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Why the Bible Hates Dogs (or does it · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: Sponsored by imprint. Dogs are mentioned forty one times in
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  Speaker 1: the Bible, thirty two times in the Hebrew Bible, and
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  Speaker 1: nine in the New Testament, and in general, dogs are
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  Speaker 1: portrayed in a negative light. In the Book of Kings,
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  Speaker 1: dogs are unclean scavengers, the perfect animal for disposing of
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  Speaker 1: the corpses of the wicked. First King says anyone belonging
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  Speaker 1: to the rebellious King Jeroboam who dies in the city,
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  Speaker 1: the dogs shall eat, and second Kings prophesied that the
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  Speaker 1: dogs shall eat the flesh of the evil queen Jezebel.
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  Speaker 1: When David confronts the Philistine champion Goliath, armed only with
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  Speaker 1: a staff, a sling, and a few rocks, Goliath is
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  Speaker 1: insulted and mocks David for treating him like a dog.
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  Speaker 1: Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?
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  Speaker 1: The Book of Psalms Li likens dogs to an aggressive
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  Speaker 1: company of evildoers, and in the Book of Proverbs, a
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  Speaker 1: dog's behavior is used as a metaphor for foolishness. As
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  Speaker 1: a dog returns to its vomit, so fools repeat their folly. Elsewhere,
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  Speaker 1: they're used to represent dirtiness, danger, or greed, and things
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  Speaker 1: aren't much better in the New Testament. For example, dogs
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  Speaker 1: are linked with evildoers and false prophets in the Book
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  Speaker 1: of Revelation. Though in this video we'll only be focusing
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  Speaker 1: on the Hebrew Bible, where the most references to dogs appear.
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  Speaker 1: Back in nineteen sixty, the Hebrew Bible scholar David Winton
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  Speaker 1: Thomas looked at these references and concluded that the Israelites
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  Speaker 1: must have considered the dog to be a vile and
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  Speaker 1: contemptible animal, despised and generally wretched. But is this true?
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  Speaker 1: All of this negativity might come as a surprise because
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  Speaker 1: in ancient societies, dogs were humanity's faithful companion for thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years. Many scholars think that dogs were the first
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  Speaker 1: animal that humans domesticated, domesticating them as far back as
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  Speaker 1: fifteen thousand years ago. Dogs and humans share a special
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  Speaker 1: relationship on a social level, unlike any other animal. Animal
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  Speaker 1: behavior scientists have found that dogs seem to communicate with
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  Speaker 1: humans through subtle body language. Specifically, one study found that
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  Speaker 1: dogs stare at our hands, meaning that they have an
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  Speaker 1: attention style so specialized for human nonverbal communication focused on
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  Speaker 1: human hand gestures. Other scientists have found that the relationship
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  Speaker 1: between pet dogs and their human caregivers resembles the attachment
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  Speaker 1: bond between human babies with their mothers. So if dogs
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  Speaker 1: were cherished and valued across many different cultures in antiquity,
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  Speaker 1: why does the Bible seem to hate them? First, let's
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  Speaker 1: examine the cultural context of the ancient Near East. As
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  Speaker 1: far back as the Neolithic period, dogs were part of
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  Speaker 1: the social fabric of ancient Near Eastern societies. They played
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  Speaker 1: multiple roles like guarding, hunting, and herding, roles that were
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  Speaker 1: absolutely vital for an agrarian economic system that depended on
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  Speaker 1: raising livestock. The great empires of the ancient Middle East,
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  Speaker 1: such as the ancient Egyptians, the Hittites, and the Assyrians,
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  Speaker 1: all valued dogs as well. They're frequently depicted in ancient
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  Speaker 1: Egyptian art, especially what the Egyptians called a tessim, their
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  Speaker 1: word for a hunting dog. They appear consistently with a
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  Speaker 1: slender body, pointy ears, and a curly tail, something like
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  Speaker 1: the Basenji, a breed of hunting dog that is believed
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  Speaker 1: to have originated in Central Africa. Other examples resemble modern
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  Speaker 1: breeds like the greyhound or the whippet, and archaeologists have
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  Speaker 1: even discovered dog collars from ancient Egypt with the dog's
