" The original audience of the book would have read such symbolism “as fluently as any modern reader of the daily papers reads the conventional symbols of a political cartoon.”10 (For example, American readers of a political cartoon featuring an elephant and a donkey immediately know that the elephant symbolizes the Republican party and that the donkey symbolizes the Democrats.) "

― Richard B. Hays , The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics