lifton, Robert. J. “Further Intimations of Immortality.” New York Times. December 14, 1975. Luomanen, Petri. “How Religions Remember: Memory theories in biblical studies and in the cognitive study of religion.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 24–42. Durham: Acumen, 2013. Lurie, Alison. The Language of Clothes. New York: Henry Holt, 2000 Maccoby, Hyam. Ritual and Morality: The Ritual Purity System and Its Place in Judaism. New York: Cambridge University, 1999. MacIntyre, Alasdair. Dependent Rational Animals—Why Human Beings Need the Virtues. London: Duckworth, 1999. Martin, Luther H. “Past Minds: Evolution, Cognition, and Biblical Studies.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited by István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 15–23. New York: Routledge, 2014. ———. “The Promise of Biblical Studies.” In Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro, 37–56. Leiden: Brill, 2007. ———. “Religion and Cognition.” In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by John R. Hinnells, 526–42. London: Routledge, 2010. ———. “Towards a Scientific History of Religions.” In Theorizing Religions Past: Archaeology, History and Cognition, edited by Harvey Whitehouse and Luther Martin, 7–14. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004. Martin, Stephen W. Decomposing Modernity: Ernest Becker’s Images of Humanity at the End of an Age. Lanham, Md: Institute for Christian Studies, 1997. Mason, Jim. “Misothery.” In The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, edited by Linda Kalof, 135–151. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Matthews, Victor. “Cloth, Clothing.” New International Dictionary of the Bible. 1: 691–696. Matthews, Victor H. “The Anthropology of Clothing in the Joseph Narrative.” JSOT 20 (1995): 25–36. Mayer, Emeran A., Rob Knight, Sarkis K. Mazmanian, John F. Cryan, and Kirsten Tillisch. “Gut Microbes and the Brain: Paradigm Shift in Neuroscience.” The Journal of Neuroscience 34 (2014): 15490–15496. Mazis, Glen. “Animals, before Me, with Whom I Live, by Whom I Am Addressed: Writing after Derrida.” In Divinanimality: Animal Theory, Creaturely Theology, edited by Stephen D. Moore, 17–35. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014. McCallum, Nancy L., and Matthew S. McGlone. “Death Be Not Profane: Mortality Salience and Euphemism Use.” Western Journal of Communication 75 (2011): 565–584. McCance, Dawne. Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction. The Palgrave Macmillan animal ethics series. Albany: SUNY, 2013. McCauley, Robert N., and E. Thomas Lawson. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms, 18–27. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ———. “Cognition, Religious Ritual and Archaeology.” In The Archaeology of Ritual, edited by Evangelos Kyriakidis, 209–254. Los Angeles: UCLA. McDonald, Nathan. What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009.

Bibliography

171

McGrath, Alister E. “Darwinism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, eds. Philip Clayton, and Zachary Simpson, 681–696. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. McGuire, Meredith B. “Religion and the Body: Rematerializing the human body in the social sciences of religion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 29 (1990): 283–296. McLaughlin, John. The Marzeah in the Prophetic Literature: References and Allusions in Light of the Extra-Biblical Evidence, 103–104. Leiden: Brill, 2001. McLaughlin, Ryan Patrick. Christian Theology and the Status of Animals: The Dominant Tradition and Its Alternatives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Meister, Chad. “Death and the Afterlife.” In Philosophy of Religion, edited by Chad Meister, 96–112. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Meltzer, David. Death: An Anthology of Ancient Texts, Songs, Prayers, and Stories. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1984. Melvin, David P. “Divine Mediation and the Rise of Civilization in Mesopotamian Literature and in Genesis 1–11.” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 10 (2011): np. Mendelsund, Peter. What We See When We Read: A Phenomenology. New York: Vintage Books, 2014. Merrill, Eugene. “Pre-Human Death and the Effect of the Fall.” Criswell Theological Review 14 (2016): 15–22. Messer, Neil. Theological Neuroethics; Christian Ethics Meets the Science of the Human Brain. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2019. Meunier, Hélène. “Do Monkeys Have a Theory of Mind? How to answer the question?” Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 82 (2017): 110–123. Milano, Lucio. “Ebla: A Third-Millenium City-State in Ancient Syria.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 1219–1230. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Miscall, Peter D. “Jacques Derrida in the Garden of Eden.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 44 (1990): 1–9. Moberly, R. Walter L. “Did the Interpreters Get it Right? Genesis 2–3 Reconsidered.” Journal of theological studies 59 (2007): 22–40 ———. “Did the Serpent Get it Right?” The Journal of Theological Studies 39 (1988): 1–27. Mobley, Gregory. The Return of the Chaos Monsters and Other Backstories of the Bible. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Mohajeri, M. Hasan, Giorgio La Fata, Robert Steinert, Peter Weber. “Relationship Between the Gut Microbiome and Brain Function.” Nutrition Reviews, 76 (2018): 481–496. Montemurro, Beth, and Meghan M. Gillen. “How Clothes Make the Woman Immoral: Impressions given off by sexualized clothing.” Clothing and Textiles Research Journal 3 (2013): 167–181. Moore, Stephen. “Ruminations on Revelation’s Ruminant, Quadrupedal Christ; or, the EvenToed Ungulate That Therefore I Am.” In The Bible and Posthumanism edited by Jennifer L. Koosed, 301–26. Atlanta: SBL, 2014. Moran, William. “The Gilgamesh Epic: A Masterpiece from Ancient Mesopotamia.” Civilizations of the Ancient Near East 4 (1995): 2327–2336. Moritz, Joshua. “Natures, Human Nature, Genes and Souls.” Dialog 46 (2007): 263–280. Moritz, Joshua M. “Human Uniqueness, the Other Hominids, and ‘Anthropocentrism of the Gaps,’ in The Religion and Science Dialogue.” Zygon 47 (2012): 65–96. Motyl, Matt, Joshua Hart, Douglas P. Cooper, Nathan Heflick, Jamie Goldenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. “Creatureliness Priming Reduces Aggression and Support for War.” British Journal of Social Psychology 52 (2013): 648–666. Mudrik, Liad, and Uri Maoz. “‘Me & My Brain’: Exposing Neuroscience’s Closet Dualism.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 27 (2014): 211–221. Mulhall, Stephen. Philosophical Myths of the Fall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Murphy, Roland. “Death and Afterlife in the Wisdom Literature.” In Judaism in Late Antiquity, Part Four: Death, Life-after-death, resurrection and the World-to-come in the Judaisms of Antiquity, edited by Alan Avery-Peck and Jacob Neusner, 101–16. Leiden: Brill, 2000. Nelson, Richard D. Deuteronomy. The Old Testament Library; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002.

