Thanks, Jürgen and Umberto!

I recall seeing a Peanuts cartoon once where Charlie Brown was paging through the Bible. When Lucy asked him what he was doing he said, "I'm looking for a Bible verse to support one of my preconceived opinions."

Flip-flopping Charlie's strategy, when I read works written from a Christian point of view, I always look for writings that support my biblically-conceived opinions. And today I found one. I received a used copy of Jürgen Moltmann's God in Creation (English translation ©1985 by SCM Press, Ltd) I had ordered. Moltmann is a German Protestant theologian of repute, the author of many theological works, some of which deal with God and creation. I flipped through this one looking to see if he comments on Genesis 1:29-30 -- the verses where God prescribed a vegan diet for both plants and animals in the beginning. He does briefly, following a lengthy section on man in the image of God in verses 26-27, and has this to say:

To 'subdue the earth' refers to the nourishment of human beings which, according to vv. 29-30, is evidently supposed to be exclusively vegetarian. The beasts are also to eat only vegetarian food. This means that the right to kill animals is excluded from the lordship of human beings over them. If human beings and animals alike eat vegetarian food, then the 'lordship' of human beings over animals can mean no more than that human beings have the function of a 'justice of the peace.' Human lordship on earth is the lordship exercised by a tenant on God's behalf. It means stewardship over the earth, for God. Only human beings know God's will, and only they can consciously praise and magnify him. Does the Creator need a representative and steward on earth? Apparently he does, for he transfers to human beings the preservation and continuation of the earthly side of creation, which assumed its first, initial form with the sabbath. Human beings become the authors of the further history of the earth. The prophetic visions of the messianic kingdom of peace (Isa. 11.6ff.) give sublime and ultimate form to this initial peaceful order between animals, human beings and the plants of the earth. But the beginning teaches that human lordship over the animals has to be distinguished from human subjection of the earth for the purposes of nourishment, and distinguished more clearly than is the case in the traditional theological doctrine of the dominium terrae; for this doctrine throws the two together and intermixes them, with disastrous consequences for the world. (p. 224)

The red type in the final line is obviously mine. I don't know how Moltmann suggests this original order be interpreted today, especially in light of Genesis 9:1 ff. Nor do I know what he means by "disastrous consequences." But he couldn't be more clear about God's original intent: that man and beast were created to be vegetarian; that man is a "tenant" on God's behalf; and that mixing man's lordship over animals with man's subjection of the earth for nourishment has "disastrous consequences" for the world.

I spent an afternoon in a seminary library once looking through Christian commentaries on Genesis and was amazed at how little attention is given to Genesis 1:29-30 -- almost none. Jewish commentators, on the other hand, comment freely, usually in the same vein as Moltmann.

Take, for example, the comments of Umberto Cassuto, late professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. (Cassuto was a conservative, Jewish Old Testament scholar, whose works I was introduced to in seminary. Christian scholars hold Cassuto's writings in the highest regard.) In his volume, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis: Part 1, From Adam to Noah, Genesis I-VI.8 (©Magnes Press, 1998; first published in Hebrew in 1944), he writes on Genesis 1:29-30:

Behold, I have given you, etc.] You are permitted to make use of the living creatures and their service, you are allowed to exercise power over them so that they may promote your subsistence; but you may not treat the life-force within them contemptuously and slay them in order to eat their flesh; your proper diet shall be vegetable food. It is true that the eating of flesh is not specifically forbidden here, but the prohibition is clearly to be inferred. No contradiction in this regard is presented by iii 21 (garments of skin), iv 2 (Abel was a keeper of sheep), or by the sacrifices of Abel and Noah (iv 4; viii 20), as we shall show in our notes to these verses. Apparently, the Torah seeks to convey that in principle man should refrain from eating meat, and that when Noah and his sons were granted permission to eat flesh (ix 3) this was only a concession subject to the condition that the blood was not to be consumed. This prohibition implies respect for the principle of life (for the blood is the life), and it serves also, in a sense, to remind us that rightly all parts of the flesh should have been forbidden; it behoves us, therefore, to eschew eating at least one element thereof in order to remember the earlier prohibition.

The Torah presents here a kind of idealized picture of the primeval world situation. Not only man but even the animals were expected to show reverence for the principle of life (see v. 30, which, too, is governed by the verb I have given of v. 29). In full accord with this standpoint is the prophetic view that the prohibition was never annulled, and that in the Messianic era it would be operative again and even the carnivorous beasts would then feed only on vegetation (Isa. xi 7; lxv 25: the lion shall eat straw like the ox). (pp. 58-59; red type added by me)

What have Christian commentators and theologians missed? I'm working on finding out.