“Agrarianism is a way of thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land and of living creatures.”
Produzir alimentos e sustentar a vida sem destruir o planeta. Onde está isto na Bíblia? O livro de Ellen F. Davis, Professora da Universidade Duke, Durham, NC, USA, mostra. Confira:
DAVIS, E. F. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, xvii + 234 p. – ISBN 9780521732239.
For anyone who believes that the Old Testament is a powerful voice in support of our sustainable use of the planet’s resources (which some deny) but is dissatisfied with current attempts to demonstrate that (e.g., the very tired “stewardship” idea), Ellen Davis’s Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible is your answer. This is a triumphantly novel and successful work of scholarship that on the all-important question of our relationship to the earth allows vast sweeps of the Old Testament to give vent to its deep intelligence and profound moral insights that were always available if only someone asked the right questions (…) Professor Davis has turned to agrarian theory, typified in the work of Wendell Berry (who has written a foreword to this volume) and other writers, such as Wes Jackson and Bruce Colman. An agrarian approach insists that we have been given the land to care for, in an attitude of reverence and humility before it. It brings out the importance of our connection with and memory of particular localities from which we draw the sustenance we require. Above all, it stresses that we must use the earth sustainably, by not compromising its means of sustaining itself. It sets up the ideal of the small-holder closely connected with the land and farming in a diversified way in sharp contrast with the large-scale industrialized farming of agribusiness, heavily dependent on fertilizer and single cropping, remorselessly driving down the nutrient levels in the land and leading to depopulation of rural areas. As Davis states in her first sentence, “Agrarianism is a way of thinking and ordering life in community that is based on the health of the land and of living creatures.” Agrarianism is a perspective for undertaking exegesis, not a distinct method (da resenha de Philip F. Esler, da Universidade St. Andrews, St. Andrews, Escócia).
A resenha, que elogia o livro de ponta a ponta, escrita por Philip F. Esler, foi publicada na Review of Biblical LIterature em 12 de setembro de 2009.
Uma leitura obrigatória para todos os exegetas e teólogos que vivem na terra do agronegócio…
