The Yahwist's Landscape: Nature and Religion in Early Israel

About this book

The present ecological crisis has created new interest in and criticism of biblical attitudes toward nature. In this book Theodore Hiebert offers a comprehensive examination of the ideology of a single biblical author--the Yahwist (J) writer of the oldest narrative sections of Genesis Exodus and Numbers. Hiebert argues the importance of reading J in its ancient Near Eastern context. His analysis incorporates evidence concerning the ecologies economies and religions of the ancient Levant drawn from recent work in archaeology history social anthropology and comparative religion. Hiebert finds that despite the limitations of Js world view (and the world in which it took shape) Js ideology is relevant to contemporary efforts to frame a theology of ecology. Particularly valuable are Js views of reality as unified and non-dualistic humanity as limited and dependent nature and humanity as interrelated and holding sacred significance and agriculture as a context for an ecological theology.