172

Bibliography

Neufeld, Dietmar. “The Rhetoric of Body, Clothing and Identity in the Vita and Genesis.” Scriptura 90 (2005): 679–684. Nielsen, Marie Vejrup. “Answering Job’s Challenge: Reception and transformation in evolutionary theory.” In Acta Jutlandica. Natural Science Series: Receptions and Transformations of the Bible, 119–133. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2009. Nieuwboer, Wieteke, Hein van Schie, and Daniël Wigboldus. “Priming with Religion and Supernatural Agency Enhances the Perception of Intentionality in Natural Phenomena.” Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 2 (2015): 97–120. Nigrin, Llewellyn. “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: The Corporeal Experience of Fashion.” In Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists, edited by Agnès Rocamora and Anneke Smelik, 115–131. London: IB Taurus, 2016. Norenzayan, Ara, Scott Atran, Jason Faulkner, and Mark Schaller. “Memory and Mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives.” Cognitive Science 30 (2006): 531–553. Norenzayan, Ara, Will M. Gervais, and Kali H. Trzesniewski. “Mentalizing Deficits Constrain Belief in a Personal God.” PLoS ONE 7 (2012): 1–8. Numbers, Ronald. “Creationism.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, edited by Michael Ruse, n.p. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013. Nussbaum, Martha Craven. Hiding from Humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009. ———. Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Oden, Robert A. The Bible without Theology: The Theological Tradition and Alternatives to It. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. O’Farrell, Mary Ann. Telling Complexions: The Nineteenth-Century English Novel and the Blush. Durham: Duke Univ. Press, 1997. Olatunji, Bunmi O., Jonathan Haidt, Dean McKay, and Bieke David. “Core, Animal Reminder, and Contamination Disgust: Three Kinds of Disgust with Distinct Personality, Behavioral, Physiological, and Clinical Correlates.” Journal of Research in Personality 42 (2008): 1243–1259. Olson, Eric T. The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Olyan, Saul M. Disability in the Hebrew Bible: Interpreting Mental and Physical Differences. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008. ———. “Jehoiakim’s Dehumanizing Interment as a Ritual Act of Reclassification.” JBL 133 (2014): 271–279. ———. “Ritual Inversion in Biblical Representations of Punitive Rites.” In Worship, Women and War: Essays in Honor of Susan Niditch, edited by John J. Collins, Tracy M. Lemos, and Saul M. Olyan, 135–44. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2015. ———. “Some Neglected Aspects of Israelite Interment Ideology.” JBL 124 (2005): 601–616. Osborn, Ronald E. Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014. Pallen, Mark, and Alison Pearn. “Darwin and Religion.” In The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Darwin and Evolutionary Thought, edited by Michael Ruse, Online, n.p. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013. Patton, Kimberly. “Caught with Ourselves in the Net of Life and Time.” In A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science, and Ethics, edited by Paul Waldau, 27–39. New York: Columbia University, 2006. Peale, Norman Vincent. The Power of Positive Thinking. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1952. Peters, Ted. “Science and Theology: Towards Consonance.” In Science and Theology: The New Consonance, edited by Ted Peters, 11–42. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. Pew Research Center. “Religious Groups’ Views on Evolution.” Feb 4, 2009 (updated Feb 3, 2014). Accessed 5/28/17: http://www.pewforum.org/2009/02/04/religious-groups-views-onevolution/. ———. “Religious Landscape Study,” 2017. Accessed 2/1/18. http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/.

