Triablogue: matthew schultz

The following is a review of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (Random House: New York, 2010). Like a good Christian, I am a couple years behind the curve reviewing this important contribution to secular sociology and ethics. Fortunately, the book's content isn't time-sensitive, and much of it can apply to methods of evangelism. (Because I am reviewing an Amazon Kindle copy, page citations might not properly align with the print version. I believe Haidt is pronounced like “height.”)

What kind of effect would a Romney presidency have on the U.S. economy?

In comments below, Matthew Schultz suggested that I have been a bit optimistic in my thoughts that Romney’s pro-growth policies will mirror Reagan’s, or more specifically, that the results we might see in a Romney presidency will be different from what we saw in the Reagan years.

He says:

This recession isn't like those of the past. We're in a financial recession caused by a debt bubble. (The disanalogy can be seen merely by seeing how ineffective our traditional government methods have been in addressing it.) Worse, we still need to deleverage, and this will take several years.

Sadly, Japan is a much better analogue. Twenty years ago they had a debt bubble. What did they do? Did they bite the bullet and let people and companies go bankrupt? No. They continued a series of ineffective, short-term policies that have caused anemic growth ever since.

Keep in mind that I am not an economist, and nor is Matthew. But I don’t think Japan is a good analogy at all. Maybe Japan is a good analogy in case Obama wins the election. But not Romney.

First, we need to be careful not to mix up two different economic phenomena here: dealing with a national debt that reaches 100% of a nation’s GDP, and also, spurring on the economy after a recession.

Second, if Obama used “traditional government methods” to address the “debt bubble”, it was Keynsian. There is another school of thought (Hayek) that holds that Keynsian economics are flawed at best. Some think that Keynsian economics prolonged the “Great Depression” far longer than need be.

Along those lines, Obama did nothing to address debt. In fact, he greatly added to the debt. If anything, Obama’s economic policies will serve as a case study, in favor of Hayek’s version of economic policy.

While Obama did indeed rely on deficit spending [and increasing the debt] to bail out GM and other companies that were “too big to fail”, Romney has said he’d have allowed GM to go through bankruptcy, and we’d have to think he’d have similar responses to financial companies as well.

This article discusses how different economies have responded when reaching a debt-to-GDP ratio that the US has currently reached. And to be sure, in the last 20 years, Japan has gone on to greatly expand that debt from 100% of GDP up to about 240% of its GDP. But the US economy and the Japanese economy (and especially the philosophies of Romney/Ryan and the current Japanese government) operate differently enough that we should see a clear difference in the handling of this debt.

I’m not going to claim that the US economy will have enough steam in it in the coming years to take the national debt down to the 50% of GDP level that it reached in the 1950’s, but Romney/Ryan are leaning more toward the US economic model followed in the 1950’s, than that followed by Japan more recently.

In 1945, to fund World War II, the US government rolled up debt to a 100% debt-to-GDP ratio of 100%. That's at a similar ratio to the US today, a deficit-to-GDP ratio of about 24%, which we have now. While the second chart in this post shows spending and not debt, the effect was still pretty much the same.

Keep in mind that “national debt” is not like having a sixteen trillion dollar lump-sum mortgage payment. We don’t owe the money to a mortgage company that’s going to try to “foreclose”. Generally, we are talking about owing the money to “the 1%” who own a lot of treasury bonds, US and other corporations, and foreign nations. You never really have to “pay down” that debt, but you do face interest payments. Many of the debt settlements they are talking about in Europe involve the forgiveness of some debt and the re-negotiation of other debt. In the US, we are nowhere near where Europe is. (For example, Europe’s deficit-to-GDP ratio is in the 50% to 70% range; in the US, we are at 24%).

True, there are structural costs (i.e., “entitlement” payments, etc.) and a demographic (“baby boom retirements”) that are a challenge at the moment. But the coming and going of that “age wave” is factored into the Ryan plan, which looks out beyond the next 30-40 years, in some cases to 2080.

