The Domestication of Origins - Andy Lewis

the catastrophe of God ordained agrarianism

By Andy Lewis

Subsistence agriculture and sheep herding was the way of life for those living in the Mediterranean hill country so it’s hardly a surprise this mixed economy is referenced throughout the Hebrew Bible and to a lesser extent in the New Testament. These themes are inescapable because they were the life way of those who would pass down the stories and histories that would become the Hebrew narrative. While biblical scholar Ted Hiebert sees agrarianism as the original preference and desire being expressed in Genesis, a sort of God ordained farm with Adam the farmhand and domesticated animals to help with crop production. This myopic view is shallow at best and ethically bankrupt at its core. Hiebert’s ,Wendell Berry inspired agritopian reading portrays an ultra domesticated view of God as the one who is moulded by human will to pronounce divine blessing on projects of hierarchy, control and domination. To be clear, agriculture is the ground in which patriarchy, warfare and all subsequent estrangements from egalitarian life ways find their root. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of a God ordained agrarianism is just how easily this aligns with a whole host of agrarian Gods found throughout the Ancient Near East. The stories of these Gods point to agriculture as a divinely inspired project initiated by a hungry authoritarian God who wants to be fed. Within this worldview humans are little more than divinely domesticated farmers and herders, charged with the task of carrying out a program of widespread domestication/ control. Echoes of these agrarian roots of Yahweh have been perpetuated for a long time so it’s disappointing to see this tired old starry eyed agritopian vision trotted out as some sort of ecologically redeeming biblical worldview. Wendell Berry has become so synonymous with the greening of Christianity over the past decade that it barely merits mentioning. And that’s part of the problem. Agriculture is agriculture and the ecological/ social consequences stem from this practice whether it’s Wendell Berry’s small scale version or Monsanto’s 21st century genetic manipulating horror show. I’m not saying Berry’s version is anywhere near as devastating as the monoculture/ agribusiness version but the two are related and the consequences of domestication are embedded in both, the agribusiness version is just further along in the process. Agriculture is not the biblical vision/ preference. Norman Gottwald provides a constructive alternative to the idea of biblically ordained agriculture by way of the implications in his book The Tribes of Yahweh. Gottwald delves into historic, social and economic implications related to ancient Israel’s tribalism. But before we get into the causes and effects of tribalism in Ancient Israel lets look at Tribes in general and balance this social structure against bands, the foundational social structure for the majority of human history. Band Society is marked by groups of 15-40 people moving frequently throughout a bio-region. Social stresses are alleviated easily due to the ease with which people can move from one band to another when tensions arise. Physical confrontations are rare. The nomadic element of this social structure ensures that carrying capacity isn’t exceeded and the land base isn’t forced into production. The lack of sedentary horticultural practices also helps to alleviate the growth of surplus and the growth of specialists( advanced division of labor) which are two of the primary contributors to rigid hierarchical structures and warfare. Egalitarianism is synonymous with band society and nomadic hunting/ gathering. “The Hadza, like many other nomadic people, value movement highly and individuals and

groups move to satisfy the slightest whim. Their possessions are so few and are so easily carried that movement is no problem…. Because the Hadza do not join in groups to assert exclusive rights over portions of land, or other property, because they do not unite to defend either resources or their own persons, because they cooperate very little with each other in their subsistence tasks, there is little to bind individuals to specific other individuals. People do depend on obtaining meat from other people, but they are entitled to a share of meat simply by being in a particular camp at a time when a large animal is killed there and do not have to rely on specific categories of kin or other specific individuals to supply them.” –James Woodburn (Stability and Flexibility in Hadza Residential Groupings)

Tribes allow for militarization, this seems to be the main reason for Israel’s tribalism, their status as oppressed people surrounded by hostile neighbors. Self-preservation, strength in numbers, Tribalism allows for a more complex social structure composed of laws, hierarchy, chiefs, big men etc (the Book of judges is a Biblical example of this), but this is in no way the original preference. It is a concession. This is the point Hiebert and the agrarian agenda misses completely, While Yahweh is interacting with farmers, Yahweh is not ordaining agriculture, domestication or the resulting warfare, patriarchy, and civilized death urge which go along with it. As Gottwald puts it, “In specifically Israelite terms, we must view its tribalism as a form chosen by people who consciously rejected Canaanite centralization of power and deliberately aimed to defend their own uncentralized system against the effort of Canaanite society to crush the budding movement. Israel’s Tribalism was an autonomous project which tried to roll back the Zone of political centralization.” (p. 325, Tribes of Yahweh). Basically what we’re talking about is anarchist resistance to repressive socio-political forces. Tribalism amongst the ancient Israelites seems to be a necessary step to maintain their cohesive vision of hunter- gatherer/ band origins in the midst of oppressive cultural/ domesticating/ civilizing forces. “All the evidence for early Israel points to its tribalism as a self- constructed instrument of resistance and of decentralized self rule…Israel’s tribalism was politically conscious and deliberate social revolution and more loosely, a civil war in that it divided and counter posed peoples who had previously been organized within Canaanite city states.” (Tribes of Yahweh) I submit that the tribalisation of ancient Israel replete with its mixed agrarian-pastoralist economy was spurred on by the deep rooted memory of band society and a lived state of anarchy. I would further conjecture that this is the basic model of Eden and consequently JudeoChristian origins. Evan Eisenberg’s book, Ecology of Eden lends support to this idea via a mix of midrash recollections about the wild origins of Eden. Indeed the Jewish mystics reveal virtually no hint of a god ordained agrarian understanding of Genesis origins myths. David Abrams book The Spell of the Sensuous looks to the Jewish Kabbalist tradition for a deep rooted spiritual understanding of nature. Within these mystical Jewish traditions Eden is most frequently located on a Mountain, the essence of wild untamed creation. Similarly the term Garden seems to be an invocation of God’s place, God’s garden is more appropriately understood as the whole earth, Adam and Eve as the most basic substrata of band society, man and woman, hunter and gatherer. Sabbath and Jubilee disrupt agrarian practices in order to reorient the people to their undomesticated origins. The domesticators war is still being waged against the wild origins of the Judeo-Christian faith. But wildness cannot be killed, it will always rise from the dead.

sections from: The Tribes of Yahweh: “Israel’s enemy was a sociopolitical system to be abolished.” “Israel’s enemies were particular persons in various socioeconomic and political