The Natural History of the Bible: An Environmental Exploration of the Hebrew Scriptures (review)

The story that Daniel Hillel tells about the Israelites and their far-flung descendants goes something like this: There is a land between the river and the sea that is unlike any other land in the surrounding regions. Those other lands, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, have rivers and irrigation, while the land of Canaan has only rain for its crops—plentiful in some years, and scarce in others. Thus, over time, the small tribe of wandering herders that began to settle there developed a religion uniquely expressive of the contingency of divine favor. In Hillel’s words, the Israelites were always on “probation.” They thus became morally introspective and persistently hopeful that spiritual improvement would bring about a better future—useful qualities for a people destined to wander in exile far from the land of their original settlement.

In Hillel’s telling, dependence on rain wasn’t the only environmental influence on the Israelites: the very fact that their land encompassed several distinct ecological zones, including mountains, desert, semi-arid plains, and access to the sea, was itself a key factor in the development of monotheism. Other peoples had local gods, but the Israelites were one people in a varying landscape, which led them to the realization that nature itself was unified at a higher level of creation. Thus, Hillel’s “natural history” turns deuteronomistic theology on its head: it’s not that covenantal monotheism leads to the reward of the Land, but rather that inhabiting an ecologically varied land brings a people to monotheism—understood here to mean worship of a God who is not limited to only one sort of natural realm.

This is a wonderfully interesting theory, laid out clearly in a book that provides equal measures of reward and frustration. First, however, let us be clear on what this book is and what it is not. Although it is called a “Natural History of the Bible,” it is not a systematic guide to the flora, fauna, and landscapes mentioned in the Tanakh. Those books exist, but Hillel is up to something more ambitious: an explication of the environmental and ecological influences on ancient Israelite society, in order to explain how such a society would produce the texts we call Scripture. As he puts it, “not all is determined by the environment, but much is influenced by it” (p. 25). The Natural History of the Bible is an overarching introduction to biblical history, seen through the lens of ecological influences, much as other books about the Bible adopt a historical, literary, or feminist perspective.

Dr. Hillel, an environmental scientist born in Israel who grew up connecting land to text, clearly loves the Bible. He wants us to understand it better, and he often succeeds, helping this reader see new insights in familiar stories such as Jacob’s descent into Egypt and Moses’s return after exile in Midian. Hillel offers fascinating insight into both poetry and prose. Yet it’s never quite clear which texts he takes at face value and which he believes are legends or exaggerations of some less dramatic historical truth. For example, he considers it plausible that the Israelites could have feasted on quail in the wilderness, but the story of manna is deemed “completely mythical” (p. 129).

Furthermore, despite great care in explaining the ecological settings of various narratives, many plausible naturalistic explanations for supernatural phenomena in the Bible often seem to miss the point. Yes, it’s conceivable that all of the plagues in Egypt could have been natural occurrences that became embellished memories over time. Yet such a discussion tends to obscure the larger moral point about the arrogance of Pharaoh and the enduring covenant bestowed upon the Israelites. Sometimes I wonder if Hillel is so firmly rooted (so to speak) in the natural world that he forgets that our ancestors were capable of literary thinking. For example, consider his discussion of...