Gifts of the Godless

What a wild week! To get to our conference, my wife and I traversed artificial paths in an automobile, a self-moving device of pistons and wheels, sometimes faster than the fastest horse can run. There at the conference, the presenters struggled with their efforts to disseminate images and sounds over great distances, prompting one to offer the curious remark, “The devil hates technology.” Meanwhile, in the evenings, I read articles about the new European efforts to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), and the indictment of a political consultant who used AI to make robocalls impersonating the president's voice. At breakfast on Friday, I listened in as a group of truckers complained about the effects that computer models have on their labor, now that an algorithm is effectively their boss. Then I went to conference again, where I heard a church planter describe his use of technology to preach to churches around the world without leaving home. Finally, I heard our bishop recite a litany of all the ways we as Evangelical Christians might ill fit the culture around us, insisting we live differently than our neighbors.

We can't get away from it – culture, technology, civilization. We and our neighbors negotiate with it daily. One author observes that “all but the poorest among us dwell in climate-controlled buildings, wake up to digital alarm clocks, prepare meals with devices powered by a vast interconnected electrical grid, transport ourselves with vehicles fueled by internationally shipped petroleum, and ingest several thousand advertisements on billboards and screens scattered throughout our cities and homes. Not a single one of those devices or behaviors existed just over a century ago, and yet all of us treat them as if they were as normal as the water we drink or the air we breathe.”¹ Does the Bible have anything that could have prepared us for such a different world as we're now in?

I'd put to you that it does, but to appreciate it, we ought to spend a bit of time in ancient Sumer. The Sumerians, the world's first civilization as we measure such things, had a list of five cities – Eridu, Badtibira, Larag, Zimbir, Shuruppag – they believed were the first cities on earth.² In the beginning, they said, “all lands were sea..., then Eridu was made.”³ But the Sumerians were convinced that these cities were not built by the hands of man. They held that the first cities on earth, including Eridu, had actually been built by gods for gods.⁴ Theirs was a deep conviction in “the divine origin of cities.”⁵ And the Sumerians insisted that “when kingship had come down from heaven, kingship was at Eridu” – that human political life began in a city of gods.⁶

Now back to the Bible. And there we read: “Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. When he built a city, he called the name of the city after the name of his son...” (Genesis 4:17). There's some debate as to if the original text said the city was named not after Enoch but after Enoch's son Irad, in which case this city would actually be Eridu itself.⁷ Either way, a Sumerian finding Genesis would be blown away and maybe horrified. The first city was built, not by gods, but by a man devoid of honor? Our cities aren't divine after all?⁸ Here in Genesis, we meet their Sumerian city, no doubt centered around some shrine and ruled by kings, but not founded by gods.

The Sumerians had been wrong about Eridu being founded by gods, but were right it was the oldest city around, its foundations having been laid over three millennia before Abraham. Eridu was one of their first cities, raised up on a sandbank in a lagoon to savor and sanctify the abundance.⁹ But cities elsewhere went back farther still. Archaeologists tell us some of the first walled settlements were already sophisticated in the late Stone Age.¹⁰

But how should we view cities? It's an important question for the church, since by the year 2050 they say two of every three humans on earth will live in cities.¹¹ To the Sumerians, the city was invented by the gods and was an unqualified good, “the center of authentic human existence,” “the ideal social context..., the pinnacle of the ordered cosmos.”¹² But in Genesis, not only was the city invented by men, it was “fallen man's idea.”¹³ Genesis pictures the first city rising out of the swamp of violence, hatred, and curse. Cities have a knack for intensifying sin by bringing sinners together in darksome ways.¹⁴ Cities we meet in Genesis are “dangerous places of hubris and impiety.”¹⁵ And historically, cities often have been “deadly killers,” filled not only with disease but with stress; those raised in large modern cities have shrinkage in the emotion-processing parts of the brain, leading to higher rates of anxiety and mood disorders.¹⁶ Worst of all, as the prophet says, “as many as your cities are your gods” (Jeremiah 2:28). The Sumerians would enthusiastically agree, but don't see the horror in that.

