The cover girl for last week’s Time magazine is not pretty, by conventional standards. She’s a bit jowly, for one thing, and whiskers sprout from her cheeks and chin. The deep brown eyes that gaze into the camera are frankly a bit off-kilter, and she cops some attitude: “Way to go, Einstein” floats in a thought bubble over her droopy ear. But hey, she’s a dog — a pug, judging from her smushed-in nose.

Anyone who lives with animals or has observed them at any length will tell you that they can seem pretty darn smart.  Recent studies confirm that they are, in diverse ways and to varying degrees. That’s the point of the magazine article. So why our history of ignorance, why our dismissal of them as “just a dog” or “just a bird”? The article pins partial blame on the Bible — on one sentence in particular — and the absolute authority that people give to such biblical texts.

Citing the biblical book of Genesis, Jeffrey Kluger (the article’s author) observes, “Human beings were granted ‘dominion over the beasts of the field,’ and [for many people] there the discussion can more or less stop.” He’s right. Truth is, though, the discussion stopped even before that point. Few people ask, for instance, “What does it mean to have dominion?”

Genesis was originally written in Hebrew, and since every translation involves interpretation, we do well to ask about that English word, “dominion.” (Some translations read “rule over,” instead.) In biblical Hebrew, the word indeed supposes a hierarchy — someone in a position of power exercises this quality over inferiors. So “rule over” or “have dominion” is actually quite accurate. However, its interpretation as the right to exploit and despoil is not.

On the contrary, in this biblical story, human superiority brings not self-serving privilege but grave responsibility. That “dominion” phrase appears in an intriguing description of the creation of human beings in which God makes human beings, simultaneously male and female, “in the image of God.” Part of the story of God’s creating the universe in seven days, the image of God is represented by God’s power and authority in creating and organizing a cosmos that God made to be good. Human beings have the unique responsibility, then, to work creatively at maintaining an order that allows each thing to be and do all of what it is and does. And that, this first chapter in Genesis declares, is good.

This story no more justifies rejecting animals’ capacities to think, dream, feel, suffer, and be happy than it does prioritizing men over women. While the text may allow for the necessity of employing and controlling animals to survive in terribly difficult circumstances, it does not deny those animals the possibility of diverse intelligences.

I don’t know how to parse the intelligence of animals, but I’m glad that there are people out there doing it. While I doubt that the dog on the magazine’s cover figured out the theory of relativity and kept mum about it, I don’t doubt that animals deserve our respect and whatever care allows them full lives according to their kinds — dogs with companionship and purpose, for example; and cats with, well, the space to determine it for themselves, thank you very much. Einstein again:

“Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of others…for the countless unknown souls with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy.”

He was talking especially about human beings, as he implies in the next sentence; but like the equally human-centered Bible, Einstein reminds us that the intelligence and capacity of human beings is at its best when infused with compassion. Maybe human intelligence simply isn’t without allowing for the intelligence of others — finned, four-legged, winged, and waddling — too. And maybe with our acumen comes the charge to protect, support, and love, to treat with respect and dignity each according to its kind. That sounds good to me.

I just read this morning a brief notice that an Illinois Corrections Department uses a Bible-based job skills program to help released inmates find and maintain jobs. It’s so successful that they’re expanding it. Hey, I’m happy for them — sounds like a great goal, and kudos for achieving it! But I’m confused. What exactly IS a “Bible-based job skills program”? Anyone know? Surely it’s not to imitate biblical jobs. It’s tough for me to imagine the practicality of, say, shepherding in Chicago or officiating as a priest in the style of Leviticus. Fishing, maybe, carpentry, too; but  winnowing grain, or prostitution? er, nevermind. And how, exactly does an arm of the judicial branch of the US government justify the application of a distinctly religious set of ideas? Clarification is welcome!

I don’t know Chris Querry, but I’d sure like to meet him. I’m delighted to read that (despite his academic training?), he appreciated Bible Babel as a book appropriate for lay and religious audiences, teachers and students, alike. Anyway, Chris, wherever and whoever you are, thanks for the great review! For the rest of you, do check out MyShelf.com for a fresh look at new books… or to do a bit of online gambling,… in German, if you like. Really.

It seems that among the least religious are people in European countries that have a religious affiliation. If you’re Swedish, you’re Lutheran… in word, anyway. Last night, I watched the film version of Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Intense. I’ve heard quite a bit about it, read more, but I don’t remember anyone mentioning that a key clue to unravelling the mystery was the biblical book of Leviticus, the”third book of Moses,” as it’s identified in the story. I’m not sure if Stieg Larsson had real antipathy for the Bible or if it just seemed to work for his narrative purposes, but the references to passages in Leviticus are  far from positive. They show instead how the cruel and twisted brains of sadist murderers could find in those texts justification or at least a map for their horrorifying acts. There’s a lot in Leviticus that I simply can’t get on board with (see the upcoming Oct. 3 issue of The Christian Century for my justification for rejecting certain biblical texts), but did you know that it’s in Leviticus that you can find the command to “love your neighbor as yourself”? Yup, Leviticus 19:18. Now that is NOT a sentiment the abusers in GWDT adopted. skipped right on over that pesky text.

