Nature and Culture 1: The Beginning

“They lived like gods, having carefree hearts,

Apart and aloof from toil and grief: no miserable

Old age was upon them, and, always the same as far as their feet and hands were concerned,

They enjoyed themselves in good times without any troubles at all.”

Hesiod, Works and Days (8^th century BCE)

The archaeology gallery¹ began, as one might have expected it to, with prehistoric stuff. Stone tools. Spearheads. A tiny little carved object that is apparently the oldest piece of artwork known to humankind, though I must admit I struggled to recognise in it the female figure that it’s believed to represent.² I knew going in that this wasn’t going to be my favourite bit; for one thing, there weren’t any inscriptions to stare at, or named characters, or corroboration from literary sources – any of that story-creating stuff that tends to pique my interest. But what did pique my interest in the prehistory section was a comment made by my friend to the effect that, wow, to think humans spent all those aeons as hunter-gatherers, living free and easy, only to then imprison ourselves with the invention of agriculture – a recent innovation, in the grand scheme of things. And it’s been all downhill from there.

 

I have just discovered that a nice chap called Gary Todd has archived a huge number of history-related photographs he’s taken (including this one of stone tools from the Israel Museum) online here, https://worldhistorypics.weebly.com/, and get this, they’re all public domain. Gary, you star.

The comment piqued my interest because, as I told her, that isn’t how I’m inclined to view things at all. The past few millennia of human progress strike me as, well, progress. She elaborated (with another of my friends also chiming in too). Apparently research suggests that life expectancy for prehistoric hunter-gatherers was long, and shortened with the emergence of cities because the more concentrated population facilitated the spread of disease. Apparently the two sexes were of pretty equal status in prehistoric societies: it was only after people started acquiring property that men began oppressing women and claiming ownership over them, because they needed guaranteed heirs to whom to pass on their possessions. Apparently, the scientists say, your average hunter-gatherer only needed to do about four hours’ work in the day in order for the needs of the tribe to be supplied; the rest of the time, these guys could just hang out having fun, telling stories, creating tiny pieces of carved artwork if the fancy so took them. And we’re all trying to get back to that, all the time, my friend claimed. Every new labour-saving device or technology we try is an attempt to claw back something of the leisure of that hunter-gatherer lifestyle, but every development just augments the problem. Emails, for instance, were supposed to streamline and simplify the process of communication with colleagues, but what’s actually happened is that we all now spend vast swathes of our time answering annoying emails. We think we’re digging a tunnel out of the prison that is work, but all we’re really digging is a new cell of the same prison.

It was a perspective I’d never heard before, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe there was some kernel of truth in it. Sometimes it does seem as if every new technological development that’s supposed to make life easier actually makes it more of a pain – just get me started on the university finance system, for instance. And there is something wistfully, primally appealing about a simpler, less urban, less high-tech lifestyle – a sort of untainted wholesomeness, you know. But at the same time, I love living in a world of progress. I love living in a world of the pursuit of knowledge, of pulling things apart to see how they work and putting them back together again in new ways; a world where you can have a dream and build it in reality, where you can face up against what’s considered impossible and carve bold new chunks of possible out of it. Hunter-gatherers might have only had to work four hours in the day, but they could never have, I don’t know, written Dvořák’s New World Symphony,³ or built the Hungarian Parliament Building,⁴ or animated Your Name, or made cookie dough and ice cream, or crafted a hat like the one I bought in Lyme Regis three years ago (to select just a few of my favourite extraordinarily beautiful things). They could never have explored the depths of the oceans or walked on the moon. And sure, they might have lived longer before they started living in cities, but a serious infection would doubtless still have constituted a death sentence without antibiotics. They might have lived longer before they started living in cities, but last century, humanity went toe-to-toe with arguably the deadliest disease in history, and only blooming went and won.⁵ Annihilated it from the face of the earth, indeed. So yeah, progress, I maintain, is still progress.

But the fact remains, and niggles, that, well, the modernist project failed. We progress, we learn and we dream and we build and we win, but our advances do seem to cause as many problems as they solve. We have striven for utopia, but we have never reached it, and the corpses of those to whom our experiments in progress have not been merciful are piled high under our feet. Given that our capacity for violence and destruction has increased with every step forward, I understand where the disillusionment that suggests we stop trying and go back the other way is coming from.

Mind you, I might frame this stuff in terms of modernism, but wrestling with the tension between simplicity and technology, rural and urban, nature and culture, is far from a modern pastime. In the third year of my undergraduate degree, I wrote an essay about the relationship between nature and culture in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, a Greek novel written in the second century CE; my Latin tutee and I are currently discovering the prominence of the same theme in Horace’s Satires, published in the first century BCE; and, on a slightly different note, Hesiod’s Works and Days, probably eighth century BCE, describes a former Golden Age when human beings lived far longer and didn’t have to do any work, as I quoted above (my own translation). Maybe we’ve been wondering to what extent technological development is a good thing, harking back to the utopia of a simpler past, and trying to find the balance between nature and culture, ever since we were using those stone tools I saw in the archaeology gallery.

