How Did Adam & Eve Make a Living?

Is it a coincidence? The opening chapters of Genesis depict situations that parallel modern anthropological theories about the transition from a gathering/hunting society to an agricultural/herding society.

And conversely, recent economic studies may help us interpret Adam and Eve’s role in the Garden of Eden story.

Earlier anthropological theory understood the introduction of agriculture as the result of a major technological breakthrough. More recent studies paint a different picture, however. They propose that agriculture represented merely an intensification of food production.

Most early gathering and hunting societies lived primarily from gathering, not from hunting.¹ Time-budget data from modern gathering societies indicate that, under normal circumstances, gathering would not have taken much time.²

Most gathering and hunting societies, even though they may not have practiced agriculture, nevertheless understood quite well the mechanisms linking the planting of a seed to the growing of a plant, as well as the need for weeding and nurturing the growing plant.³ We should no longer think of gatherers and hunters as “a ragged and scruffy band of nomads”; instead, “they appear as a practiced and ingenious team of lay botanists who know how to wring the most out of a superficially bleak environment…We know of no human group on earth so primitive that they are ignorant of the connection between plants and the seeds from which they grow.”⁴

Where population density remained low, gathering and hunting societies normally did not abandon this method of obtaining food because, on average, it required less work than agriculture. When population density increased, however, the balance shifted. At some point, wild foods became over-gathered and game over-hunted, a process that occurs much faster than the declining fertility of the soil in agriculture: In economic terms, diminishing returns in gathering and hunting occurred faster than in agriculture, so eventually the latter became relatively more productive.

Thus the adoption of agriculture represented the implementation of an already-known technology in order to offset the effects of a changing external environment, that is, a rising population.

Although agricultural labor productivity began at a low level, it rose over time with the introduction of technological changes. In the millennia following the inauguration of agriculture in the Near East, for example, new properties were bred in plants. Instead of the original emmer and einkorn wheat, in which the seed-pod easily shattered, nonshattering varieties with a tough rachis connection were planted that allowed harvesting without a great loss of seeds. Early farmers also discovered and adopted new plants such as polyploid wheats that, once harvested, could be easily separated from their glumes to permit easier threshing. They also developed seeds with more uniform maturation periods. They invented various agricultural tools, such as plows, and more effective storage technologies. They introduced new methods of cultivation—for example, the use of irrigation—that reduced uncertainties in production arising from weather fluctuations.

In the 19th century, anthropologists thought that herding preceded agriculture. This is no longer current thinking. Recent research has concluded that agriculture and herding appeared at roughly the same time in human history, about 10,000 years ago.

Moreover, agriculture/herding societies preceded fully nomadic economies. The original domestication of animals required a fixed home, even though the lack of sufficient pasturage in any one place may have required temporary migration for some months.

With this anthropological background, let us now look at the biblical text.

It is easy to imagine Adam and Eve initially as gatherers in the lush Garden of Eden described in Genesis 2. In the previous chapter, “God said, ‘See, I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon the earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; they shall be yours for food’” (Genesis 1:29).

The story changes when, after eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge, Adam and Eve are banished from Eden; now, making a living is no longer so easy. They are forced into agriculture, to till the cursed earth: “By toil shall you eat of it…By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat” (Genesis 3:17–19).⁵

Thus Adam and Eve are shown adopting a more laborious method for producing food than they needed under their previous mode of subsistence in the Garden. As noted above, this change can occur when a gathering technology becomes less productive, that is, as the law of diminishing returns sets in. The biblical story appears to be consistent with our current understanding of the origins of agriculture: When the productivity of gathering falls below that of agriculture, the shift occurs.

However, the biblical texts present a serious complication in our analysis. There is a garden in Eden, planted by God. Humans are placed there to “till it and tend it” (Genesis 2:15). It certainly sounds as if Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden are already farmers.

The Hebrew, however, is not as clear as this common English translation suggests. The two verbs are ‘eved (‘VD) and shamar (SãMR). The first means literally “to work, to serve”; when the object is soil it may mean “to cultivate.” But here the object is not specified. A suffix to the verb indicates “it,” but the suffix, interpreted as a feminine pronominal object, disagrees with the gender of garden, which is usually considered masculine. For this reason, the great biblical exegete Umberto Cassuto regarded this suffix as a later emendation and accepted the straightforward meaning of the verb, “to serve,” rather than adopting an agricultural emphasis.

The second verb also has several meanings: to watch, to guard, to keep. It is used slightly later in the text, after the expulsion, when cherubim are stationed “to guard” access to the tree of life (Genesis 3:24).⁶

In short, the two words would be more appropriately translated “to serve and to guard,” suggesting that humans were not to cultivate the Garden as farmers but to protect it as servant guardians in the divine arboretum.⁷ Whether or not this makes them gatherers may be a moot question from the linguistic viewpoint.

