Ingvild Saelid Gilhus - Animals, RZYM
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ANIMALS, GODS AND HUMANS
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus explores the transition from traditional Greek and
Roman religion to Christianity in the Roman Empire and the effect of this
change on how animals were regarded, illustrating the main factors in the
creation of a Christian conception of animals. One of the underlying assump-
tions of the book is that changes in the way animal motifs are used and the
way human–animal relations are conceptualized serve as indicators of more
general cultural shifts. Gilhus attests that in late antiquity, animals were used
as symbols in a general redefinition of cultural values and assumptions.
A wide range of key texts are consulted, ranging from philosophical trea-
tises to novels and poems on metamorphoses; from biographies of holy men
such as Apollonius of Tyana and Antony, the Christian desert ascetic, to
natural history; from the New Testament via Gnostic texts to the Church
fathers; from pagan and Christian criticism of animal sacrifice to the acts of
the martyrs. Both the pagan and the Christian conception of animals
remained rich and multi-layered through the centuries, and this book
presents the dominant themes and developments in the conception of
animals without losing that complexity.
Ingvild S
æ
lid Gilhus
is professor of the History of Religions at the
University of Bergen. Her publications include
Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins
(Routledge 1997).
ANIMALS, GODS AND
HUMANS
Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman
and Early Christian Ideas
Ingvild Sælid Gilhus
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