 

I like this depiction of Daphnis and Chloe by Paris Bordone because of how he included Eros asleep at the side there, to show that the pair haven’t quite figured out what to do about the fact that they’re in love yet.

So what’s the answer? Where do the scriptures stand on this question? Well, for starters, you’ve probably noticed that the paradise granted to our first ancestors to live in was a garden; that’s actually what ‘paradise’ means. So that would seem to be a tick on the ‘nature’ side. But then again, the human was put in the garden to work it and keep it; in fact, the way that the initial lack of bushes and small plants on the earth is explained as being partially because there were no human beings to work the soil, at least implies that some sort of human agricultural activity was a desideratum so that the earth might better fulfil its potential.⁶ Hmm. What about after the fall? It’s the descendants of Cain – archetypally unrighteous Cain – who are spoken of in connection with technological developments like musical instruments and metallurgy. But then the ark, built by righteous Noah and representing the salvation of humanity, sounds as if it was quite a technologically complicated building project for the time: three hundred cubits long, three separate decks, the whole thing covered in bitumen. Hmm again. What about the matter of cities? The OG city in the Bible is Babel – that is, Babylon (same word in the Hebrew, I can’t fathom why the translations don’t render it consistently) – and it’s definitely Very Bad. It’s founded in direct and conscious opposition to God’s command to the postdiluvian humans that they spread out across the earth; in a lack of faith that he’ll keep his promise never to flood the earth again (why else did they want that massive tower?); and in self-elevation of the builders, who want to make a name for themselves (an idiom that, pleasingly, works just as well in English as in Hebrew). It’s also the beginning of the kingdom of Nimrod, whose name means ‘we shall rebel’ and who is described as a ‘mighty man’, a title which at this stage in the narrative definitely recalls the Nephilim produced by the union of the sons of God and the daughters of man. Bad bad bad. So cities are bad, then? Well, yes, except for the fact that when you flip to the other end of the book and find the description of the perfect new heavens and new earth that God will create, its most prominent feature is new Jerusalem – the holy city, coming down from God out of heaven.⁷

The problem, it must be concluded, isn’t technology, or urbanisation, or culture, in and of themselves. The problem is humans. Humans build a city and it’s bad, because it’s done in disobedience of God; but God builds a city and it’s good, because everything he does is good. And our disobedience isn’t brought on by our technological circumstances; it’s brought on by our sinful nature. We disobeyed God when there were no cities and we still disobey him now that the earth is covered in them. We disobey God at every stage of development. The reason our progress doesn’t make things better isn’t because it’s our progress, but because it’s our progress.

Pessimistic of me? Not really. Not in view of the perfect new heavens and new earth that are coming. On the contrary, it’s very freeing to know that it’s not either our technological advances, or our lack of them, that make life and work difficult for us; that it isn’t on us to either learn and dream and build until we fashion utopia for ourselves, or to throw off the shackles of our ancestors’ choices to recapture the lost golden age of longevity and leisure. The reason life and work are difficult is because we live in a world full of sin, and there isn’t a thing we can do ourselves to get rid of that sin. But if we accept Jesus’ mind-bogglingly merciful death on our behalf, and lay the burden of our sins on him to be paid for and brought to nothing, then we become ambassadors, in the present world, of the true utopia and the true golden age to come – which, unlike Hesiod’s, will never end. Behold, the LORD creates a new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. Live as if you believe that, brother or sister of mine; live as if that’s where your hope is. It’s all uphill from here.

Footnotes

¹ At the Israel Museum. Did I mention yet how insanely cool it was? https://www.imj.org.il/en/node/130

² I also remember it from the first episode of Civilisations, which I massively recommend: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p05xxp5j/civilisations. It’s basically a nine-hour history of the world told through the lens of art; now, I don’t care about art any more than your average person, but the connections that Civilisations made, the great big story it placed this stuff in, really took hold of me.

³ My gosh it’s wonderful. Try the fourth movement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGdtkUiKaA8.

⁴ Currently up there with the Founders’ Building at Royal Holloway on my list of favourite bits of architecture. I’m sure you’re capable of Googling the pics yourself.

⁵ Smallpox, in case you weren’t sure. My new favourite YouTube series, Extra History, will happily tell you all about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke6tT3_QTuM.

⁶ I’ll give you Genesis 2 here, and you can just click forward through the next few chapters to cover the references in the best part of the rest of the paragraph: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+2&version=ESVUK.

⁷ Revelation 21 – but you already knew that: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=rev+21&version=ESVUK.

On Sacred Spaces, or I Went to Israel and Nothing Supernatural Happened

“And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England’s mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God on England’s pleasant pastures seen?

And did the countenance divine look forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here among those dark satanic mills?”

William Blake, Milton: A Poem in Two Books (1804)

I mean, don’t get me wrong, Israel was a brilliant time. I’m unequivocally chuffed that I got to go, and especially that I got to go with some excellent people whom I love a lot and basically consider to be my academic siblings. We had eight full days there: three at a conference, five seeing the sights. And boy, were there some sights. We explored Magdala and Capernaum and Caesarea;¹ we swam in the Sea of Galilee and roamed the rooftops of Jerusalem; we traced the route from the Mount of Olives through Gethsemane to the heart of the Old City and the remains of the western wall of the Temple; and yeah, I spent a good deal of time staring at ancient texts trying to read them, because what can I say, my job is also my hobby.² This post isn’t intended as a travelogue, so I’m going to spare you the details, but suffice it to say that the trip was an epic one. The place was just absolutely swimming in history and it was great.

 

View eastwards from a random rooftop at roughly the intersection between the four quarters of Jerusalem. The highest tower you can see in the background is on the Mount of Olives; Gethsemane is quite close below that.

But people had been telling me that something supernatural would happen. They had been telling me that it would be a life-changing experience, that walking where Jesus walked would bring me closer to him, that the very air is different in the Holy Land, that the impact on my faith would be profound. And, as I’d suspected, none of that proved true. If anything, I was less focussed on God than I usually am at home, because, as other experiences have also taught me, having both a) a packed schedule and b) a roommate does not exactly help one maintain a decent routine of personal prayer. I walked the ground that Jesus did, and as it turns out, it didn’t feel any different to any other ground. I saw sites mentioned in the scriptures, and it was really cool and all, but I enjoyed them the same way I enjoy any historical site: lapping up all the facts about the story of the place; grinning at little bits of realia, hints of the lives of the real people who inhabited it; staring at any inscriptions present trying to read them. And granted, it’s even cooler when the stories and realia and inscriptions pertain to matters that are of especial interest to me because of their relevance to the scriptures in which I believe God has revealed himself, but there’s nothing about that that goes beyond the natural. People get particularly excited about stuff they particularly care about; that’s just a perfectly normal, logical, expectable thing, and indeed so fundamentally obvious that it hardly bears stating. But it means that when I pretty much jumped up and down with excitement in the Shrine of the Book because a brother in Christ and myself found and read the bit of the Great Isaiah Scroll (or technically its facsimile, I think)³ where it says they shall call his name Immanuel,⁴ it wasn’t because God filled me with some kind of supernatural ectasy, or was any more tangibly present than usual. It was because this was a prophecy about the one to whom I consider myself to owe everything worth having, and we were reading it off a facsimile of a scroll written many years before its fulfilment, and, you know, that’s pretty blooming amazing.

As you can tell, I’m making a distinction here between a natural feeling and a supernatural feeling. We all experience the former; that’s just, you know, feeling stuff. But I gather that some people also experience the latter: they perceive, react to, feel things that are not discernible on the natural level. They feel, in whatever manner, the presence of God. And that’s, you know, cool and all. I don’t begrudge them it. But it doesn’t happen, or at least hasn’t yet happened, to me.

Funnily enough, I don’t think this situation is without its advantages. I mean, I’d love to feel God’s presence in a tangible way, I’d be well up for that, but the fact that I haven’t surely makes the faith he has given me all the more remarkable. I have no dramatic personal encounter with God on which to lean my trust in him. He has never opened heaven to my eyes; I have seen only earth, and yet somehow he has still granted me to walk in faith that heaven is my true homeland. If those who have not seen and yet have believed are blessed, ⁵ then blessed must I be. I don’t say this to elevate my own faith as purer or realer or better than anyone else’s; faith is a gift of God, so that no one might boast, and my point is that it surely glorifies him that he can put that gift into effect without revealing himself to a person in any supernaturally spectacular way. That I believe in the gospel, that I understand and am changed by the scriptures, that I am increasing in obedience and holiness, that I am learning to place my hope in an inheritance I have no proof of at the expense of gain in the here and now – these things are supernatural enough in and of themselves. God is glorified in one way when he manifests himself to someone in a tangible way, and in another when he manifests himself by shaping her after his likeness despite her never having perceived his presence directly.

So I didn’t mind that I went to Israel and nothing supernatural happened. I was expecting as much. It was enough to experience what I did on a natural level. And again, neither do I begrudge anyone who has had a supernatural experience during a trip to Israel. The thing I don’t get is the suggestion that Eretz Yisrael is some kind of special zone where access to the supernatural is readier than elsewhere – a sacred space, in other words. Because I was under the impression that, as Protestants, we don’t believe in sacred spaces.