So the city is evil, right? Ah, but no sooner did Israel enter the promised land than they began to settle in some of the cities they conquered (Numbers 21:25), “cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars, besides very many unwalled villages” (Deuteronomy 3:5). Moses himself approved, saying God had intended to give them “great and good cities that you did not build” (Deuteronomy 6:10), “cities which the LORD your God is giving you to dwell there” (Deuteronomy 13:12). Israelites didn't start out as city-builders like Cain, but by God's grace they were given cities. By the time of David, not only had these come to be called “the cities of our God” (2 Samuel 10:12), but the Ark of the Covenant moved into one (2 Samuel 6:16-17). There's still a risk for the city to be full of violence and injustice (Ezekiel 7:23; 9:9), but the city can also be a site of divine presence and human flourishing (Psalm 72:16). That's true today, as well: God can provide for the city (Jeremiah 33:9).

Although human culture stretched back before the first cities, once cities began, it's said that “the dynamic interaction of people in the dense, cramped metropolis has generated the ideas and techniques, revolutions and innovations that have driven history” – the city brought a “rapid series of inventions and refinements,” so that “innovation begat innovation.”¹⁷ The city is the precondition for what we know as civilization. But, just like with the city, the Sumerians didn't believe that civilization or its technologies came from human know-how. The Sumerians developed a tradition about seven superhuman beings called apkallus, custodians of the order of the world, who were entrusted by the gods with teaching primitive humans how to be civilized. The apkallus – the first of whom was sent to Eridu – were responsible for “cultural relations, political relations, occupations, sciences, crafts, arts, deeds, etc. – in short, all the human characteristics that are connected to civilized life.”¹⁸ It was the gods, the Sumerians said, who invented; we just received them as gifts.¹⁹ Most ancient civilizations agreed: these tools came from gods, but mere humans couldn't make much of anything.²⁰

But Genesis gives its own “account of the origins of human civilization.”²¹ And here the “inventors of skills” aren't gods or angels, but ordinary human beings “endowed with free will and gifted with knowledge.”²² This would shock the Sumerians, that “from the perspective of Genesis, civilization is a human accomplishment,” and so all these cultural goods “originate from human inventions and efforts.”²³

Here we meet “Jabal, the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock” (Genesis 4:20). Abel already had been a shepherd, but Jabal (whose name sounds a lot like Abel's) is distinguished by domesticating larger animals than sheep or goats: he's got cattle, he's got donkeys, maybe he's aiming for camels and horses – beasts who can be put to work, beasts who represent wealth.²⁴ Animal domestication, selective breeding, and trade between people groups are features of the settlements of the late Stone Age.²⁵ Not only does Jabal domesticate and employ more animals, but his emphasis is on his possessions and his mobility – maybe here we have a glimpse of a traveling merchant, whose wheels set the stage for the birth of the money economy.²⁶ In Jabal's steps follow lines of capitalists and industrialists, communications pioneers and factory managers, automobile and airplane manufacturers; in Jabal we see Eli Whitney and Alexander Graham Bell, we see Ford and Ferrari, we see Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, all of whom had a bit of Jabal in 'em.

Here also we meet “his brother Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe” (Genesis 4:21). He's a master of musical instrumentation, of string instruments and wind instruments.²⁷ Without music, you've got many things, but culture's not one of them. He brings the art, he brings the parade, he brings the party. The oldest surviving Sumerian lyres come from 2500 BC, with pictures of them a couple centuries before that; flutes you'll find mentioned at the same time, though we have flutes made of bone from long before the first city. All of it is summed up in Jubal. In his wake stand pop musicians and skilled sculptors, artists and actors and entertainers, pioneers of the intellect and imagination, purveyors of pleasure for eyes and ears. From Mozart to Monet, from Descartes to Dostoevsky, Jubal makes them possible, he paves the way for their delights.

