The Genesis of Desire

 What does it mean to be made in God's Image? God's first act after creating man in Genesis Two is to have Adam look for a companion. To accomplish this, he creates the beasts of the field and birds of the air and has Adam name them. What is the purpose of this exercise? It is an exercise in separation, in discernment. Chapter One of Genesis displayed God as one to separates, one who divides. He separates/divides light from dark, water from land, sun from the moon and stars, etc. The first thing he has Adam do is separate. identify and name the animals as an exercise in separating and dividing (picture one). This exercise helped Adam learn that the animals were not to be the primary object of his desire. His primary desire was to be directed towards the Woman that God will create for him. 

God continues His work of separation, distinction, and discernment even within the Seventh Day of Rest, providing examples for humans to follow by directing Adam's and Eve's attention away from family towards each other (picture two) and away from the Tree of Knowledge and towards the Trees good for Food and The Tree of Life (Picture three).  

What can we deduce from the text? Separations and distinctions are not only good, they are necessary, however, some separations and distinctions are not good. So, how does one know the difference? 

We know it through the Explicit Prohibition of The Tree of Knowledge. The purpose of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is to point to the true object of Man’s Desire. The Tree of Knowledge provides Adam and Eve the opportunity to express continual delight with God in the life He has provided.

They were placed in a garden they did not till, was already producing fruit and was pronounced “very good” by God. By refusing the prohibited fruit, Adam and Eve have the ability to affirm their entire satisfaction with God. God is more than enough. In its clear opposition against the other trees of the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge presents an alternative path to ‘satisfaction’, apart from God’s will as revealed in His expressed command. 

Prohibitions and Boundaries direct desire to its appropriate object. It identifies danger by providing a safe space to protect and take care of oneself or others. It establishes identity by enabling us to differentiate ourselves from one another. It establishes distinctions in degree to reduce tension, acquisitive rivalry and conflict. The absence of healthy boundaries indicates we do not have strong identities or are too enmeshed in the identity of another. The Tree of Knowledge, instead of being something negative, actually functions as powerful, positive object lesson.   Traditional thought is that differences lead to resentment, anger, rivalry and conflict. But it is the lack of boundaries, being in too close a proximity to one another, being too much like one another, that results in people striving to differentiate themselves from one another resulting in conflict (Exodus 20: 13 – 17).

The fourth picture illustrates what a healthy relationship between God, Adam and Eve looks like. God is separated by Distinction and Degree from Adam & Eve. Adam & Eve have a unique and positive (idealized) relationship with God. In other words, they are in a harmonious, fully reciprocal relationship with their community. Due to their relationship, the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil has no influence and creates no desire for Adam and Eve. Their desire is directed towards the specific task of tending and keeping the garden, which is what God does.

The Overarching Theme of the Bible

 What is the central or overarching theme of the Bible? 

The phrase “the scarlet thread of redemption”—was first coined by W. A. Criswell, a renowned Southern Baptist preacher, to express the overarching theme of redemption running through the Bible. He popularized this vivid metaphor in a sermon titled "The Scarlet Thread of Redemption," in which he traced this motif through key biblical narratives—from the skins used to clothe Adam and Eve after the Fall, through Abel’s offering, the ram caught in the thicket, Rahab’s scarlet cord, the Passover lamb, and numerous sacrifices, culminating in the once-for-all atoning work of Christ. 

René Girard adopted the phrase Sacred Violence to summarize his conception of the arc of Scripture. He viewed the Bible as a progressive revelation that exposes and critiques the mechanism of “sacred violence”—humanity’s tendency to create peace and unity by channeling collective aggression onto a scapegoat. Bloodshed is not divinely willed but the product of human rivalry, fear, and the sacrificial system. The Bible unmasks the lie behind sacrifice. While myths hide the victim’s innocence, the Bible increasingly reveals it (e.g., Abel, Joseph, Job, Jesus). For Girard, the sacrifice, including the crucifixion, is not God demanding blood but God revealing and ending the sacrificial system by showing the innocence of the victim and breaking the cycle of mimetic violence.

A substantial and diverse group of scholars, theologians, and political thinkers explicitly read the Bible as a sustained critique of state power and its claims to legitimacy. This view appears across biblical studies, political theology, anthropology, and ethics. It does not rule out the above views, but reflects a different vantage point. These scholars focus on the biblical narrators depiction of the ongoing struggle of the patriarchs to avoid being subjugated by state control, the struggle of the tribal leaders against Moses to retain control over the twelve tribes, the resistance to the constant pull towards nationalism as outlined in I Samuel 8, the support of the critique of the state as found in Jeremiah 35 and laid out in passages such as Isaiah 10, Micah 3 and the book of Amos, exposing the overreach of Ahab in I Kings 21 and their overall message of the prophets attempting to reign in the power of the Kings. 

I would summarize the view of the scholars above as "Domination". I propose the central theme of the Bible to be that of humanities  distorted view of Biblical domination as stated in Genesis1:26 - 28. These verses offer YAHWAH's stated view that the primary purpose for Him creating  humans being is that we might have dominion over His creation. This stewardship over His creation is in stark contrast to that of other worldwide creation myths that state humanities primary purpose is slavery to the Gods. The Bible exposes these "Gods" as in Genesis six as nothing more than humans that have exalted themselves above their fellow human beings. 

The Bible continues this critique through Genesis, culminating in a concrete example of how empires enslave their own in the story of Joseph's rise in Egypt. This story culminates with the slavery of Joseph's own people by the Egyptians', their escape and subsequent power struggle between Moses and the Tribal leaders in the rest of the Pentateuch, the conquest of Canaan in Joshua, the failure of Moses' form of government in Judges, and the people's turn to Kingship in Samuel - the captivity, the power struggles with the "People of the land" upon their return in Nehemiah and Ezra, and their own struggle against dominion through the rest of the Bible to the book of Revelation.  

One thing René Girard does well is illuminate how the Bible exposes the basic mechanism of desire to gain mastery and power over others. Genesis three not only serves as an expose of the transition from foraging  communities to agricultural ones, but also presents a template for how sacred violence works.  We are going to explore Girard's template in the next few posts. The first picture below offers the most basic form of the template using Biblical language. The second picture offers Girard's Template of Acquisitive Desire. The triad of Agape, Faith and Love in the first picture corresponds respectively to Girard's Model, Subject and Object in his basic template. Desire is defined by Girard as what one believes is require to obtain being, identity, uniqueness, individuality, autonomy, possessions, power, etc.. Desire consists of an urge to acquire something which one thinks others have, and upon obtaining it, will bring fulfillment.

Human desire is not autonomous. We do not desire objects directly; rather, we desire them because someone else desires them. This gives desire its triangular structure. Desire can be external or internal. 

External desire occurs when the model is clearly distant, superior, or unreachable—socially, metaphysically, or ontologically. That is, the model is not a direct rival. For this reason imitation does not lead to conflict, desire remains ordered and stable and the object is not contested in practice. External mediation tends to channel desire upward, stabilize hierarchies, reduce rivalry and violence and allow admiration without resentment. In traditional societies, gods, ancestors, saints, or kings often functioned as external mediators, keeping desire from collapsing into conflict. This form of desire is primarily healthy.

Internal desire (Picture three) occurs when the model is close enough to become a competitor—a peer, neighbor, sibling, colleague, or rival. With internal desire, the "model" becomes an obstacle (in other words, the subject wants to rise to the role of the model in order to replace it- see picture). Desire intensifies as rivalry grows. The object becomes secondary to outdoing the model, often to the point of the subjecting forgetting about the original desire altogether. Envy, resentment, and hatred emerge, focused on the model even to the point of wanting to eliminate it. Examples of internal desire are siblings competing for parental approval, colleagues vying for the same promotion, romantic rivalry over the same person, social media–driven comparison and imitation. 

