Lion, detail of mosaic, Mount Nebo (Mosaics of Jordan, fig. 219 on p. 169). Chapel of the Priest John at Khirbat-al-Mukhayyat, Jordan 565 CE. Courtesy of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land, Mount Nebo, and the American Center of Oriental Research, Amman. Permission obtained by author.
The intellectual climate had changed, and I saw that I needed to situate my work as an historian in contemporary animal theorizing in order to be responsive to the interpretive richness of this new cultural moment in scholarship and to develop a vocabulary that might enable a reading “otherwise” of ancient Christian texts that feature animals.
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