Issue 136 (2018)

V. Rubel, Dr. habil. (History), prof.

Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv, Ukraine

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/1728-2640.2018.136.1.13

«NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION» IN BIBLICAL DESCRIPTION: ATTEMPT OF GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL IDENTIFICATION

The stories of paradise garden, first men living in it, their fall and exile from Eden are fixed in the Bible and considered a sphere of religious and mythological, but not a historical component of the Holy Scripture. Textual analysis of the second chapter of «The Book of Genesis» gives grounds to consider Eden a real geographical object, which limits correspond to the territories of today’s Tabriz Valley. Description of paradise garden, where Adam, created by God, was not aware of death and was richly fed, not making any additional efforts, is a peculiar human memory of an era of early pre-Neolithic being. «The exile from Eden» – is an era in history, when «unproblematic» life of primitive men was finished because of lack of the natural resourses, quantity of which was deficient for survival. It made people to occupy territories beyond the original range of their existence. The second result of «the exile from paradise» was a curse of Adam, as since then he had to get food «by the sweat of his brow». Modern scientific terminology calls it «Neolithic revolution», i.e. transition from the foraging to the agriculture, when human had to master the art of tilling for growing food. Inverse chronological calculation method of generations of biblical patriarchs allows to date this historical fracture by the first half – the middle of III millennium BC. The third result of «the exile from paradise» was declared loss of human’s immortality. The emergence of reproductive economy, when a person began to plow the ground, dig channels, build dams, pasture livestock and in such way «get the daily bread», intensified the development of protoscientific knowledge, which resulted in human’s awareness of finality of his personal physical existence. The Bible redefines this fact as the loss of «eternity» by human.

Keywords: The Book of Genesis, Eden, Neolithic revolution, Biblical geography, Biblical chronology.