Don’t Run With The Wolves

I find myself wondering if the mistrust of wolves in the Bible may be warranted, given how actual shepherds have to put up with their presence whenever they go near sheep at all. This attitude’s not unique to Christianity alone as you could find it in Zoroastrianism, an Iranian religion that predates the coming of Islam to Iran. Considering that both Israel/Palestine and Iran are in the Middle East, that it’s logical their own peoples have had unpleasant experiences with wolves enough to have this same attitude enshrined and magnified in their religious beliefs, though Zoroastrianism seems to esteem dogs more consistently than what Christianity does. I feel the Christian attitude to dogs is at best mixed/ambivalent, dependent on if the dog serves the church or not, though it’s also dependent on the individual church itself.

Dogs seem to be more well-integrated in Catholic and Orthodox circles, especially if they have a calling in guarding monasteries and also pest control on the side, despite their own suspicions at times relating to witchcraft. In some African churches, especially those in Ghana and Cameroon, dogs are even associated with witchcraft as it was in early modern Europe, though this could also be due to folkloric influence (this is also true for their European counterparts), even if not all Ghanaians and Cameroonians believe in this. Given how the Bible largely mistrusts dogs, that associating them with witchcraft is practically kind of befitting in this regard. Similar things can be said of their wild counterparts wolves, which makes the comparison of God’s people to sheep even more apt and accurate.

Associating wolves with witchcraft makes even more sense in this regard because witchcraft is regarded similarly as rebellion, and that witches are some things used by the Devil to oppose Christianity. So it would be logical for witches to be linked to wolves in some way or another, perhaps more consistently than you would with dogs since there is at least some Biblical mention of dogs being used for good (healing Lazarus, guarding sheep, guiding Tobit and used as comeuppance for Jezebel’s own misdeeds). This kind of translates to Christian monasteries relying on dogs for protection and pest control, whereas the overall attitude to wolves is largely mistrust. There is the lone Biblical passage of wolves living peacefully with sheep, but that’s when order is restored in the future.

Due to the consequences of Adam’s sins that death entered the world, so animals killing each other is possibly part of this. God undoing this in the new earth, as presaged in Isaiah, would put an end to predation for good. Albeit in a way we don’t expect it to, but God answers problems in his own way that are better than expected. Wolves and possibly dogs living peacefully with prey is part of this, as with lions and possibly cats eating plants with no issue being the same.

Another look at wolf-human interactions

When it comes to wolves and humans, while there’s no doubt these interactions do exist yet attitudes to wolves vary from culture to culture and between individuals and sometimes these attitudes exist in perplexing ways (perplexing for some people). In the case with the Middle East, while Turks and Turkic people revered the wolf the same can’t be said of Iranians where they mistrust it. At some point, Iranians believed that wolves were the creation of Ahriman as the evil counterpart of dogs (which are good animals) hence why they’re similar. (This belief long predated scientific discovery that dogs are wolves.)

Wolves were despised for stealing livestock, while dogs are valued for guarding them. While this isn’t unique to Iranians since some people have similar feelings towards dogs and wolves, but it does give a good insight into what their cultural beliefs are like and why Middle Easterners aren’t all alike when it comes to attitudes to wolves. (For another matter Muslims since some Muslims are very sympathetic to dogs, especially with the Sufis.) While the Middle East’s also another place where dogs were first domesticated, yet attitudes to wolves aren’t universally favourable.

If the ancient Iranians are any indication, even if dogs come from wolves that doesn’t explain why Zoroastrian Iranians mistrust wolves who see them as evil copies of dogs. Either the dog’s imported from elsewhere or that like with the Chinese, Iranians mistrust wolves on some level despite being related to the dog. Consider the Chinese and Japanese, while the Japanese historically loved wolves and the word for wolf contains a word or character for deity, the same can’t be said of the Chinese where they have negative proverbs about wolves.

And that the Chinese word for pervert contains the character for wolf, while proverbs about dogs are more ambivalent (not always favourable but still tolerated). My understanding’s that with both Iranians and Chinese, dogs are tolerated at best for being useful but there’s not much practical use for wolves so they mistrust them a lot even if that’s not case for other animals. But it makes better sense in that animals are treated and regarded differently if there’s any practical use for them.

Cultural and individual attitudes to animals aren’t universal, the point of anthropology’s to study a culture from its own perspective and nearly free from a projected bias. While you might say that wolves are selected to be wild due to persecution, it’s really not that simple in real life where as what some people say or rather imply the bolder wolves get persecuted for going near livestock and human habitation. Dogs also get persecuted, not just for attacking animals but also for their link to witchcraft at some point for some cultures and in some countries.

Retrieverman’s reasoning doesn’t explain why semi-feral dogs exist and why some people allow their dogs to roam freely and why some dogs hunt on their own despite being trained and owned, which means dog domestication isn’t that straightforward as it should be. Wolf-human interactions are complex, but not always for reasons you think it is.

Good animals

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.

Not just them

I still think when it comes to negative attitudes towards wolves, it needn’t to (just) be Christianity to influence that as other beliefs (such as Hinduism, Chinese mythology/folklore and Zoroastrianism) also have similarly negative attitudes to or portrayal of wolves, either as livestock killers (in Hindi, the word for wolf is related to the word for sheep) or greedy where even Chinese mythology comes to that same conclusion, that’s without much Christian influence (Christians, being in the minority, don’t have much of a big presence to begin with in India, Iran and China).