Over that period of time, the plans that are being proposed all account for this “age wave” -- they provide ways to mitigate the effect of it, allowing some people to “opt out”, reducing the stress on the system, while NOT throwing anyone off a cliff. These plans are designed specifically to “deleverage” in a way that is going to minimize whatever “personal suffering” Matthew seems to think is coming.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the topic of economic growth coming out of a recession, I can speak to this at something like a more personal level. I work at a technology company, and the sales/revenue were growing comfortably all through the Bush years. In 2008, sales fell off the chart, the company had massive layoffs (“re-alignment of costs”), and for the last three years, sales have been positive but very difficult.

We know that our customers aren’t buying what we sell, not because they don’t need it, but because they are trying to manage costs. What we sell amounts to increased capacity in their IT and network infrastructures. Our would-be customers at the present time certainly do need what we sell, but because of the tax and regulatory uncertainty over the last two years, especially, they aren’t buying at the moment, because they are trying to hold down on some expenses.

However, I can foresee a tsunami of purchasing if Romney is elected, and here’s why. (And keep in mind that the kind of pent-up demand that I’ve described here is not just something that’s affecting my company. Such an effect is going to go into place immediately following a Romney election).

Romney has not promised “immediate tax cuts across the board”. What we are going to see is a reversal of some of the anti-growth regulations that are strangling businesses in different ways.

For example, we’ll immediately see a lifting of the regulations that prevent drilling off-shore and an opening of leases on government-owned lands. This will greatly expand the production of energy, and a reduction in gasoline and diesel prices. Just about every item in every store today gets shipped there by truck -- using diesel fuel -- and if those costs drift down from $4,00 per gallon now, to say $3.00 per gallon (which is not unreasonable), that easing up will slack all through the economy. It’s not just the tax rates that are going to lead to “pro-growth” environment. But an easing of regulations of that kind will lead to a demand spike that is going to happen very quickly, as in the “Reagan” line above, and drift downward through eight (?) years of a Romney presidency.

This is the kind of activity that will result in a very noticeable release of pent-up demand, which will give us a good final quarter of the year (1Q 2013), and I can personally see increases in the 5-10% range, rather than the 2% range, which will mean the meeting of bonus levels, the ability of our family (and thousands of families that depend on our company for their income) to use that extra money in whatever way we see fit, which will benefit the economy in a variety of different ways.

Sure, there can and likely will be shocks -- terrorist attacks, potential wars, etc. But Romney has run a very cautious campaign; he is not an intellectual lightweight like Bush to listen to the loudest voices on his cabinet, and come up with some equivalent of a “Bush doctrine”. He’s going to much more reserved than that.

As the WSJ said in the article that I cited above, “Nearly every problem known to man is more solvable with a larger economy” -- that should be, “a growing economy”, an economy that can and will grow at a 4%-6% rate for at least the next couple of years. That is a much more positive scenario than four more years of 2% growth in an Obama presidency.

* * *

As Christians, we need to keep in mind that “The LORD detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him” (Proverbs 11:1).

For a nation, that means a sound economic policy. A lot of readers here advocated voting for Ron Paul for this very reason. I don’t think Paul looked at the economy from a growth perspective. And I think Romney does.

We will never have a perfect president. But I think we can feel comfortable to vote for a president who will at least have some of these economic fundamentals in mind.

Monday, July 09, 2012

A New Topical Index For Triablogue

You may have noticed a new tab at the upper left portion of the screen, titled Triablogue Master Index. It's a topical index linking to some of our posts on a large variety of topics. The index was put together by Matthew Schultz. If you don't find what you're looking for there, you can try another topical index I designed last year, or you could try a Google search.

Friday, March 16, 2012

The Appropriation of the Fathers in Church History: The Use of Augustine in Late Medieval and Reformation Studies

One of the planks of lay Catholic apologetics is the assumption that modern Catholic doctrine is the result of an unbroken tradition of theological reflection stretching back to the Apostles themselves.

Sometimes this view manifests in a simplistic objection to Protestant exegetical claims.¹ For example, if a Protestant successfully demonstrates that a certain passage of Scripture cannot reasonably be reconciled with modern Catholic doctrine, the lay Catholic can immediately assert that the Protestant is really a nobody who isn't to be taken seriously. After all, his novel interpretation has no accord with 2,000 years of unbroken, serious reflection on the Scriptures and the fathers by learned, Spirit-filled Catholics.

