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Introduction
Commentators have long noted that God's commandment to Noah to bring all animals onto the ark exists in two intertwined versions in the biblical text. In the first version, Noah is told to bring two of every species: "And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female" (Gen 6:19 nrsv). In the second version, however, the animal kingdom is divided into pure and impure species: "Take with you seven pairs of all pure animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not pure, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth" (Gen 7:2-3). 1Noah then sacrifices some of the pure animals and birds after the flood (Gen 8:20).
The second version raised a number of questions for ancient and late ancient commentators, both Christian and Jewish. Why was Noah commanded to take two of some animals and seven of others? The biblical text seems to assume that Noah and the readers already know of a distinction between pure and impure animals, and does not explain in detail which species are meant, nor how Noah should distinguish between them. Yet the distinction between pure and impure animals is revealed to Moses only later, as part of the dietary laws in Leviticus 11. What, then, may be the function of this pre-Mosaic commandment? Does it imply that the impure animals were prohibited to Noah, and perhaps to the rest of his generation? Many Greek and Syriac exegetes of the first millennium, as well as a large number of Jewish sources, refer to these questions from various angles. 2
These questions were not only exegetical conundrums. The exegetical tradition on Noah's animals relates to a larger complex of ideas discussed by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers: the relationship between abstinence from certain animals as food and conceptions of nature. 3This issue may be divided into three topics. The first concerns the identification of the dietary...