Saul Olyan brilliantly demonstrates how a number of biblical texts see animals as possessing rights and personhood. This is an outstanding book that makes a major scholarly contribution and brings clarity to a subject that is often misunderstood.

Saul M. Olyan is the Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He is the author of nine books, including Violent Rituals of the Hebrew Bible (2019) and Friendship in the Hebrew Bible (2017), and is the editor or co-editor of thirteen books. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and St. John's College, University of Cambridge, as well as a grant from the American Philosophical Society. In 2016, he was president of the New England and Eastern Canada region of the Society of Biblical Literature.