Co-sponsored session with The Bible and Animal Studies (SBL), Reading Theory and the Bible (SBL) and Sacred Texts, Theory, and Theological Contexts (AAR) which will explore animal studies and/in the Bible but with a particular focus on theory. This panel will engages with Animals and/in Sacred Texts, via strong engagement with sharply informed critical theory—including but also going beyond Agamben, Calarco, Derrida, Haraway, and others—in an effort to address "what is 'the Animal'?"
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.
This paper builds on my earlier article 'Cutting up Life', where I argued that Judeo-Christian blood sacrifice is a technology for stabilising the fluid distinctions between human, animal and divine andthen breaking these boundaries down. In a usage that began in the Journal of Physiology in 1903,and still survives in laboratories (though often abbreviated to ‘sack’ or other euphemisms) the term ‘sacrifice’ took on the additional meaning of ‘to kill an experimental animal for scientific purposes’. Inthis paper I compare sacrifice in the laboratory and on the altar focussing on three key ambiguities:1) literalism and euphemism; 2) guilt and justification; 3) secrecy and visibility; 4) transitive andintransitive sacrifice (separation from and identification with the sacrificed animal as data, equipmentand object and surrogate human, martyr, ‘pet’).
This paper revisits the book of Numbers 22:22-33 through the lens of Lori Gruen’s entangled empathy. Previous studies on the Balaam narrative have typically focused on symbolic, narrative, or theological interpretations, often overlooking its ethical implications regarding human-animal relationships. Gruen’s theory of entangled empathy, which integrates both attentive care for animals and cognitive awareness of relevant moral responsibility, provides a fresh lens to explore the animal ethics in the story of Balaam and his donkey. Through textual analysis, this paper demonstrates how the interactions between Balaam, his donkey, and the angel demonstrate the process of entangled empathy. Additionally, the study highlights how the ethical framework of entangled empathy resonates with other instances of animal concern throughout the Bible.
The paper I am proposing explores the contributions and interdisciplinary insights of new materialism as a philosophical movement, and how its focus on matter at inherently vibrant could shape method and/or approaches to biblical texts that deal with non-human characters. It also builds on the work of Brittany E. Wilson whose work on God’s body and new materialism has attempted to investigate the role of God’s material interaction with the nonhuman world. I use Numbers 22:21-35 as a test case for my research and observe how the three bodies presented in the encounter of Balaam, his she-ass, and God’s messenger might be read with particular attention to new materialist insights. This paper represents my attempt to outline how a new materialist reading of a biblical text might take shape, and form a new hermeneutic approach to biblical texts.
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.