Ellen Davis: The Way of Manna: Culture and Agriculture in the Hebrew Bible

I have found that, contrary to the contemporary common received wisdom, if you want a truly deep reading of history and literature, read or listen to a theologian or a scripture authority.  I wasn't familiar with Ellen Davis's work before hearing Krista Tippett's brief exchange about her with Walter Breuggemann during a pause in their formal dicussion.  I will be reading her book, Scripture Culture and Agriculture as soon as I can get hold of a copy.  

We are in the period where people will learn that if they don't abandon the culture and economics of unsustainability, of unequal distribution of goods and resource we are going to die.  We live, conservative and liberal in the culture of death that Breuggemann talked about.  That choice is the price of intelligence, we will have to use it for the common good, not relying on what we want without considering the consequences of getting as much of that as we can figure out how to amass.  

For example, I think it's ever clearer that we're on the cusp of choosing between having billionaires and millionaires among us or doing without things like self-government or a livable environment.  In ever less deniable fact, the choice is between sustaining an international billionaire class of Pharaohs or having a water supply, food, housing, and, ultimately,  continuing on with the species.   Given what's happening in the United States and virtually every other country in the developed world and the corruption in the rest, I'm not optimistic.

This lecture, reading the text of Exodus in the way that Ellen Davis does, provides a powerful context for thinking about the issues we face.   I think it's a lot more important than reiterating the Just-so stories derived from natural selection.  It's clear that we can't continue under the system of survival of the fittest because the fittest, equipped with intelligence, culture, government, science and technology will lead to the death of our species as it is leading to the death of so many other species.  We won't survive unless we reject that as a way of human conduct.  The way we will survive in the desert of our own making is egalitarian justice, it isn't the way of scientistic modernism.

And now that I've left you with something to think about, see you later.