Bibliography

173

Pfeiffer, Henrik. “Der Baum in der Mitte des Gartens. Zum überlieferungsgeschichtlichen Ursprung der Paradieserzählung (Gen 2, 4b–3, 24).” ZAW 112 (2000): 487–500. ———. “Der Baum in der Mitte des Gartens. Zum überlieferungsgeschichtliche Ursprung der Paradieserzählung (Gen 2, 4b–3, 24).” ZAW 113 (2001): 2–16. Pinker, Aron. “Job’s Perspectives on Death.” JBQ 35 (2007): 73–85. Proulx, Travis. “Absurdity as the Source of Existential Anxiety: A critique of terror management theory.” PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2003. Pyszczynski, Tom, Jeff Greenberg, and Sheldon Solomon. “A Dual-Process Model of Defense against Conscious and Unconscious Death-related Thoughts: An extension of terror management theory.” Psychological Review 106 (1999): 835–845. Pyszczynski, Tom, Sheldon Solomon, and Jeff Greenberg. “Thirty Years of Terror Management Theory: From Genesis to Revelation.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 52 (2015): 1–70. Pyysiä inen, Ilkka. “The Cognitive Science of Religion.” In Evolution, Religion & Cognitive Science, edited by Fraser Watts and Leon Turner, 21–37. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Rahner, Karl. On the Theology of Death. New York: Herder and Herder, 1961. Ramsey, George W. “Is Name-Giving an Act of Domination in Genesis 2: 23 and Elsewhere?” CBQ 50 (1988): 24–35. Raphael, Rebecca. Biblical Corpora: Representations of Disability in Hebrew Biblical Literature. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. London: Bloomsbury, 2009. Recht, Laerke. “Identifying Sacrifice in Bronze Age Near Eastern Iconography.” In Defining the Sacred: Approaches to Archaeology of Religion in the Near East, edited by Nicola Laneri, 24–37. Oxford: Oxbow, 2015. Reed, Annette Yoshiko. “From Sacrifice to the Slaughterhouse.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 26 (2014): 111–158. Regard, Marianne, Daria Knoch, Eva Gütling, and Theodor Landis. “Brain Damage and Addictive Behavior: A Neuropsychological and Electroencephalogram Investigation with Pathologic Gamblers.” Cognitive & Behavioral Neurology 16 (2003): 47–53. Richardson, Angelique. After Darwin: Animals, Emotions, and the Mind. Amsterdam: Radopi, 2013. Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. London: Routledge, 2003. Riexinger, Martin. “Islamic Opposition to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution.” In Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science, edited by J. R. Lewis and O. Hammer, 483–510. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Rindge, Matthew S. “Mortality and Enjoyment: The Interplay of Death and Possessions in Qoheleth.” CBQ 73 (2011): 265–280. Ritvo, Harriet. “On the Animal Turn.” Daedalus 136 (2007): 118–122. Roberts, Alice, and Susannah K. S. Thorpe. “Challenges to Human Uniqueness: Bipedalism, birth and brains.” Journal of Zoology 292 (2014): 281–289. Robertson Smith, William. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1894. Robinson, Benedict. “Disgust c. 1600,” ELH 81 (2014): 553–583. Rottzoll, Dirk U. “Die Schöpfungs-und Fallerzählung in Gen 2 f. Teil 1: Die Fallerzählung (Gen 3)” ZAW 109 (1997): 481–499. Routledge, Clay, Jacob Juhl, and Matthew Vess. “Mortality salience increases death-anxiety for individuals low in personal need for structure.” Motivation and Emotion 37 (2013): 303–307. Rozin, Paul. “Towards a Psychology of Food and Eating: From Motivation to Module to Model to Marker, Morality, Meaning, and Metaphor.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 5 (1996): 18–24. Rozin, Paul, and Jonathan Haidt. “The Domains of Disgust and Their Origins: Contrasting Biological and Cultural Evolutionary Accounts,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (2013): 367–368.

174

Bibliography

Rozin, Paul, Jonathan Haidt, and C. R. McCauley. “Disgust: The body and soul emotion in the 21st century.” In Disgust and its Disorders, edited by D. McKay and B. Olatunji, 9–29. Washington DC: APA, 2008. Rozin, Paul, Linda Millman, and Carol Nemeroff. “Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and Other Domains.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 (1986): 703–712. Rumbaugh, Duane M. Language Learning by a Chimpanzee: The Lana Project. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Ruppert, Lothar. Genesis: ein kritischer und theologischer Kommentar. Forschung zur Bibel. Würzburg: Echter, 2003. Sapir-Hen, Lidar, Meirav Meiri, and Israel Finkelstein. “Iron Age Pigs: new evidence on their origin and role in forming identity boundaries.” Radiocarbon 57 (2015): 307–315. Sarna, Nahum M. Genesis: The traditional Hebrew text with the new JPS translation. Philadelphia: JPS, 1989. Sax, Boria. “What is this Quintessence of Dust? The Concept of the ‘human’ and its origins.” In Anthropocentrism: Humans, animals, environments., edited by Rob Boddice, 21–36. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Schimel, Jeff, Joseph Hayes, Todd Williams, and Jesse Jahrig. “Is Death Really the Worm at the Core? Converging evidence that worldview threat increases death-thought accessibility.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92 (2007): 789–803. Schmid, Konrad. “Loss of Immortality? Hermeneutical aspects of Genesis 2–3 and its early receptions.” In Beyond Eden: the Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and its Reception History edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, 58–78. Tübingen: Mohr Siebek, 2008. Schmidt, Brian B. Israel’s Beneficent Dead: Ancestor Cult and Necromancy in Ancient Israelite Religion and Tradition. Winona Lake, Ind: Eisenbrauns, 1996. Schmidt, Klaus. “‘Zuerst kam der Tempel, dann die Stadt;’ Vorläufiger Bericht zu den Grabungen am Göbekli Tepe und am Gürcütepe 1995–1999,” Istanbuler Mitteilungen 50 (2000): 5–41. Schroer, Silvia, and Thomas Staubli. Biblisch Menschenkunde. Stuttgart: Schwabenverlag, 2013. ———. “Bodily and embodied: Being human in the tradition of the Hebrew Bible.” Interpretation 67 (2013): 5–19. Schuller, Robert H. Self-Esteem, the New Reformation. Waco: Word Books, 1982. Schwabe, Calvin W. “Animals in the Ancient World.” In Animals and Human Society: Changing perspectives, edited by Aubrey Manning and James Serpell, 36–58. London: Routledge, 1994. Scurlock, JoAnn. “Animals in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion.” in A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, ed. Billie Jean Collins, 361–387. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Segal, Alan F. Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. New York: Doubleday, 2004. Shafer-Elliott, Cynthia. Food in Ancient Judah: Domestic Cooking in the Time of the Hebrew Bible. New York: Routledge, 2014. Sife, Wallace. The Loss of a Pet. Nashville: Howell/Wiley, 2014. Simkins, Ronald A. “Anthropocentrism and the Place of Humans in the Biblical Tradition.” Journal of Religion and Society, Supplement 9 (2013): 16–29. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York: Random House, 1975. Ska, Jean-Louis. “Genesis 2–3: Some Fundamental Questions.” In Beyond Eden. The Biblical Story of Paradise (Genesis 2–3) and Its Reception History, edited by Konrad Schmid and Christoph Riedweg, 1–27. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2008. Skinner, John. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Genesis. ICC. New York: Scribner, 1910. Smith, Mark, and Elizabeth Bloch-Smith. “Death and Afterlife in Ugarit and Israel.” JAOS 108 (1988): 277–284. Snowdon, Paul F. Persons, Animals, Ourselves. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Bibliography

