Theologians and philosophers are turning again to questions
of the meaning, or non-meaning, of the natural world for human
self-understanding. Brian R. Doak observes that the book of Job, more than any
other book in the Bible, uses metaphors drawn from the natural world,
especially of plants and animals, as raw material for thinking about human
suffering. Doak argues that Job should be viewed as an anthropological “ground
zero” for the traumatic definition of the post-exilic human self in ancient
Israel. Furthermore, the battered shape of the Joban experience should provide
a starting point for reconfiguring our thinking about “natural theology” as a
category of intellectual history in the ancient world. Doak examines how the
development of the human subject is portrayed in the biblical text in either
radical continuity or discontinuity with plants and animals. Consider
Leviathan explores the text at the intersection of anthropology, theology,
and ecology, opening up new possibilities for charting the view of nature in
the Hebrew Bible. Theologians and philosophers are turning again to questions
of the meaning, or non-meaning, of the natural world for human
self-understanding. Brian R. Doak observes that the book of Job, more than any
other book in the Bible, uses metaphors drawn from the natural world,
especially of plants and...