Hunter-gatherers and biblical theology
Garden of Eden. Johann Wenzel Peter, 19th century
Biblical scholars debate whether there is a coherent theology running through the Bible, or a ‘Judaeo-Christian tradition’. I think there is. It’s an appeal to hunter-gatherer economics in reaction against agricultural empires.
To make sense of it we have to turn upside-down what my generation were taught to think of as ‘progress’.
https://www.clatworthy.org/2024/08/hunter-gatherers-and-biblical-theology/
The progress story
The story went like this. Once upon a time our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. They had to work really hard to get enough to eat. Then, around 12,000 years ago, they learned agriculture: first the digging stick, then the hoe, then the plough. At each stage there was more food so they didn’t have to work so hard. This was the agricultural revolution. Then, much later again, the industrial revolution. Machines. We created more stuff, and life got easier still.
The regress story
Since the 1960s the progress story has been torn to shreds. Anthropologists, historians and archaeologists have produced detailed evidence showing that our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a more healthy lifestyle and a more healthy diet than anybody since. And they didn’t spend so much time having to work.
When the agricultural revolution arrived, there was indeed more food. Kings commandeered it. They used it to employ soldiers and tax collectors. The farmers who actually grew the food were forced to grow more, and pay it in tax. They had to work longer hours to grow the extra food. Their diet deteriorated, because their range of foods was mainly limited to what they grew. Whereas hunter-gatherers lived in small groups and made sure everybody had enough to eat, in the big agricultural empires some people had huge wealth while others went hungry. At each stage in this development, power and wealth became more unequal.
When the industrial revolution came, steam engines produced machines to be kept running 24 hours a day. The electric light bulb meant people could be made to work after sunset. Mobile phones mean your boss can phone you on holiday.
The problem is not the technologies as such but the misuse of power. The overall trend has been increasing inequality. The main exception was at the end of the Second World War when there was an international movement for greater equality. It lasted for about 30 years.
The beneficiaries of these changes are constantly telling us that life must have been dreadful in the old days before we had modern technology. It’s always possible to point out people who had a dreadful time in the past. You and I would hate to live without the internet and flushing toilets, because this is the way we’ve been brought up. But hundreds of years ago people didn’t spend their time saying ‘Roll on the days of flushing toilets and Windows 11’. They did things differently.
This newer story that inequality and poverty have been increasing, has been developing since the 1960s. It is pretty pesssimistic. Everything is getting worse! We are all doomed!
The variation story
So here comes another story again. Recently scholars have been pointing out that there isn’t just one history, from hunter-gatherers to agriculturists and from agriculturists to industrialists. We are not trapped in that sequence. Different societies have gone in different directions at different times. Some hunter-gatherers have become farmers, farmed for a while, and then gone back to hunting and gathering. Some societies have looked at the next society along, decided they don’t like it, and set about organising themselves in a completely different way. The way societies organise themselves isn’t predetermined; they can make their own decisions, just as British society made a decision at our recent general election.
The biblical story
I see the Bible as one example of this decision to do things differently. In the agricultural empires of the ancient near east the ruling classes demanded taxes from the peasants. When peasants couldn’t pay they would get into debt. When they couldn’t repay their debts they either sold themselves into slavery or ran away, found some unused land and used it to feed their families. One range of hill tops collected so many refugees from debt that they formed themselves into a new nation: Israel.
The story Israel told itself was of prophets denouncing exploitative kings for taxing the farmers; laws restricting the power of kings; and histories denouncing kings for disobeying the laws. They add up to most of the Bible. The texts Jesus knew as his scriptures were reactions against the agricultural empires of Egypt, Babylon and Assyria, reactions trying to preserve the earlier system they still remembered – of small communities where everybody had enough and nobody had too much.
The rulers of the agricultural empires claimed that the gods had created humans to work hard and the king’s job was to punish slackers. The first page of the Bible says the opposite: God has created humans for our own sakes, as a blessing. There is a place for work but also a place for rest and a place for celebration.
This biblical tradition was what Jesus revived. He lived at a time of widespread starvation. By appealing to this tradition he could argue that there is enough for everybody, provided nobody takes too much. We could do with his kind of biblical theology today.
Brilliant!
‘We could do with his kind of biblical theology today.’
Definitely! Instead we’re told there’s a massive ‘hole’ in public finances and the only way to close it is to give poor people even less – because that worked SOOO well for the Tories – when the number of billionaires has more than doubled in the last 14 years. Charging the very rich a very small amount of their ‘income’ would fill the hole and then some!
My understanding has been that the rivalry between Cain and Abel has between the hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists.
So this will have been part of the background to that particular story. Thanks.