Human-animals relations and the theological significance of the rabbinic concept of the image of God: from classical sources to contemporary culture

• In Event: Ethics and Theology

Abstract

This paper seeks to demonstrate the contemporary theological and philosophical significance -- specifically, in connection with approaches to human-animal relations -- of the Jewish concept of the human being as the image of God. While medieval Jewish (as well as Christian) understandings of the image of God tend to link the notion with an intellectual or cognitive capacity or faculty -- the rational soul/intellect -- that is posited as present in humans but not in animals, the classical rabbinic conception of the image of God links the notion NOT with a specific intellectual capacity, but rather with the embodied and living human being as a holistic combination of body and soul. This embodied conception of the image of God has profound theological implications for conceptions of human relation to and commonality with non-human animals. In the medieval intellectualized conception of the image of God, valuing of and respect for human beings is linked to a faculty separate from the body; since this faculty is conceived of as specifically not present in animals, then respect and concern for humans as the image of God would not ‘carry over’ at all to respect for and concern for animals. By contrast, in the classical rabbinic embodied conception, concern for humans as the image of God is bound up with concern for elements of physical embodiment; since these basic aspects of physical embodiment are also found in animals, this creates potential for concern for human beings to carry over, in part, to concern for animals. Because many contemporary conceptions of human-animals relations -- in Jewish, Christian and secular spheres -- have been influenced by ‘disembodied’ conceptions of the human being, the incorporation of the embodied classical rabbinic theological notion has the potential to open up qualitatively different understandings of the ways in which humans can or should relate to animals. Thus, far from being a mere remnant from late antiquity, this more neglected Jewish theological notion of the image of God can function in a radical and culturally interventionist manner to enable a rethinking of humanness and animality in conjunction with one another.

author

• Daniel Haskell Weiss, University of Cambridge