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Spring 2006/Vol. 42, No. 1
Iain Provan is the Marshall Sheppard Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent College and the author of numerous articles and several books including commentaries on Lamentations, 1 and 2 Kings, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs. More recently he wrote A Biblical History of Israel (co-authored with Phil Long and Tremper Longman). |
The Land Is Mine and You Are Only Tenants (Leviticus 25:23): Earth-keeping and People-keeping in the Old TestamentIain ProvanWhat kind of story is the biblical story? Does it help us with earth-keeping and people-keeping, or hinder us in these endeavours? It is commonly alleged nowadays that it hinders—that people who have taken the Bible story as their governing story have a woeful record of looking after the earth and have often not treated human beings very well either. This is not the place to explore the full truthfulness of such claims about what Christians have sometimes done or not done, historically. There is certainly some truth to be found in such critiques, but there is also much ignorance and propaganda. More to the point is whether the biblical narrative itself has required such Christians to act negligently or badly, where they have so acted, or whether the biblical narrative itself presents a quite different vision of the world from the one pursued by these badly behaved Christians, perhaps sometimes misunderstood and misconstrued by its readers. I would certainly want to argue the latter: that the problem lies—where there has been a problem—not with the Bible, but only with certain very inadequate readings of the Bible. In fact, the biblical story in itself provides us with important resources— Christians would say, ultimately important resources, provided by God himself—in our quest to be both earth-keepers and people-keepers, and indeed to understand the interrelationship between these two. I want to show some ways in which this is so, focusing on the Old Testament Scriptures, and within these Scriptures primarily on the early chapters of Genesis. This is not only because of the importance of the early chapters of Genesis to a Christian worldview, but also because of the practical matter of the length available for this presentation. Towards the end of the paper I shall nevertheless begin to branch out to some extent into the remainder of the Old Testament, so that we get a fuller picture of biblical teaching. My tendency, incidentally, will be to say more about earth-keeping than people-keeping. This is not because I think that the first is more important than the second, but only because I think Christians have more often understood the imperatives surrounding the second than those surrounding the first.... READ THE FULL ARTICLE (pdf download)
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