Green Theology
Jesus and Animals
A cursory reading of the Gospels might
well leave the impression that there is very little to be said about Jesus and animals. This impression would seem to be confirmed by the fact that modern New
Testament scholarship, which has left rather few stones unturned in its
detailed study of Jesus and the Gospels, has given virtually no attention to
this subject. However, this chapter will show that there is in fact a good deal
to be learned from the Gospels about Jesus’ understanding of the relationship
between humans and other living creatures. This will only be possible by
relating Jesus and his teaching to the Jewish religious tradition in which he belonged.
All aspects of Jesus’ ministry and teaching, even the most innovatory, were
significantly continuous with the Jewish tradition of faith, especially, of
course, with the Hebrew Bible. Many features of this religious tradition Jesus
presupposed. He did not argue, for example, that the God of Israel is the
one true God, but everything he did and said presupposed this. Similarly, he
presupposed the religious and ethical attitudes to animals that were
traditional and accepted, both in the Old Testament and in later Jewish
tradition. In his teaching, he adopts such attitudes, not for the most part in
order to draw attention to them for their own sake, but in order to base on them
teaching about the relation of humans to God. But this does not imply that he
took them any the less seriously than other aspects of Jewish faith and
religious teaching that he endorsed and developed.
But it does mean that, in order to
appreciate the full implications of Jesus’ references to animals in his
teaching, we must investigate the context of Jewish teaching to which they
belong.
Compassionate Treatment of Animals
A duty to treat animals humanely and
compassionately, not causing unnecessary suffering and whenever possible
relieving suffering, was well established in Jewish tradition by Jesus’ time,
though it was applied largely to domestic animals – those animals owned by humans
as beasts of burden, working animals, sources of milk and food, and therefore
also offered in sacrifices to God. These were the animals for which humans had
day-to-day responsibility. They were not simply to be used and exploited for
human benefit, but to be treated with respect and consideration as
fellow-creatures of God.
Proverbs 12:10 states the
general principle:
A right-minded person cares
for his beast,
but one who is wicked is
cruel at heart. (REB)
In later Jewish literature, an
interesting instance is the Testament of Zebulon, which is much concerned
with the duty of compassion and mercy to all people, exemplified by the
patriarch Zebulon himself, and understood as a reflection of the compassion and
mercy of God.
Compassion is probably here an
interpretation of the commandment to love one’s neighbour (Lev. 19:18), taken
to be the central and comprehensive ethical commandment of God and interpreted
as requiring compassion for all people. In other words, the love commandment is
interpreted much as Jesus interpreted it. But in Zebulon’s general statement of
the ethical duty of compassion he extends it not only to all people but also to
animals: ‘And now, my children, I tell you to keep the commands of the Lord: to
show mercy to your neighbour, and to have compassion on all, not only human
beings but also irrational animals. For on account of these things the Lord
blessed me’ (T. Zeb. 5:1–2).
Another interesting, if not perhaps very
representative, passage from the Jewish literature of Jesus’
time occurs in 2 Enoch (the Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch) in a context of
ethical teaching that again has many points of contact with the ethical
teaching of Jesus. Chapters 58 – 59 deal with sins against animals. Uniquely,
it teaches that the souls of animals will be kept alive until the last
judgment, not, apparently, for the sake of eternal life for themselves, but so that they may bring
charges, at the last judgment, against human beings who have treated them badly
(58:4–6). There seem to be three kinds of sins against animals: failing to feed
domestic animals adequately (58:6), bestiality (59:5), and sacrificing an
animal without binding it by its four legs (59:2–4). This third sin may seem at
first sight to be purely a matter of not observing what the author understood
to be the proper ritual requirements for sacrificial slaughter, and it is not
obvious why it should be considered a sin against the animal. The reason may be
that an animal not properly bound would struggle and die with unnecessary suffering.
More probably, the idea is that if the animal struggled, the knife used to cut
its throat might slip and damage the animal in some other way. The animal would then not
satisfy the ritual requirement that a sacrificial victim be without blemish,
and could not be a valid sacrifice. In that case, its life would have been
taken to no purpose. This passage of 2 Enoch is evidence that some Jews gave serious
thought to human beings’ ethical duties towards animals.
Of more direct relevance to material in
the Gospels (as we shall see) are Jewish legal traditions, in which the law of
Moses was interpreted as requiring compassion and consideration for animals.
Later rabbinic traditions understood a whole series of laws in this way (Exod.
22:30; 23:4–5; Lev. 22:27,28; Deut. 22:1–4,6–7,10; 25:4). In many of these cases, it
is not obvious that the point of the law is compassion for the animals, and
modern Old Testament exegetes often understand them differently. Ancient Jews could also do
so. For example, the law of Deuteronomy 22:6–7, which requires someone taking
the young birds from a nest (for food) to let the mother bird go, was evidently
understood (probably correctly) by the Jewish writer known as Pseudo- Phocylides
(lines 84–5) as a conservation measure: ‘leave the mother bird behind, in order
to get young from her again.’ But it was also commonly
understood as a matter of compassion for the bird (Josephus, C. Ap. 2.213; Lev.
Rab. 27:11; Deut. Rab. 6:1). The rabbis deduced from such laws a general
principle that all living beings should be spared pain (the principle of a’ar
ba’aley ayyim).
The rabbinic material, of course, post-dates the New Testament, but there are enough
pieces of early evidence of the same kind of interpretation for us to be sure
that this way of interpreting the law, as concerned with compassion for
animals, was well established by Jesus’ time. For example, Josephus, in a
remarkable passage in which he is trying to represent the law of Moses in the
ways most calculated to appeal to Gentile critics of Judaism, explains that
Moses required that the Jews
treat strangers and even national
enemies with consideration, and then argues that Moses even required
consideration for animals:
So thorough a lesson has he given us in gentleness and
humanity that he does not overlook even the brute beasts, authorizing their use
only in accordance with the Law, and forbidding all other employment of them
[cf. Exod. 20:10; Deut. 5:14; 22:10]. Creatures which take refuge in our houses
like suppliants we are forbidden to kill.
He would not suffer us to take the parent birds with the young [Deut. 22:6–7],
and bade us even in an enemy’s country to spare and not to kill the beasts employed
in labour [perhaps cf. Deut. 20:19]. Thus, in every particular, he had an eye
to mercy, using the laws I have mentioned to enforce the lesson (C. Ap. 2.213–214).
Here the principle of compassion for animals
apparently leads to the formulation of laws not to be found in the written
Torah at all. A very similar treatment, though restricted to laws actually
found in the Torah, is given by Philo of Alexandria, who sees the gentleness and
kindness of the precepts given by Moses in the fact that consideration is extended to creatures of every kind: to humans,
even if they are strangers or enemies, to irrational animals, even if they are unclean
according to the dietary laws, and even to plants and trees (Virt. 160;
cf. 81, 125, 140). He expounds in detail the laws which he understands to be
motivated by compassion for animals: Leviticus 22:27 (Virt. 126–133);
Leviticus 22:28 (134–142); Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21 (142–144);
Deuteronomy 25:4 (145); and Deuteronomy 22:10 (146–147).
This line of interpretation of the law cannot be
explained merely as an apologetic for the law of Moses by diaspora Jews
concerned to impress Gentiles. Not only can it be paralleled in later rabbinic
literature. One striking instance, which may well go back to New Testament
times, is found in the Palestinian Targum. It concerns the law of Leviticus
22:28, which forbids the slaughter of an animal and its young together (one of
the laws discussed by Philo, though not by Josephus, as an instance of
compassion for animals). According to the Targum of Pseudo-Jonathan, which
frequently preserves Jewish exegetical traditions from the Second Temple
period, God, when giving this
commandment, says to his people: ‘just as I in heaven am merciful, so shall you
be merciful on earth’ (cf. Luke 6:36). Behind this statement probably lies
Psalm 145:9: ‘The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he
has made.’18 God’s compassion for all his creatures is to be imitated by his
people, and the laws requiring consideration for animals are given to this end.