175

Solomon, Sheldon, Jeff Greenberg, and Thomas A. Pyszczynski. “The Cultural Animal.” In Handbook of Experimental Existential Psychology, edited by Jeff Greenberg, Sander Koole, and Tom Pyszczynski, 13–34. New York: Guilford Press, 2004. ———. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House, 2015. Speiser, Ephraim Avigdor. Genesis. Introduction, Translation, and Notes. Anchor Bible. Garden City: Double Day, 1964. Sperber, Dan. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996. ———. La Contagion des idé es: thé orie naturaliste de la culture. Paris: O. Jacob, 1996. Spolsky, Ellen. The Work of Fiction: Cognition, Culture, and Complexity. London: Routledge, 2017. Starr, Ivan. “In Search of Principles of Prognostication in Extispicy.” Hebrew Union College Annual 45 (1974): 17–23. Stol, Marten. “Private Life in Ancient Mesopotamia.” In Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, edited by Jack Sasson, 485–501. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006. Stone, Ken. Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animal Studies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018. Strømmen, Hannah. Biblical Animality after Jacques Derrida. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: SBL, 2018. ———. “Beastly Blame and Biblical Questions.” In The Bible and Posthumanism, edited by Jennifer Koosed, 13–28. Atlanta: SBL, 2014. Suen, Alison. The Speaking Animal: Ethics, language and the human-animal divide. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Suriano, Matthew J. A History of Death in the Hebrew Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Swift, Art. “In US, Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low.” Gallup, May 22, 2017. http://www.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx. Swift, Jonathan, and Thomas Roscoe. The Works of Jonathan Swift Containing Interesting and Valuable Papers, Not Hitherto Published; in 2 Volumes. London: Bohn, 1843. Taylor, Nik. “Anthropomorphism and the Animal Subject.” In Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments., edited by Rob Boddice, 265–280. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Ter Ern Loke, Andrew. “Reconciling Evolution and Biblical Literalism: A Proposed Research Program.” Theology and Science 14 (2016): 160–174. Thomas, Matthew A. These are the Generations: Identity, Covenant, and the ‘toledot’ Formula. Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. New York: T&T Clark, 2011. Thoreau, Henry David. “Walking.” In The Making of the American Essay, edited by John D’Agata, 167–195. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016. Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh epic. Waucanda, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, 2002. Tiggemann, Marika, and Suzanna Hodgson. “The Hairlessness Norm Extended: Reasons for and predictors of women’s body hair removal at different body sites.” Sex Roles 59 (2008): 889–897. Tiggemann, Marika, and Christine Lewis. “Attitudes Toward Women’s Body Hair: Relationship with disgust sensitivity.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 28 (2004): 381–387. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Confession. Translated by Peter Carson. New York: Liveright, 2014. Tonutti, Sabrina. “Anthropocentrism and the Definition of ‘Culture’ as a Marker of the Human/ Animal Divide.” In Anthropocentrism: Humans, Animals, Environments, edited by Rob Boddice, 183–200. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Toppe, Jana. “Bible, Monsters in the.” The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, online, n.p. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2014. Towner, W. Sibley. Genesis. Westminster Bible Companion. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001. Trau, Henri, Nissan Rubin, and Shmuel Vargon. “Symbolic Significance of Hair in the Biblical Narrative and in the Law.” Koroth, 9 (1988): 173–179.

