Ignoble Savage: What the Bible says about Ancient Man
1. Ancient men were just people, and people haven’t changed.
Exhibit A: Doodle made by a child over a thousand years ago when he should have been doing his schoolwork. Here, ancient man exhibits classic signs of humanity: as with any modern child, Onfim (he signed it) has made himself the victor. On the top right you can see the schoolwork he was supposed to be doing, i.e. writing the alphabet. Apparently the alphabet didn’t hold his attention for long. One can’t help but wonder if the person under the horse is an enemy, or simply the schoolteacher?
The Bible teaches that sin doesn’t come from society, or civilization (sorry, Rousseau,) but from our fallen nature. The Noble Savage is a myth. The feral human is going to be just as selfish, silly, wildly optimistic, and generally preposterous, as the human in Pittsburgh, PA. Therefore, the motivations of ancient man were, and will always be, the same as for modern man: a contradictory mix of safety, ambition, and the quest for the eternal.
Exhibit B: The oldest known “bar” joke from ancient Mesopotamia:
‘A dog walked into a tavern and said, ‘I can’t see a thing. I’ll open this one.’”
*Cough cough* a real side-cracker–one assumes! The meaning of the punch line has been lost to history. If you have a guess as to the subtext that made the joke funny—please, do tell!
2. Civilization can go backwards (the post-apocalyptic trope is real)
First came the Stone Age, then the Bronze Age, then the Iron Age…
Except the Bible tells us that bronze, iron, and musical instruments were invented before the flood.
And Lamech took two wives. The name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. Adah bore Jabal; he was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. Zillah also bore Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron. – Genesis 4:19-22
Before the flood, we had bronze and iron. After the flood, those skills were lost and later rediscovered.
It’s a thing, people. Have you ever read or watched a post-apocalyptic story? Alas, Babylon, anyone? Imagine what it would be like to step off the Ark onto a ruined planet, that looks like a total hot mess, splattered in lava, littered with rotting mats of plant debris. All the technology you once knew, the great cities and the crowds of people, have been swept away. Maybe you grew up with indoor plumbing and sewage systems, like several ancient cities had, and now you’re digging pits in the ground. Once you could go to a market and purchase what you wanted, and now your only options are what you grow and what you scavenge.
3. Ancient man was genetically superior to modern humans.
What happens if you cajole your printer into copying something for you, then copy the copy, and then copy that copy, 200 times? My printer would make a rude noise and quit after eating three pieces of perfectly good paper, but if yours worked, the final result would be an unreadable mess. Bad news? You’re about 200 generations (genetic copies) out from the creation of the world.
Yowch.
Lucky for you, God has a better copy machine than HP could ever dream of, and He combines two previous copies to make you. If the two copies He uses aren’t closely related, (ie. similar) the places where the ink on one has become all fuzzy, the other may still read clear, and voila—you get legs of equal length, and just maybe, you can keep your wisdom teeth! Cain married his sister, and so did Seth. It wasn’t until the time of the Exodus, a couple thousand years later, that God prohibited marriage between close relatives. I’m guessing he did so because, as the master designer, He also prefers people to have legs of equal length. But in early Genesis, human DNA was so good that even siblings could marry. (Which was a good thing, given the fact that there weren’t any alternatives.) So ancient man–if given as good a diet as modern man–would probably live longer, have better teeth, better eyesight, be more intelligent, and more athletic.
Here’s an interesting tidbit: today we use mutations in the DNA as markers to track genetic lines back through history. We can even calculate how many mutations occur per X number of generations. And the genome mutation rate appears to agree with the Biblical timeline.
4. Ancient man was not particularly noble.
If you think that people living in daily contact with nature, free from the shackles of modern society, are better people, you didn’t get that idea from the Bible. The idea that humans are born noble and unspoiled before being corrupted by the society around them is not a Christian idea. Ancient man enjoyed a weekend out romping around killing his neighbors, stealing their wives, and imposing taxes on the survivors, as much as anyone. In fact, genetics tells us that history is fill with repeated “events” where all of the males in a population were exterminated, but women survived. Mysterious, that’s what it is.
The Bible doesn’t describe ancient men as primitive proto-humans, or as noble savages, but as fallen, flawed humans living with the same tension between indwelling sin and imago dei that we experience today.
