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? 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.

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.

• Acknowledgments


• Abbreviations


• Introduction


• Chapter 1, Four Legal Texts in the Hebrew Bible that Evince a Concern for Animal Rights


• Chapter 2, Animals as Covenant Partners in Genesis 9:8-17 and Hosea 2:20 (Eng. 2:18)


• Chapter 3, Animal Culpability and Its Ramifications for Legal Status


• Chapter 4, Symmetry or Asymmetry According to the Law? The Case of Domesticated Animals and Human Beings


• Chapter 5, Animal Welfare: The Evidence of Biblical Texts


• Conclusion


• Index