176

Bibliography

Tremlin, Todd. Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Trible, Phyllis. God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. Overtures to Biblical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1978. Turner-Smith, Sarah. “Naked but not Ashamed: A Reading of Gen 2: 25 in Textual and Cultural Context.” JTS 69 (2018): 425–446. Tybur, Joshua, D. Lieberman, R. Kurzban, and P. DeScioli. “Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure.” Psychological Review 120 (2013): 65–84. Tylor, E. B. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. London: J. Murray, 1891. Uro, Risto. “From Corpse Impurity to Relic Veneration.” In Mind, Morality and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies, edited István Czachesz and Risto Uro, 180–196. Durham: Acumen, 2013. ———. “Gnostic Rituals From a Cognitive Perspective.” In Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science, edited by Petri Luomanen, Ilkka Pyysiä inen, and Risto Uro, 115–138. Leiden: Brill, 2007. ———. Ritual and Christian Beginnings: A Socio-Cognitive Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ———. “Towards a Cognitive History of Early Christian Rituals.” In Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition Through the Ages, edited by Istvá n Czachesz and Tamas S. Biró , 103–121. Leuven: Peeters, 2011. Vail, Kenneth E., Jacob Juhl, Jamie Arndt, Matthew Vess, Clay Routledge, and Bastiaan T. Rutjens. “When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 16 (2012): 303–329. Vail, Kenneth E., Zachary K. Rothschild, Dave R. Weise, Sheldon Solomon, Tom Pyszczynski, and Jeff Greenberg. “A Terror Management Analysis of the Psychological Functions of Religion.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (2010): 84–94. van der Toorn, Karel, Bob Becking, and Pieter Willem van der Horst, Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 598. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Van Huyssteen, Wentzel. Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology; the Gifford Lectures, the University of Edinburgh, Spring 2004. ISSR Library. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Van Seters, John. Prologue to History: The Yahwist as historian in Genesis. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992. Van Wolde, Ellen J. Reframing Biblical Studies. When Language and Text Meet Culture, Cognition, and Context. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009. Vedeler, Harold Torger. “Reconstructing Meaning in Deuteronomy 22:5: Gender, society and transvestitism in Israel and the ancient Near East.” Journal Of Biblical Literature 127 (2008): 459–476. Vogels, Walter. “‘Like one of us, knowing tob and ra’ (Gen 3: 22).” Semeia 81 (1998): 145–158. Vogelzang, Marianna E., and W. J. van Bekkum. “Meaning and Symbolism of Clothing in Ancient Near Eastern Texts.” In Scripta Signa Vocis, edited by Herman L. J. Vanstiphout, 265–284. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1986. Von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis: a Commentary. Old Testament Library. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1973. Waldau, Paul. Animal Studies: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University, 2013.Top of Form Walker-Jones, Arthur. “Eden for cyborgs: Ecocriticism and Genesis 2–3.” Biblical Interpretation 16 (2008): 263–293. ———. “Naming the Human Animal; Genesis 1–3 and Other Animals in Human Becoming.” Zygon 52 (2017): 1005–1028. Wallace, Howard N. The Eden Narrative. Harvard Semitic Museum Monographs. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985. Waltke, Bruce K., and Cathi J. Fredricks. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2001.

Bibliography

177

Weil, Keri. Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Weir, Robert F. Death in Literature. New York: Columbia University, 1980. Weisberg, Dvora E. Levirate Marriage and the Family in Ancient Judaism. HBI Series on Jewish Women. Waltham, MA: Brandeis, 2009. Weiser, Artur. Psalms. Philadelphia: Old Testament Library. Westminster: John Knox, 2000. Wenham, Gordon. J., Genesis. 1–15. Word Biblical Commentary. Waco: Word Books, 1987. Westermann, Claus. Genesis 1–11. A Continental Commentary. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994. Whedbee, J. William. The Bible and the Comic Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. White Jr., Lynn. “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis.” Science 155 (1967): 1203–1207. White, Hugh C. Narration and Discourse in the Book of Genesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Whitehouse, Harvey. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Cognitive Science of Religion Series. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004. Whitekettle, Richard. “Where the Wild Things Are.” JSOT 93 (2001): 17–37. Wiltshire, John. Jane Austen and the Body: the Picture of Health. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Wohlgelernter, Devora. “Death Wish in the Bible.” Tradition 19 (1981): 131–140. Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. Cambridge: Icon Books, 2010. Wolfe, Carey. “Human, All Too Human: ‘Animal Studies’ and the Humanities.” PMLA 124 (2009): 564–575. Wolff, Hans Walter. Anthropology of the Old Testament. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974. Wolman, Thomas. “Human to Animal Transformations in Literature.” Cultural Zoo: Animals in the Human Mind and Its Sublimation, edited by Salman Akhtar and Vamik D. Volkan, 95–126. London: Karnac Books, 2014. Wong, Paul, and Adrian Tomer. “Beyond Terror and Denial: The positive psychology of death acceptance.” Death Studies 35 (2011): 99–106. Yong, Ed. I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life. New York: Harper Collins, 2018. Young, Kay. “Feeling Embodied: Consciousness, Persuasion, and Jane Austen.” Narrative 11 (2003): 78–92. Zunshine, Lisa. “Introduction.” In Introduction to Cognitive Cultural Studies, edited by Lisa Zunshine, 1–33. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. ———. “Introduction to Cognitive Literary Studies.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, edited by Lisa Zunshine, 1–14. Oxford: Oxford University, 2015.