Internal desire leads to: escalating rivalry, mimetic "contagion" (remember the discussion on plagues in the Book of Numbers) leading to violence or scapegoating, and breakdown of differences. Ironically, as rivals imitate one another more closely, they become increasingly alike, even as they believe themselves to be opposites.

The fourth picture illustrates Adam's and Eve's original state in the Garden. They were in a healthy relationship with God. God serves as an external model - He is the source of all life and, in their estimation, is worthy of Adam’s & Eve’s Infatuation and Awe. Their desire was serving God by tending the Garden. God’s Essence and Being is demonstrated in the bountiful provisions He set forth for Adam & Eve and His in his ability to separate and make distinctions, (discernment). All Adam and Eve have to do to participate in this relationship, which is the model for all healthy relationships, is to be fruitful and multiply. 

In the next post we will explore more how this template reveals more about our relationship with God and how to deepen and sustain it. 

Genesis 1 - 11: From Relational to Institutional Authority

 What came first, the Temple or the City? In the Biblical progression, the City's rise corresponded with the rise of the Big Man motif, as represented by Cain. Kingship (The Sons of God) followed close behind, followed by that of large temples and palaces. Nimrod is the prototypical King (Genesis 10:8-12) with Babel being the prototypical Temple-State (Genesis 11:1-4). In this scenario, relational power through individuals and tribal leaders comes first, followed by the institutions of temple and palace. 

Archaeology sheds light on the development of temples and the temple-state, and its historical development corresponds well with certain archaeological periods, expanding our understanding of the early Biblical period summarized in Genesis 4 - 11. 

The first archaeological period is the Late Epipaleolithic → Pre-Pottery Neolithic (c. 12,000–7000 BCE). This period is characterized by Proto-cult centers serving the needs of forging communities like that of Genesis three. Before Mesopotamian temples existed as architectural institutions, the Near East already exhibited ritual aggregation sites (e.g., Göbekli Tepe, Çatalhöyük, Norsuntepe) where mobile or semi-sedentary kin-based groups gathered periodically. While not temples in the later Mesopotamian sense, these sites reveal the primacy of cult before state. Economically, subsistence was still heavily foraging-based, supplemented by early cultivation. Ritual centers offered centralized fixed locations for feasting, collective storage, and seasonal aggregation, providing buffer for these vulnerable communities in unpredictable environments. Ideologically, shared cultic rituals and beliefs stabilized cooperation as these communities grew and extended beyond immediate kin. This period establishes the shared ideology and fixed location of the cult as a mechanism for social integration, surplus pooling, and coordination, not yet characterized by hierarchy or extraction.

The second archaeological period is the  Ubaid Period (c. 6500–3800 BCE) characterized by early temples serving as corporate community institutions. This period marks the appearance of the first true temples in southern Mesopotamia—rectangular tripartite buildings at sites like Eridu. Settlements remained relatively small and socially homogeneous, with limited evidence of sharp class stratification.

Economically temples coordinated irrigation maintenance and seasonal labor. Surplus was stored and redistributed through ration systems. Production remained largely communal and subsistence-oriented. Temples also absorbed individuals who could not fully support themselves: widows without male kin, orphans, the elderly, the lame, blind, or chronically ill, refugees or displaced persons after famine or conflict. These people were not treated primarily as charity cases but as working dependents of the god’s household. The temple did not ask, “Are you economically productive?” but, “Do you belong under the god’s protection?”

Ideologically the temple functioned as a corporate household larger than any lineage. Contributions to the temple were framed as offerings to the gods. Inequality existed, but it was institutional and muted, not yet personalized. Here the temple binds an agrarian–foraging population into a year-round cooperative unit, buffering scarcity and dampening internal rivalry.

The third archaeological period is the Uruk (c. 3800–3100 BCE) where temples serve as engines of urban growth and expansion. This period marks a qualitative transformation: the rise of the world’s first cities, dramatic population growth, craft specialization, and long-distance trade. Southern Mesopotamia lacked timber, stone, and metals, forcing institutional innovation.

Temples no longer merely buffered scarcity; they actively channeled surplus outward. Agricultural overproduction was converted into trade goods, labor was specialized, and distant regions were drawn into asymmetric exchange relationships. Temples coordinated workshops, rationed dependent laborers, and oversaw the flow of goods along riverine and overland routes. Monumental architecture itself testified to this transformation: temples now embodied not only divine presence but institutional power and logistical capacity.

Ideologically, the cult still sanctified these arrangements, but its meaning subtly shifted. Service to the gods increasingly meant participation in an expanding economic system whose benefits were unevenly distributed. The temple’s sacred authority masked the growing distance between administrators and producers, and between core urban centers and peripheral regions. What Gil Stein describes as integration here shades into what Guillermo Algaze identifies as extraction and expansion—a necessary phase in the scaling-up of early urbanism.

The next archaeological period is the Jemdet Nasr / Early Dynastic I–II (c. 3100–2600 BCE). As Uruk institutions solidified, political authority diversified. Palaces emerged alongside temples, and elite households began to accumulate land and dependents. 

Temples remained major landholders and employers while private property and debt relations intensified. 

Free cultivators increasingly risked loss of land through obligations plunging them into debt and eventual servitude. Divine kingship (the Son's of God) developed alongside temple cults, often competing for the same economic resources. Temples remained central but no longer monopolized authority. 

This phase introduces a well-known and recurring structural problem: unchecked accumulation threatens to dissolve the free citizenry into debt servitude. As cities matured into true city-states, private wealth, creditor classes, and hereditary elites began to emerge. Left unchecked, debt accumulation threatened to dissolve the very free peasantry on which temple and palace economies depended. Eventually, this process generated new tensions leading to violence and chaos.

The fifth archaeological period is the Early Dynastic III → Old Akkadian Period (c. 2600–2200 BCE). By this stage, Mesopotamian polities had become full city-states with codified law, standing armies, and formal administration. In the mature Mesopotamian city-state, temples assumed a regulatory and moral-economic role. They were no longer merely organizers of production or engines of expansion, but guardians of social equilibrium. Temples standardized weights and measures, administered land tenure, and acted as major creditors—yet crucially, they also provided the ideological foundation for debt cancellation and social reset. Clean-slate proclamations, framed as restorations of divine order, prevented the concentration of land and labor into the hands of oligarchs.

Here the temple’s ideology functioned not to conceal inequality but to limit its excesses. The gods were imagined not as patrons of accumulation but as guarantors of justice and balance. Kings, ruling in partnership with temple institutions, justified periodic interventions in the economy as acts of piety rather than political expediency. Civilization survived precisely because the temple restrained the logic of debt and private power before it could destroy the social base. This narrative fundamentally unsettles a modern, post-Enlightenment assumption—often taken for granted in social theory—that religion is secondary: a symbolic veil laid over material power relations to legitimate domination already in place. When the Mesopotamian temple is followed historically, from its earliest archaeological expressions through city-state maturity, religion appears not as an after-the-fact justification but as a primary structuring force that creates, organizes, and constrains power itself.

In mature city-states: temples and kings repeatedly cancel debts, restore land to families, free debt-bonded laborers among other things. From a modern market ideology, this behavior appears irrational. Why would elites erase legally contracted obligations? The answer is a religious one: debt crises violate cosmic order, unchecked accumulation offends the gods, and social equilibrium is a divine mandate. From a social perspective, unchecked accumulation leads to uprisings from within and danger from without. Kingdoms could not afford standing armies. They relied on a free citizenry to serve as soldiers. Debt-bondage reduced the number of people capable to field a standing army and made the state vulnerable to attack from outside. 

Here religion does not legitimate power—it interrupts and limits it. Unlike religious institutions today, the temple becomes a counter-oligarchic institution, opposing the emergence of private, hereditary wealth concentrations. Modern secular narratives struggle to account for this, because they assume religion aligns naturally with state objectives. The archaeological record suggests the opposite: historically religion resisted the logic of accumulation.