This kind of response could only be given by someone who isn't aware of the history of the appropriation of the fathers. The historical record shows that it is hardly such a clean affair; even assuming the implausible lay Catholic view of history--that the modern denomination currently located in Rome is all that existed before the Reformation until the great agitator Luther decided to interpret the Bible for himself--it is clear that the use of the fathers by the medieval church was plagued by problems that render their conclusions and use of these fathers problematic, if not erroneous.² Given his role in post-patristic thought, the case of Augustine is sufficient to be representative of the general problems here.³ Catholics before and during the Reformation often failed to read Augustine in context, did not study the full extent of his corpus, and attributed to him dozens of spurious works.

Anthological Augustine

Augustine was known to those in the years leading up to the Reformation in several ways. While those wealthy and educated enough could afford both the leisure time and travel expenses (to say nothing of the right ecclesiastical connections) to gain access to and read hand-copied, Latin manuscripts (which could not be moved without threat of crumbling), or even printed copies, the general method was through education. For those training to religious vocation, it seems Augustine was learned primarily through Peter Lombard's Sentences, the standard patristic anthology of the middle ages.

Lombard's work was problematic for at least a few reasons. First, as a compilation of quotations from the fathers, they were given without broader context. Second, these snippets were given without adequate reference or citation for those who wished to read the quote in a broader context.⁴ Third, Lombard "had no direct knowledge of more than a limited number of books by Augustine, four to be precise: the De doctrina christiana, the Enchiridion, the De diversis quaestionibus 83, the Retractationes. He had no knowledge of other works by Augustine except through the Glossa ordinaria or the Expositio of Florus of Lyons."⁵

This lack of primary source documents included a failure to read important theological works, such as Augustine's anti-Pelagian texts. Even the arrival of the printing press did not provide access to the whole of Augustine’s materials, as "[m]ost of the anti-Manichaean works...were unavailable in print until Amerbach's collected edition. What is more, most anti-Pelagian works, concerned with human sinfulness and the nature of the divine grace in response to the followers of Pelagius, had never been printed before."⁶

Patristic Pseudepigrapha

Those who managed to read Augustine unmediated (a term used with appropriate qualification) at the monastery, library or other similar location, were not always achieving access to Augustine himself. Many of the works attributed to Augustine during this time were spurious. For example, during the time of early printing, of "all incunables published under Augustine's name, in fact, almost two-thirds (116 out of 187) were spurious,"⁷ this itself being merely representative of the medieval growth of pseudo-Augustine works.

Sometimes nobody seemed to know that a work was spurious, as in the case of the Hypomnesticon, which, in at least one era, was seen to be authoritative by all those who argued over its use. In other cases, the spurious works affected the development of doctrine, such as the rather Pelagian De vita Christiana. This was particularly the case with De vera et falsa poenitentia, and the work came to play a significant role in Reformation debates over penance.⁸

(A caveat: while this would require its own post, it is important to remember that not all appropriation of the fathers was poor during this time period. There were moments of renaissance (to say nothing of the Renaissance and the humanist, cultural shifts to ad fontes); for example, one 1345 compilation of Augustine's work was remarkably accurate, the author gave references were possible [and apologized when he could not!], and the material was based on Augustine's own list of works given in Retractationes, which perhaps inoculated it from spurious attributions.⁹ However, it was not until Amerbach's work during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries that the Augustinian canon was truly purged.)

To make matters worse, printers knew that certain "Augustine" works were spurious, but due to their function as "popular devotional treaties" and their use in "theological manuals, such as Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologia, or Gratian's Decretum," refused to remove them, even if they did tacitly acknowledge their questionable status.¹⁰ In fact, the foundational works of the Summa and Decretum "were full of references to pseudo-Augustinian writings."¹¹ Sometimes these works were even known to be spurious by those who used them for theological purposes, and such behavior was defended as legitimate due to the usefulness of the works in question.¹²

Implications for Development Narratives

Given the reception of the sources in the medieval period, any extended theological reflection on Augustine would likely have been warped and distorted to at least some extent, and often corrupted, especially in important areas such as his theology of grace. Far from an ever increasing, careful and reasoned development of theology and doctrine, medieval and even Reformation theological reflection often enough based its conclusions on falsely attributed works, with not all of the legitimate works readily available, and being screened through the editorial choices manifest in the available anthologies.

