The Book of Job and the Sex Life of Elephants: The Limits of Evidential Credibility in Eighteenth-Century Natural History and Biblical Criticism.

The article discusses the international public debates related to the publication of the multi-volume "Histoire naturelle," by French scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, and scholars including German biblical scholar and Orientalist Johann David Michaelis, which focused particularly on questions relating to elephants, especially how the had sex. Michaelis became intrigued with elephants while translating the Old Testament Book of Job and writing biblical criticism. It reports that reports of indigenous knowledge of elephant behavior were not considered, it was purely a debate of eighteenth-century European intellectuals.