Jesus the Serpent, Theoretically: Animality, Desire, and Jesus in the Epistle of Barnabas

I propose to present on the intersection of animal symbolism, sexual desire, and religious identity in the Epistle of Barnabas, a second-century text included in some early Christian scriptural collections. The Epistle portrays animals ambivalently, representative of both divine glory and earthly fallenness. Utilizing the work of theorist Mel Chen, and in conversation with other theorists in animal studies and the environmental humanities, I will argue that the Epistle constructs an “animacy hierarchy” where animal, human, and divine identity are mapped according to relative alignment with the text’s configurations of sexual morality and scriptural interpretation.