From Biological Beings to Covenant Beings: An Eco-critical and Eschatological Reading of the Animal Subjectivity in Genesis 1-11

This project attempts to interpret the animal subjectivity in the first eleven chapters of Genesis and the gradual change that this concept undergoes in the narrative progress of the primeval history in Gen 1-11. The project commences with a thematic analysis of animal subjectivity prominently in the secular literature as the biblical literature does not offer sufficient literature related to this concept. With reference to the concepts of Jacques Derrida I would explain the notion of animal subjectivity and its intrinsic relation to alterity and diversity. I would also look into the status questionis to make explicit the inadequacy of current ecological hermeneutics in dealing with animal subjectivity. In the second part of the thesis I would attempt a literary and historical critical analysis of selected passages in Gen 1-11 in order to explain the gradual changes in the concept of animal subjectivity in the narrative of Gen 1-11. In the last part of my thesis the method of normativity of the future would be applied to use the eschatological orientation of the narrative to reinterpret the meaning of animal subjectivity in the present context.