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  Speaker 1: names still inscribed on them. Around eighty dog names appear
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  Speaker 1: in the archaeological record of ancient Egypt, roughly translated names
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  Speaker 1: like Blackie, Faithful, Brave, north Wind, and Catcher. Dogs were
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  Speaker 1: also part of life in ancient Mesopotamia and among the
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  Speaker 1: Hittites up in Anatolia. Figurines from Mesopotamia portray guard dogs
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  Speaker 1: with collars, and hunting scenes from the Hittites show hunting
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  Speaker 1: dogs alongside the human hunter. The Hittites also used puppies
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  Speaker 1: in magical healing rituals, where you'd hold up a puppy
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  Speaker 1: up to the patient and chant, just as the puppy
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  Speaker 1: licks its own nine body parts in the same way,
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  Speaker 1: let it lick up the illness in so and So's
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  Speaker 1: body parts. Basically, puppies are being used in an illness
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  Speaker 1: transfer ritual. Sounds nice, but the Hittites also ritually slaughtered
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  Speaker 1: dogs as a sacrifice. But even that demonstrates that the
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  Speaker 1: Hittites valued dogs on a more sacred level. So from
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  Speaker 1: the evidence that seems that dogs were valued in all
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  Speaker 1: of the civilizations of the ancient biblical world, and I
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  Speaker 1: do mean all because this also includes the kingdoms of
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  Speaker 1: Israel and Judah, despite their negative portrayal in the Bible.
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  Speaker 1: In a recent study on dogs during the Iron Age
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  Speaker 1: in ancient Israel and Judah, archaeologists found that dog remains
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  Speaker 1: are actually not all that rare in the archaeological record
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  Speaker 1: in this region. In fact, archaeologists have found dog bones
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  Speaker 1: that around sixty six percent of archaeological sites around the
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  Speaker 1: kingdoms of Judah and Israel, including at some of the
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  Speaker 1: largest Israelite and judahyte cities. Dog bones have been found
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  Speaker 1: at Megido, a major strategic city that was part of
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  Speaker 1: the Northern Kingdom of Israel, as well as Lakeish, one
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  Speaker 1: of the most important cities of the Southern Kingdom of Judah.
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  Speaker 1: And from this evidence we can piece together how dogs
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  Speaker 1: fit into ancient Israelite society. The researchers found that sites
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  Speaker 1: with a lot of sheep and goat bones also had
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  Speaker 1: a lot of dog bones. They argue this means that
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  Speaker 1: people in ancient Israel used dogs for herding and guarding livestock,
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  Speaker 1: a super surprising conclusion because we see this in every
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  Speaker 1: contemporary culture and the Bible does explicitly reference sheep dogs
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  Speaker 1: in job thirty and guard dogs are mentioned in the
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  Speaker 1: Bible as well in the Book of Isaiah. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: doctor Joshua Schwartz at Barilana University hypothesizes that the kings
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  Speaker 1: of Israel and Judah probably kept guard dogs. Given the
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  Speaker 1: likelihood that the Israelites used herding and guard dogs, we
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  Speaker 1: can also assume there was a whole profession of dog
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  Speaker 1: trainers and handlers, people with the specialized knowledge to turn
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  Speaker 1: a dog into a valuable working animal. It also implies
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  Speaker 1: there was an industry of dog breeders, selecting dogs to
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  Speaker 1: fit specific roles. But like so much of daily life
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  Speaker 1: and antiquity, these sorts of professions are invisible to historians
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  Speaker 1: as they slip through the cracks of elite narratives like
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  Speaker 1: what we find in the Bible. So while we do
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  Speaker 1: not have evidence that dogs were cherished as pets as
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  Speaker 1: we do from ancient Egypt, we do have evidence that
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  Speaker 1: dogs played a vital role in the economies of ancient
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  Speaker 1: Israel and Judah as work dogs. But if they were
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  Speaker 1: so useful to the economy, why all the the analogies
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  Speaker 1: portraying dogs as low status, unclean, aggressive, or evil. To
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  Speaker 1: answer that, let's turn to the city of Ashkalan on
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  Speaker 1: the southern coast of Israel. For centuries, Ashkalon was a
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  Speaker 1: major city of the perennial enemies of the Israelites, the Philistines.