The Perspicuity of the Fathers in Debate

Studying the use of the fathers in history also suggests that they are not perspicuous--at least if we assume the current lay Catholic assumptions about how the meaning of texts cannot be discerned in light of interpretive conflict and division. Not only was Augustine appropriated by both Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation, sometimes even the very same texts would be used and analyzed, with different interpretations applied to those texts. This was, at least in part, due to the nature of quotations during the medieval and Reformation eras, as through their collection in anthologies, written or printed, "it was possible for one author to be used in support of strikingly different ideas."¹³ In fact, these "anthologies reveal...the fundamental instrumental nature of intellectual authority. Their thematic organization, especially, exemplifies how Augustine was mined for proof texts about topical arguments, rather than as an independent source of intellectual inspiration."¹⁴

If the division of interpretation over a text demonstrates that it is unclear, as is asserted with Protestant interpretations over Scripture, then it follows that Augustine is unclear.¹⁵ So what purpose is there in citing Augustine in a debate with a Protestant? And what hope does the lay Catholic have in properly interpreting Augustine for himself and successfully employing his texts against Protestants in polemical discourse?

As with many other Catholic assertions, a study of history does far from confirming Roman Catholicism as right and true; such a study overturns simplistic development narratives and even calls into question the coherence of the apologetic strategies used by its defenders.

Recommended Reading

Irena Backus, The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997).

Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004).

Arnoud Vesser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500-1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

____________________

^{1. This is the second stage of capitulation in the typical Roman Catholic apologetic. Once the exegetical ground is lost, historical claims are made. And, once those historical claims are shown for what they are, the final defense is to specious philosophical assumptions.↩}

^{2. To say nothing of the fact that each generation must restudy the Scriptures. It is likely that many good and important interpretive insights have been completely lost to the sands of time.↩}

^{3. Concerning Augustine in the medieval period, the "influence of the patristic heritage, and supremely the thought of Augustine of Hippo, upon the development of Christian thought during the medieval period is beyond dispute. Indeed, the theology of the medieval period may be regarded as thoroughly Augustinian to the extent that it was virtually a series of footnotes to Augustine...In every major sphere of theological debate, the point of departure appears to have been the views of Augustine." Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 168.↩}

^{4. Arnoud Vesser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500-1620 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 17.↩}

^{5. Jacques-Guy Bougerol, "The Church Fathers and the Sentences of Peter Lombard," in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed., Irena Backus (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997), 115.↩}

^{6. Arnoud Vesser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation, 15.↩}

^{7. Ibid.↩}

^{8. Alister McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation, 170.↩}

^{9. Eric Saak, "Augustine in the Later Middle Ages," The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed., Irena Backus (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1997), 381-382.↩}

^{10. Arnoud Vesser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation, 21-22, 24.↩}

^{11. Ibid., 40.↩}

^{12. Ibid., 91.↩}

^{13. Ibid., 80.↩}

^{14. Ibid., 91.↩}

^{15. Technically, this would be limited only to those texts that had their meaning contested.↩}

Monday, December 12, 2011

Genre and Early Church Evidence for Infant Baptism

A.N.S. Lane, commenting on patristic scholar David Wright's material, makes a good observation about interpreting the evidence for infant baptism in the early church:

One important contribution that David [Wright] has made is to remind us of the need to be critical of the early sources for infant baptism. In particular, we need to bear in mind the genre of our sources. There are sermons and other writings that contain exhortations either to baptise or not to baptise babies. These testify to the views of the authors and show what views were considered acceptable, but do not in themselves prove that anyone actually followed the advice given. Then there is evidence as to when specific individuals were baptised, either through literary biographical information or from inscriptions. In between these two types are church orders and other works regulating practice. These do not give hard statistical information but are clearly a far more reliable indicator as to what actually happened than are exhortatory sermons. So, for example, Cyprian’s account of the controversy over whether baptism should be delayed until the eighth day might lead one to suppose that the practice of infant baptism was universal, but other evidence indicates that it was not. On the other hand, the controversy would not have occurred were significant numbers of babies not being baptised. ["Baptism in the Thought of David Wright," Evangelical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (April 2006), 140.]

