RE: Lazy Atheism?
June 18, 2024 at 12:14 am
(This post was last modified: June 18, 2024 at 12:18 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(June 18, 2024 at 12:01 am)The Grand Nudger Wrote:(June 17, 2024 at 10:07 pm)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Robert L. O'Connell in The Soul of the Sword (a history of human weaponry, writ short) suggests that the divide between farmers and herdsmen may be one source of organized warfare, in that the two groups were fighting over land, one to use that land for crops, the other for pasturage. It's only supposition, which he makes clear in the book, but I think it's an interesting thought.
When we frame the fable of Cain and Abel in that light, it sure looks allegorical ... but again, that's supposition, on my part this time.
It's less important that we frame it in that light as that the authors themselves chose to do so. It would not be the only way they communicated their values in the narrative. The prohibition against pork, the poly-blend clothe bit, and what would calcify into overt and exhaustively described ethnic replacement theory by the yahwist period are all variations on this same recognizable theme of internecine conflict. You could spill alot of ink..and alot of ink has already been spilled, observing the many ways in way the establishment myths of a given society do seem to speak to at least some of the starting conditions of that society as we can find them in the archeological record. How we find a pre and post urban narrative in genesis..and a fairly accurate description of late bronze and early iron age warfare in judges and kings even though nothing else about the respective narratives seem to reflect any reality that can be found outside their pages. These observations are inevitably the first victims of any revision to apologoetic needs based of the ideological and historical differences between abrahamic subsects.
Sure, but we have every right to practice historiography -- such as it may be when dealing with a mythology -- in assessing why these myths took root.
TBH, I don't care what Abrahamics think of their own foundational myth, I'm more interested in why it took root, rather than some other story, and how that adhesion to mythos reflects what may have actually happened. In other words, what are the stories we tell ourselves to justify the shit we do, and why do those stories resonate with so many?
If you haven't read O'Connell's book mentioned above, I'd just say read it. It doesn't address the religious overtones we're talking about at all, but it's a deep dive into the psychology of human weaponry and useful for that on its own. It's worth the money imo.