Index of Ancient Texts and Names

Genesis 1, xvii, 126, 129, 130 Genesis 1–11, 133 Genesis 1:1–2:3, 126 Genesis 1:20, 104, 155n22 Genesis 1:20–25, 128 Genesis 1:24, 155n22 Genesis 1:26, 104, 155n22 Genesis 1:26–27, xiv Genesis 1:28, 130 Genesis 1:30, 60 Genesis 2, 88, 111 Genesis 2–3, xi, xvii, xviii, xxii, 33, 86, 110, 111, 118, 120, 121, 124, 126, 131, 143, 146, 154, 159 Genesis 2:1, 146 Genesis 2:4, 146 Genesis 2:4–24, 148 Genesis 2:4–25, 146, 155n13 Genesis 2:4–3:24, 147 Genesis 2:4–5, xxii, 126, 159 Genesis 2:4–7, 146 Genesis 2:4–8, 147 Genesis 2:5, 122, 148 Genesis 2:7, 57, 60, 136n27, 146, 148 Genesis 2:7–9, xxii, 159 Genesis 2:7–25, 128 Genesis 2:8, 148 Genesis 2:9, 123 Genesis 2:10–14, 148 Genesis 2:15, 122 Genesis 2:15–17, 148

Genesis 2:15–24, xxii, 147, 159 Genesis 2:17, 126 Genesis 2:18, 126, 128, 149 Genesis 2:18–25, 143 Genesis 2:19, 128, 149 Genesis 2:20, 126, 149 Genesis 2:22, 128 Genesis 2:23, 129, 130, 153 Genesis 2:24, 131 Genesis 2:25, 120, 131, 147, 150, 155n13 Genesis 2:25–3:7, xxii, 147, 150, 159 Genesis 3, 28, 47, 53n48, 78, 145, 146 Genesis 3:1, 131, 151 Genesis 3:1–5, 151 Genesis 3:1–7, 155n13 Genesis 3:11, 152 Genesis 3:14–19, 152 Genesis 3:16, 153 Genesis 3:17–19, 122, 153 Genesis 3:19, 57, 122, 134, 153 Genesis 3:20, 134, 135, 143, 153 Genesis 3:21, 133, 144, 153 Genesis 3:21, 133 Genesis 3:21, 143 Genesis 3:22, 123, 125, 152, 154 Genesis 3:22–24, 143 Genesis 3:23, 122 Genesis 3:23, 153 Genesis 3:23–25, 157 Genesis 3:24, 123 Genesis 3:5, 151 179

180

Index of Ancient Texts and Names

Genesis 3:6, 151 Genesis 3:7, 131 Genesis 3:7, 133 Genesis 3:7, 151 Genesis 3:8, 152 Genesis 3:8–24, Genesis 3:8–24, xxii, 148, 152, 159 Genesis 4:22, 133 Genesis 5:24, 65 Genesis 6:12, 60 Genesis 9:20, 133 Genesis 11, 133 Genesis 12:16, 104 Genesis 15:2, 66 Genesis 25:7–11, 66 Genesis 25:8, 65 Genesis 27:18–29, 5 Genesis 35:16–18, 139n104 Genesis 37–50, 108 Genesis 38, 66 Genesis 39:13, 108 Genesis 41, 105 Genesis 41:42, 108 Genesis 45:22, 108 Genesis 47:30, 65 Exodus 12:8, 60 Exodus 13:19, 66 Exodus 21:23, 59 Exodus 28, 109 Exodus 39, 109 Leviticus 2:1, 60 Leviticus 4:11, 60 Leviticus 11, 104 Leviticus 11:13–19, 105 Leviticus 13:45–46, 62 Leviticus 17–26, 35, 70 Leviticus 19:28, 67 Leviticus 19:31, 67 Leviticus 21:17–23, 61 Leviticus 24:17, 59 Numbers 5:11–35, 109 Numbers 6:18, 80 Numbers 8:7, 80 Numbers 11:15, 64 Numbers 16, 65 Numbers 16:29, 65

Numbers 23:10, 59 Deuteronomy 6:5, 59 Deuteronomy 7:20, 80 Deuteronomy 12, 105 Deuteronomy 12:23, 60 Deuteronomy 14, 104 Deuteronomy 21:10–14, 109 Deuteronomy 22:5, 109 Deuteronomy 23:1, 61 Deuteronomy 28:65, 60 Deuteronomy 29:3, 60 Deuteronomy 34:7, 66 Joshua 23:14, xii, 65 Judges 1:6, 115n93 1 Samuel 2:6–8, 65 1 Samuel 15:27–28, 109 1 Samuel 18:4, 108 1 Samuel 24:4, 109 1 Samuel 28, 105 1 Samuel 31:4, 64 2 Samuel 3:29, 61 2 Samuel 10:1–5, 80 2 Samuel 14:25–26, 80 2 Samuel 14:26, 80 2 Samuel 14:7, 66 2 Samuel 21:14, 69 1 Kings 1:1–4, 61 1 Kings 2:2, xii 1 Kings 14:11, 106 1 Kings 19:4, 64 1 Kings 21:23, 106 1 Kings 22:37, 65 2 Kings 2, 109 2 Kings 2:11, 65 2 Kings 2:23, 80 2 Kings 23:20, 69 Job 14:10, 66 Job 14:7, 66 Job 26:5, 73n78 Job 27:3, 123 Job 30:23, 66

Index of Ancient Texts and Names Job 42:16–17, 66

Matthew 9:20–22, 34

Psalm 6, 64 Psalm 22, 106 Psalm 40:2, 65 Psalm 42:1, 60 Psalm 65:2, 60 Psalm 84:2, 60 Psalm 88:3–8, 64 Psalm 88:10, 73n78 Psalm 88:10–12, 73n78 Psalm 91:7, xv Psalm 102, 64 Psalm 104:29, 123

