When describing the sins that led to the condemnation of an entire generation in the time of Noah, the Hebrew Bible is vague: “When God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth, God said to Noah: I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness …” (Genesis 6:12–13) What exactly did these people do that earned them annihilation?
Rabbi Yohanan says: This teaches that they bred domesticated animals with undomesticated animals, and all animals with humans.
If somebody told you that people were breeding goats with gazelles and then, far more shockingly, breeding humans with animals, you would probably think they had buried the lead. But the fact that Rabbi Yohanan doesn’t seem bothered by bestiality any more than the interbreeding of animal species suggests that he’s imagining a mythical past in which humans were considered just another species of animal.
This pattern continues on today’s daf. For instance, the Torah tells us that 40 days after the ark came to rest, Noah sent a raven in search of dry land. In the Talmud, we learn that the raven complained bitterly to Noah about this assignment:
Help us keep Jewish knowledge accessible to millions of people around the world.
Your donation to My Jewish Learning fuels endless journeys of Jewish discovery. With your help, My Jewish Learning can continue to provide nonstop opportunities for learning, connection and growth.
Reish Lakish says: The raven provided a convincing response to Noah; when it did not wish to leave the ark the raven said to him: Your Master, God, hates me, and you hate me. Your Master hates me, as He commanded to take from the kosher species seven and from the non-kosher species two. And you hate me, as you disregard those from the species of seven (i.e., the kosher birds) and instead dispatch one from the species of two (i.e., the non-kosher birds). If the angel of heat or the angel of cold harms me and kills me, will the world not be lacking one species of creature, as there was only one pair of ravens? Or perhaps you are sending me because it is my wife that you need?
This bird talks, argues about Jewish law and, perhaps most importantly (speaking of burying the lead) sees Noah as romantic competition! Later on the daf, Noah also converses with the phoenix, who forgoes his food on the ark in order not to trouble his host. And the dove pleads with God to free him from any human control, stating he is willing to forgo feeding by humans:
Master of the universe, I would prefer my food to be as bitter as an olive but under your control, and not as sweet as honey and under the control of flesh and blood.
In this unusual collection of teachings, the rabbis present animals from the generation of the flood thinking strategically, weighing the long-term consequences of their actions and conducting emotionally weighty conversations with humans and even God. This is not our experience of animals, nor was it the norm for the rabbis to imagine them this way. Like the Bible, the rabbis rarely tell stories of talking animals.
Strikingly, we also find passages on the daf that take the opposite approach to animal life, seeing it as subordinate to human life. For example, Gemara wonders why God would choose a form of destruction which wiped out animal life, and not just humanity, and a beraita attributed to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karha explains:
This is comparable to a man who made his son a wedding canopy, and prepared all manner of foods. Later, his son died. The man went and destroyed the wedding canopy, saying, “I only did this for my son. Now that he has died, why should I have a wedding canopy?” So to, the Holy Blessed One said, “I only created animals for the benefit of humans. Now that humans have sinned, why should I have animals?”
According to this radically different approach, animals are not agents of their own fate, subject to divine reward or punishment. They are simply an asset for human beings.
In the Torah, the flood narrative ends with God permitting Noah and humankind to eat animals. According to some rabbinic voices, this represents a new approach, the first humans having been instructed to follow a plant-based diet. In more ways than this, the rabbis identify the flood as the moment in which the world moves from a mythical prehistory, in which animals speak, argue and act on par with humans, to a more recognizable era, in which humans and human societies dominate other species. This isn’t a far cry from evolutionary history as we understand today, in which humans slowly distinguished themselves from their animal peers, and eventually came to control more and more of their environment.
