Abstract
With the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s seminal essay, the biblical attitude to nature became a scholarly concern. Initial work had an apologetic bent, defending the Bible against misuse and misinterpretation, but more recent studies have critically assessed the role of nature in the Bible within its historical and social context. The Bible emerged out of an agrarian worldview of the ancient Near East and largely shares the same attitudes to nature as Israel’s Near Eastern neighbors. For the ancient Near Eastern peoples, there was no nature independent and separate from human beings, and the presence and will of the gods could be expressed through the material world. This worldview is expressed through three distinct attitudes to nature in the biblical and ancient Near Eastern literature: a mastery-over-nature, a harmony-with-nature, and a subjugation-to-nature attitude.