Returning to Genesis 3

Now I return to dig deeper into Genesis 3. In this exposition I closely follow Natan Levy In The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1–11. Natan Levy reads Genesis 3 just as I do, as a story shaped by collective memory of one of the most consequential transformations in human history: the shift from foraging lifeways to cereal agriculture and the emergence of early agrarian states. His analysis adds nuance and depth that was lacking in my original musings on this subject.  Rather than treating the chapter primarily as an abstract account of moral failure, Levy and I both read the passage within the lived experience of communities who understood the agricultural revolution as a profound rupture that brought new forms of labor, hierarchy, suffering, and dependence.

The story of the tree of knowledge stands at the center of this transformation. I understand the tree to stand for the community's source of their previous mode of life. Trees were the primary food source for a foraging community. Levy extends the analogy of the tree in that the “tree” and its fruit function symbolically as agricultural knowledge itself—especially the cultivation of cereals such as wheat and barley. In ancient Near Eastern contexts, the fruit of many trees had been turned into tools of taxation and control  due to their ability to be mass produced and easily stored and transported long distances. Examples are the grape vine, which can be turned into wine, the fig tree, which can be dried, and the olive tree, which can be turned into oil. Such knowledge was not merely intellectual but practical and technological: to “know” was to master processes that shaped the world. Mass producing, storing and shipping fruit therefore marks humanity’s entry into deliberate seed selection, cultivation, and food control. This knowledge makes humans “like gods,” not in a metaphysical sense, but in their newfound power over reproduction, growth, and subsistence.

The serpent’s role is not simply that of a moral tempter but of a narrative catalyst that introduces transformative knowledge into the human community. Its persuasion reflects how new techniques and ambitions accompany promises of autonomy and power. The serpent’s assurance that the humans will not die, but instead gain godlike capacities, mirrors the historical allure of agriculture: it offered stability, surplus, and control, even as it quietly introduced new vulnerabilities to autonomy and security.

Levy pays close attention to Eve’s agency in this moment. The text emphasizes her perception, evaluation, and action—she sees that the tree is good for food and takes from it. Levy and I both connect this portrayal to anthropological theories that women played a significant role in early plant cultivation. In this reading, Eve becomes a narrative representative of those who experimented with plants, gradually domesticating them, and in doing so reshaping human society. The story preserves a memory of this pivotal role while simultaneously embedding it within a framework of loss and consequence.

The heart of our interpretation lies in the curses that follow. When the ground is cursed and humans are condemned to eat by painful toil, the narrative gives voice to the harsh realities of early agriculture. Farming required sustained, repetitive labor; it exposed humans to crop failure through drought, fires and disease, weeds, soil exhaustion, and seasonal dependence. “Thorns and thistles” are not merely poetic images but reflect the lived struggle of early cultivators contending with unruly fields. In this sense, the curse is etiological: it explains why life became harder and why subsistence now demands relentless work. It also hints at the reason for the rise of the "giants", the "mighty men of old" and the "Sons of God". If the work is more difficult, why continue doing it? It is because one is forced to do so by others. 

The expulsion from Eden crystallizes the social meaning of this transition. Eden was a real city in the hinterland of Mesopotamia, near the headwaters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, where the forests first gave way to farming and the farm land to deserts. But Eden also, at least in historical memory, represents a mythical world of abundance and immediacy that one can return to, analogous to the relative flexibility and autonomy of foraging economies. Being driven out of Eden to till the ground is not only a historical memory, but also a moral lesson - the ground reflects a loss of that autonomy and a forced entry into settled, land-bound existence. This moment resonates strongly with the experience of populations drawn into, or displaced by, early state systems that depended on grain production, taxation, and labor extraction. The story encodes the perspective of those for whom agriculture meant not liberation but slavery. It explains the New Testament's reference to Kingdom's of the world as Satan's domain in Matthew and Luke 4 and other passages. The image of the cherubim with the flaming sword in Genesis 3:24 seems to imply that the way back to Eden is impossible, that the transition from forger to farmer is equivalent to Pandora's Box. 

The pronouncement concerning pain in childbirth and altered relations between man and woman further ties the narrative to demographic and social changes associated with sedentary life. Agriculture supported higher population densities, which intensified reproductive pressures, and restructured gender roles. Genesis 3 registers these changes not as neutral developments but as burdens layered onto human existence as a result of the new subsistence regime.

Taken together, Genesis 3 functions as a critique rather than a celebration of the agricultural revolution. It acknowledges the power and inevitability of cultivation while refusing to mythologize it as pure progress. Instead, the chapter preserves a counter-memory—a story told from the margins of early grain states, one that explains suffering, hierarchy, and toil as the cost of humanity’s turn toward domination of the land. The theological language of curse and expulsion gives moral and cosmic weight to what appears to be, at first glance, a deeply ambivalent transformation.

Neither Levy or I claim that Genesis 3 is a literal account of Neolithic events. Rather, it is a layered narrative in which theology, myth, and historical experience converge. The story reflects how one ancient community made sense of agriculture’s promises and failures, embedding social critique within sacred narrative. In this way, Genesis 3 becomes a key text in our broader argument: that Genesis 1–11 preserves an alternative memory of early civilization—one that questions the human costs of states, surplus, and domination even as it acknowledges their enduring power. It supports the narratives in I Samuel 8, Jeremiah 35 and many of the prophets in seeing Kingship as a step towards the steep slope of a long, downward slide. It is this understanding that also serves to inform my understanding and interpretation of the mission of Jesus and the rest of the writers of the Christian Scripture. Jesus did not advocate nor did he seek kingship, but rejected it at every turn. His teachings and those of his followers were a return to the ancient faith of Israel, which has more in common with the Rechabites than the modern Church, which would have Jesus return to earth in the role of s King.  

Genesis 6 and the Daughter's of Men

 "Now it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, 2 that the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves of all whom they chose. 3 And the LORD said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.” Genesis 6:1-3

"Now Israel remained in Acacia Grove, and the people began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the LORD was aroused against Israel", Numbers 25:1-3

Numbers 25 has the potential to shed light on the "daughters of men" theme in Genesis 6. Verses 1 & 2 of Genesis 6 identifies the specific action of the Sons of God taking daughters for their "wives" that leads to the Lord's response in verse 3 that He will not "strive with man forever". 

Notice in Number 25:1 Israel is committing "harlotry" with Moabite women, but in verse 14 it is a Midianite noblewoman, the daughter of one of the prominent men of median, who is killed. What is going on? Is the Bible confused? Remembering Biblical history, the Moabites were the descendants of Lot (Genesis 19:37). The Midianites were the descendants of Ishmael (Genesis 25:2). It appears that somewhere along the way the Moabites and Midianites created an alliance and are now joined as one tribe. 

In ancient cultures one primary method for creating alliances was through sharing property. One of the major sources of property was women. Numbers 25 is a continuation of the previous chapters where Barak, the King of Moab, hires Balaam to curse the Israelites. Balaam tries several times only to fail. At the end of that story the scene immediately shifts to our current story, where "Israel is joined to the Baal of Peor". In other  words, after Balaam's failure, it appears the Leaders of Moab approached the leaders of Israel and proposed a "peace treaty", which was sealed with the intermarriage of the heads of the clans (vs 14 & 15). This is the only thing that makes logical sense. The reaction of Moses and Aaron when they discover the plan strongly implies they were left out of the conversation.

