Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online

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Animals
(3,170 words)

The reason why Christians were interested in animals and in nature in general is twofold. First, animals are all God’s creatures. Second, some Christians adopted the scheme of macrocosm and microcosm: the human person is so integrated into the entire cosmos that a kind of parallelism exists between the macrocosm and the human person as microcosm. As a result of this para…

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Ledegang, Fred, “Animals”, in: Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online, General Editor David G. Hunter, Paul J.J. van Geest, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte. Consulted online on 07 December 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/2589-7993_EECO_SIM_00000174>
First published online: 2018



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