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

by Mari Joerstad

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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Ecology

254 pages, Hardcover

Published July 11, 2019

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A concept-shifting work for me. Mari (she’s my prof!) pays close attention to those texts in the Hebrew Bible that suggests that nature is alive, persuasively arguing that rather than just being poetic metaphors, the writers of Scripture did indeed see trees, rivers, and landforms as living creatures. What I loved about this book was how Mari opened up new ways of thinking about ethics, language, imagination, and scripture, with some truly wonderful passages. I can’t wait to engage with these ideas more.

[Katie Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

gorgeous gorgeous stunning chef’s kiss life-changing would read 1000x

[Jess Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for Willie James Jennings’s course on Natural Theology and the New Animism… still not sure what all that means, but we are figuring it out, or not.

This book has such a boring title, but was such a delightful read. Joerstad’s writing reflects the care and intimacy with which she understands “nonhuman persons”, land, and nature in the Bible. I rarely recommend books from class to friends, but this one is soooo worth your time.

[Matthew Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful study of personalistic nature texts in the Hebrew Bible - those passages where the natural world is portrayed as a person (singing, lamenting, suffering, healing, etc.). Such patterns of portrayal are more than rhetorical decoration. They reflect a distinct way of relating to non-human persons that stands at odds with most modern ways of relating to nature. The book analyzes the vast array of such texts in the Pentateuch, Prophets, and Writings, and considers the profound implications of this personalistic vision of the natural world for the contemporary environmental crisis.

[Andrew (Drew) Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provocative reading of the entire Hebrew Bible through the lens of "new animism". It essentially asks, what if we took seriously phrases like "the trees of the field clapped their hands"? Is that merely a metaphor or does the land have an emotional response to the work of God, too? It's an important question to ask and Joerstad answers the question well in a short and readable book. Unfortunately, though the book is readable, it is not really buyable. I don't mean that her premise isn't sound, I mean that it's $113. Have your library buy it unless you can get it for free.

[Elisa R. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book swirls in some unique directions, that I occasionally followed, occasionally skipped over. I loved the tracing of the land's role in God's justice throughout Genesis and the prophets, and attention to how the Israelites were tied to the land- not expected to protect it, but to utilize it well to the glory of G-d. Empty lands were bereaved wastelands, not "ecological liberation." I also enjoyed attention to nature's praising of G-d, and how humans are a "a secondary audience to nature’s adoration of YHWH, not its raison d’être." I was captivated by the section on Job and wished for more clarity, but recognize Joerstad's point that not everything can be definitively argued.