Likewise not all Native American communities necessarily have positive attitudes to wolves, where among the Navajo there’s a tendency to associate wolves and to some extent, dogs with witchcraft (also found among Mexicans and Oneida to some degree) even though not all Navajo necessarily believes in that. Whatever those are, you can’t just blame Christianity for it as other belief systems such as Zoroastrianism also have negative attitudes to wolves (even associating them with other livestock killers like lions, I think) and even the nonChristian Chinese similarly associate wolves with greed as much as their Christian Western counterparts do.

Don’t just blame them

I think when it comes to attributing wolf persecution to Christianity, bear in mind other religious beliefs like Zoroastrianism also have a negative attitude perhaps attributing to wolves attacking livestock. Whilst dogs aren’t any better to whatever extent, they’re generally more practical and if they’re wolves, they’re the only kind of wolves useful to people like guarding premises and hunting vermin.

(This kind of duality shows up in Biblical lore where dogs can be used for good like hunting down Jezebel and guiding Tobit or bad if used for witchcraft, like what Caitlin Snow does.)

Likewise, if surviving pre-Christian lore is any indication, any distrust of or superstition linked to the animal could’ve predated Christianity. Whilst some early modern superstitions linked dogs to witchcraft, but with pre-Christian Roman attitudes being the same or similar the distrust did predate its contemporary counterpart, or so it could be argued where it might be the same for wolves or any other animal.

Any degree of distrust to wolves can’t just be attributed to Christianity, since it could also be linked to Zoroastrianism or almost any religious beliefs that comes to this conclusion.

There’s an analogue to it

I think the major obstacle to accepting those beliefs, in this era, is that it’s rather demeaning and seems homophobically so that in order to make sense of this some African communities already associate queer sexuality and nudity with witchcraft, even those that tend to be skimpily dressed will associate nudity with witchcraft. (I honestly think dressing in shorts isn’t bad if there’s a reason for it like running, playing football and volleyball.)

I do recall vividly on a study on Iranian beliefs (some of which should deconstruct their Jewish and Christian counterparts) where homosexuality is associated with demons and witchcraft that I think the fear has a counterpart in communities outside of Iran at some point. Let’s not forget that lesbianism was associated with witchcraft at some point that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lesbian or any queer person to align themselves with witchcraft and paganism.

But I’m afraid this belief, even when explained, won’t sit well with others.

Sheep stealing wolves

There was a study stating that dogs not only originated from commensal wolves but also that wolves are becoming more like dogs but not just in the sense of being familiar with humans but also familiarised to them by proxy through rubbish and preying on livestock. (I suspect that even if there were tamed wolves in antiquity, had toilets never been invented before that this necessitates some owners to exclude their pets whenever they kept on literally messing in the house and why dogs are held as dirty.)

Bear in mind that even outside of Abrahamic monotheism, religions like Zoroastrianism and Hinduism don’t have a high opinion of wolves either. In Hinduism, wolves are also depicted as wily and destructive. Similar things can be said of Zoroastrianism. Oddly enough wolves are grouped with felids proper as the destructive animals. Makes sense that dogs would seem good in the context of them protecting sheep. Though I also think this would’ve influenced Abrahamic religions to an extent.

The wolf’s infamous habit for gluttony via preying on livestock can be akin to Caitlin Snow’s insatiable appetite for heat. This may even extend to blood and watch out if she turns into a wolf, preying on sheep. So to speak, she’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing and preying on people’s trust in her in order to kill them later. Practically why even in Hinduism wolves don’t always have a high reputation.

So much so that they are even literally known as sheep-eaters or similar.

Lycophobia outside of Abrahamism

Like I said, the distrust or disdain for wolves does exist outside of Abrahamic religions. Most notably with Iranian Zoroastrianism. The odd thing’s that this religion grouped wolves with felids (i.e. evil animals) and dogs with good animals. Though this could also be based on pastoralism, I still think it can and does exist outside of the Abrahamic religions.

Hinduism doesn’t seem to have a high opinion of wolves either. Odder still’s Japan where the people did worship wolves but at some point they eventually began hunting them to extinction. The surviving wolves likely hybridised with stray dogs and it seems rural stray dogs have practically taken over their niche.

So bear in mind it’s not even restricted to Christianity as other religions/communities to dislike wolves so.

Queer witches

Though this is not always exactly, universally nor consistently the case it seems parsimonious, that as inferred from some studies on African witchcraft, homosexuality and nudity are often associated with sorcery. Even their European and Middle Eastern counterparts used to think the same way too. That actually makes sense really.

The association’s not lost on the Iranian Zoroastrians, which I think helps deconstruct monotheistic Abrahamic homophobia well. In the sense that homosexuality is demonic, sinister, devilish and evil. Or at the very least highly unexpected and odd. (At some point, lesbianism was criminalised in England and still is in some countries though Botswana repealed this.)

That’s not to say I condone homophobia though I think it’s kind of wrong to poop on fundamentalists for not approving of homosexuality. (If they fear witchcraft, they might unconsciously associate homosexuality with witchcraft.) It does make it more understandable though.