To determine how the text depicts what Adam and Eve were doing in the Garden, we can approach the problem in a different way, by determining how the first family and their descendants are shown earning their living after the expulsion, and then by extrapolating backward.

After the expulsion, Adam must work to supply food from ground that was cursed (Genesis 3:17, 19). In the generation that follows, “Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the soil” (Genesis 4:3), but the Lord rejects his offering (Genesis 4:5). When Cain proceeds to murder his brother Abel, the Lord imposes additional burdens: “If you till the soil, it shall no longer yield its strength to you” (Genesis 4:12).^a Clearly, the text suggests that early agriculture is not very rewarding, exactly as the anthropological analysis outlined above proposes.

Obviously, the biblical story was intended to impart a theological message, not to explain the economics of early farming. But it is also possible to look at the story as a cultural artifact reflecting on ancient origins. The story’s theological point is that as a result of the rupture of divine-human cooperation in Eden and the subsequent moral pollution of the earth by violence, God has cursed the ground and the easy abundance of Paradise is no more. At this point in the story, from the economic viewpoint, agricultural productivity is low, since the necessary technological improvements have not yet taken place. Before these improvements occur, productivity may fall even lower—although not as fast as when gathering and hunting technologies prevail—because such factors as declining soil fertility cause diminishing returns.

Later in the story, agricultural productivity increases as a result of changes that offset diminishing returns. This is reflected in the Flood story. After the waters subside, God is shown instituting a new order, removing the curse on the land and promising (or guaranteeing) seasonal regularity (Genesis 8:21–22)—in other words, reducing uncertainty due to weather. Perennial crops (for example, vineyards) are now planted and agriculture becomes more productive.

The biblical discussion of herding shows an even clearer correspondence to modern theories. Although the text commits Adam and Eve to some form of agriculture after the expulsion, we are given no details. In the next generation, one of their sons (Cain) is said to have tilled the soil; the other one (Abel) herded. This implies a rough simultaneity of the origin of these two food-producing activities, again in accordance with modern anthropological research.

Six generations later in the genealogy, Lamarch’s wife Adah bears Jabal, who “was the ancestor of those who dwell in tents and amidst herds” (Genesis 4:20). This is the first true nomadism depicted in the Bible. The implication is that Abel had practiced sedentary herding near Cain’s fields. Here again, the biblical account concurs with the anthropological reconstruction. True nomadism, without a fixed home, developed after agriculture and sedentary herding.

When we consider humans as carnivores (meat-eaters), we run into a problem. In the Garden of Eden story, Adam and Eve appear to be vegetarians based on the preceding instruction in Genesis 1:29. The anthropological data, however, suggest that humans were always carnivorous; primate cousins, such as chimpanzees, also have meat-eating propensities, even though their main foods are plants.

After the expulsion, it is unclear whether the first family eats meat; the Bible does not tell us whether Abel keeps animals for their milk and wool or for their meat.

After the flood, however, the text reports God’s formal designation of plant and animal food for humans: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give it to you” (Genesis 9:3). The language parallels the earlier charge (“I give you every seed-bearing plant that is upon all the earth [Genesis 1:29]). After the Flood, only “flesh with its life-blood in it” is forbidden (Genesis 9:4).

Still later, hunting is mentioned for the first time: Nimrod is described as “a mighty hunter” (Genesis 10:9) several generations after agriculture was introduced. This suggests that either hunting was not a very significant element in the culture’s view of its origins or that it was not an important source of nourishment to those who transmitted the stories. The first possibility accords with current anthropological studies indicating, as noted above, that gathering/hunting societies lived primarily from gathering, rather than hunting. This may also explain the poetic vegetarianism of the first family.

To return to the initial question—is this correspondence of biblical and anthropological views a coincidence? The biblical account has been examined here as a collection of sacred stories about human origins that might contain ancient understandings of agricultural developments. This reading may or may not be carried over to other creation myths of the ancient Near East. The role of human beings as servants of the gods, the controversy between farmers and shepherds, and the reports concerning causes and consequences of floods appear in different contexts from their biblical counterparts and must be interpreted separately.⁸

Within the biblical account itself, however, and by extrapolating backward within the anthropological model, one arrives at the interpretation that Adam and Eve were understood as gatherers, not farmers, in the Garden story. Only after leaving Eden should they be imagined as farmers.⁹

Is it a coincidence? The opening chapters of Genesis depict situations that parallel modern anthropological theories about the transition from a gathering/hunting society to an agricultural/herding society. And conversely, recent economic studies may help us interpret Adam and Eve’s role in the Garden of Eden story. Earlier anthropological theory understood the introduction of agriculture as the result of a major technological breakthrough. More recent studies paint a different picture, however. They propose that agriculture represented merely an intensification of food production. Most early gathering and hunting societies lived primarily from gathering, not from hunting.1 Time-budget data from modern gathering societies […]