.
This paper argues that a trajectory in Foucault’s work may help us theorize an approach to spirituality with relevance for animal studies and the Bible. Although the significance of “spirituality” for ecological thought and practice has been noted in multiple contexts, from Val Plumwood’s ecofeminist “critical spirituality” to reassessments of indigenous spiritualities, biblical scholars interested in animals rarely invoke discourses on spirituality. In his work on practices of the self however, Foucault, influenced by Pierre Hadot’s studies of ancient philosophy as “spiritualexercises,” develops a “new concept of spirituality as free ethical self-transformation through ascesis,” which is also a “political spirituality” (Karen Vintges). While scholars use this framework to rethink bodily practices from veganism to queer sexual activities, the role of reading in Foucault's spiritual exercises allows us to theorize the interpretation of the Bible’s animals as a kind of spiritual exercise, which transforms the reader into an ecological subject.