03_Wilson_201_221_201_221 10/07/15 12:41 Pagina 220 220 WALTER T. WILSON 220 to assure the audience of God’s pervasive care. While a certain pre- eminence for humanity within the order of creation is clearly pre- supposed in this regard, there is no evidence to suggest that Matthew would have endorsed the Stoic-Philonic view summarized earlier, according to which animals exist solely to serve people because (lacking rationality) they are categorically unlike people 67. Put differently, although the statements in Matt 6,26, 10,29-31, and 12,12 are couched in arguments a minori ad maius, they do not have the effect of setting human beings on a different plane of existence vis-à-vis non-human beings. Instead, attention is drawn to the mutuality of people and animals as members of creation, which, as such, are united in their dependence on God’s provision, which extends even to individual members of each species 68. Accord- ingly, insofar as God is Lord of all creation and not of humankind alone, all spheres of human action are not only morally meaningful but also morally related 69. * * * With regard to its content, scholarship on Matt 12,11-12 has fo- cused on parallels with synoptic co-texts (e.g., Mark 3,4) and with early Jewish texts on the sabbatical treatment of animals (e.g., CD 11.13-14). With regard to its manner of reasoning, scholarship on the passage has focused on parallels with rabbinic literature, to the neglect of evidence supplied by non-rabbinic authors. For an ex- ample of the latter we can turn to Philo and his Exposition of the Law. Like Matthew, the Alexandrian constructs arguments incor- porating a minori ad maius comparisons between human and non- human subjects as a way of both indicating the correct observance of specific laws and illustrating forms of moral reasoning predi- cated on the observance of mercy and similar virtues. With both authors it is possible to discern a process according to which the obligation to treat animals mercifully constitutes a basis for reflect- 67 It should be noted that the rabbis were not immune to Stoic theories of teleological anthropocentrism, as evidenced by m. Qidd. 4.14. 68 The “one” sparrow of 10,29 can be compared with the “one” sheep of 12,11. See n. 16 above. Cf. R. BAUCKHAM, “Jesus and Animals”, 39-48. 69 DAVIES – ALLISON, Saint Matthew, I, 649.