23 Aug '10 15:00>1 edit
Originally posted by wolfgang59It antiquity history was commonly perceived to have gone through several 'ages', each of which was worse than the preceding one. First came the 'Golden Age', when, as Hesiod claims:
I like this interpretation a lot, although (as you indicate later) i think it more logical that Able was a nomadic herdsman rather than a hunter-gatherer.
The writers of Genesis were therefore looking backwards to better-times (much as the Press do now - "The Good Old days"😉 and blaming the ills on the world on the new-fangled innovation of agriculture.
Men lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all devils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods.
The Golden Age ended when Prometheus brought the gift of fire and all the other arts to mankind, who subsequently lost his idyllic state. The courser Silver, Bronze and Iron ages followed in suit. In his book The Pursuit of the Millennium (p.187), Norman Cohn is talking about Ovid's version of the myth from the Metamophoses:
'Men used to cultivate good faith and virtue spontaneously, without laws. Punishment and fear did not exist, nor were threatening phrases to be read from bronze tablets....Earth herself, untroubled and untouched by the hoe, unwounded by any ploughshare, used to give all things of her own accord...' But the day was to come when 'shame and truth and good faith fled away; and in their place came deceit and guilt and plots and violence and the wicked lust for possession....And the wary surveyor marked out with long boundary-lines the earth which hitherto had been a common possession like the sunshine and the breezes....Now pernicious iron was produced, and gold that is still more pernicious than iron; and these produced war....Men live from plunder..."
I think the entire Christian notion of The Fall owes a large debt to this Greco-Roman version of the fall from this idyllic past. Versions of this myth persisted long into the Middle Ages, with many reformist groups trying to undo the corruption of the Roman Church and reconnect with the long lost Golden Age. Whether Rousseau was aware of it or not, it bears a striking similarity to his conception of events in his Discourse on Inequality.
Edit: Here's a painting of the Golden Age by Lucas Chranach the Elder (1472-1553):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Goldenes-Zeitalter-1530-2.jpg