Then we meet their half-brother “Tubal-cain; he was the sharpener of every craftsman of bronze and iron” (Genesis 4:22). With him, the tribe of Cain says goodbye to the Stone Age and hello to the Copper Age, to the Bronze Age, and waves to the Iron Age on the distant horizon. The mere use of natural metal appears at the tail end of the Stone Age, but archaeologists find the first evidence of copper smelting around 5000 BC, with bronze artifacts a couple centuries after that, and meteoric iron artifacts from before 3000 BC.²⁸ Metalsmithing became “the center of the ancient tech industry.”²⁹ Tubal-cain brought us to the Bronze Age, and it's said that “from the Bronze Age onward, the quest for knowledge, better technology, and sophisticated living propelled humankind forward and established the building blocks of civilized society that remain recognizable today.”³⁰ In Tubal-cain's footsteps walk masters of every tool and trade, and the tech titans behind Google and Apple and Amazon. His sister Naamah was in Jewish tradition “the inventor of dirges and songs,”³¹ dubbed by some “an early leader in developing vocal music, as her half-brother Jabal was in the development of instrumental music.”³²

Genesis helpfully condenses a long story into one generation of one family for our ease of understanding.³³ To us, the things these folks come up with seem so basic as to feel natural as air and water. To the Sumerians, these were the foundations of civilization; these were cutting-edge ideas, things that changed the world. But Genesis dares to tie this great history to the story of the first murder, devastatingly reminding us of “a dark side to civilization,” that these marvels are capable of “increasing human strife, oppression, and suffering.”³⁴ After all, what a family! These inventors are cast as sons of a violent and vainglorious 'big man' in the city. If Jabal domesticates animals, it's to build up Lamech's wealth and status; one early Christian pictured Jabal using his meats to buy people's loyalty for Lamech.³⁵ If Jubal crafts a musical instrument, it's to manipulate the people's passions. And if Tubal-cain masters metals, some Jewish writers judged that his work led inevitably to idols,³⁶ while others saw him as a weapon-maker using his invention “to distinguish himself in the art of war.”³⁷ No doubt for Lamech, these foundational “arts and sciences” become “a means of self-assertion and violence.”³⁸

It'd be so very convenient if we could consider violence and science, or technology and tyranny, as nice, neat opposites. But that's a lie. As one writer puts it, “intellectual, technological, and aesthetic development... does not necessarily bring with it moral advancement.”³⁹ The Philistines weren't just more tech-savvy, they were also more artistic: Goliath would've spent his downtime sipping wine from fancy pottery decorated with delicate swans. Lamech's family was smart and sophisticated, more civilized and cultured and creative, better dressed and better adorned than their neighbors. They were technologically advanced. They were genteel, but hardly gentle. Lamech lived to breathe hell on earth. World history only proves the point: intellectual or technological or artistic refinement are no guarantee a nation won't elect a monster or bomb villages off the map, that they won't use their grand prowess to build concentration camps or abortion clinics, that they won't power their inventions with the tears of slaves or raise their towers high on the stolen lands of the poor. As then, so today.

In this light, we could walk away with the lesson that civilization, culture, technology are irrevocably “tainted” by their roots.⁴⁰ These cultural goods were, after all, “invented by the children of the curse,” as one medieval monk put it.⁴¹ And this reflects the fact that Israel lived in the shadow of more advanced civilizations.⁴² But then Israel ends up adopting these same cultural goods. The Israelites lived in Jabal's tents in the desert (Numbers 1:52), and even the holy ark dwelled in a tent (2 Samuel 7:2). The same bronze Tubal-cain brought would eventually overlay Israel's altar of sacrifice (Exodus 27:1). The same harp Jubal strung would fall into the hands of David (1 Samuel 16:23). “All these activities plainly feature in the life of Israel's worship.”⁴³

The redemption of these technologies didn't make them forever safe, lest Israel follow the clan of Cain in their use. With the metal of Tubal-cain, “now they sin more and more and make for themselves metal images” (Hosea 13:2). With the music of Jubal, “they have the lyre and harp and tambourine and flute and wine at their feasts, but they do not regard the deeds of the LORD or see the work of his hands” (Isaiah 5:12). And yet early Christian leaders described Cain's family here as offering “things necessary for the well-being of the human race,”⁴⁴ much like “the Greeks and their contributions in the areas of art and philosophy, and the Romans and their legal and political institutions.”⁴⁵ That's why early Christians, too, held that Christians were free to plunder cultural goods from Greece and Rome, for any truth or beauty or goodness was “mined, so to say, from the ore of divine providence, veins of which are everywhere to be found.”⁴⁶

