Thanks for interesting discussion. Kinda fun to think about.

Robert Tulip wrote: I am talking about actual progress, . . .
the iron empires had vastly more scope and power to eliminate diversity than the earlier low tech systems

I am interested in the way you put that: "eliminate diversity". The point was probably literally to put people to work for the rulers. Once the possibility of an agricultural surplus was understood, the military competition to capture more of it was likely to follow. I don't think the early layers of empire were really into eliminating, say, ethnic diversity. Maybe it was easier to enslave foreigners? I'm really not sure, but the Persians supposedly endured where previous Middle Eastern empires had failed because they tolerated the continuation of different cultures. So maybe there was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on.

establishment of Hellenistic rule over the eastern Mediterranean was celebrated as bringing the progress of logical Greek dynamism over effete eastern stagnation.

I remember hearing of logic, but not particularly of dynamism, in the Hellenistic blessing brought to the rest of the world. The Macedonians were conscious of having inferior civilization, but that did not stop them from conquering and adopting logic to go with their horses.

I am not sure you can so clearly distinguish between the prophetic tradition in Israel and statecraft.

Okay, a reasonable point. Mendenhall even has the prophet Nathan conspiring with David and Bathsheba to legitimize her line in the succession, a version I had never heard before. Certainly Ezekiel and Jeremiah had a lot to say about alliances and submission. I only had in mind the opposition of Elijah and the monotheist party to the statecraft which involved foreign queens and foreign gods.

I see the prophets as presenting a message that Israel required excellent diplomatic skills to achieve good relations with its large neighbours, with the only method to save Israeli independence being high moral standards that would cause their neighbours to be well disposed to them. But the Bible prophets explain that instead Israel had appalling moral standards, and this was the excuse for Syria and Babylon to invade.

Well, I don't think I can go along with that reading. Good behavior doesn't seem to have been an issue for any of the conquerors, and the prophets were all over the place on what was being punished. Religious apostasy? Oppression of the poor? Taking God for granted? Violence and robbery? All of these and more are blamed by someone at some point.

It illustrates that the ideal of a state of grace is seen as a political condition of peace, freedom and friendship, while the state of corruption associated with the fall from grace involves war, bondage and hatred. When the Gospels have Jesus say his kingdom is not of this world, it suggests a kingdom based on principles of grace which are not attainable in a world dominated and corrupted by iron swords.

I think Mendenhall's interpretation makes more sense. The covenant was between the people and God, but that also means one with another. That would give them some strength and overcome ethnic diversity. One of the decalogue commandments was "don't take the Lord's name in vain" which is most sensibly read as "if you take an oath, better stick to it". I think that was seen as a more innocent way than the warlords took to enslave their vassals, but even with the solidarity of the covenant they would not automatically have peace, prosperity and freedom, much less a state of innocence and grace.

Military conquest requires an ideological intensity and self belief, producing a moral framework to justify the Athenian principle in the Melian dialogue that the strong take what they can and the weak accept what they must.

Indeed.
[/quote] The false belief of Christendom that belief conferred redemption produced an appalling scale of alienated delusion through the dark ages and subsequently. We still suffer under the burden of this massive error. [/quote]
I think belief gets overemphasized because the Councils and the Protestants made such a thing of "right belief". The church certainly emphasized confession and absolution, as well as the Eucharist, as the critical "means of grace", though catechism was required and wrong belief was not to be proclaimed.

It has always been a problem for humans to justify atrocity, since there have always been critics who decry atrocity as evil. You might say that Stalin’s maxim ‘no man no problem’ was a simple solution, but it produced cascading syndromes of trauma which continue to inflict bad karma on Russia.

Interesting. I recently read Gaddis' short book (only 3 or 4 hundred pages) on the Cold War, and he agrees with you. The coldly calculated effect does not erase the searing impact on the people being ruled by such terror, and the USSR was having a more and more difficult time justifying their brutality as the Cold War wore on. So the toxic effects may be there in systemic evil as well, though I still suspect it is a different phenomenon from personal choice to be evil.

The supernatural fantasy is a sublimation of the toxic effect of unrepentant evil, lurking in the subconscious of an avowedly secular and rational society. The toxicity of the fall includes people’s ability to believe untrue claims in the face of abundant evidence. A corrupted society is inured to sensitivity and perception, building a carapace of delusion that is impervious to evidence. This was the message of the prophets of Israel, that unless Israel repented and converted its behaviour to remove the hypocritical clash between its words and its deeds, it faced conquest and destruction.

Hmm. I am tempted not to comment on this at all, since I see things so differently. Does rejection of immigration corrupt a society? Then secular Europe is at least as corrupt as the supposedly Christian U.S. I think it is just a natural instinct for fending off competition, and the moral side of the issue rarely comes up when people contemplate "all of the Third World" being allowed in. Does it work better (or worse) with supernaturalism to sublimate with? I see no obvious evidence either way.

Bruce Springsteen sees it, at least. Ghost of Tom Joad.

Harry Marks wrote:Thanks for interesting discussion. Kinda fun to think about.

Yes, it goes back to Interbane’s comment at the start of the thread that Josh Duggar has tried to deflect the blame for his porn addiction and adultery on to the fall of Adam and Eve from grace when they got twicked by that wascally snake. Like if people accept it is all Adam’s fault, then Josh can be forgiven. I don’t want to dwell on the self-justifying theories of the fall of contemporary hypocritical evangelicalism, but rather try to engage on whether this obscure idea of the fall actually has merit as part of a scientific understanding of history.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote: I am talking about actual progress, . . . the iron empires had vastly more scope and power to eliminate diversity than the earlier low tech systems

I am interested in the way you put that: "eliminate diversity". The point was probably literally to put people to work for the rulers. Once the possibility of an agricultural surplus was understood, the military competition to capture more of it was likely to follow. I don't think the early layers of empire were really into eliminating, say, ethnic diversity. Maybe it was easier to enslave foreigners? I'm really not sure, but the Persians supposedly endured where previous Middle Eastern empires had failed because they tolerated the continuation of different cultures. So maybe there was a lot of ethnic cleansing going on.

Technological progress supports cultural evolution towards larger and more uniform societal patterns. We see it today where iphones mean everyone is a unique individual but in the same way. The faster and stronger the connection, the less the diversity.

But as with biodiversity, having smaller separate gene pools can actually create a robust protection for an ecosystem against catastrophe, as seen in the potential vulnerability of crops that have been cultivated to all be the same in a monoculture, even while this small system can be steamrollered when the empire strikes back. The extinction of the world's frogs and bats and coral reefs caused by human monoculture is effectively a product of the fall from grace.

Empires do by their nature eliminate diversity, even if by something as seemingly innocuous as requiring that people light incense at the statue of Caesar, as the Romans did, while allowing local customs that are not seen as seditious. This seemingly tolerant Roman attitude covered a tyrannical reality, which produced the Jewish diaspora when all the Jews were expelled, killed or enslaved. Josephus commented that the only reason the Romans stopped crucifying Jews outside Jerusalem was that they ran out of wood. There is a slippery slope from a nod to Caesar to rampant execution.

A state of grace means heaven on earth. That does not need to be imagined as something magical, but rather as a situation where people are free, secure and prosperous. The reality of history is that technology has simultaneously created both freedom and slavery.

In terms of now imagining a recovery from the state of corruption, the challenge is to visualise a potential realistic critical path, considering the time frame and process required. A starting point is to examine existing theories of history, including the theory of the fall, and see how they contain a distorted reflection of something real.

Robert Tulip wrote: We see it today where iphones mean everyone is a unique individual but in the same way. The faster and stronger the connection, the less the diversity.

I am fascinated by this blending. I have been teaching at international schools, and it is true that everyone wants to be the way "everyone is" (parents and teachers excepted, of course). To some extent little subcultures seem to be facilitated by the internet, but I think they tend to orient themselves relative to the great Global Village as if it was a magnetic field.

But as with biodiversity, having smaller separate gene pools can actually create a robust protection for an ecosystem against catastrophe,

Our striving for control leaves out the unknown unknowns, and, as you point out, leaves us more vulnerable to them than if we had not solved all the known knowns. The fall may be related directly to this urge to take control, but I have trouble thinking of the result as a bad thing, even though we may yet destroy the source of our living. Basically, I like our control-freak of a culture, especially if it can chill out now.

A state of grace means heaven on earth. That does not need to be imagined as something magical, but rather as a situation where people are free, secure and prosperous. The reality of history is that technology has simultaneously created both freedom and slavery.
In terms of now imagining a recovery from the state of corruption, the challenge is to visualise a potential realistic critical path, considering the time frame and process required.

I tend to think in terms of the steady state that will happen, whether in 100 years or 1000 years, when we know most of what we need to know about natural science. Then we can find fulfillment in each other, on a family scale, a local scale and a universal scale. No great exploration or conquest awaiting, and I say a fond good riddance to them.