Claude Mariottini, a professor of Old Testament at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, told Cybercast News Service the passage not only doesn't exist - it's "fictional."

Other scholars agree that nothing remotely resembling it can be found in any version of the Scriptures - Old Testament or New Testament.

"Responsible use of the Old Testament cannot divorce the biblical notion of stewardship (that man is obligated to care for God's creation) from the equally important biblical view that the entire natural world was created for man, for him to subdue it and to reign over it," Jenislawski said.

"Environmentalists who make man subservient to the natural world actually invert the biblical view of man's relationship to the earth," he said.

"People try to use the Bible to give authority to what they are trying to say," he said. "(This) is one of those texts that you fabricate in order to support what you want to say," Mariottini said.