In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller

Abstract

Reviewed by: In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity by Patricia Cox Miller Robin Darling Young In the Eye of the Animal: Zoological Imagination in Ancient Christianity. By Patricia Cox Miller. [Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2018. Pp. viii, 271. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-812-5035-0.) A conundrum both lies at the heart of, and drives the analyses in, this book. The author identifies that conundrum in the preface: "while there is no doubt that ancient Christian theology was aligned with Western philosophy's ratification of the boundary between human and animal and the positioning of the human as superior to the animal, there is also the curious fact that, again and again, ancient Christian texts think both about and with animals, especially in terms of their emotional, ethical, psychological and behavioral continuities with human beings." Readers of early Christian theology know that most of its pages reflect the rhetorically-driven controversies reflecting philosophical problems that quickly rocketed from the problematic to the destructively divisive: how could one and three be configured as the same (Trinity); a divine-human metamorphosis achieve stable distribution (Christology); or a vast, differentiated and self-contradictory book be corralled into a repository of stable and self-consistent meaning (biblical [End Page 139] exegesis) suitable for preaching or rational reflection? The mixed success of the third project would always compromise the success of the first two, because they required consistent testimony not to be found in the Bible. On the other hand, there were theological discourses in early Christianity that allowed both for variety and extravagant self-contradiction—for instance, the elaboration of the afterlife, the related question of angelic or demonic populations, or the unregulated production and expression of the cult of the saints. Thinking about animals belongs in this second category. Early Christians appropriated the library of Greek and Latin works about the lives and significance of animals, and they had many scriptural passages that allowed for symbolic or literal interpretation. In addition, they had their own experience of living with all kinds of animals in much closer quarters than their modern interpreters. They remained curious about the creatures with whom human beings shared the world; sometimes, as in the case of ascetic practitioners, they were said to have returned to Edenic harmony with those creatures. This book explores, in five chapters, early Christian curiosity, investigation, and metaphorical interpretation of animals. The first chapter introduces the book by discussing "figuration," and how birds figure as metaphors of human states. The second, on zoomorphism, explores "anthropocentrism and its discontents." The early Christian concentration on the human being and its woes led them often to make invidious comparisons between humans and animals, projecting onto animals the worst qualities of the human. The third chapter, "anthropomorphism," shows how early Christian authors drew animals close, to become the measure of human goodness or its opposite. The fourth and fifth study, respectively, the way in which animals become companions for ascetics, at least in the imagination of their chroniclers; and insects, worms, flies, and other tiny animals feature in the reflections of early Christian authors. No summary of this book's rich chapters can do justice to the complex and polyphonic reflections on the human-animal divide that the author elegantly has assembled for this book. Not only has she explored the perplexity of ancient Christian writers in the face of the host of animals with whom they shared the world. It would be enough to have decentered the topics in which their works more typically feature. But Professor Cox Miller has gone far beyond that; she has put ancient authors in a dialogue with modern authors, also perplexed at their interactions with animals. Because each perspective is not only similar (human) but different—in the wake of eighteenth-century legislation against cruelty to animals—ancient and modern authors illumine each other's reflections. They do not cease to share, however, a wonder at how they, human beings, look "in the eye of the animal" that uncannily looks back. [End Page 140] Robin Darling Young The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2020 The Catholic University of America Press...