What does this have to do with Genesis 6? It is a concrete example of how archaic societies used women as pawns to be moved and shared for personal gain. This ties in well with I Samual 8 and with the large harems of David, Soloman and the other kings in the Bible. These societies view women as tokens of power to acquire and/or consolidate property. That is why the first act of Absalom when he drove David out of Jerusalem was to make public display of going into his father's concubines, "And Ahithophel said to Absalom, “Go in to your father’s concubines, whom he has left to keep the house; and all Israel will hear that you are abhorred by your father. Then the hands of all who are with you will be strong.” 22 So they pitched a tent for Absalom on the top of the house, and Absalom went in to his father’s concubines in the sight of all Israel", 2 Samuel 16:21-22. This also the reason for Solomon's strong reaction when his brother Adonijah, who was first in the line of succession for the Kingdom and was passed over for Solomon, asked to marry David's concubine, Abishag the Shunammite (1 Kings 2:13 - 25). Solomon immediately had Adonijah executed. 

One final example is the sordid story that closes out the Book of Judges. The story covers chapters 19 - 21 and begins with the strange story of the death of a concubine of a Levite from Ephriam. His concubine is abused in the town of Gibeah while he is traveling and, in his role as judge, he calls on the rest of Israel to join him in avenging her death. What appears at first glance to be a noble cause of justice turns out to be the near mass extinction of the Tribe of Benjamin males and the mass extinction of all the females. This results in there being no women available for the tribe of Benjamin to rebuild. Therefore, the Israeli tribes agreeing to massacre all the male and female inhabitants of Jabesh Gilead (they were the only region that did not show up to assist in the fight against Benjamin), gathering up all the virgins and "presenting" them to the Tribe of Benjamin, but there are still not enough females for the men. The final act is for the Israelites to give the Benjamite's permission to raid a festival at Shiloh and kidnap the women they need from there. Oddly, this time the Israelites tell Benjamin they will protect them from retaliation by the men from Shiloh. 

Notice how this story begins with avenging the unsanctioned abuse and death of one woman and ends with the community sanctioned near extinction of the Tribe of Benjamin (21,100 men) and the abuse and abduction of over 1,000 women. This is one of the clearest examples of sacrificial violence without the support of myth (i.e. using the Divine) to disguise it. It is also another classic example of how violence can so easily be compared to a plague, fire or flood. This is why many scholars have come to the belief that one of the purposes of the Bible is exposing how myth is created.   

This story closes out the Book of Judges and the selection appears to be a deliberate attempt to portray the Moses experiment as an abject failure. I Samuel opens with the sons of Samuel committing debauchery with the women of Israel as well as enriching themselves at Israel's expense, providing additional commentary on the classic "Big Man" motif. I Samuel 8 is the turning point where Israel turns from the Moses experiment to that of desiring a king like the other nations.  

More on the "Mighty Men" of Genesis 6

 This post provides more examples from the career of Moses on how the "Big Man" or "Mighty Man" concept leads to violence,  specifically from the Book of Numbers. The Book of Numbers details how Moses strengthened and consolidated his power over that of the Tribal leaders. It is also an excellent example of how "myth" is generated in the community to obscure the violence exercised by the victors in the suppression of others. In every case, the plague is attributed to a divine act of the Lord. This is to done to deflect the blame away from Moses and the Levites and lay the bulk of the blame at the feet of the "people" as an act of defiance against God.

A very close reading of the any part of Moses' story after his return from exile shows the main antagonists, after Pharoah, to be the Tribal leaders or Elders of Israel. They struggle to maintain their position as the primary decision makers in the larger community and challenge Moses as he enlarges and consolidates his authority. Exodus seems to downplay the challenges against Moses, casting them as mere grumblings against Moses by the people in general, but things change in the book of Numbers. This may partly be due to Moses having elevated the Levites, the tribe he is from, to a special status. In chapter 2 they are not numbered with the other "armies" of Israel.  In chapters 3-4 the Levites are given a special dispensation, specific duties relating to the service and upkeep of the Temple. They are to serve at the behest of the High Priest, belonging specifically and particularly to YAHWEH. In later chapters we see them rallying around Moses and Aaron every time there is a threat, acting like a special honor guard dedicated to protecting the High Priest and Moses. In Numbers 25:5 the Levites are specifically designated as "Judges" with the power to take life of their fellow Israelite. And we learn that when the Israelites eventually enter the land, the High Priest essentially serves as the acting "King", with a Tent serving as a temple that can be taken up and moved to a new location at a moment's notice. The Levites are to be given land in every tribe, dispersed throughout country, acting as the eyes and ears and Judges of the High Priest. This is a classic form of diffused/centralized power. 

The number one accusation against Moses was that of overstepping the bounds of his authority. In each accusation the authority of Moses is challenged over and over again in a variety of different ways, each time ending in a "plague". Also, as the challenges intensify, we see the violence escalate. Violence is first directed against one person, then ten, then 250, finally culminating with the death of 24,000. 

The first accusation of comes, of all places, directly from his own brother and sister (“Has the LORD indeed spoken only through Moses? Has He not spoken through us also?” Numbers 12:2).  The occasion for this particular accusation is Moses marrying outside the Tribes of Israel. The result is odd. Miriam, but not Aaron, was smote with a plague. This resulted in Miriam being sequestered outside the tribes, sight unseen, for a period of seven days.

The next challenge to Moses' authority happens right on the heels of the first, the whole story being covered in two chapters (13 and 14). Moses sends twelve spies to canvas the land of Canaan and bring back a report. On tier return, they report of a land full of abundant resources, but populated by "giants". Caleb and Joshua want to immediately go and conquer it, but the other ten men counsel against it, claiming winning is impossible. When Joshua and Caleb press the matter, "all the congregation said to stone them with stones", (Numbers 14:10). Notice what is occurring. "The People" most likely refers to the tribal leaders. They are used to meeting, discussing and then voting on how to proceed. What we are seeing is the case being made for majority rule. The tribal elders are not used to minority rule. At this point, "the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of meeting" stopping the people, the LORD threatening to wipe out the whole congregation and start over, but Moses intercedes, resulting in only the ten spies, the majority, being struck by a "plague". 

The third challenge is that of Korah, Dathan, Abiram, and On with 250 others, claiming that everyone is holy and Moses and Aaron take on too much authority for just two men. This would be a typical complaint from a people used to governing by council and not by autocratic rule. This is similar to the complaint of Miriam and Aaron as well as the complaint of "the people" in the case of the spies. What Moses does is delays the challenge to the next day. One thing he does is requires the 250 elders to bring their censers with them filled with incense.  When they gather the next day, Moses has the bulk of the congregation step away, leaving him, Aaron and the opposition in a thick cloud of incense smoke. According to the passage, "the ground split apart under them, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up". Then "a fire came out from the LORD and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense", (Numbers 16:35). Of course, all this took place under the thick cloud of incense. 

The last challenge against the authority of Moses is in Numbers 25, by the "princes of Israel", and it is here that the source of the "plague" is the most obvious. "So Moses said to the judges of Israel, “Every one of you kill his men who were joined to Baal of Peor.” And indeed, one of the children of Israel came and presented to his brethren a Midianite woman in the sight of Moses and in the sight of all the congregation of the children of Israel, who were weeping at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. Now when Phinehas the son of Eleazar, the son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose from among the congregation and took a javelin in his hand; and he went after the man of Israel into the tent and thrust both of them through, the man of Israel, and the woman through her body. So the plague was stopped among the children of Israel. And those who died in the plague were twenty-four thousand." (Numbers 25:5-9). 

The source of the plague in each instance, although attributed to God, if one looks "behind the veil" so to speak, one can detect the hand of man .  The last plague provides us with the interpretive key. The passage is explicit - Moses is said to specifically command the judges of Israel (i.e. the Levites) to take up arms and kill their Israeli brethren. This is the plague. There is no other way around it.  The source of the plague was Moses' order to kill the Israelites that were taking Moabite women. The plague stopped when Phinehas killed the last offender. The source of the plague is contributed to God, although it was Moses and the Tribe of Levi (as the Lord's army) that carried out the act.  It was this last act of defiance by the leaders of the various clans that resulted in their power being broken and Moses's power being absolute. But it is also this episode that we see the Bible pulling back the veil of myth exposing the source of violence. Between Numbers 12 and 25, God's plagues in each incidence can be traced back to the hand of man. It is only as we move forward, paying close attention in each separate incident, do the writers of the Bible slowly expose the hand of man in bringing on the plague. This is how the Bible demythologizes itself and the world, exposing how violence works. 

Let's probe a little deeper to see what can be observed in the previous passage? First, why does Moses ask for a break in the action? If God is God, why does Moses have to wait until the next day? And why ask for the 250 elders to bring their censers full of lit incense? Attempting to pierce the veil, the way I read this passage, Moses needs time to set the stage. He has to have time for the Levites to dig a pit. He required the 250 men to bring their censors provided a "smoke screen" to hide the pit from them and the masses. This pit provides a mass grave into which the leaders of the clan were thrust and most likely stoned. The "fire " consuming the 250 elders most likely comes from the swords of the Levites, culminating in the burning of the bodies, a typical warning in archaic societies (cp the end of Achan and his family in Joshua). 

The plague consuming the ten spies is relatively simple. Moses and Aaron were successful in turning the majority of the congregation against the ten spies, and the stones that were originally intended for Caleb and Joshua were turned against them. Miriam's plague is the easiest to explain of them all. Who would have been in a position to see Miriam once she had been physically isolated for seven days to know whether or not she was actually afflicted with leprosy? Moses and Aaron could tell the rest of the nation anything they wanted and they could not have been challenged.

The major point in all these stores is they involve a "plague" of some sort. What is a plague? In ancient literature, "plague", "fire" and "flood" is the holy trinity of apocalyptic language. Anytime one sees the word "plague", "fire" and "flood" in the Bible, one need to ask  if one is looking at the beginning of sacred violence, an attempt to hide or obscure violence perpetrated by the group writing the document. This is the same concept as "skandalon" in the New Testament. "Skandalon" is interpreted as "stumbling block", "offence" and "scandal" by various translations. 

A scandal moves through a community much like a plague, fire or flood. They begin quietly, almost invisibly, but slowly or quickly spreads to a point where it is entirely out of control. In a scandal, a rumor, a revelation, or an accusation surfaces at the margins. At first, it is uncertain, even deniable. But soon it spreads. Just as bodies carry disease from house to house, words and reactions pass from person to person. Conversation becomes charged. Attention narrows. What was once distant suddenly feels close and threatening. As the contagion grows, normal life is disrupted. In a plague, routines collapse—markets empty, rituals stop, authority falters. In a scandal, trust erodes. Institutions wobble, reputations fracture, and the legitimacy of leaders is questioned. People begin to sense that something foundational has been violated, that the social body itself is sick. Fear follows quickly, and with fear comes the demand for explanation. 

A plague is rarely endured as a meaningless event; people insist on knowing why it has happened and who or what caused it. So too with scandal. The community searches for a face to attach to its anxiety, a person or group who can bear responsibility for the disorder now felt everywhere. Complexity becomes intolerable. The cause must be singular, visible, and punishable. At this point, moral judgment intensifies. Plagues have historically been interpreted as signs of divine anger or moral corruption. Scandals function the same way. They are not treated merely as failures or mistakes but as revelations of hidden rot. The language becomes absolute: purity and contamination, innocence and guilt, inside and outside. The crisis presses toward resolution, and resolution requires removal. 

In a plague, the infected are isolated, expelled, or buried. In a scandal, the accused are shamed, dismissed, exiled from public life, or symbolically destroyed. Once the supposed source is eliminated, calm returns. The community exhales. Order appears restored, and the violence of the process is quickly forgotten or justified as necessary. Yet what both plague and scandal ultimately reveal is not only a culprit but the deep vulnerabilities of the society itself. A plague exposes fears of bodily fragility and death. A scandal exposes fears of illegitimacy, rivalry, and the collapse of shared meaning. Each shows how quickly a community can turn inward, how easily anxiety becomes accusation, and how readily peace is purchased through exclusion and violence.

In this way, a scandal is a social disease. It does not merely infect individuals; it infects relationships. Like a plague, flood or fire, it spreads by contact, thrives on fear, demands a sacrifice, and leaves behind the unsettling knowledge that the sickness did not come only from outside, but arose from the very structure of communal life itself.

That is what we have in Numbers, and that is how Numbers can serve as a commentary on the spread of violence in Genesis 6.

Genesis 1 - 11: What About the Giants?

 Let me attempt to paint a picture to provide some perspective. 

Chapter three of Genesis provides a narrative summarizing the shift from a forging society to an agricultural society. Historically archaeologists and anthropologists tell us this initial shift took place somewhere between 10,500 BC - 3,000 BC, accelerating between 3,000 BC - 400 AD (with some hiccups along the way) and continued with a few more hiccups up to the present day.

To put it another way, Chapter 3 of Genesis covers roughly 5,000 years of history, whereas chapters 4, 5 and 6 cover another 2,000 years of history, from 4,000 BC to Abraham in roughly 2,000 BC. As a story teller, what would be the best format to use? The Writers of Genesis used what I would call a "once upon a time" motif, similar to the format used by Rousseau, Hobbes and other story tellers wanting to discuss origins.  Or, as I have mentioned before, they rely on the concept of "mythic time." We have to remember that myth serves to both preserve the memory of real events while simultaneously disguising it. It is also a useful tool for presenting large amounts of information in densely packed containers - that is, myth serves as a sort of shorthand.  How does one preserve 7,000 years of history and share its most important lessons with those that need to learn from it?

The writers of Genesis, being Israelites, were not only familiar with the history of Mesopotamia, but also of Egypt, having descended from Abraham of Ur, and descendants of people who spent 400 years in Egypt. Their whole historical memory was colored not only by these two major events, but also having spent the remainder of their history in the land between both of the first major historical city-states. Thus, they have a firsthand perspective of living inside and being subject to major city-states as well as living outside them. They would also be exposed to the myths and stories of how the first city-states came to be formed. As in any origin story, there are two sides: the official version as told from the winners (i.e. the elites or aristocracy) and that as told by the underdogs, those that serve the elite or escaped their clutches. What is interesting is most of the Bible appears to be written from the perspective of the underdogs.  

We are going to begin our analysis with Genesis 6 and the identity of "The Sons of God". Who are these "Sons of God"? The majority of modern day commentaries claim they are "fallen angels" who have come down to earth to mate with women. Another line of interpretation identifies them with the "godly" line of Seth, and the "daughters of men" being the godly line of Cain. These interpretations are so common I do not wish to spend time discussing the pros or cons of these positions. 

As I said, I take the historicity of the Bible very seriously. Therefore, I insist that these Biblical references should have some basis in historical fact. Is there some historical basis for believing that the term "Sons of God" refers to something different than that posed above? In fact, I think there is. In both Mesopotamia and Egypt (as well as other areas of the Ancient Near East (ANE), kings and noble warries used divine titles ("son of god", "begotten by god", "god and king") to refer to themselves and their ascension to the throne (cp Psalm 2). These men saw themselves as distinct or separate from the common people ("Sons of god" vs the common man - similar to the way ancient peoples saw themselves as distinct and separate from "others", i.e. Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and Barbarians, Romans and Barbarians, etc). Thus, the "daughters of men" would refer to the rulers taking "whomever they choose" to fill their royal harems, for forced marriages and the seizure of commoners daughter's as concubines as Samual warned the Israelites in I Samuel 8. This is also illustrated in the life of the patriarchs when Pharoah takes Sarah from Abraham and Abimelech takes Rebekah from Isaac and in the large Harems of David and Soloman. 

