The law is holy, just and good. – St. Paul, Romans 7:12
It should probably come as a surprise to most people to look upon the arcane and sometimes “stupid” laws of the Old Testament as integral to your personal survival during a world catastrophe. I am not offering a discussion on “God takes care of the good people” theology. Certainly, miraculous interventions by Almighty God would be appreciated to enhance our chances of survival during and after the calamities described in this series.
Rather, I am looking at the Old Testament, especially the time period from that of Abraham to Moses, from an anthropological perspective. That era represented a post-catastrophe recovery.
We think that the Hebrews escaped from Egyptian captivity sometime around 1500 BC. Abraham walked the earth some 400 years earlier, maybe 1900 BC. Anthropologists tell us that this time period represented the Late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. What this means is that, while earlier time periods represented a neolithic age in which much of humanity carved its tools from rocks, the Bronze Age onward represented the discovery and use of various metals in making the useful tools, weapons and accoutrements of human civilization.
We need to appreciate the primitivism of that time-period. When men plowed their fields, their plows were at first made of wooden stakes pulled by oxen, if they were lucky. In fact, even to this day, our surveyor’s definition of an “acre” is derived from the area in which a man could plow a field with an ox in one day. Compare that to what can be done with tractors now.
Climatologists also tell us that many parts of Europe and America were still in the grips of an Ice Age. Switzerland was still covered with magnificent glaciers and Russia was uninhabitable. In fact, the suggestion has been made by Velikovsky, McCanney and others, that until the “Moses event” Earth’s geographical North Pole was somewhere just north of Wisconsin. Catastrophists believe that an Earth encounter with a planetary-sized comet – some claiming it was Venus, others Mars – moved the tilt of the Earth some 30 degrees. We have discussed the particulars of this catastrophe elsewhere on this website (see the Search function) and suggest that Noah’s Flood was a more likely culprit.
However, aside from that catastrophic “Moses event,” Earth was still recovering from the after-effects of Noah’s Flood, maybe from a thousand years before that or more. It had produced far greater catastrophes, and was followed by many centuries of weather extremes and geophysical violence.
The safest places to live were inland and in the river valleys of the middle latitudes: the Indus, Mesopotamia, and the Nile. Only after agricultural and technological success in those somewhat sheltered areas did it become possible for the human race to expand.
The story of Abraham and later the Israelites under Moses offers us clues to the living conditions of the people as they ventured out. Famines were frequent, life expectancy was shortened, and reproductive success was a matter of grave concern. Abraham’s encounter with the Philistine king, Abimelech, is illustrative: when the women of his harem stopped conceiving, it created panic. The barrenness of the patriarchal wives has become legendary, but it only created a crisis of succession. When a household’s maidservants become barren, however, survival of the clan becomes a crisis from the resulting shortage of manpower.
In those times, survival was not a sure thing. And superstitions abounded. We think a “Lord of the Flies” scenario occurs after every global disaster because it is predominately the children which survive. The old people perish and their knowledge, customs, and wisdom are lost. For children under the age of 16 trying to make sense of their world without adult guidance results in make-shift explanations: various fantasies, paranoias, and fetishes. We think the longevity of the biblical patriarchs was a rare occurrence.
The Mosaic Law is not a stupid rule book of do’s and don’ts. It was a composition necessary for survival of the tribe. Fertility was paramount for both man and beast. Population growth is the foundation of economic success and security. Only demented Malthusians think differently. Sexual deviancies are negatively sanctioned in the Mosaic Law because they are an attack on fertility. “Butt sex” may be fun for some people, but it is unsanitary and compromises the reproductive vitality of our sexual organs.
Mixing fields with seeds from different grains is another attack upon fertility. While it lends itself to fraud in the marketplace, it also can compromise the genetic characteristics of a plant’s seeds and eventually result in crop failure. Corn (maize) is a grass, as are many grains. They are simply grasses which have been improved by horticultural practices over the course of time. Left to themselves, they will degrade back to grasses. Harvesting your field which is mixed with wheat and oats, for example, the saved seed eventually will result in lower quality grains.
Someday, I propose a law-by-law analysis of the Mosaic Law and its implications on human survival. But a thoughtful person should be able to reflect on the laws and speculate as to how they might influence human behavior, and whether that behavior lends itself to a survival strategy.
— JWS, 7/16/23