So what do we learn? What do we take away? First, don't be surprised when – like Cain's kids – non-believers excel at making cultural goods of all kinds, and perhaps use this excellence as a pretext to preen and sneer, as if God's people were backwards simpletons. It's to be expected. Jesus cautions us that “the sons of this age are more shrewd in their own generation than the sons of the light” (Luke 16:8). Today, too, a lot of the innovative work is being done by unbelievers. But no inventor or innovator can succeed without God being the ultimate teacher: “I have created the smith who blows the fire of coals and produces a weapon for its purpose,” says the Lord (Isaiah 54:16).⁴⁷ God can provide good gifts even though those who are most unlike him.⁴⁸ And don't be surprised when, now and then, God raises up believers to cultural excellence, as he did for “Bezalel and Oholiab and every craftsman in whom the LORD has put skill and intelligence” (Exodus 36:1). That's why the Christian Middle Ages were “a period of enormous advances in science, technology, and culture.”⁴⁹  It's also why there are so many Christians today doing excellent work in the sciences, in the arts, in all sorts of branches of culture and engineering and technological innovation; pray for them, too.

But even though “good servants of God sometimes worked hard at things of this kind,” that medieval monk said, “the wicked delighted in such things as if they were their highest good, but the elect either renounce these things entirely or use them in passing for the sake of some proper purpose of this life until they reach eternity.”⁵⁰ The Sumerians were wrong: “civilization is not an undiluted good,” not divine, not ultimate, because it's all touched by both natural limitations and human sin.⁵¹ Nothing we invent can take us back to paradise.

Given those limitations and our sin, the same discovery or invention or idea can often be taken two ways. There was a German chemist named Fritz Haber. A hardline nationalist, when Germany kicked off the Great War, he used his knowledge and talent to become the father of chemical warfare. After the war, his institute pursued powerful insecticides based on cyanide gas; and, to his dismay, the Nazis upgraded it and put to use in the gas chambers. That's evil technology. On the other hand, Haber also invented a clever process to synthesize ammonia from common ingredients. While that process was used in the war to make explosives that killed millions, the same process can produce fertilizers on a large scale. Today, nearly half of all people on earth have food to eat because of Fritz Haber's invention: rip it out of history, and four billion starve.⁵²

There are two schools of thought about technology: instrumentalists say it's neutral, and what matters is how you use it: 'guns don't kill people, people kill people'; determinists say technology nearly forces itself on you, and to engage it is to give it control. The truth is somewhere in between.⁵³ We start by shaping our tools, and “the act of making things always results in an embedding of values and meaning into that thing.”⁵⁴ But then our cultural goods return the favor and start shaping us back, since each now comes to us with “certain biases and tendencies.”⁵⁵ If we aren't careful, “we can find ourselves overcome and mastered” by any one of the cultural goods we use.⁵⁶ But with care, we remain free to change their use or set them aside.⁵⁷ A sword may accustom us to slaying, but with grit and grace we can turn them to plowshares (Micah 4:3).

“New technology presents people with a different set of choices than they had before,” pushing people “in a certain direction, giving them benefits while also presenting them with new problems.”⁵⁸ Every cultural good, every tool, every idea has a trade-off; and we all know that a bigger range of possibilities isn't always a positive thing. So “we must listen carefully to creation.”⁵⁹ Machines made from Tubal-cain's bronze and iron have “balefully harmed the earth's ecosystem.”⁶⁰ Good culture, good technology, should “always fit within a larger ecosystem” and help us “properly care for and cultivate creation.”⁶¹ (In this light, it's worth remembering the environmental costs of mining the earth for the rare-earth minerals essential to many of our computerized devices, and the outsized water and electricity usage required for some of our experiments in 'artificial intelligence,' and the myriad other ways in which our technologies can deplete the earth or contribute to its pollution.) 

That mandate to care for God's creation goes for ourselves as part of that creation. What does it do to our communities and our spirits to live in an artificial world of our own design? It's perhaps part of the reason for the rise of secularism, nihilism, atheism in our day, as we “rob ourselves of those experiences that... make our lives real.”⁶² (Consider especially young brains, yet in formation, which all experts agree are deeply vulnerable to social media use, which is often associated with ever-higher rates of numerous psychiatric illnesses.) Trade-offs that cost the robust dignity of our humanity, that treat us as though body and place and time were dispensable, that “undermine our engagement with reality” – such trade-offs would surely “diminish us” and are “at odds with God's purposes for his world.”⁶³

