I have just read The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, a Booker prize winning novel. You may have read it but it was all about how to be Jewish and whether it was to your shame to be Jewish. Although I was brought up in a strongly Presbyterian family and went to church regularly, I don't think I really realised the Old Testament is completely about how the Jews were looking for a home. But there was a passage in this book which said, "He [the narrator, a non-Jew, fascinated by everything Jewish] had a fancy that when he'd first taken up with Hephzibah that they would walk together to the lake...talk about Jews and Nature - why the Bible was so light on in natural description, why even Paradise was so sketchy in the matter of vegetation etc..."
I hadn't noticed the Bible was sketchy on nature. Is it?
I didn't like this book as much as I felt I should have. It was totally about the feelings - shame, joy, un-understandability - of being Jewish. Except when it was talking about sexual matters and even that was always seen through a Jewish eye, or a wishful Jewish eye.

I'm no biblical scholar but I know that very early on in the Bible there is this very brazen statement about the supposed relationship between God, Man and Nature. Here it is, quoted from the KJV (Genesis 1:26-28):

26. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

[My emphasis, but note also that these words are nearly identical in all modern, ie 17th century onwards, mainstream English language translations, as well as those rendered into other languages. For example the current International French Language Bible uses the expression "...l'homme à notre image, selon notre ressemblance, et qu'il domine sur les poissons de la mer, sur les oiseaux du ciel, sur le bétail, sur toute la terre, et sur tous les reptiles qui rampent sur la terre."   Et encore c'est mon emphase].

I cannot help but think that most of the Earth's - and so by default Mankind's - current environmental and societal problems, all stem from this rather arrogant pronouncement. We humans - and certainly all the other plants and creatures that we currently share the planet with - would have been much better served if the Abrahamic God had been inclined towards a rather more Buddhist way of thinking, or indeed even a simple Animalist type of theology. But there you go, that's Gods for you: they won't be reasoned with. And the monotheistic ones are absolutely the worst, always arrogantly thinking that they, and they alone, know best.

On the other hand, Noah had conservationist tendencies in that tale - so there was an awareness of the sanctity of all life and that it needed preserving - and not necessarily for the plate - or did he  only save domestic and sacrificial animals? (Thinking of the dove).  And of course we have all considered the lilies of the field who neither reap nor sow - especially  when seeing able bodied lilies in the benefits queue - anyway, Jesus seemed to like meadow flowers.

As ever the Bible is conflicting and ambiguous, nevertheless according to Genesis 7:2 God does seem more concerned about the gastronomic value of things over any nebulous 'sanctity of life' guff when He commands how many of each type of animal be taken upon the Ark: just one pair of all the unclean animals, but seven pairs of the clean ones, the ones that can be eaten, yum yum. Perhaps God, with his concern for the inner man, was actually French and not as he is usually represented, as English.

25 muššir mešrâmma še'i napšāti
26 [m]akkūru zērma napišta bulliṭ
27 šūlima zēr napšāti kalāma ana libbi eleppi
25 "'Abandon riches and seek survival!
26 Spurn property and save life!
27 Put on board the boat the seed of all living creatures!

Thus he god Ea instructed Utnapishtim the Faraway - no difference between the two types, but it is noticeable  that the popular mantra sticks to "two by two" for the plagiarised version.

I've always enjoyed the phrase about lilies in the field - it seemed to vindicate my innate laziness! Even as a child [I was mostly a child when the Bible was read to me or I read it - ah that reminds me of the fourth thing I wanted to do every day, the others being read a poem, phone someone, learn some Maori, but I couldn't remember the fourth one, but that was it]

Psalm 8 v 3-8

3 When I consider your heavens,
    the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
    human beings that you care for them?[c]

5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
    and crowned them[f] with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
    you put everything under their[g] feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
    and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
    and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.