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  Speaker 1: Dogs were also part of the social fabric of Philistine society,
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  Speaker 1: but often as a meal or a ritual sacrifice. From
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  Speaker 1: what we can tell, the Philistines eight dogs on special occasions.
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  Speaker 1: Dog bones from ancient Philistine cities, which you can see
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  Speaker 1: here on screen, show clear signs of dogs being butchered
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  Speaker 1: for consumption, and puppies have been found buried in pots
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  Speaker 1: within Philistine homes, which some scholars have interpreted as evidence
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  Speaker 1: of puppy sacrifices. Ashkalon always comes up when scholars talk
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  Speaker 1: about dogs in the Bible because here archaeologists discovered over
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  Speaker 1: one thousand dog burials that date to the Persian period. Now,
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  Speaker 1: even though this is a few centuries after the kings
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  Speaker 1: of Israel and Judah, it's still useful comparative data. Such
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  Speaker 1: a huge sample size enables archaeologists to create a sketch
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  Speaker 1: of the average dog population in the ancient Near East.
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  Speaker 1: The dogs of Ashcalon were medium sized and probably not
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  Speaker 1: selectively bred for specialized work like herding or guarding. Although
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  Speaker 1: no breed today exactly matches the Ashkalon dogs, the breed
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  Speaker 1: called the Canaan dog, which we saw at the start
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  Speaker 1: of this video, is considered to be a close match.
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  Speaker 1: The breed is said to be very ancient and descend
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  Speaker 1: from native dogs living along the eastern coast of the
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  Speaker 1: Mediterranean and antiquity. Many of the Ashkalon dogs show evidence
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  Speaker 1: of malnutrition, parasites, and bone fractures that had healed, meaning
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  Speaker 1: that they lived long enough for bones to mend after
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  Speaker 1: their injury. Taken together, the evidence points to a population
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  Speaker 1: of relatively unmanaged, free ranging street dogs, sometimes known as
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  Speaker 1: pariah dogs. Dogs like this live on the margins of
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  Speaker 1: human society, where they have adapted to scavenge and survive
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  Speaker 1: without direct human care and intervention. They're often mixed breed
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  Speaker 1: and their appearance can vary widely from dog to dog.
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  Speaker 1: Given their lack of socialization, their behavior tends to be
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  Speaker 1: more independent and wary, especially around humans. However, they may
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  Speaker 1: also be viewed negatively due to concerns about disease, aggression,
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  Speaker 1: and their association with dirt and trash. And here we
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  Speaker 1: might have our answer to the Bible's negative attitudes toward dogs.
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  Speaker 1: The negative references seem to refer specifically to the behavior
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  Speaker 1: of street dogs and does not reflect a blanket opinion
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  Speaker 1: on dogs as a whole as vile and contemptible. As
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  Speaker 1: David Wynton Thomas argued back in nineteen sixty, these semi
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  Speaker 1: wild dogs were certainly part of village life in ancient
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  Speaker 1: Israel and Judah. Every day people would have seen dogs
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  Speaker 1: with matted fur and covered in dust, roaming through the
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  Speaker 1: unpaved streets of the village, eating garbage, and sometimes scavenging
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  Speaker 1: dead bodies animal and probably human bodies alike. The historian
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  Speaker 1: Sophia Menafe argues that the negative attitude toward dogs and
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  Speaker 1: the Hebrew Bible is tied to dogs scavenging behavior. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: the Book of Exodus even instructs the Israelites to dispose
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  Speaker 1: of ritually impure food by throwing it to dogs. You
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  Speaker 1: shall be holy people to me. You must not eat
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  Speaker 1: flesh torn by beasts in the field. You shall cast
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  Speaker 1: it to the dogs. All those references of dogs eating
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  Speaker 1: the bodies of your enemies like Jezebel, also points to
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  Speaker 1: feral dogs scavenging behavior. Curiously, the law codes in the
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  Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible never declared dogs to be ritually impure animals
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  Speaker 1: like pigs, but touching a corpse would have conferred ritual impurity,
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  Speaker 1: and it's likely that this behavior led to the unfavorable
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  Speaker 1: view in Biblical literature, associating specifically street dogs with impurity,
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  Speaker 1: even though the average person associated with work dogs on
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  Speaker 1: a more mundane level as part of the canine economy.