I didn’t know that the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Minneapolis Science Museum would include examples from and description of the gorgeous new illuminated St. John’s Bible, about which I blogged some months ago. Surprise: the script on samples of real Dead Sea Scrolls is teeny-tiny; and the St. John’s Bible is great big. Nothing like seeing things for real to get perspective~

Archaeologists recently discovered a temple, with two great pillars, in what was once the Philistine city of Gath. And they discovered evidence of a huge earthquake. One of the Bible’s most dramatic stories tells about the not always admirable but surely impressive Samson who, duped by his lover Delilah, loses the secret to his power (his hair) to the enemy Philistines. After a humiliating stint as their blinded prisoner, Sampson’s final tour de force is the dramatic destruction of the Philistine temple. Having regained his strength, he breaks its massive pillars to bring the temple down on the heads of his enemies. Some will likely determine that this find corroborates the biblical story. Others, reading less literally, may appreciate how architecture and natural events from biblical times influenced how the stories were told.

And tomorrow, a TV interview for KARE-11… all in Minneapolis. I’m visiting MN during one of the year’s most beautiful times in the “land of 10,000 lakes.” Believe it or not, this place — so far from the desert wilderness of Israel is hosting an exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls. This afternoon, my whole Minnesota family will check it out. My St. Paul sister Deb, who lined up tickets to the show, asked if I’d seen them before. “Yes,” I said, ”but years ago.” “Well, they’re older now!” she quipped. My Minneapolis sister Linnea brought Bible Babel to the attention of the museum, which has been selling copies to supplement the exhibit. How different today’s modern books are from those ancient scrolls, dating to a few centuries straddling the year zero. Enormously important for our understanding of the Bible’s development, mysteries remain. One, who wrote the scrolls? has been the subject of considerable debate among Bible scholars and archaeologists. The collection of discovered fragments includes texts identical to what’s in the Bible, others show variations in what became biblical, some share ideas and imagery with biblical texts but are not otherwise “biblical,” and still other scrolls have in common with biblical texts only the Judaism(s) of the communities that passed such texts along. Most people have assumed that the texts were written (and hidden) by a break-away, ascetic sect of Jews called the Essenes. But recent evidence suggests that they may actually represent the collections of a number of Jewish groups, some of whom fled Jerusalem when the Romans attacked in 70 C.E. (A.D.) and deposited their precious scrolls in the dry caves around the Dead Sea.  But time to go!

Word has it that the Good Word is jumping on the vampire bus. For all sorts of reasons, it’s not as great a leap as you might think — more on that later… Meanwhile, here’s the scoop: Will Smith as the lead in The Legends of Cain a re-telling of Genesis’ story of the first kids, the first brothers, and the first murder in which Cain is a vampire.  That’s all I know so far. Do let me know if you learn more.~ … (later) Thanks to Jospeh Laycock, a doctoral candidate at Boston University, for his essay in Religion Dispatches on the topic. Really interesting. Check it out.

        I attended a funeral recently — “untimely,” one might say, because the man who died did so at his own hand. There was so much about it that defied expectation, defied logic. There’s the suicide itself, of course, an act that makes sense only to the person killed, if at all. But there was more about this funeral that messed with my head… and heart, though I’d never even met the man. C. was a physician who specialized in medical ethics and the work of alleviating end-of-life-suffering without assisted suicide. So, there’s that. Plus, one of the readings struck me as particularly odd.

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Ok, there are probably a lot of problems with angels, but consider this: If an angel steps in to change the course of events to benefit a person, there may be a downside for someone else. What should we do with that? Related, what about the person who simply is not helped by an angel — the devastating car accident, the mugging victim, the addict… But back to Problem #1. I got thinking about this while watching an old episode of “Saving Grace.” Here’s what happened. The angel Earle “saved” Grace from committing drunk driving homicide (you lawyers out there: is this what they call “manslaughter”? anyway…). It sure looked to us (and to her) like she’d killed the guy; but then it turns out she hadn’t. Matter of fact, it appears that the accident never happened. It’s the first time that we meet another of Earle’s charges — a guy on death row, the very same whom Grace thought that she had slaughtered. When Grace talks to him in prison, trying to figure out how all this could have happened, the guy explains that (simultaneous with the accident) he’d dreamed he was in heaven with God, but because of Earle’s actions (“saving” Grace), he had to return to “this hell-hole,” i.e. prison on death row. Hmmmm.