Abstract
Michael Gilmour’s contribution to the growing field of studies investigating the place of non-human animals in Christian texts and traditions is ‘not an exhaustive or systematic overview’ of the topic of the Bible and animals, but rather ‘a deliberately provocative presentation aiming to disrupt more traditional/habitual perspectives on biblical texts’: meditations rather than commentaries on the texts (p. 15). Gilmour’s provocation is of a gentle kind, however. He takes as a model the attitude of Gerard Manley Hopkins to a fellow priest when they witness together a vast multitude of starlings, as narrated in Hopkins’s journal. Hopkins is awe-struck by the starlings sweeping round in whirlwinds, speculating that ‘they must be full of enthusiasm and delight hearing their cries and stirring and cheering one another’ (p. 26). His friend William Splaine, however, sees things differently: he wanted a gun, declaring it would then ‘rain meat’. Gilmour interprets their divergent reactions to the same sight as a parable: both ‘deeply religious’, one sees the birds as God’s gifts for human pleasure; the other sees something ‘far more important than a meal or a sharpshooter’s delight’ (p. 27). Gilmour also notes that Hopkins does not condemn Splaine’s comment, even in his journal, and expresses his aim to emulate the spirit of unity evident in their walking in Wales together, ‘recognizing that well-meaning, pious, competent thinkers disagree’ on this topic (p. 28). What results is a highly rewarding series of reflections that consistently make innovative connections among poetry, fiction and innovative readings of biblical texts concerning other animals.
The most systematic the book is prepared to get is in its helpful identification of three different reading strategies when encountering texts that seem problematic in relation to non-human animals. Take, for example, Paul’s apparent dismissal of the idea that God could be concerned for oxen in 1 Cor. 9:9–10. Gilmour rejects the possibility of taking a ‘pick-and-choose’ approach to such texts, ignoring them and privileging others. Instead, he suggests that we look for texts as bearing ‘Prophetic Suggestiveness’, as containing patterns of ‘Divine-Animal-Human Triads’, or as incorporating ‘All-Inclusive Language’ (pp. 38–41). The first category comes from Edward Said’s discussion of the uncomfortable question of why moral concern about slavery seems absent in Jane Austen’s novels. Said notes the silence that follows Fanny Price’s questioning of her uncle about the slave trade in Mansfield Park, interpreting this as ‘prophetic suggestiveness’. In relation to the Pauline text on oxen, Gilmour asks whether we dare see it as prophetically suggestive in a similar way, in that Paul takes a text that was clearly about oxen and applies it to humans: ‘Paul’s great insight in these verses is that God is not concerned with oxen only in Deut. 25:4, any more than other laws demanding generosity, hospitality, protection, and compassion are about human beings only’ (p. 35; original emphasis). Gilmour therefore reads Paul’s slipping between the categories of human and non-human as demonstrating the legitimacy of such slippage, in both directions. His second strategy of recognising triads between God, other animals, and humans, is similarly interesting. When the angel confronts Balaam in Num. 22:22–35, it is his donkey that recognises the messenger of God, and Gilmour notes that it is illuminating to recognise this three-way encounter. Similar patterns are found when Nathan presents God’s word to David in the story of the poor man’s ewe (2 Sam. 12:1–12), or when the cock crows to announce Peter’s betrayal of Jesus (Matt. 26:31–5 & ||, pp. 38–39). Gilmour’s third reading strategy is to note that the Bible often includes other animals alongside humans in all-inclusive terms such as ‘all creation’, ‘all things’ and ‘all flesh’, and we should take care not to overlook their non-human referents.
Having laid down this methodological foundation, Gilmour proceeds in the third chapter to consider a range of engaging complexities. First, he observes that God’s tabernacle is made in part from goats’ hair and rams’ skins, that biblical manuscripts were written on vellum or parchment—the skins of young cattle, sheep, goats and antelopes—that the feathers of birds were used for quills, and that egg was used to thicken ink. Rather than seeing this merely as an instrumental use of animals, Gilmour prefers to recognise a divine-animal-human triad, as the animals ‘are in these cases literally the word of God, literally the delivery systems through which God speaks to people of faith’ (pp. 58–59). He finds similar intriguing complexities in asking whether in mistaking Jesus for the gardener, Mary made an insightful mistake, seeing in him a new Adam restored to a role to tend for creation (pp. 68–69), and whether the faithful accompaniment provided by Tobit’s dog should be interpreted as an angelic presence (pp. 71–74). Gilmour judges standard readings of the story of Jesus condemning the Gadarene swine to death after giving demons permission to enter them (Matt. 8:38–9.1) as unsatisfactory: it seems that the demons needed a living host, not a dead one, so why they would have an interest in killing the pigs is unclear. Gilmour makes the innovative suggestion that the pigs could have played a more active role, sacrificing themselves as a way of saving the possessed man: ‘The demons do not plunge the swine into the waters. It is the other way around. The swine hurl the demons into the “sea” using their own bodies, destroying the devils in the process’ (p. 86).
Gilmour devotes the fourth chapter to discussion of the issue of animal sacrifice, seeing this as the ‘biggest knot to untangle’ concerning the Bible’s view of animals. Here he makes the bold claim that animal sacrifice was a human initiative: God never demanded that humans sacrifice other animals, but instead permitted it as a legitimate expression of religious faith in a particular period of the religion of Israel (p. 93). He argues that this helps make sense of the ambivalence of the Hebrew Bible about animal sacrifice, with texts such as Isa. 1:11 rejecting the practice. Even within the practice, he observes that the key element is not the destruction of the animal but returning it to God, so sacrifice can never be interpreted as indicating that the lives of non-human animals are of no account (p. 112).
The fifth chapter argues that ‘indifference to animal suffering, particularly suffering we inflict, is an ethical matter those who take biblical literature seriously need to face’ (p. 115), noting that the four creatures around the throne of the lamb in Revelation ‘represent the totality of sentient creation in all its diversity’ (p. 116), and the odd references to the disciples of Jesus being able to handle snakes without harm signify a return to Edenic peace between humans and other animals (p. 112). Given that the modern food industry ‘cannot treat animals with the respect and dignity evident in biblical literature’, he argues that those ‘who recognize the religious authority of the Bible ought to evaluate their food choices in the light of this and consider how to bring animals into the life-affirming community, how to complete the animal-human-divine triad’ (p. 139). Gilmour’s final chapter then treats the life of the American naturalist William Bartram (1739–1823), noting resonances between his writings and biblical visions of creation.
Gilmour’s book realises its aim of offering gently provocative reflections on biblical texts that unseat received understandings of the ways non-human animals figure in them. The questions he puts about how these texts should be read, and the implications for our thought and practice in relation to other animals, are consistently insightful, original and engaging. The reader will not emerge from this meeting with Eden’s other residents with the sense of a clear and coherent biblical understanding of non-human animals, but is likely to be convinced both that they feature more significantly in biblical texts than has previously been recognised, and that engaging seriously with this biblical material is likely to require reconsideration of our dealings with them.