Re: An interesting area where the Bible may provide accurate historical insight


VBM wrote:
> As you may know, I am a Christian who does not think that the Bible was
> meant to be read as strict historical narrative, and I definitely fall into
> the Theistic Evolution category. My background in history, however, means
> that I do treat the Bible, like any ancient text, as a window into actual
> history. Sometimes, the fundamentalist and literalists can lose the forest
> for the trees, and fail to see the true value of Scripture, even as a source
> of knowledge about our past, by insisting on reading it incorrectly.
>
> Now, the following MAY be an example of such value, from a purely
> historical/anthropological view. It is definitely something to think about.
>
> Unlike previous "progressivist" thought, it is now known that the
> pre-agricultural times, such as the paleolithic, were not "nasty, brutish
> and short". The Upper Paleolithic people were in most ways simply better off
> than their later counterparts, even up to modern times. Jared Diamond,
> author of Guns, Germs and Steel, wrote a now famous article for Discover in
> 1987 calling agriculture "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human
> Race". The hunter-gatherer societies which preceded it were healthier,
> taller, lived longer, had less disease, had more leisure time, had little or
> no famine or starvation, etc, etc. While it may be easy to romanticize this
> to Jean Auel level, it is still true that, basically, they had a better
> quality of life. In fact, in some areas the average height has still not
> returned to "Cro-Magnon" levels, and only in this century have we, through
> modern medicine and technology, been able to regain the levels of health
> found in the Upper Paleolithic (and even now, only in first world countries,
> and even now it is matter of keeping fatter, less healthy people alive
> longer). Sure, the agricultural "revolution" meant we were able to produce
> more food per person, even a surplus, but this turned out to be an ephemeral
> benefit, since societies became dependent upon that farming, herding and
> surplus, and soon they were working MUCH harder just to stay alive.
>
> There are many reasons and inter-related factors in the switch to
> agriculture, but the bottom line is that it was a step down, not a step up,
> in most respects.
>
> But, up until these recent discoveries, everyone has treated human history
> as a series of positive progressions (with a couple of minor set-backs here
> and there). Agriculture and "civilization" (in the form of agriculture and
> urban living) were seen as a slam-dunk on the side of progress. Even as
> early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, we have a celebration of civilization over
> the natural man. No one after Sumer was considering the pre-agricultural,
> hunter/gatherer societies as "the good ol' days".
>
> But, consider the Bible, which seems to see this transformation for what it
> was: a curse. In Genesis, we have Adam and Eve, who did not have to farm or
> herd, and their life was described as a paradise. When they disobeyed, what
> was Adam's punishment? Basically, he would have to farm, and it would be a
> hard, sweaty job. Next we see Cain and Abel, described as a herder and a
> farmer, which can very easily be read as "types" for those categories. Then
> we see Cain heading off and establishing the first mentioned city, another
> result of the agricultural revolution.
>
> If we properly read the early Genesis texts as figurative, non-literal, even
> typological representations of actual historical events, whether general or
> specific, it may be that these texts may have been the only one to see the
> agricultural revolution for what it was. I find it somewhat ironic that both
> Jared Diamond and Christian theology treat the same event in the same way,
> albeit from entirely different angles: it was the Worst Mistake in the
> History of the Human Race.
>
> BTW, here is a link to the text of Diamond's article given in full:
>
> http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html
>
> and, no, this is not an advertisement for those "paleolithic diets" out
> there. :0)

VBM; this *is* interesting, but only if one accepts Diamond's thesis.
That's a BIG if.

.

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