Animal Rights and the Hebrew Bible

Does the Hebrew Bible ascribe an implicit form of legal personhood or legal rights to animals? If so, which animals--domesticated or wild, or both--receive which rights, and for what purpose? Scholars have been slow to consider these questions, and animal-oriented research as a whole, in the field of biblical studies. For the first time, author Saul M. Olyan addresses these questions in detail and explores how the evidence of the Hebrew Bible might contribute to contemporary debates about animal rights in the academy, in the courts, in the public square, and in religious communities. In this book, Olyan demonstrates that seven different biblical texts extend both legal personhood and rights to animals. The rights conferred upon them are mainly specific and situational, and the legal personhood associated them is in most cases best characterized as limited. Nonetheless, he argues that the animal rights described by these texts are genuine because they are not contingent on the needs or demands of others, they do not disappear or give way because of conflict with the interests of another legal person, and they may not be violated with impunity. Finally, Olyan considers how the biblical texts examined in his analyses might be used to extend or strengthen the arguments of those advocating for animals in judicial, academic, political, or religious settings.

Saul M. Olyan is the Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He is the author of nine books, including Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible (2019) and Friendship in the Hebrew Bible (2017), and is the editor or co-editor of thirteen books. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and St. John's College, University of Cambridge, as well as a grant from the American Philosophical Society. In 2016, he was president of the New England and Eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature.