The Agrarian Perspective of the Bible
A Response to James A. Nash, 'The Bible vs. Biodiversity: The Case against Moral Argument from Scripture'
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.v3i2.260Keywords:
agrarianism, Hebrew Scriptures, agricultureAbstract
James Nash correctly states that the biblical writers are more interested in the health of agricultural land than in biological diversity. Yet, far from being opposed, those two concerns are integrally related in key biblical passages, as well as in our current crisis, when industrial agriculture itself may constitute the largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function. The Bible’s agrarian sensitivity reflects the fragile ecological zone that is the central highlands of Canaan, the core area of Israelite occupation. Multiple passages point to the need for cultural practices of restraint in both material consumption and manipulation of natural systems. Thus the Bible may be helpful in generating particularized visions of what is good for both natural systems and the human communities that depend upon them for their own existence.
References
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. 1953. Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press).
Davis, Ellen F. 2009. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Jackson, Wes. 1987. Altars of Unhewn Stone: Science and the Earth (San Francisco: North Point Press).
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being: Current State and Trends (Washington, DC: Island Press).
Nash, James A. 1995. ‘Toward the Revival and Reform of the Subversive Virtue: Frugality’, in The Annual of the Society of Christian Ethics (Boston: The Society of Christian Ethics): 137-60.
Schifferdecker, Kathryn. 2008. Out of the Whirlwind: Creation Theology in the Book of Job (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Theological Studies).
