The bible contains facts? That’s news.

So, is there any meaning to draw distinction?

On one hand you can have a happy couple where a man engages in different sexual activities and a woman is aware and appreciative of it. On the other side, a conservative couple may seek a therapist to alleviate the problems that arise from constrictive sexual environment.

It is hard to judge.

The facts of the biblical books also give very clear ruling on marriage as one man, and one woman(or in older books fiver or so women, but really, can YOU live with FIVE women in sync? I don’t want to!).

I would say your entire essay leaves one wondering at exactly what you do for research when you only read ‘half’ the book to get your information. DO you also read half the other books you study for information as well? Your own information suggests a strong yes.

Having said that, a reference to society as a functional unit is not inappropriate; there are emergent properties of societies and cultures and self perpetuation is probably actually selected for at that level (using the word selection in a general sense).

“, but it seems that intra-communal violence is higher among foragers.”

Do you have any evidence to support this statement outside of the arctic and subarcit? I failed to include my usual caveat that when thinking of long term societal, biological, and cultural history we need to avoid mixing arctic/subarctic adaptations, which are very recent and unique.
” ethnohistorical evidence points to greater intra-communal violence in non-agricultural communities.”

That is a very hard statement to back up. There are times and places in the archaeological record where you find the occassional spear in the head, but increasingly such cases are linked to earlier than thought agriculture, like in the Late Archaic of North America. There isn’t much of a record on no-agricultural modern humans to base this on.

Having said all that, ” War, yes, grows with agriculture, for obvious reasons, but violence as a whole doesn’t necessarily grow with the rise of agriculture or pastoralism.” may be a reasonable statement, but it does not obviate what I said . When resources are highly vulnerable to competitive neighbors, in middle range societies, you get more fierceness as a cultural trait. These are not peasant societies with some sort of army (I made that distinction). Nor does “fierceness” mean day to day nastiness (I also made that distinction).

“It also seems unlikely that the Israelites conquered Canaan in 2400 BCE. ”

Could be, that is not my area.

This, also, is contentious:

With the rise of agriculture in a given region, things like conflict and war become more likely, and social organization trends towards the maintenance of a state of fierceness or bellicosity.

Agriculture doesn’t necessarily mean greater bellicosity. It could mean greater inter-communal violence (the desire for land and food security, etc), but it seems that intra-communal violence is higher among foragers. That is certainly true among, say, Inuit groups before their subjugation by imperial powers. I realise that this isn’t the experience of many ethnographers with extant foraging groups, but perhaps there are other reasons for this – certainly the ethnohistorical evidence points to greater intra-communal violence in non-agricultural communities. War, yes, grows with agriculture, for obvious reasons, but violence as a whole doesn’t necessarily grow with the rise of agriculture or pastoralism.

It also seems unlikely that the Israelites conquered Canaan in 2400 BCE. Archaeologically, the Israelites are invisible; they are the same as other Canaanite groups until the Babylonian captivity (or the forced migrations under the Assyrians, when the populations of Judah and Israel were largely replaced by Aramaeans). The only evidence for the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition date seems to be the claim, made in the Bible, that the Israelites under David acquired iron-working from the Philistines.

Your blog posts on the subject have come at just the right moment for this reader.