The article is published in two installments. The first can be found here.
Humans from the Hummus – life as royal gardeners
It is generally recognised that the Garden story is more environmentally friendly. As Jewish scholar Ziony Zevit observes, agricultural themes are clearer in the Garden story.[1]As we saw earlier, Habel identifies it as a more Christian text than P’s mandate, a view I have refuted. To fully appreciate this narrative as a potential root for a biblically informed environmental justice principle, it is important to liberate Eden from a simple, paradisiac prelapsarian past.[2]
The first observation from this passage is that of human solidarity with the rest of creation. In Gen 2:7, the man (haadam) was formed out of the earth, aphar min haadamah. Zevit sees as significant in in contrasting the adam from the animals. The word adamis related both to the soil adamah, but also the colour red adom, and blood dam, hence referring to the soil terra rossa.[3] Theodore Hiebert notes that adamah is used in a precise sense, as cultivable soil, as opposed to the more general erets.[4]
The breathed upon clod became a nephesh hayyah, as was domestic and wild animals (Gen 1:24). We shall see shortly the difference that being created from the dust of the earth makes compared to directly from the earth. Yet the common origin ties to the use of the formula “these are the generations of (toledot)” (Gen 2:4) that the Garden story describes the origin of the Earth family.[5] We are all earthlings.
The second observation, following Walter Brueggemann, is that our creation from the dust (aphar) of the earth in Gen 2:7, rather than simply straight from the earth as with the garden trees and animals implies a royal identity for the adam. Comparing Gen 2:7 with 1 Kgs 16:2, and 1 Sam 2:8 (paralleling Ps 113:7–8) reveals that aphar can refer to a pre-royal status:
1 Kgs 16:2 I lifted you out of the dust (aphar) and made you ruler over my people
1 Sam 2:8 // Ps 113:7–8 He raises up the poor from the dust (aphar); and he lifts the needy from the ash heap to set them among princes
Of course, aphar can refer to literal dust, as in the curse of the serpent (Gen 3:14) and is also indicative of our mortality (Gen 3:19). However, these parallels beg the question of where Eden was, who the adam was, and what was their role?
Several factors link Eden to the Tabernacle and hence serving the Garden with serving God. First, the Garden was entered from the east (Gen 3:24). The entrance to the tent of meeting was to the east (Num 3:28), as was the entrance to the temple in Jerusalem (Ezek 8:16). Second, Gordon Wenham observes that these guardian cherubim (Gen 3:24) feature in Solomon’s temple in the inner sanctuary, decorating the walls and doors (1 Kgs 6:23–32), and the top the Ark of the Covenant (Exod 25:18–22).[6]
Third, as Geoffery Harper has observed, the divine presence in both Eden and the sanctuary is indicated by Yhwh walking to and fro within them. The hithpael of halak (Gen 3:8), is also used in connection with the Tabernacle being carried with the people (2 Sam 7:6–7), the divine presence within the camp (Deut 23:14), and throughout Canaan (Lev 26:12).[7] The implication is that as in other parts of the ancient Near East, gardens were associated with temple cults and the wise royal rule. Such temple theology is not dissimilar to that found in P’s creation account, where creation is described as a protological temple.[8]
Who then is the adam? Geoffrey Harper examines the relationship between the Garden narrative and H in the Holiness Code and examines the dating of H.[9] Of the options for pre-exilic, exilic, and post-exilic, I find the latter most convincing. Julia Rhyder argues for a post-exilic setting because H assumes the presence of the temple. The purpose of H is therefore to ensure the success of the second temple cult.[10] If this is the case, then the adam represents all of Israel. Such a view makes sense of the above discussion of reverencing the temple and keeping the Sabbath as being central to lay Israelite holiness.
Zevit reveals much of what is understood life in the garden to be like to be a projection from Greek mythology.[11] God planted a garden and put the adam in there to work it. Eden likely means bountiful or abundant, based on its shared consonantal root ednah, and Assyrian parallels.[12] Hiebert notes that this bounty was of rain–based highlands, and not irrigated lowlands (Gen 2:5 cf. Dt 11:10–11).[13] Elsewhere, Eden is described as well watered and agriculturally endowed (Gen 13:10; Joel 2:3). Hence, life in Eden meant hard, but rewarding agricultural labor.
