Downstream from Eden is a celebration of water in a less-than-perfect world. It will inspire you and bring you hope, Probably the most comprehensive study of water and the Bible you will find anywhere. Well-researched and highly readable, with stories from Icelandic waterfalls to the Aral Sea, from the origins of the universe to the Apocalypse, the author weaves a conversation that turns water into wine. You will sip and savor page after page. Water is an urgent global concern with 800 million people living today in parched conditions or with unsafe water. The UN Water for Life Decade 2005-2015 highlights the need for sustainable water solutions. Downstream from Eden adds a unique voice to this discussion with insights from the Bible, science, history and literature on issues of social justice, the environment and personal spirituality. Fascinating material! David Knight is a profound, reflective and interesting writer. - Ramez Atallah, The Bible Society of Egypt A beautiful study of water. Read it slowly and enjoy. You will be refreshed spirit and soul! - Barry Mackay, Habitat for Humanity India (retired), Includes A Manifesto for Action: Ten Disciplines for Living Downstream from Eden and Questions for Small Group and Book Club discussion.

This book invites a close textual encounter with the first 11 chapters of Genesis as an intimate drama of marginalised peoples wrestling with the rise of the world’s first grain states in the Mesopotamian alluvium. The initial 11 chapters of Genesis are often considered discordant and fragmentary, despite being a story of beginnings within the context of the Bible. Readers discover how these formative chapters cohere as a cross-generational account of peoples grappling with the hegemonic spread of domesticated grain production and the concomitant rise of the pristine states of Mesopotamia. The book reveals how key episodes from the Genesis narrative reflect major societal revolutions of the Neolithic period in Mesopotamia through a three-fold hermeneutical method: literary analysis of the Bible and contemporary cuneiform texts; modern scholarship from archaeological, anthropological, ecological, and historical sources; and relevant exegesis from the Second Temple and rabbinical era. These three strands entwine to recount a generally sequential story of the earliest archaic states as narrated by non-elites at the margins of these emerging state spaces. The Dawn of Agriculture and the Earliest States in Genesis 1–11 provides a fascinating reading of the first 11 chapters of Genesis, appealing to students and scholars of the Hebrew Bible and the Near East, as well as those working on ecological injustice from a religious vantage point.