Introduction

This chapter presents the study’s objectives and parameters, surveying the ancient Near Eastern arena and contemporary field of ethical human-animal relations.As an interdisciplinary contribution, this volume combines human-animal ethics with the reading of ancient biblical and ancient Near Eastern sources.The divergences between the two disciplines calls for a discussion of the nature of each, linking the two and providing the necessary background to the reader unfamiliar with either or both.It thus first reviews the study of ethics and the vast recent body of literature on the subject, dividing the theoretical material into two parts—secular philosophical ethics and theology.It then briefly sets the historical scene, in particular with relation to ancient Near Eastern cultures, focusing principally upon those periods and places that deal with the matter under investigation.