Crossing Borders between the Domestic and the Wild: Space, Fauna, and Flora

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The present volume searches for different biblical perceptions of the wild, paying particular attention to the significance of fluid boundaries between the domestic and the wild, and to the options of crossing borders between them. Drawing on space, fauna, and flora, scholars investigate the ways biblical authors present the wild and the domestic and their interactions. In its six chapters and two responses, Hebrew Bible scholars, an archaeobotanist, an archaeologist, a geographer, and iconographers join forces to discuss the wild and its portrayals in biblical literature.The discussions bring to light the entire spectrum of real, imagined, metaphorized, and conceptualized forms of the wild that appear in biblical sources, as also in the material culture and agriculture of ancient Israel, and to some extent observe the great gap between biblical observations and modern studies of geography and of mapping that marks the distinctions between the wilderness and the sown. The book is the first written product presented on two consecutive years (2019, 2020) at the SBL Annual Meetings in the Section: Nature Imagery and Conceptions of Nature in the Bible.

Reviews

This volume models the kind of multidisciplinary collaboration that is vital to contemporary biblical scholarship. With exegetical precision it challenges dichotomies between humans and nonhumans, domestic and wild that have been dangerously absolutized by the industrialized mindset. Because that challenge is articulated in language accessible to non-experts, it merits wide usage by scholars, students, and interested readers of the Bible * Ellen F. Davis, Professor of Bible and Practical Theology, Duke Divinity School, USA *
This first book of a new series on nature imagery in the Bible is like a beacon. It shows the way to systematic and interdisciplinary investigations, with a variety of aspects and in dialogue. It demonstrates that the boundaries between nature and culture are fluid and thus invites to a deeper reflection on our world. * Georg Fischer SJ, Professor emeritus, University of Innsbruck, Austria *
Given the authority of the Bible across various domains of society (economic, social, political), and given the many climate-related challenges we all now face, how the Bible thinks about the world we inhabit, and the categories of wild and domestic, matters enormously. Mark Boda and Dalit Rom-Shiloni have assembled a stellar array of contributors who expertly guide readers into the variety of biblical understandings of these slippery concepts, and how we might make sense of them in light of todays challenges. * Jacqueline E. Lapsley, President of Union Presbyterian Seminary, USA *

Author Bio

Dalit Rom-Shiloni is Professor of Biblical Studies at Tel-Aviv University, Israel.

Mark J. Boda is Professor of Old Testament at McMaster Divinity College, Canada.