Davis comments further on the nature of this labor. The Hebrew abad is often translated as work done for someone, except where it refers to soil, where it is usually translated as work done on or with something (e.g., Gen 2:5). From this, Davis concludes that the human pair were to work for the soil, serving its needs.[14] Likewise, shamar, usually translated as keep as in a flock (e.g. 1 Sam 17:20) can also mean observe, as in keeping the Sabbath (e.g. Ex 31:13). Davis takes from this the need to observe the soil, learn from it, and respect its limits. These limits of the soil are instantiated within it by God and provides us with a lesson that human ingenuity cannot always overcome limits.[15]
Given that Eden is the tabernacle in Jerusalem, what then of the return to dust warned in Gen 3? The most obvious reference is to human mortality, but Brueggemann also suggests dethronement language, the opposite of the enthronement found in other passages that use aphar. Given the likely post-exilic setting, exile itself must be in mind. Leviticus 18 places Israel on the same tentative footing in the land as the nations before them and promises they will be “vomited out” by the land for covenant breaking. Likewise, Lev 26 echoes Gen 3 in the reversal of its blessings.[16] The ejection from the Garden therefore is the reminder of the possibility of exile.
However, the divine presence is not limited to the land, suggesting that even in exile, relationship with God via good earth care was possible. God’s care of creation is described in two ways. Rain provides the needed moisture to cause both the human gardener to be formed to tend domesticated plants, and to water the wild plants outside of the garden (Gen 2:5–9).[17] Likewise, the river out of Eden divides into four to water the world.[18]
Hence, while Israel’s vocation was to care for its own soil, the world outside of it, and its agricultural concerns was not outside of divine care. Yet, the goal was always return to Eden, and Lev 26 points towards the “Edenization of Caanan” and to land care as an exercise of lay Israelite holiness, as discussed earlier. This Edenization was anticipated elsewhere in the prophetic literature (e.g. Ezek 36:3; Isa 51:3).[19] As we shall see below, this Edenization is not confined to Canaan in the New Testament but extends to include all of creation.
The roots of environmental justice in the non-Priestly Garden story lie in its understanding of connection between God’s Tabernacle presence, and the imagery of tending the Garden. Gardens were usually a symbol of kingly wisdom to rule, be it the king of Persia (Esth 7:7) of Nebuchadnezzar with his hanging gardens of Babylon.[20] By analogy, the adam as gardener points to a broader rule and hence responsibility for the adamah beyond the garden.
As noted earlier, Rhyder argues that H integrates the Garden narrative into its promotion of the temple cult in the Persian period.[21] As such then, the royal cultic role is that of the lay Israelite and demonstrated in the reverencing of the temple and keeping of the Sabbath, which as noted above, includes care for the land. Hence, the two stories (Gen 1:1–2:3 and 2:4–3:24) point in the same direction. In an agrarian society, land care is assumed to be a part of lay holiness. The non-agriculturally related creation shares in this, even if it is not as clearly prioritised.
Returning to the soil
We have seen that the two origin stories in the Hebrew bible present proper care of land as a holy and sacred task, part of the good ordering of creation so that human needs for nourishment are met, we can procreate, and bear the divine image. The Anthropocene demonstrates a lack of wisdom, particularly with regards to limits. Western society in the 21st century is not agrarian in nature. Farming in the west continues the trend of a small number of laborers producing a large amount of food via mechanization, or the use of cheap labor.
As discussed already, agriculture has led to the pushing of several of the planetary boundaries which support human flourishing and that of the more-than-human. What then does the relationship of the image of God and its relationship to agriculture tell us about human vocation for the non-farmer?
Themes from Gen 1–3 and H are echoed in the New Testament. The so-called Nazareth Manifesto of Luke 4 hints at a Jubilee year, with Jesus’ proclamation of the “year of the Lord’s favour” (v. 19) and release of captives (v. 18 cf. Lev 25:40–41).[22] Unmentioned, but unavoidable in my analysis, is Sabbath rest for the land. Likewise, John’s gospel incorporates both origin stories. Jesus is both the agent of creation and new creation in John 1 (c.f. Gen 1) and the new Adam in the new creation in John 20 (c.f., Gen 2).
There are seven signs in John’s Gospel, echoing the heptadic creation story. The eighth sign is the resurrection, indicating the new creation.[23] Hints of the struggle of the creation and its futility to human misrule are found in Romans 8, together with Exodus language promising a return from exile for people and land.[24] Finally, Rev 21–22 explicitly uses imagery from Gen 1–3. In Rev 22:2, the tree of life is for the blessing of the nations, and hence Edenization moves out from the church into the whole world.[25]
My argument, albeit tentative, is that if the creation accounts point to an intimate human connection to soil, and a warping or frustrating of the relationship is part of our alienation from God, then part of being redeemed is being reconnected to soil. This does not suggest that humanity must return to an essentially agrarian way of life, but that given that part of the Anthropocene is an abuse of soil, all humans are called to better respect the soil. Such respect can take three forms.
First, all human labor should indirectly nurture and serve the needs of soil. Any human activity that undercuts agriculture is a breaking of our mandate, let alone a lack of wisdom. This is a principle broad in application. As noted, giving land Sabbath rest from human economic activity is key.
Second, it is important that all humans see themselves as bi-vocational. Gardening represents a return to the soil, a re-grounding and reconnection to natural cycles that has been lost in modern life, and indeed is being disrupted by climate change. This is not a call to reduce human society to entirely agrarian, but a call to attentiveness. Miriam Pepper has catalogued the variety of community gardens, demonstrating that garden can provide spaces for reconciliation, meditation, education, and becoming rooted to place.[26]
Third, for those of us living in colonised lands, reconnecting with soil is an opportunity for reconciliation. Bruce Pascoe demonstrated has that Aboriginal people engaged in agriculture in a sustainable manner before colonization.[27]Learning to reground ourselves in an Australian context is intimately tied up in reconciliation. Potawatomi botanist Robin Kimmerer calls us to learn the “grammar of animacy,” which is necessarily local in nature, and reflective of the traditional peoples of a place.[28] While we need to understand the whole earth as temple, i.e., think globally, we need to act locally if environmental justice is to take root in our own contexts.
Mick Pope heads up the Australian environmental think tank Ethos. He completed undergraduate theological studies and a PhD in Meteorology at Monash University. He is Professor of Environmental Mission at Missional University and speaks regularly on the interaction with environmental ethics, science and mission. He has a number of published book chapters and journal articles in this area, including A Climate of Hope: Church and Mission in a Warming World, with Claire Dawson (2014), and Climate of Justice (2017).
[1] Ziony Zevit, What Really Happened in the Garden of Eden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013).
[2] Nicholas Wyatt, “A Royal Garden: The Ideology of Eden,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 28, no. 1 (2014): 1–35.
[3] Zevit, What Really Happened, 82.
[4] Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape, 34.
[5] Mick Pope, From Canaan to Creation: Biblical Hermeneutics for the Anthropocene (Eugene: Pickwick, 2024), 58.
[6] Gordon J. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism in the Garden of Eden Story,” in “I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood”: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11, ed. Richard S. Hess (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 401. LeFebrve, “Adam Reigns in Eden,” 32.
[7] G. Geoffrey Harper, “I Will Walk Among You” The Rhetorical Function of Allusions to Genesis 1–3 in the Book of Leviticus (University Park: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 194. Wenham, “Sanctuary Symbolism,” 401.
[8] Pope, From Canaan to Creation, 39–42.
[9] Harper, “I Will Walk Among You,” 88–97.
[10] Julia Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult in the Holiness Legislation: A Reassessment,” JBL 138, no. 4 (2019): 721.
[11] Zevit, What Really Happened, 86.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Theodore Hiebert, The Yahwist’s Landscape Nature and Religion in Early Israel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 36–37.
[14] Davis, Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture, 29.
[15] Ibid, 30-31.
[16] Pope, From Creation to Canaan, 82–83.
[17] Ibid, 64-65.
[18] Ibid, 77.
[19] Ibid, 79.
[20] LeFebvre, Adam Reigns in Eden, 30–31.
[21] Julia Rhyder, “Sabbath and Sanctuary Cult,” 721.
[22] R. B. Sloan, “Jubilee,” in Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, ed. Joel B. Green, Scott McKnight, and I. Howard Marshall (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 396.
[23] Margaret Daly-Denton, John: An Earth Bible Commentary: Supposing Him to Be the Gardener, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2017).
[24] Mick Pope, “With Heads Craning Forward: The Eschaton and the Non-human Creation in Romans 8,” in Ecotheology in the Humanities: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Understanding the Divine in Nature, ed. Melissa Brotton (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 161–78.
[25] Mick Pope, All Things New: God’s Plan to Renew Our World (Reservoir: Morning Star Publishing, 2018), 135–136.
[26] Miriam Pepper, “Church-based Community Gardening: Where Mission Meets Ecology in Local Contexts,” Australian Journal of Mission Studies, 6, no 2 (2012): 54-59.
[27] Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (London: Scribe, 2018).
[28] See Robin W. Kimmerer, The Democracy of Species (London: Penguin Books, 2021), 1–23.
