Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Reading of the Scriptures

Traversing river valleys, fruitful fields, forested highlands, undulating grasslands, barren desert wastelands, and seacoasts, the Israelites came into contact with the ancient Near East’s many cultures and the region’s dramatic environmental contrasts. In this new work, Daniel Hillel follows events in the Hebrew Bible to reveal the complex interplay between the ancient Israelites and their natural and cultural environments. More than just affecting their material existence, the diverse environmental character of the ancient Near East profoundly shaped the evolution of Jewish culture and beliefs and, ultimately, of Western civilization as a whole.Hillel vividly describes the region’s five principal ecological domains and how each gave rise to a distinctive society with a characteristic mode of subsistence and cultural outlook. He argues that as the Israelites came into contact with different Near Eastern societies, they absorbed selective elements of their cultures and infused them into their own evolving culture. Their wandering existence and experience with different environments led them to perceive the overarching unity of all nature and its multifarious manifestations. Instead of deifying the separate forces of nature, like their neighbors, the Israelites came to believe in one God’s integral creation. A prominent environmental scientist, who helped survey Israel’s land and water resources, Daniel Hillel is a uniquely qualified expert on the natural history of the lands of the Bible. His work offers new perspectives on controversies concerning biblical views of nature, the origins of monotheism, and the evolution of Jewish culture in relation to the environment.