Mark 5:25–34, 34

181

Luke 8:43–48, 34 Acts 20:9, 16 1 Corinthians 11:14, 80 1 Corinthians 11:5–10, 79 1 Corinthians 14:5, 13–15, 16 2 Corinthians 5:1–4, 145 1 Timothy 2:9, 79

Proverbs 2:18, 73n78 Proverbs 7:22, 106 Proverbs 9:18, 73n78 Proverbs 11:30, 124 Proverbs 14:4, 104 Proverbs 16:31, 80 Proverbs 21:16, 73n78 Proverbs 26:11, 106 Proverbs 30:16, 66

1 Maccabees 7:9, 67 2 Esdras 2:44–45, 144 Apocrypha of John 24:6–8, 144 The Cave of Treasures, 155n7 El Amarna Letters, 108

Ecclesiastes 3:2, 65 Ecclesiastes 3:18–21, 57 Song of Songs 4:1, 80 Jeremiah 22:18–19, 69 Jeremiah 22:18–19, 106

Genesis Rabbah 20:13–15, 144 Jubilees 3:28–30, 145 Judith 10:3, 80 Song of the Hoe, 133

Ezekiel 11:19, 60 Ezekiel 28, 66 Ezekiel 28:13, 124, 137n41 Ezekiel 28:31, 137n41 Ezekiel 47:12, 124

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Genesis 3:1, 145 Temple Scroll (11Q19 45:12–14), 62 Tobit 3:6, 64

Daniel 4:13, 107

Abel, 153 Abraham, 51n15 Abraham, 66 Absalom, 80 Achan, 108 Adam, 43, 47, 53n41, 53n43, 60, 123, 131, 135, 145 Adapa, 64, 123 Adonibezek, 115n93 Ahab, 65

Hosea 13:14, 64 Amos 2:1, 69 Amos 4:1, 106 Amos 6:1–7, 68 Jonah 4:3, 64

Wisdom of Amen-em-opert, 122

182

Index of Ancient Texts and Names

Alluhappu, 113n32 Anubis, 101 Aquinas, 54n58 Aristotle, 54n58, 118 Aruru, 122 Atrahasis, 122 Augustine, 54n58 Baal, 101 Benjamin, 108

John, 14, 15, 16 Jonathan, 108 Joseph, 66 Joseph, 105 Josephus, 15 Joshua, 108 Josiah, 68 Judith, 80 Khnum, 122 Kingu, 63

Cain, 53n41, 153 Lamastu, 113n32 David, 61, 66, 80, 108, 109 Eliezer, 128 Elijah, 64, 109 Elisha, 109 Enki, 63, 64 Enkidu, 23, 35n1, 64, 111, 123, 129 Enlil, 133 Enuma Elish, 52n39, 63 Er, 66 Eros, 78 Eutychus, 16 Eve, 43, 135, 145, 153, 154 Gilgamesh, xvii, 23, 35n1, 52n39, 63, 64, 122, 123, 124, 137n47 Hathor, 100 Hermanubis, 101 Hermes, 101 Herodotus, 108 Hezekiah, 65 Innana, 33, 133 Irenaeus, 21n102, 53n44 Isaac, 5, 66 Isaiah, 66 Ishmael, 66 Jacob, 5 Jehoiakim, 68, 69 Jehoiakim, 106 Jeremiah, 68 Jerome, 120 Jesus (or Christ), 14, 15, 34, 42, 47, 53n43 Job, 51n15, 64, 66

Marduk, 63, 101, 126 Moses, 64, 66 Mot, 64, 66 Nebuchadnezzar, 107 Nintu, 122 Ovid, 79, 80 Paul, 16, 53n43, 80 Philo, 96n22, 123 Plato, 54n58 Pliny, 88, 89 Qoheleth, 53n48, 57, 58, 66, 68, 106 Rachel, 139n104 Saul, 64, 109 Sennacherib, 104 Shalmaneser III, 109 Siduri, 35n1 Solomon, 42, 57 Tamar, 66 Tertullian, 21n102 Thanatos, 78 Thutmose III, 103 Tutankhamen, 108 Utnapashtim, 23, 63, 123 Zeus, 100

Index of Modern Authors

Ackerman, Susan, 35n1 Arnold, Bill T., 136n27 Austen, Jane, 119 Barbour, Ian, 46, 49, 50 Barr, James, 59, 120, 121, 124, 126, 143, 151, 153, 154 Barrett, Justin, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10, 11, 17n15, 45 Beard, Mary, 42 Becker, Ernest, xii, xiv, xviii, 23, 24, 25, 26, 35n8, 36n14, 42, 43, 44, 51n15, 78, 92–93, 102, 153 Berquist, Jon L., 62 Bloch-Smith, Elizabeth, 67, 68 Boddice, Rob, 96n21 Borges, Jorge Luis, 87 Boyd, Brian, 5, 7 Boyer, Pascal, 6, 11, 13, 27 Brayford, Susan, 137n41 Brown, Warren, 50 Brueggemann, Walter, 125 Bührer, Walter, 140n121 Cameron, David, 28 Cassuto, Umberto, 125, 128, 129, 132, 139n100 Cave, David, xvi Chomskey, Noam, 2 Clark, Joseph, 103 Coats, George W., 133 Conze, Edward, xvi