Four centuries ago, England was rocked as the Luddites began smashing the machines of the Industrial Revolution. We've often believed their enemies that they were frightened retrogrades, but actually the Luddites were a workers' rights movement objecting to the way new machines were used to disrupt society, put them out of work, destroy communities, and endanger children.⁶⁴ Today they remind us to ask whether new ideas or tools or cultural goods are being adopted fairly, with first thought to the vulnerable; whether things are going at a pace society can handle; whether we remember that humans should never be slaves to culture or its machines. That medieval monk warns us to be “resourceful in taking care, lest the last day find us entangled beyond measure in things of this kind.”⁶⁵ Wise men today agree that it's “often only after we've been forced to go without our devices for a period of time that we realize how dependent upon them we have become, as well as what we may have missed in giving so much of our time and attention to them.”⁶⁶

But if it respects God and his creation and is implemented justly, most any cultural good or technology can be ours. We're licensed by the authority of our Lord, wherever the cultural good comes from (even if it began as a 'gift of the godless'), “to take over and convert [these things] to Christian use,” and most especially “to take these things... for the proper use of preaching the gospel.”⁶⁷ All the beauties and bounties of human culture shout “the Creator's extravagance,” and for that we owe him our gratitude and our worship.⁶⁸ In the end, the final rule of thumb when it comes to the ideas we hear, things on the TV and the radio or in the written word, all the cultural trends, the technologies and the gadgets, is that only if we can thank God for it, in knowledge (fairly) full and conscience clear, should we embrace it.⁶⁹ Or we may freely abstain, in many cases, for no one person's life will ever use every cultural good or tool that any given civilization might afford, and each of us may conscientiously exercise prudence even toward good things.

The Bible's end sums up human civilization with a “mighty city... in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints” (Revelation 18:10, 24). This is where Cain's labors have reached their climax: in civilization as relentless and bloody oppressor of all the heirs of Abel.  But as urbanism collapses, this picture adds, down with it fall technology and culture. Sorry, Jubal, but “the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more” (Revelation 18:22). Sorry, Tubal-cain, but “a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more” (Revelation 18:22). It's “a fiery end to the legacies of Cain's children.”⁷⁰ God “frustrates the devices of the crafty so that their hands achieve no success” (Job 5:12). 

But while the tents of Jabal have fallen, there's a “more perfect tent not made with hands” (Hebrews 9:11), a “city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10). The Sumerians were half-right: there's a city built by a god, only it's not Eridu and Cain's fingerprints are absent. The “holy city Jerusalem,” sent from above, has “its great high wall, with twelve gates..., and the foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel..., and the street of the city was pure gold..., and I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb” (Revelation 21:10-22). There in its midst will stand saints “with harps of God in their hands” (Revelation 15:2), making music Jubal never heard.⁷¹ “The kings of the earth... will bring into it the glory and honor of the nations, but nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable and false” (Revelation 21:24-27). To whatever measure our inventions and cultures aren't impure or false or rendered simply obsolete in a new creation, they're destined for the holy city, in the hands of the saints, before the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, world without end. Hallelujah! Amen.

1  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 22.

2  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 153.

3  Founding of Eridu lines 10-22, in Wilfrid G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 371.

4  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 137-138.

5  Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 29.

6  Sumerian King List lines 1-2, in Writings from the Ancient World 19:119.

7  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 147-149; Robert P. Gordon, “Contested Eponymy: Cain, Enoch, and the Cities of Genesis 1-11,” in James K. Aitken and Hilary F. Marlow, eds., The City in the Hebrew Bible: Critical, Literary, and Exegetical Approaches (T&T Clark, 2018), 168.

8  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 139 n. 81.

9  Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 21.

10  Jill L. Baker, Technology of the Ancient Near East: From the Neolithic to the Early Roman Period (Routledge, 2018), 16.

11  Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 1.

12  Ronald Hendel, “Genesis 1-11 and Its Mesopotamian Problem,” in Erich S. Gruen, ed., Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 29; Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 157.

13  Patrick Henry Reardon, Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis (Conciliar Press, 2008), 50.

14  Tremper Longman III, Genesis, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 96.

15  Ronald Hendel, “Genesis 1-11 and Its Mesopotamian Problem,” in Erich S. Gruen, ed., Cultural Borrowings and Ethnic Appropriations in Antiquity (Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), 29.