What about the "giants" and "mighty men of old"? Anthropologists have coined the phrase "Big Man" to refer to a type of achieved leadership where individuals gain influence not through inheritance or formal office but through personal skills, persuasion, and wealth redistribution. It describe leaders who build reputations and followings by organizing collective activities, orchestrating exchange events (such as wealth distributions), and mobilizing support through personal networks. Their power is personal and situational, that is it is dependent on sustaining alliances rather than on institutional roles. It can also refer to those men whose power is derived from military prowess.  I posit that the terms "giants" and "mighty men of old" refer to such types of leadership. This type of leadership is a precursor to that of a king. I believe it to be significant that the term for King in Mesopotamia is LUGAL, that is "Big Man".  

How is the Big Man concept a precursor to that of kingship? Big Man systems are associated with swidden gardening (slash & burn), root or tree crops  and small scall husbandry (goats, pigs). It is not associated with intensive agriculture. These systems have three crucial features. First,  surplus is possible but not probable, second, surplus is unstable and labor-intensive, and, third, surplus cannot easily be centralized or stored long-term. The result is wealth can be circulated but not hoarded. These conditions make it close to impossible for the creation of a City-State, but it does create conditions leading up to it. These type of societies have no permanently fixed offices or hereditary control because land is often held through kin groups, production is dispersed among households and there is no permanent tax or tribute mechanism. This makes it difficult for leadership to be inherited or formalized.

The agricultural revolution, however, changed the dynamic. It provided the opportunity for those people who formally functioned as Big Men to shift the power dynamic. Chiefs and Kings were able to rule where agriculture could provide a predictable, transportable, less perishable, taxable produce. Where grains were grown in fixed fields, were easily detectable (not underground), matured at the same time (making them easy to track), were hardy enough to be stored for long periods of time, and were small enough to transport long distances and to use as a form of currency made them ideal for City-State formation. The Ag Revolution saw the rise of hereditary elites, centralized distribution and thus a centralized bureaucracy, formalized political offices, and the rise of the military state. Whereas the original Big Man society was largely relational and not coercive, the subsequent city-state formed around the concept of the Divine King become more and more coercive. This coercive nature of kingship is the rationale behind Samuel's warning in I Samuel 8 when the Israelites were demanding a king.

But even the "Big Man" role can be coercive. This is no more evident than in the episode of David and Nabal in I Samuel 25. As the story goes, David, without Nabal's knowledge or consent, provided "protection" for Nabal's shepherds and other help. Eventually, in exchange for his running a protection racket, David felt he could "ask" Nabal for food for his troops. When Nabal balked, pointing out that he had neither asked for nor wanted David's protection, David's first response was to take his troops and demand it at the point of a sword. Violence was only averted after Abigail intervened. It is this type of violence that is hinted at in Genesia 6. Notice that at the end of the story, Nabal winds up dead (natural causes or hidden violence?) and David takes Abigail as his wife. It was acts and stories like these that elevated David's stature in the eyes of the common people and led to their demand for him to be King. This eventually led to the point where, at Solomon's death, the people were crying for relief from state corvee and taxation. Rehoboam's answer was to tell them they had it easy, which led to the split of the two Kingdoms and the subsequent violence. Thus the whole history of the rise of the Israeli Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon acts as a commentary on the transition of the "Mighty Men" to "Giants" to Sons of God" to the City States in Genesis 10.  

Genesis 1 - 11: The Origin Story

 From my previous post, I hope one of the takeaways is this: I take the historicity of the Genesis story very seriously. I do believe the first chapters of Genesis present history, but it is not history in the way most people read it today. It is history written by very learned men with a very specific agenda. It is also my belief that this agenda sets the stage for the rest of the Bible. This is something I will elaborate later in this series, but suffice it to say that I believe the rest of the Bible, including the Christian Scriptures, are a commentary on the first 11 chapters of Genesis. I think this will come apparent as I proceed with the posts. 

Let's begin by reflecting on the typical origin story. Origin stories always start with at least one fully formed, fully articulate adult Homo Sapien. Humans are almost always formed or created by a god or the gods for their benefit and service. This is true whether the origin stories are from Mesopotamia (Atrahasis – humans made to do manual labor for gods), Babylon (Enuma Elish – humans made from Kingu’s blood to relieve the gods from toil), Aztec cosmology (humans created to feed gods with blood and keep the universe running), Maya (Popol Vuh – humans created so someone exists to worship the gods correctly), Hindu (human's created to perform yajna [sacrifice] which nourishes the gods and maintains cosmic order), Egyptian (Humans molded by Khnum from clay and are expected to care for the gods’ temples, perform rituals, and maintain ma’at [cosmic order] for the gods). Israel (Humans are created to tend and keep the Garden of Eden). Humans are not, then they are. And when they do burst on the scene, they are immediately put to work at relieving the gods of their labor, or providing them with sacrifices (food and nourishment) and infrastructure (temples, palaces, irrigation ditches, canals, etc).  More on this topic in a later post. 

Modern origin stories (which also usually begin with fully formed, articulate humans) are often framed by two contrasting views, typified by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. Rousseau argued that humans began as hunter-gatherers living innocently and egalitarianly, and that the agricultural revolution and subsequent civilization born from it brought both cultural advances and most social evils (unsurprisingly, this is rather close to the biblical view, as we shall see below). Hobbes held that the original State of Nature was in no sense innocent; instead it was violent and miserable - a "dog eat dog world". Hobbes' contention is progress came precisely through the rise of states, laws, courts and bureaucratic institutions (police and armies) that impose order. 

Whichever origin story one begins with, the classical and still normative narrative, which was originally created and codified thousands of years ago by the first great agrarian kingdoms wishing to distinguish themselves as much as possible from the tribes from which they came, portrays the development of the agricultural revolution (i.e. the development of a single crop or several crops that could be easily transported as well as easily taxed by a city-state) as a moral and social advance over a primitive, uncultured, barbaric hunter-gatherer people resistant to change. These societies frame farming as the foundation of a settled, cultured life of religion, law, and government, exemplified by the city-state. Agriculture replaced the savage, wild, primitive, lawless and violent world of hunter-gatherers and nomads. This worldview was reinforced by myths in which gods granted sacred crops to chosen peoples, legitimizing agriculture’s superiority and the authority of agrarian states. The logical direction of history is thus seen as a progression from the nomadic gather-hunter to that of pastoralist, the farmer and, finally, at the top of the pinnacle, the City dweller, being undergirded and supported by the state.   

This view rests on the assumption that sedentary life is safer than, superior to and more attractive than mobile forms of subsistence living and that no one who had experienced the sedentary life under state control and protection would want to return to their previous mode of existence. Ironically, at the same time this narrative is promoted by kingdoms, their laws and religious texts are filled with laws and invectives that impose harsh sanctions on people that want to return to the "wastelands", hinting to a desire of many people to return to the previous life they knew. The reality is the boundaries between state, city, farm, pasture, and hunter-gatherer is more porous than the state wants to admit. In fact, historically cities and states, until the advances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in reducing disease, famines, and poor living and working conditions, had great difficulty attracting and retaining people and often resorted to slavery as a means for supplying people to their domains.

The third and fourth chapters of Genesis strongly hint that the sages who wrote the passages extoling the virtue of obtaining one's primary subsistence from trees and the double curse against the ground (one for Adam and one for Cain) would, at first glance, have sided with Rousseau and the modern anthropologists and archaeologists on the downsides of the agricultural revolution and the civilization that sprung from it. Chapters 2 and 3 depict humans in their innocent state, gathering nuts, fruits and berries from a variety of trees as in James Frazer's The Bough. The latter part of Chapter 3 and the first part of chapter 4 (the cursing of the ground) depicts the shift from a simple gathering community to one focused on agricultural specialization (food resources from a small number of sources) and its subsequent negative effects (anthropologists tell us one effect of the shift to grain as a primary food source, besides the difficulty described in the texts, is more frequent births but a higher infant mortality rate, hence Eve's curse). Chapter 4 introduces us to the typical nomadic/pastoralist represented by Abel, and the typical sedentary farmer turned city-dweller represented by Cain, and the first act of physical violence (committed by the farmer) followed by the threat of mass retribution, “Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold” (Genesis 4:15). That is, if one person kills Cain, six additional innocent people will be sacrificed in addition to the original person who committed the act. Remember this is GOD talking! No wonder Lamach had no problem increasing the number of people for hurting him to 77, violence seemed sanctioned by GOD himself. From the point of view of Genesis 3 and 4, civilization does not look too inviting! And from here to the end of chapter 11 it only gets worse!