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  Speaker 1: In the end, the archaeologists conclude that the negative references
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  Speaker 1: to dogs in the Bible obscure the actual relationship between
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  Speaker 1: dogs and the ancient Israelites. Yes, there were almost certainly
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  Speaker 1: semi wild dogs roaming around ancient Israelite villages, barking, growling,
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  Speaker 1: and scavenging, but at the same time, dogs were also
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  Speaker 1: an active part of the community as sheep herders, hunters,
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  Speaker 1: and guard dogs, which leads the researchers to conclude we
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  Speaker 1: should move away from understanding iron age dogs as simply
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  Speaker 1: unclean or pariah animals. The situation on the ground was
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  Speaker 1: more complicated. Some dogs were valued and probably even cherished,
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  Speaker 1: while many more were viewed as dirty and dangerous. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: we can find dog themed insults from neighboring civilizations. Pharaoh
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  Speaker 1: Rameses the second and a correspondence with the Hittite king,
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  Speaker 1: complained that his envoy was lying, saying who is this dog?
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  Speaker 1: The pharaoh Murnepto, when battling the Libyans, insults their leader,
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  Speaker 1: saying their chief is like a dog, a boastful man
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  Speaker 1: without courage. If historians only had access to thirty two
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  Speaker 1: examples of canine themed insults from ancient Egypt, then we'd
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  Speaker 1: assume the Egyptians also hated dogs. But instead we have
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  Speaker 1: a wealth of evidence, ranging from dog collars to sculptures
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  Speaker 1: depicting dogs as companions, which balances the historical picture. The
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  Speaker 1: situation reminds me somewhat of the Bible's view on pigs.
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  Speaker 1: The laws of the Hebrew Bible famously forbid the Israelites
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  Speaker 1: from eating pork, but even in Jerusalem, Israeli archaeologists recently
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  Speaker 1: discovered a nearly complete skeleton of a piglet in the
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  Speaker 1: heart of the city, dating to the time of the
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  Speaker 1: kings of Judah. The pig was found in a room
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  Speaker 1: with cooking vessels and other animal bones, which showed signs
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  Speaker 1: of being butchered. Someone was raising pigs for food in
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  Speaker 1: the capital of the Kingdom of Judah within a few
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  Speaker 1: minutes while from the Temple of God itself, which raises
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  Speaker 1: questions about how widespread were these food taboos, were people
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  Speaker 1: actually following them, or did they even exist at the time.
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  Speaker 1: It's potentially misleading to make sweeping claims about ancient Israelite
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  Speaker 1: society based solely on a few passing references found in
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  Speaker 1: Biblical texts, which may not provide a comprehensive view of
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  Speaker 1: daily life and cultural practices, especially of the non elite.
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  Speaker 1: In the case of dogs in Iron Age Israel and Judah,
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  Speaker 1: the biblical disdain for dogs reflects more a specific social
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  Speaker 1: phenomenon common in ancient villages, rather than a complete condemnation
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  Speaker 1: of canines. To create this video, I spent hours reading
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  Speaker 1: and synthesizing half a dozen peer reviewed articles and chapters,
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  Speaker 1: including that very recent archaeological study about dogs in the
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  Speaker 1: Iron Age. In every step along the way, I was
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