The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, NonHumans, and the Living Landscape

Joerstad, Mari

ISBN 10: 1108476449 / ISBN 13: 9781108476447

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2019

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781108476447

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Hebrew Bible and Environmental Ethics: Humans, NonHumans, and the Living Landscape
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108476449
• ISBN 13: 9781108476447
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The environmental crisis has prompted religious leaders and lay people to look to their traditions for resources to respond to environmental degradation. In this book, Mari Joerstad contributes to this effort by examining an ignored feature of the Hebrew Bible: its attribution of activity and affect to trees, fields, soil, and mountains. The Bible presents a social cosmos, in which humans are one kind of person among many. Using a combination of the tools of biblical studies and anthropological writings on animism, Joerstad traces the activity of non-animal nature through the canon. She shows how biblical writers go beyond sustainable development, asking us to be good neighbors to mountains and trees, and to be generous to our fields and vineyards. They envision human communities that are sources of joy to plants and animals. The Biblical writers' attention to inhabited spaces is particularly salient for contemporary environmental ethics in their insistence that our cities, suburbs, and villages contribute to flourishing landscapes.

About the Author

Mari Joerstad is Research Associate at the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University, North Carolina, where she works on Facing the Anthropocene, a project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.