Abstract
This chapter focuses on a dichotomy between wilderness and gardens found in biblical texts such as Jeremiah 17: 5–8. In addition, the author explores how this dichotomy—with its negative construal of wilderness—was appropriated by British settlers in nineteenth century New Zealand, that is, in ways that facilitated the large-scale destruction of perceived wilderness. The author explores what might be possible if we were to free wilderness from this dichotomy. By moving beyond the binary that has traditionally determined meaning in this biblical text, it becomes possible to perceive wilderness in an entirely new light as home.
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Notes
- 1.
In asking this question, Wakefield quotes ‘MA of Trinity College Cambridge.’
- 2.
Kei te noho au i Tāmaki Makaurau, i tipu mai au kei raro i te taumarumaru o Ōhinerau, ā, i te taha o te Waitematā. Ko Ngati Whatua o Orakei te mana whenua, te iwi whakaruruhau. Ko tēnei te mihi nunui ki a rātou katoa. This is a brief greeting and acknowledgement of tangata whenua (the people of the land) who are kaitaiaki (guardians) of Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), where I reside. I read and write as a Pākehā (non-Māori) whose family have been manuhiri (guests) in Aotearoa (the Māori name for New Zealand) for eight generations. I am deeply cognisant of the many ways in which my ancestors were complicit in and benefited from the colonisation of Aotearoa. As one of their descendants, I also benefit from and am, all too often, complicit in this ongoing colonial legacy. I am committed to the radical decolonisation of Aotearoa, and I see this work as part of that broader kaupapa (agenda).
- 3.
An independent and artistically well-rounded unit, Jer 17:5–8 does not seem to be intrinsically connected to the surrounding material. The upper limit of the poem is indicated by a setumah (symbolising a break in the text) prior to v 5. While there is no such delimitation after v 8, the shift in tone, content, and sentence structure in v 9 indicates the beginning of a separate unit. It is also interesting to note a setumah at the end of v 6, dividing the curse portion from the blessing portion of the poem. Given the complementary nature of these verses, however, it seems unlikely that they were once separate units; rather, the setumah seems to function to highlight the difference between curse and blessing.
- 4.
The primary focus of this textual analysis will be on the poem’s second stanza and its representation of wilderness. Although I will make references to the fertile land implied in the fourth stanza, these references will be in relation to the depiction of wilderness.
- 5.
The LXX for example, has agriomyrikē (wild tamarisk). Other translations include ‘bush’ (NIV), ‘scrub’ (NJB) and ‘heath’ (ASV, KJV). I prefer the NRSV translation of ‘shrub.’
- 6.
McKane (1986) does not find any shrub imagery in Jer 17:6. Instead he argues that עַרְעָר be translated as ‘destitute.’ For McKane, the image thus refers to a destitute person who knows nothing of the good life and suffers a solitary existence in wasteland. Given the symmetry of the poem in so many regards, and the clear reference to a tree in v 8, I retain the balancing image of the shrub in v 6.
- 7.
Although the assonant potential of עֲרָבָה makes this term an understandable rhetorical choice for the description of the cursed land, the use of מִדְבָּר in the same verse suggests these words are being used synonymously (cf. 1 Sam 23:24; Is 35:6; 41:19; 51:3).
- 8.
A hapax legomenon, חֲרֵרִים is a source of much uncertainty, but is typically translated as ‘parched places’ due to the understanding that the term is derived from the verb חָרַר, meaning ‘to burn.’ Cf. Job 30:30; Jer 6:29; Ezek 15:4–5; 24:11. Slight variations in translation include ‘scorched places’ (Lundbom 1999, p. 784), and ‘stony (lava) fields’ (Holladay 1986, p. 489).
- 9.
Variations on this phrase are used frequently throughout Jeremiah to express a similar sentiment. Without exception, the lack of inhabitants is linked with the land’s desolation and destruction: Jer 2:6, 15; 4:7; 9:9 [Eng 10], 10 [Eng 11]; 26:9; 34:22; 44:22; 46:19; 51:29, 37.
- 10.
Brown (1999) refers to the wilderness as ‘terra reformanda,’ a land poised for transformation. He suggests the Garden of Eden as a model of land to which the wilderness must return.
- 11.
Indeed, Beisner (1997) argues that the task of humanity is to ‘transform wilderness into garden,’ bringing the world from primordial to eschatological glory (13, 127).
- 12.
William Fox became the principal agent of the New Zealand Company (a British business focused on the systematic colonisation of New Zealand) and was Premier of Aotearoa at various times (1856, 1861–1862, 1869–1872, 1873).
- 13.
Premier Vogel’s Land Act of 1877 required landowners to ‘bring it [the land] into cultivation,’ which meant clearing the forest as quickly as possible. Indeed, the prevailing attitude of nineteenth and early twentieth century colonists was summed up in 1907 by ethnologist Elsdon Best who was of the opinion that ‘a people settling in a forest country must destroy the forest or it will conquer them’ (quoted in Park 1999, 193). The combination of fire and axe meant that by the 1930s, almost all the lowland forests in New Zealand had been destroyed (Park 1995).
- 14.
This idea gained expression more broadly in the colonial doctrine of terra nullius (the empty land), which claimed that the land God gave to human beings was originally ‘empty’ and thus available to be conquered by European invaders.
- 15.
A similar attitude was reflected in the legal argument adopted by William Fox who insisted that Māori had rights only to the land which they inhabited and cultivated. He believed that land ‘unused’ by Māori should be declared a wilderness or ‘waste land’ and allocated to settlers - along with troops to defend them on that land (Sinclair and Dalziel 1990).
- 16.
After the New Zealand wars of the 1860s, substantial areas of Māori land were confiscated by the New Zealand Government. The biggest areas of raupatu (confiscation) were in the Waikato and Taranaki regions where around 1.5 million hectares of land were confiscated from local iwi (tribes) (Keane 2010).
- 17.
King notes this percentage would have been higher but for the South Island’s Southern Alps. The consequences of such drastic transformation continue to be felt, particularly in the alarming rate of erosion of the land.
- 18.
LeGuin (1989) comments that ‘where I live as a woman is to some men a wilderness. But to me it is home’ (45). Here she makes a connection between women and the wilderness as ‘Others.’ She reflects the way in which the ‘master’ works to deny the legitimacy of the subordinate experience by alienating that which is normal to this Other – like the notion of home. Gaard (1997) argues that wilderness will be experienced differently in relation to where each human’s identity is located in terms of the dualistic pairs. She suggests that women and Indigenous minorities, located on the subordinate side of the dualistic sets, will feel a closer affiliation with the wilderness.
- 19.
The CEB, NASB and NRSV versions translate שָׁכַן to mean ‘live.’
- 20.
If the ‘shrub’ does in fact refer to the tamarisk as the LXX suggests, this plant actually thrives in the saline soil that is described as plaguing the wilderness.
- 21.
Leopold (1968) notes with awe the way in which the component species of the wilderness are rarely lost, and they do not get out of hand.
- 22.
Scriven (1997) suggests that it is in fact the ability to adapt and respond to external circumstances without reference to the well-being of other organisms that endows all living things with ‘some good of their own’ (151–153, author’s emphasis).
- 23.
The translations of these terms are inadequate approximations only. The English translations here do not capture the depth and nuance of these concepts.
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Colgan, E. (2024). To Conquer and Subdue: An Ecological Reading of Wilderness in Jeremiah 17:5–8 and Beyond. In: Kolia, B.F., Mawson, M. (eds) Unsettling Theologies. Postcolonialism and Religions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46121-7_10
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