Countering the prevailing notion that humankind is naturally predisposed to war, new research suggests that primitive humans existed mostly peacefully, with war developing much later than previously thought.Now, as to why I'm disposed to take this seriously, leaving aside my commitemnt to taking seriously Christ's teaching. I think that the activity of warfare seems to require a certain amount of 'psyching up' rather than being something we 'naturally' slip into. As the study seems to show, murder is more likely -crimes of passion, resentment etc. Organising a unmber of people to warfare is a very different league and requires organising, arguing for etc -a far more expensive endeavour in terms of psychic and physical resources. Then consider that to get people to fight wars takes quite a bit of training -including desensitisation to killing and cuing aggressive responses (and even then typical soldiers tend to suffer fear reactions more than 'bravery').
As an expression of that expense can be seen in the mythically-enshrined ideologies of ANE; the Babylonian and Sumerian creation myths which 'justify' organised violence. So the Genesis 1 account which reads to me like a counter-story is significant because it pictures a peaceable creation process presumably deliberately telling a different tale to warring god-factions and thereby giving a different vision of human purpose and dignity which is presumably the theological point. So I would see this as providing a pre-historical evidence that the theological assertion I'm seeing in Genesis 1 is mirrored by human development in history, And that the development of warfare is a later cultural development which required, among other things, ideological underpinnings which Genesis is resisting and countering.
That's not to say that a rosy view of early humanity is propogated by the Bible -far from it. However, in line with this interpretation of evidence, violence in scripture is seen more as interpersonal (Cain and Abel) first of all.
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