Cotter, David W., 125 Darwin, Charles, xii, xiv, xix, 27, 37n26, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51n24, 52n39, 89, 95n10, 118, 120, 157 Derrida, Jacques, xi, xii, xvii, xxi, 87, 88, 90, 91, 95n7, 110, 115n83, 118, 119, 120, 121, 144 Descartes, Renee, xiii, 54n58, 88, 90 Douglas, Mary, 34, 50, 58, 81, 106 Durkheim, Émile, 58, 67, 68 Eco, Umberto, 86, 87, 88 Elias, Norbert, 102 Fossey, Diane, 96n35 Foucault, Michel, 107 Frankel, Victor, 25 Freud, Sigmund, 26, 36n14 Geertz, Clifford, xxvn35 Goldman, Alvin, 17n23 Goodall, Jane, 91, 96n35 Gotschall, Jonathan, xiii, 7 Gould, Stephen Jay, 46 Greenberg, Jeff , xiv, xviii, 25, 26, 27 Grudem, Wayne, 53n41 Haidt, Jonathan, 27, 29, 34 Ham, Ken, 52n40 Hamilton, Victor, 127, 133 183

184

Index of Modern Authors

Hartley, John, 125 Hays, Christopher B., 67, 68 Hegel, G. W. F., 48 Heidegger, xiii, xxivn13, xxvn27, 88 Herman, David, 7, 8 Herz, Rachel, 37n35 Hesse, Brian, 100 Hickman, Louise 3n58 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 111 Hogan, Patrick Colm, 6 Hume, David, 45 Huxley, Thomas, xii, xxivn6, 44, 49 István Czachesz, 33 James, William, xxvn21, 7, 8, 18n36 Jong, Jonathan, 36n14 Kant, Immanuel, 92–93, 93, 94 Kazen, Thomas, 33, 34, 35, 39n76, 70, 81, 106 Keen, Sam, 24, 36n14 Keenen, James F., 48 Ketola, Kimmo, 13, 14, 15 Kierkegaard, Søren, 43, 51n15 Klawans, Jonathan, 102, 106 Krü ger, Thomas, 143 Lawson, E. Thomas, 8, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19n68 Lemos, Tracy, 103 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 99 Lifton, R. J., 35n8 Locke, John, 92–93, 93 Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, xxvn34 MacIntyre, Alisdair, xxivn13 Martin, Luther, 2 Martin, Stephen W., 35n8 Mason, Jim, 103 Mazis, Glen, 95n7, 121, 134 McCauley, Clark R., 27, 29, 34 McCauley, Robert, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19n68 McGuire, Meredith, 50 McLaughlin, John, 67, 73n68 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 107 Milgrom, Jacob, 34, 81 Milton, John, 153

Newton, Isaac, 49 Nielsen, Marie Vejrup, 54n52 Nussbaum, Martha, 37n35 Olyan, Saul, 61, 68, 69, 106 Peale, Norman Vincent, 25 Pfieffer, Henrik, 129 Pinker, Steven, 7, 18n35 Pyszczynski, Thomas A., xiv, xviii, 25, 26, 27 Ramsey, George W., 139n104 Rank, Otto, 36n14, 78 Reed, Annette Yoshiko, 102 Rottzell, Dirk U., 125 Rozin, Paul, 27, 28, 29, 34, 37n26, 37n35 Sarna, Nahum, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 134, 139n106, 141n144, 146, 147 Schmidt, Brian, 67, 68 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 42 Schuller, Robert H., 25 Singer, Peter, 90 Ska, Jean-Louis, 155n15 Smith, Christian, xxvn35 Smith, George, 52n39 Smith, Jonathan Z., 102 Solomon, Sheldon , xiv, xviii, 25, 26, 27, 43 Speiser, Ephraim Avigdor, 127 Sperber, Dan, 10, 11, 13 Spolsky, Ellen, 7 Stone, Ken, xxivn11 Strawn, Brad, 50 Strømmen, Hannah, 115n83, 153 Suriano, Matthew, 59, 62, 68, 69, 70 Swift, Jonathan, 75, 76, 82n5 Tillich, Paul, 36n14 Tolstoy, Leo, xix, 41, 42, 43, 45 Trible, Phyllis, 122, 128, 139n104, 139n106, 140n115 Trump, Donald, 28 Turner-Smith, Sarah, 155n13 Uro, Risto, xxivn18, 13, 15, 16 Vail, Kenneth, 30

Index of Modern Authors Van Huyssteen, Wentzel, 51n24 Van Wolde, Ellen J., 1, 141n144 Vogels, Walter, 126 Vogelzang, Marianna E., 111 Von Rad, Gerhard, 123, 125, 130 Wallace, Alfred, 48 Wallace, Howard N., 124, 132, 133 Waltke, Bruce, 133 Weil, Keri, 91 Wenham, Gordon, 120

185

Westermann, Claus, xxii, 122, 124, 125, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 134, 137n40, 143, 146, 147, 152, 155n15 Whedbee, J. William, 132, 134 White Jr., Lynn, 90, 96n25 White, Hugh C., 130, 131, 133 Whitehouse, Harvey, 11, 12, 13, 15 Wilberforce, Samuel, xii, xxivn6, 44 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xv Wolf, Maryanne, 7

About the Author

Isaac M. Alderman received his PhD from the Catholic University of America. He is the lead author in a collaborative interdisciplinary commentary on Jonah, Is It Good for You to be Angry? (forthcoming in 2021). He has also published articles and presented at conferences on various biblical passages in the context of cognitive science, pedagogy, and reception theory. Isaac lives with his wife in Providence, Rhode Island.

187