So, the Bible itself hints that the shift from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle to that of an agricultural lifestyle contributed to violence, but how? The traditional, classic narrative extols the virtues of the agricultural revolution. Farming produced year-round settlement, a predictable, storable surplus, increased population and, thus, labor availability, infrastructure such as houses, roads, irrigation, storage facilities, craft specialization (potters, metalworkers, builders, administrators, priests, scholars, etc), writing, mathematics, record keeping, trade networks, economic complexity, and political, religious and military institutions. Some of these benefits are even listed in Genesis 4 (music, advances in agriculture, the arts) and fleshed out in the story of Joseph's tenure in Egypt at the end of Genesis (by the way, what most people miss about the Joseph story is this - it is the negative impact of Joseph's administrative program on the Egyptians that leads the Egyptians to turn on the Israelites in Exodus 1; this, in turn, leads to reforms in the Mosaic Covenant such as a decentralized Priesthood and no permanent debt-bondage in the form of the Jubilee, i.e. "Year of Release" or "Year of the Lord's Favor", overturning  the two main aspects of Joseph's program which lead to the Egyptian bondage in Genesis).

Before answering the question at the beginning of the previous paragraph, lets bear in mind that Israel always had a large nomadic/pastoral population. After the death of Solomon, when Rehoboam was confronted by the people of Israel to lighten the tax load and corvee labor of his father, 1 Kings 12:16 states, "So Israel departed to their tents", suggesting most people in Israel at that time did not have permanent residences, most likely still relying heavily on a simi-nomadic, pastoral lifestyle. In the 35th chapter of the Book of Jeremiah, the Rechabites were held up as an example of a clan that deliberately chose a nomadic lifestyle, "Then I set before the sons of the house of the Rechabites bowls full of wine, and cups; and I said to them, “Drink wine.” But they said, “We will drink no wine, for Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, commanded us, saying, ‘You shall drink no wine, you nor your sons, forever. You shall not build a house, sow seed, plant a vineyard, nor have any of these; but all your days you shall dwell in tents, that you may live many days in the land where you are sojourners.’ Thus we have obeyed the voice of Jonadab the son of Rechab, our father, in all that he charged us, to drink no wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons, or our daughters, nor to build ourselves houses to dwell in; nor do we have vineyard, field, or seed. But we have dwelt in tents, and have obeyed and done according to all that Jonadab our father commanded us" (Jeremiah 35:5-10). This is a backhanded critique of the settled, agricultural lifestyle the Judeans had eventually chosen which led to their eventual downfall and deportation to Babylon. This critique is similar to that made of the northern Kingdom by the prophets that railed against her (Amos, Hosea, etc). 

So, once again we ask, what does the Bible have against the agricultural lifestyle and how does it contribute to violence? We will explore this further in our next post.

Genesis 1 - 11: Introduction

 Human use of fire was a unique, species-defining tool that allowed people to reshape entire landscapes long before agriculture. Across regions such as the Amazon, Australia, North and South America, controlled burning opened forests, encouraged the propagation of desired plants and animals, and concentrated food resources closer to human relying exclusively on gathering, foraging, fishing and hunting across a variety of ecological settings. When Indigenous burning practices in North and South America abruptly ended after European-introduced epidemics, forests rapidly regrew, creating the false impression of a pristine wilderness. Some climatologists even argue that this abrupt halt in burning practices across two continents and the resultant reforestation reduced atmospheric CO₂ enough to help trigger the Little Ice Age. Interestingly, fire, as landscape architecture, does not appear in the historical accounts, most likely because it was spread over thousands of years and the recorders of historical memory, living in the newly cultured world of cities, would have considered the landscapers to be "uncultured" and "primitive" and their practices not worthy of mention. 

This long-term, fire-driven landscape engineering was a systematic form of resource intensification: humans, over tens of thousands of years, deliberately created calorie-rich but agriculturally diverse productive mosaics that catered to their preferred nomadic lifestyle rather than accepting the "current disposition of the natural world" as given. From the point of view of a single clan anywhere along that historical continuum, as they foraged from forest to river to wetland to the ocean and back to the forest, it would have appeared that everywhere they went was a paradise prepared for them by the gods. The techniques and practices that maintained and extended those productive regions in which they lived and moved would have been so ancient and "baked-in" to the fabric of their rituals and taboos they would have been attributed to their gods. Any new practices and techniques shared or borrowed from other clans and cultures would, as the mists of time veiled the details, also be attributed to new gods or demi-gods.

In his massive work, The Golden Bough, James Frazer begins the section on Tree Worship with these word, "In the religious history of the Aryan race in Europe the worship of trees has played an important part. Nothing could be more natural. For at the dawn of history Europe was covered with immense primeval forests, in which the scattered clearings must have appeared like islets in an ocean of green. Down to the first century before our era the Hercynian forest stretched eastward from the Rhine for a distance at once vast and unknown; Germans whom Caesar questioned had travelled for two months through it without reaching the end…The excavation of prehistoric pile-villages in the valley of the Po has shown that long before the rise and probably the foundation of Rome the north of Italy was covered with dense forests of elms, chestnuts, and especially of Oaks" (Chapter One, Section 4). He continues citing from ancient works the dense forests of Greece, Germany, Prussia, Lithuania, and so on. His main point is this -trees became the center of worship due to their being a primary source of food. 

Anthropologists, archaeologists, and other specialists point out that as forests were converted into farmland, and farmland expanded from the initial centers of the agricultural revolution, over time these original farmlands turned into deserts, forcing the farmers to pick up and move to new locations. This is no more evident than at the Mesopotamian hinterlands that were once dense forests and were the earliest centers of the agricultural revolution. Archeology has traced the slow ecological changes and population migration from the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates river basin to the lower delta from the 10th millennium BC through the 3rd millennium, BC. Although considered sedentary, farmers focusing on a narrow selection of crops (and the cities and states that resulted from them) had to keep on the move due to soil erosion, nutrient depletion, and salinization - concentration of others salts in the soil. Dependence upon monocrops made societies fragile and prone to collapse from drought, pests, disease (as a result of increased population density) or climate shifts.  Mesopotamia is not the only civilization to have experienced this phenomenon. Illustrations of this phenomenon exist worldwide. Densley populated agricultural societies were paradoxically more vulnerable to large-scale famine and disease than their smaller, more mobile hunter-gatherer cousins. Major crop failures could devastate dense populations, whereas foragers, relying on a much wider variety of food resources spread out over a much wider area were less prone to crop failures, could more rapidly shift food sources and could scatter more quickly at the hint of a plague.

Interestingly, we have only come to learn much of this ourselves in the last few decades. However, as we do, it begins to shed more light on the "myths" that we have been exposed to. Many contemporary specialists—across anthropology, classics, ancient history, religious studies, and archaeology—explicitly treat myth as a form of history, though not in the modern sense of objective chronicle. Instead, myth is understood as a culturally encoded memory of real events, social transformations, and power struggles, reshaped by symbolism, ritual, and ideology. Most specialists agree on the following three points: First, Myths are not fabricated ex nihilo. They arise from real experiences—ecological disasters, migrations, wars, political upheavals, or ritual violence. Second, Myths preserve meaning, not chronology. What is remembered is why something mattered, not when or how exactly it occurred. Third, Myths legitimate social order. They explain why the world must be the way it is—often by sacralizing violence, hierarchy, or divine authority. Thus myth is best described as: Memory transformed by ritual and ideology. 

