Rain on a Land Where No One Lives: The Hebrew Bible on the Environment‪.‬

I. Posing the Question We may begin to frame the questions concerning the biblical perspective on the world in terms the 1967 article that initiated the modern debate, Lynn White's "The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis." (1) This paper created a virtual cottage industry among biblical scholars (2) and theologians who set out to refute what they took to be the main claim of the article, that the rape of the earth had been authorized by the biblical injunction "to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth" (Gen 1:28).