When it comes to the position of sheep in Judaism and Christianity, so far my understanding’s that the sheep continues to be a working animal (good in this regard because it still has practical use) so they’re useful for things like clothing (wool), cheese and meat things people can’t live without and where billion dollar industries thrive on. Let’s consider how harmful wolves are to those industries, that’s if farmers and shepherds don’t want to wake up realising that their sheep’s been slaughtered by some wild predator.
Wool, meat and cheese don’t grow on trees and whatever money gets spent on rearing sheep risks wasting away if it weren’t for any attempts at protecting sheep from wild animals, so there’s bound to be a lot of time and effort at protecting these very sources from factors that risk hurting an entire industry based around them. That’s how important sheep are to pastoralism and to a given extent, Abrahamic monotheism which’s the faith of pastoralists. (Both pastor and pastoralist have the same root word.)
Actually some of the same things can be said of zoroastrianism too where sheep and cattle are seen as beneficial animals, with wolves and lions being evil beasts that threaten to wipe out an entire flock. Comes to think of it, there might be a sound reason why some predatory animals are linked or likened to witchcraft, that’s being both eerie and suspicious enough to have the capacity to do a lot of harm and damage.
(There was a time in Europe where wolves were linked to witchcraft, which’s where my own thoughts about sheep as good animals begin to make more sense this way.)
To correlate this, somewhere there’s this study in French about witch beliefs in Cameroon where witches’ familiars are said to take on forms of predatory animals (dogs, cats, leopards) and their victims are goats. Goats, like sheep, are predictably vulnerable to predators so the link between predatory animals and witchcraft becomes crystal clear in here. That deserves more time to contemplate on and worth reading up about when it comes to the position of sheep as good animals in Christianity and zoroastrianism.
Or why wolves are generally reviled in both religions.
fynm 