I don’t deny that the land is special – a chosen and designated inheritance for the children of Israel, and of profound importance of God’s plans not only in the past but also in the future. In that sense, I suppose, it’s sacred. But that isn’t my covenant, and it isn’t actually as good as my covenant either. Even when God’s presence really did rest in a physical building in Jerusalem, the quality and intimacy of the relationship that that enabled wasn’t a patch on what I – Gentile sinner that I am – enjoy now. In England. Where we can safely say those feet in ancient times did not walk, whatever you might find in certain Arthurian legends.⁶ Think about it: God himself dwells within us by his Holy Spirit; and when we meet together in his name, we stand in congregation with all saints, present and departed, and with all elect angels, in the heavenly throne-room; and we are commanded to boldly approach the throne of grace, God’s own heavenly mercy-seat – the reality that the earthly mercy-seat in the Holy of Holies reflected – confident in the knowledge that we are righteous and deserving through the blood of Jesus shed on our behalf, that as our High Priest he carries our prayers as incense, that we are adopted as his brothers and co-heirs and nothing could separate us from our Father’s love. The veil is torn. We are beyond it.⁷ You think any site on earth could even begin to claim to be a fraction as sacred as that? If you’re a temple of the Holy Spirit, then it follows that you yourself are the most sacred site that currently exists on the earth. So, you know, there’s something to add the CV.

 

The model of Herodian-era Jerusalem at the Israel Museum. Spot the Temple. Back then, it really was a sacred space where there was special access to God, but not so in the Church age.

It’s easy to apply this stuff in contempt of the people who queue up to kiss altars at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or whatever, but I don’t think that considering the land of Israel to have some special power to bring the Christian closer to her God is very far from that. If there are, in this the Church age, no sacred spaces, then there are no sacred spaces; it isn’t just that those Other Christians are honouring the wrong sacred spaces – church buildings rather than the land as a whole. No space of any size or nature can provide better-quality access to God than we already have.

This isn’t to say that it’s automatically wrong or not from God if someone experiences something on the supernatural level that’s ostensibly triggered by being at a site of significance in the Biblical narrative. After all, it’s quite likely that being there might prompt one to a focus on God and a reflection on the wonder of what he did in sending Jesus to walk among us in real, physical, mappable existence, and I imagine that that’s the sort of thing that might provide fertile ground for supernatural feeling. But anything supernatural that does happen is not the result of some inherent property of the site itself. The site is not, after all, magic.⁸

I went to Israel and nothing supernatural happened. But then, there was no reason it should. There was a lot there that was extremely cool and interesting, and I feel very privileged that I had the opportunity to visit, but even as I sit at home in my pyjamas typing this,⁹ the space I occupy is more sacred than any site I visited during my week-and-a-bit in the Holy Land. And if that sounds like too bold a claim, then I suggest we need to take a more careful look at what God claims to have achieved in making us the Church his Temple, the site of his holy presence, in the current era.¹⁰

Footnotes

¹ Caesarea was a particular highlight, especially given that I started out as a Classicist; here’s a quick description of the place: https://www.britannica.com/place/Caesarea.

² I was quite pleased that my palaeo-Hebrew skills proved sufficient to read slightly more of the Tel Dan inscription than was already specially pointed out in the display. The Tel Dan inscription is a huge deal, so if you don’t know about it already, here’s your chance to learn: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/the-tel-dan-inscription-the-first-historical-evidence-of-the-king-david-bible-story/.

³ The Shrine of the Book is dedicated to the first of the manuscripts discovered at Qumran, what you’ll know as the Dead Sea Scrolls. You can browse the archive online, hooray: https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/.

⁴ Isaiah 7, if you need a reminder: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=is+7&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Which they are; check John 20:29.

⁶ Yep, William Blake’s famous poem had its basis in preexistent traditions about Jesus having spent some time in Cornwall. On the grounds that Joseph of Arimathea was actually his uncle, and took him on a business trip to buy tin. It sounds pretty mad, but there are people out there who are prepared to argue the case: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8380511.stm.

⁷ In this section, I riff mainly on the book of Hebrews. Too many references for me to be bothered to footnote them individually. Go and read, and decide whether I’m handling the text legitimately.

⁸ I say this with some hesitation given that the conference I mentioned was on late-antique magic, and the academic consensus is that magic and religion cannot be meaningfully distinguished. But nonetheless, the scriptures oblige me to distinguish them, and that forces me to put an awful lot of stuff that goes on in the Church and in my own heart into the ‘magic’ box. More of my thoughts on this are in ‘The Magic Word’, under November 2016 in my blog archive.

⁹ I recently got some new pyjamas from PJ Pan, and I love them because they are a) actually long enough, b) really comfy, c) super cute, and d) made in Britain. Only downside is the price, but hey, I get paid now: https://www.pjpan.co.uk/.