The idea that compassion for animals is a general principle of the Torah
explains why acts of compassion for animals were permitted on the Sabbath, even
though they involved what would otherwise be considered work, which is
prohibited on the Sabbath. On three occasions in the Gospels Jesus refers to
such generally recognized exceptions to the prohibition of work on the Sabbath.
He does so in the context of debate about his practice of performing healings
on the Sabbath, to which the Pharisees (Matt. 12:10–14; Luke 14:3) and others (Luke
13:14; 14:3) objected. In each case his point is to argue that, since his
opponents agreed that relieving the suffering of domestic animals was lawful on
the Sabbath, how much more must relieving the suffering of human beings be
lawful. The statements are:
Matthew 12:11–12: Suppose one of you has only one
sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and
lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is
lawful to do good on the sabbath.
Luke 14:5: If one of you has a child19 or an ox that
has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?
Luke 13:15–16: Does not each of you on the sabbath
untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water?
And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long
years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?
Not all Jews would have agreed with Jesus’ account of
what it was permitted to do for animals on the Sabbath. The written Torah, of course,
makes no such explicit exceptions to the Sabbath commandment. Therefore the
Qumran sect, whose interpretation of the Sabbath laws was extremely strict,
categorically forbade such acts of mercy:
‘No man shall assist a beast to give birth on the
Sabbath day. And if it should fall into a cistern or pit, he shall not lift it
out on the Sabbath’ (CD 11:12–14). On this latter question,
addressed in Matthew 12:11 and Luke 14:5, later rabbinic opinion was divided as
to whether it was permissible to help the animal out of the pit or only to
bring it provisions until it could be rescued after the Sabbath (b. Shabb. 128b;
b. B. Mets. 32b). We may take the Gospels as evidence that the more
lenient ruling was widely held in Jesus’ time. As to the example given in Luke 13:15,
it is very much in line with the Mishnah’s interpretation of Sabbath law in
relation to domestic animals, though not explicitly stated as a rabbinic
ruling. The point is that tying and untying knots were defined as two of the
types of activity that constituted work and were generally unlawful on the
Sabbath (m. Shabb. 7:2), but provision for domestic animals was one kind
of reason for allowing exceptions (m. Shabb. 15:1–2; cf. b. Shabb. 128a–128b;
cf. also m. Erub. 2:1–4, where it is taken for granted that cattle are
watered on the Sabbath). These exceptions to the prohibition of work on the
Sabbath are remarkable. They are not cases in which the lives of the animals
were in danger, and so they cannot be understood as motivated by a concern to
preserve the animals as valuable property. Rather they are acts of compassion,
intended to prevent animal suffering. It was only because the law was
understood as generally requiring considerate treatment of animals that the
Sabbath commandment could be interpreted as not forbidding such acts of mercy
to animals on the Sabbath.
Moreover, it is clear that Jesus understood the issue
in this way. His argument is that, since his hearers agreed that acts of
compassion, designed to relieve the suffering of animals, are lawful on the
Sabbath, surely acts of compassion, designed to relieve human suffering, are also
lawful. According to Matthew 12:12–13, rescuing a sheep from a pit on the
Sabbath is ‘doing good’, and so healing a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath is
also doing good.
Of course, in all three texts, the law’s requirement
of compassion for animals is only the presupposition for the point Jesus is
making. But his argument is certainly not merely ad hominem. He is
arguing from a presupposition that is genuinely agreed between him and his opponents.
Jesus, in his recorded teaching, does not teach compassion for animals, but he places himself clearly within the
Jewish ethical and legal tradition that held that God requires his people to
treat their fellow- creatures, the animals, with compassion and consideration.
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