Encyclopedia of animal rights and animal 525

482 | Religion, History, and the Animal Protection Movement which lasted roughly from 800 to 200 bce, sages like Confucius, LaoZi, the founder of Taoism, Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, the Buddha, the great Hindu reformer Vyasa, a name usually taken to stand for several teachers whose names have been lost, Zoroaster, the Latter Prophets, and Pythagoras, revolutionized religion and ethics by introducing the idea that our lives should be based upon helping others rather than entirely upon self-interest The Origins of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare From the animals’ standpoint, what is most important here, and all too often overlooked, is that several of these teachers: Mahavira, the Buddha, and Vyasa in India, Pythagoras in Greece, and the Latter Prophets in Israel, counted animals among the neighbors whom we should love as we love ourselves They recognized that the suffering and death of a chicken or a lobster is as urgent to the chicken or the lobster as your suffering and death are to you and my suffering and death are to me Therefore, they taught that the chicken and the lobster are entitled to the same moral consideration to which human beings are entitled They taught the moral equality of all sentient beings Thus, animal protection began as animal liberation, not as animal welfare, and was part and parcel of the same movement that pioneered human liberation In the minds of these thinkers, animals were not second-class citizens They were coequal beneficiaries, along with the humans of the Axial Age movement, to end violence and oppression Mahavira, the Buddha, Vyasa, and Pythagoras explicitly forbade the raising and slaughter of animals for food or sacrifice Down to the present time, the vast majority of Jains are ethical vegetarians, as are a large percentage of Buddhists and Hindus Neither Jainism nor Buddhism has ever indulged in animal sacrifice, and in Hinduism it became a marginalized vestigial practice In Israel, the Latter Prophets, radical religious and social reformers who included such familiar names as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and Hosea, condemned the oppression of the poor by the rich and powerful, and also called for an end to animal sacrifice In Isaiah, God tells the people, I take no pleasure in blood of bulls, lambs, and goats When you come to appear before Me who requires of you this trampling of My courts? [E]ven though you multiply prayers, I will not listen Your hands are covered with blood (excerpted from Isaiah 1:11–17, New American Standard Bible) In Hosea, God speaks just as clearly “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hosea 6:6, New International Version) Condemnations of sacrifice are also found in Isaiah 66:3–4, Jeremiah 7:21–23, Hosea 8:11–13, and Amos 5:21–25 In very ancient times, Jews were permitted to eat meat only from an animal that had been offered as a sacrifice (I Samuel 14:31–35) But gradually this law was relaxed to allow Jews to eat meat as long as sacrifices were offered at the Temple in Jerusalem, the only place that sacrifice was permitted When the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce, bringing animal sacrifice to an abrupt halt, the leading rabbis of the day debated whether meat eating was still allowed As so often in human history,