Is the Bible Agrarian or Primitivist? Part I
When I first read The Essential Agrarian Reader I devoured it very quickly with a strong voice in my mind telling me, "This makes sense." I had the same reaction when I read Ellen Davis drawing out the agrarian tones of the Bible in Scripture, Culture and Agriculture. But when I read Ched Myers' entry on "Anarcho-Primitivism in the Bible" from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, my attitude took a decidedly less sanguine turn. And that was because I couldn't simply add Myers to Davis like putting milk in my tea.
Primitivism, in its more radical and systematic forms, holds one of three developments as the beginning of human disconnection from nature and emergence of patterns of dominance: a) the birth of agriculture and the resultant concentration and increase in populations, leading to social divisions, resource hoarding, increased warfare and disease, etc; b) domestication of plants and animals, which opened the conceptual door to "domesticate" nearby human beings; or even c) the rise of symbolic mediation (language) as the dominant form of communication. Most primitivists I have come across tend to stick to a) or perhaps b) - the third option is extreme for most. In all three cases, however, agriculture is indicted as a lamentable mistake, perhaps even unredeemable, and (it seems) automatically oppressive.
But the experience of Israel runs counter to these assumptions. God may lead Israel into the wild land of Sinai to instruct her, as Ched Myers points out, but Israel does not remain a wanderer. She is invited to settle, to build and to plant. And yet she is not called to a vision of hierarchy and dominance. Thus the land is understood as a priceless inheritance, as a space that instantiates God's limits for his creatures, and as a gift that is not to be squandered or taken for granted. Through the giving of manna and the laws about kindness to the stranger, gleaning, and Jubilee restitution of land, Israel is instructed to do what many primitivists say is impossible: practice agriculture in a manner that respects the land, maintains humility, and honors the neighbor as an equal to whom one is responsible. And the textual data of Judges-1 Samuel, alongside the archaeological evidence of early Israel, do point toward a society stubbornly egalitarian and resistant to the pressure of kingship and the hierarchy it generates.
I admit that agriculture has been practiced un-ecologically and made to support oppressive structures of power for much of history. May the primitivists tell us it was not simply "improvement." But the testimony of Israel points to agriculture as a practice of humility and sharing as well. God didn't call his people to be nomads and hunter-gatherers. If "civilization" is one of the powers at work in our world today, then perhaps it, too, may be redeemed.
Labels: Agrariana
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