Another aspect of myth is the concept that history is written by the victors. Most myths encode real struggles over power, often involving class conflict, conquest, or domination. Myth is told from the perspective of winners. When reading a myth, one has to identify who benefits from the myth. Myth often preserves events that shaped a community's identity through ritual. Think of the instructions in the later chapters of Exodus on how the Israelites were to "remember" the story of the Exodus by reciting key elements of the story at an annual festival. It preserves real founding events but transposes them into "mythic time" that transcends actual time. Thus, reenactment of a myth renews the story for each subsequent generation. It also serves the purpose of hiding historical violence - real acts of collective killing behind a thin veil of justification or "legal fiction" (scapegoating). 

 WHY THE EUNUCH?

“…𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯’𝘴 𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦. 𝘏𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘪𝘵, 𝘭𝘦𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘱𝘵 𝘪𝘵”. Matthew 19:12

In the ancient world, a eunuch was usually a man who had been castrated (sometimes forcibly) so he could serve in a royal court, harem, or temple without being seen as a sexual threat. Over time, “eunuch” could also be used more broadly for men who were celibate, infertile, or did not fit standard masculine roles. In my last post I used the eunuch as an example of how the position of the eunuch in Israel changed over time. It culminated with Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, one of the earliest non-jewish converts, symbolizing inclusion at the margins. Why is the role or position of the eunuch such a loaded topic in Jesus’ day?

Let’s step back a bit. In early Mesopotamian city-states, classification was not abstract—it was the very basis of civilization. The scribes of Uruk and Babylon invented cuneiform lists long before they wrote stories: lists of animals, plants, gods, metals, professions. These lists were attempts to sort and stabilize the messy abundance of life. As Seth Richardson emphasizes, this was “𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿” at work: the ability of institutions to order bodies, land, and resources by making them visible, enumerable, and thus governable. To call someone a “dependent,” a “priest,” a “slave” or a “eunuch” was to inscribe them into a slot within or outside of the cosmic and political order.

This wasn’t just practical bookkeeping. In Mesopotamian myth, as in the Hebrew Bible, the cosmos itself was conceived as an act of classification—Marduk slays Tiamat and divides the chaotic waters, giving names, functions, and places to gods and things. Yahweh does the same thing to the earth that was “without form and void”. Creation is sorting. Disorder, in turn, was always a breakdown of boundaries—floods that blurred land and water, or enemies that blurred the line between civilization and wilderness.

The anthropologist Mary Douglas helps us see that these early taxonomies were not neutral. Her insight that “𝗱𝗶𝗿𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲”reveals that ancient purity systems were less about hygiene and more about protecting symbolic order. A pig was unclean in Israel not because it was dirty but because it straddled categories (it had cloven hooves but did not chew cud). Likewise, eunuchs troubled Levitical law because they stood in a liminal place. The eunuch, then, was a walking reminder of ambiguity, a body that could not be placed in the tidy binaries of male/female, fertile/infertile, inside/outside. To blur or resist classification was to stand outside the dominant structures of power, purity, and visibility.

Jesus’ recognition that some are “born eunuchs” (Matt 19:12) is a recognition of the natural diversity in human embodiment and gender/sexual expression. Some theologians see this as an opening for understanding intersex and transgender experiences. Eunuchs were 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿-𝗻𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗶𝗴𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆, and the way Scripture treats them—especially moving from exclusion to embrace—provides a powerful precedent for how faith communities might think about inclusion of transgender people today. “𝗛𝗲 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗶𝘀 𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗶𝘁, 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝗺 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁 𝗶𝘁”.

 

 

 

 𝗝𝗘𝗦𝗨𝗦 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗖𝗘𝗣𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗚𝗢𝗗 𝗜𝗜

The progression of the eunuch’s status in relation to worship across 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝟮𝟭, 𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗮𝗵 𝟱𝟲, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘄 𝟭𝟵 is an excellent illustration of the dialectic we discussed earlier: 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗱𝘂𝗮𝗹’𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆’𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗺𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗼𝗱-𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁. Let’s walk through the verses and connect them to that framework.

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𝟭. 𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘂𝘀 𝟮𝟭:𝟭𝟲–𝟮𝟯 — 𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱

Leviticus prohibits men with physical defects, including eunuchs, from approaching the altar as priests. The rationale here is that physical wholeness represents ritual and symbolic wholeness before God.

• Community’s conception of God: God is imagined as holy, perfect, and requiring unblemished service. The priest represents the community before God, so physical wholeness is interpreted as a reflection of divine perfection. This reflects the community’s attempt to mirror heaven’s purity “on earth.”
• Individual’s experience of God: A eunuch, though personally devout, cannot directly serve as priest. His individual devotion is subordinated to the community’s standards of holiness.
• Dialectic: Here the community’s collective conception of God overrides the individual’s sense of vocation. God is defined in terms of communal boundaries and exclusion.

 

𝟮. 𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗮𝗵 𝟱𝟲:𝟯–𝟱 — 𝗜𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹

Isaiah envisions a future where eunuchs are not excluded but honored: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths… I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.”

• Community’s conception of God: In the prophetic vision, God is reimagined not only as a guardian of purity but also as a God of justice, inclusion, and reward for faithfulness. The community is called to expand its boundaries of who can belong.
• Individual’s experience of God: Eunuchs, once marginalized, are promised direct access to God’s presence. Their devotion is acknowledged as fully valid, apart from physical condition.
• Dialectic: The prophetic word arises from the suffering and longing of excluded individuals (their cry, their devotion) and reshapes the community’s understanding of God. God is now seen as one who values covenant faithfulness over physical wholeness. This is a shift born of tension between lived individual piety and inherited communal norms.

 

𝟯. 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘄 𝟭𝟵:𝟭𝟮 — 𝗘𝘂𝗻𝘂𝗰𝗵𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗶𝗰𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗞𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗱𝗼𝗺

Jesus reframes the eunuch identity, saying: “𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘰 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘩, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘣𝘺 𝘮𝘦𝘯, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘶𝘯𝘶𝘤𝘩𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯.”

• Community’s conception of God: The community’s old purity codes are relativized. What once excluded is now reimagined as a sign of radical devotion. The God of Jesus is conceived as one who blesses self-sacrifice for the sake of the kingdom.
• Individual’s experience of God: A eunuch is no longer simply marked by loss or defect. Instead, the eunuch becomes a model of single-hearted devotion. Individual self-offering can shape how the community perceives holiness itself.
• Dialectic: Jesus elevates a once-excluded category into a paradigm of spiritual calling. This suggests that God’s will is not fixed but dynamically reinterpreted through the encounter between individual experiences and evolving communal ideals.

 

𝗣𝘂𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗜𝘁 𝗧𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿

The trajectory from 𝗲𝘅𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗟𝗲𝘃𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘂𝘀) → 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗜𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗮𝗵) → 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝗹𝗲𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘄) shows the dialectical process at work:

• The community’s conception of God begins with boundaries that safeguard holiness.
• Individuals’ devotion and marginal experiences (like that of eunuchs) challenge these boundaries and call forth a broader vision of God’s justice and compassion.
• The evolving dialogue between individual and community results in a new conception of God: one who not only accepts eunuchs but honors them as exemplars of kingdom commitment.

This mirrors the “on earth as it is in heaven” theme: what is enacted in community (exclusion, inclusion, redefinition) becomes the very way God is conceived. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘂𝗻𝘂𝗰𝗵’𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗽𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗿𝘂𝗹𝗲𝘀—𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗮 𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗱𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗚𝗼𝗱 𝗛𝗶𝗺𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲, 𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗻𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗱𝘀.