Farming for Children: A Different Way of Thinking About the Fall
I’ve figured out the job thing, and the book is back in my editor’s hands, so it’s time to resurrect my alter ego, the Mormon Monk. And, in honor of my book, how about a monkish meditation on Eden ? Let’s review: Eden was a place without death or disease, and it was inhabited by a man who knew so much about the natural world (theologians reading Genesis 2:19 have said) that he understood the nature of each animal as he met it and gave each its appropriate name. But transgression of divine law caused God to exile Adam and Eve from this paradisiacal existence; instead of reaping nature’s bounty, Adam would have to till the land and farm. I’ve summarized the Eden story because it bears a striking resemblance to the narrative laid out by Kenneth Kiple in his one-volume comprehensive history of food, A Movable Feast . While most of us think about the “primitive” hunter-gatherer peoples who lived before the invention of agriculture more than thirteen millennia ago with pity, acc