BIODIVERSITY IN THE BIBLE?

Posted: 19.04.11 in Articles category

Why should ‘biodiversity’ matter to Christians? The term does not appear anywhere in the pages of the Bible, so why must it concern us when words that do appear like ‘evangelism’ and ‘justice’ are pressing issues today demanding our attention? Yet to dismiss a concern for biodiversity on such a premise ignores the broader perspective of creation and humankind’s role as its stewards that the writers of the Bible consistently present. Let me simply echo the words of Psalm 50 proclaiming that the natural world belongs to God. If every animal of the forest, all the creatures of the field and every bird in the mountains are known and owned by God, then we have a God-given duty to protect, nurture and sustain them.

 Biodiversity in part concerns the loss of animal and plant species from different parts of the world. From reading the Bible it is clear that such loss affects the biblical lands today as well. Modern Israel may still flow figuratively with milk and honey, but the territory is no longer home to some of the animals written about in scripture. Lions and bears, for example, have long gone. Three thousand years ago a shepherd from Bethlehem persuaded his king that he could to fight the giant Goliath by boasting how he had killed both the lion and the bear while protecting his sheep. More than 200 years later the prophet Amos spoke with familiarity of lions growling and roaring, for he too as a shepherd knew about guarding sheep from the threat these big cats posed. However, by the thirteenth century AD the last lions had been killed in Palestine, although some remained in Syria as late as 1851 according to the British explorer Burton.

 At the time of Jesus the main animal threat to sheep came from wolves. Hence he spoke of the good shepherd willing at all costs to defend his sheep, unlike the hired hand who would run away when the wolf attacked the flock. Wolves today, however, pose no such threat in Israel where there are as yet no plans seemingly to reintroduce them.

 The largest animal to disappear from the lands of the Bible is arguably the hippopotamus. References in the book of Job chapter 40 describe a large muscular animal that fed on grass, hid among the reeds and lay submerged under the lotus plant …apt descriptions of a hippo’s appearance and behaviour. Although it is unlikely any lived in Palestine itself, hippos were present along the Nile in Egypt until the twelfth century AD, as well as much earlier in Syria, so they were known to people in the eastern Mediterranean. However, hippos too have disappeared from the region and their current distribution lies well south in the heart of the African continent.

Israel today is renowned for its rich birdlife. Each spring and autumn the spectacle of diurnal migration involves many thousands of large birds like eagles and storks flying over the country on route from Africa and back. Not surprisingly, many of the biblical authors wrote about these birds in flight. Even without the aid of binoculars and telescopes, the flight and timing of stork migration impressed Jeremiah and the writer of the proverb marvelled at “the way of an eagle in the sky”. Yet at least one large bird mentioned with some affection in the Old Testament is no longer found in the region. The ostrich appears in Job as both a figure of fun and an impressive creature that can outrun a horse, but it does not appear in any of the biblical lands today.

MARK WINTER  (NB. Article published in Arocha UK magazine in 2007)