16  Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 27-28.

17  Ben Wilson, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention (Doubleday, 2020), 1, 31.

18  Helge S. Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Brill, 2011), 1100.

19  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 149, 158.

20  Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 35-36.

21  Bill T. Arnold, Genesis, New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81.

22  Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Genesis 4:19-22, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 132:131.

23  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 109; James Chukwuma Okoye, Genesis 1-11: A Narrative-Theological Commentary (Wipf and Stock, 2018), 84.

24  Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 239.

25  Jill L. Baker, Technology of the Ancient Near East: From the Neolithic to the Early Roman Period (Routledge, 2018), 16.

26  Richard S. Hess, Studies in the Personal Names of Genesis 1-11 (Eisenbrauns, 2009), 125.

27  John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Academic, 2020), 104.

28  Nahum M. Sarna, Genesis, JPS Torah Commentary (Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 38; Milijana Radivojevič et al., “On the origins of extractive metallurgy: new evidence from Europe,” Journal of Archaeological Science 37/11 (2010): 2775-2787; Thilo Rehren et al., “5,000 years old Egyptian iron beads made from hammered meteoric iron,” Journal of Archaeological Science 40/12 (2013): 4785-4792; Milijana Radivojevič et al., “Tainted ores and the rise of tin bronzes in Eurasia, c.6500 years ago,” Antiquity 87/338 (2015): 1030-1045.

29  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 47.

30  Jill L. Baker, Technology of the Ancient Near East: From the Neolithic to the Early Roman Period (Routledge, 2018), 17.

31  Targum Neofiti Genesis 4:22, in Aramaic Bible 1A:68.

32  Joseph E. Coleson, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition (Beacon Hill Press, 2012), 174.

33  Daniel D. Lowery, Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11: Reading Genesis 4:17-22 in Its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Eisenbrauns, 2013), 70, 235.

34  Tremper Longman III, Genesis, The Story of God Bible Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2016), 101.

35  Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Genesis 4.3.3, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 91:132.

36  Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 2.9, in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2:305.

37  Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.64, in Loeb Classical Library 242:31.

38  Bruce K. Waltke, Genesis: A Commentary (Zondervan Academic, 2001), 100.

39  Martin Sicker, Reading Genesis Politically: An Introduction to Mosaic Political Philosophy (Praeger, 2002), 69.

40  Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Free Press, 2003), 145.

41  Bede, On Genesis 4:20-22, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:156.

42  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 137.

43  J. Gordon McConville, Being Human in God's World: An Old Testament Theology of Humanity (Baker Academic, 2016), 182.

44  John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis 20.5, in Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 82:38.

45  Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-17, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 1990), 239.

46  Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine 2.40 §60, in Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/11:160.

47  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 91, 100.

48  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 245.

49  James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (Regnery Publishing, 2011), xvii.

50  Bede, On Genesis 4:20-22, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:156.

51  Iain W. Provan, Seriously Dangerous Religion: What the Old Testament Really Says and Why It Matters (Baylor University Press, 2014), 255.

52  Vaclav Smil, Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production (MIT Press, 2004); Thomas Hager, The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World But Fueled the Rise of Hitler (Crown, 2008).

53  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 84-86.

54  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 93.

55  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 70.

56  Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (IVP Academic, 2018), 3.

57  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 87.

58  John Dyer, From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology (Kregel, 2011), 92.

59  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 144.

60  Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: Cosmos, Creatures, and the Wise and Good Creator (Baker Academic, 2017), 200.

61  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 246.

62  Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (IVP Academic, 2018), 32, 83, 163, 187.

63  Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (IVP Academic, 2018), 3, 95, 177, 180, 206; cf. Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 253.

64  Brian Merchant, Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech (Little, Brown, and Company, 2023).

65  Bede, On Genesis 4:20-22, in Translated Texts for Historians 48:157.

66  Craig M. Gay, Modern Technology and the Human Future: A Christian Appraisal (IVP Academic, 2018), 178.

67  Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Doctrine 2.40 §60, in Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century I/11:160.

68  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 148.

69  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 292.

70  Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life (Crossway, 2022), 203.

71  Patrick Henry Reardon, Creation and the Patriarchal Histories: Orthodox Christian Reflections on the Book of Genesis (Conciliar Press, 2008), 51.