(For those who don't know, Steve Hays and Jason Engwer have written a good deal about infant baptism at Triablogue. One method of finding these articles is to browse the results of an advanced Google search. Also consider the posts here, here and here.)

Friday, December 09, 2011

The Rose and the Amaranth

(The following contains spoilers for the movie Limitless.)

I recently watched Limitless on Netflix. The movie centers around Eddie Morra and his chance discovery of a drug that augments mental abilities. As a fellow viewer pointed out to me, while Inception is a simple epistemological mind-teaser, Limitless raises more fundamental and practical questions.

Morra is an aspiring writer who seems to suffer from an inability to accomplish much of anything at all. He's several months behind on his book contract, having yet to write a single word. His personal life is no better either, with his longtime girlfriend moving out, leaving him with no financial support. He spends his days lagging about, hoping to stumble upon some sort of inspiration. His physical appearance, an important theme throughout the movie, is self-described as that of a homeless man or drug addict. (This latter description is perhaps ironic.)

Circumstances change--dramatically--when Morra meets his dubious ex-brother in law, Vernon. He offers Morra a sample of an "FDA approved" drug, NZT, that promises to turn his life around. Desperate, Morra downs the pill.

The drug affects an incredible change, similar to Liquid Luck in Harry Potter. Suddenly Morra's intellect is working in overdrive. Yet it is not an uncontrollable rush of ideas. His now tumescent mind is paired with the ability to perceive the necessary means to achieve his goals--whatever they might be.

The effect is conveyed through lighting techniques and lensing distortions. The world of Morra moves from bleak, drab and astigmatic, to vibrant, vivid and panoramic, and switching between the two as Morra is subsequently on and off the drug. The intended message is clear: when on NZT, Morra is fully alive.

Everything in Morra's life seems to become better, at least in terms of efficiency. Among other things, such as an ever improving, well-groomed appearance, Morra finishes his entire book in what appears to be less than a few days. In a similarly brief amount of time, he becomes fluent in several languages. Soon he becomes an incredible day trader, turning a paltry sum into millions. This attracts the attention of financial kingpin Carl Van Loon, and it isn't long before Morra is brokering a merger between two enormous companies.

Much of the movie is spent this way. Morra is increasingly successful at everything he does, and his life turns into one thrill of success after another. But why should we find that appealing? It's not as if the drug enhanced his moral capacities. He's the same person he was before, simply much more efficient. Efficiency is only good if it's applied to a good process. Yet Morra is using his new-found powers for nothing other than his own agenda.

NZT users are essentially frauds. The drug enhances the mental abilities of everyone who uses it, indiscriminately it seems. At one point a thuggish loan shark manages to get access to the drug. Before his demise at the hands of Morra, the criminal's intellectual rise, and its attendant ambition, seems as meteoric as Morra's. We hear of another individual who has taken the drug and become as wildly successful as Morra. Without NZT, Morra would still be an unaccomplished nobody, his mind and life an inchoate morass of ill-discipline.

There is an important scene near the end where Loon tries to impress upon Morra that he can offer the rising star things that can only be earned by the hard, tedious work of grubbing up the coporate ladder year after year. While Loon's ingratiation is for selfish ends, his appeal to hard work and perseverance--more generally what we would call character development--makes obvious the deficits in Morra's new life.

The drug has its side-effects, of course. Morra learns that everyone who has ever taken it is either dead, dying or suffering crippling mental problems. Morra himself begins to blackout, being unable to account for his whereabouts for stretches of time. NZT is also addictive, for what seems to be both psychological and physiological reasons, and Morra doesn't have the moral fortitude to quit.

The ending is markedly weak. The drug use doesn't catch up with Morra. Rather, we learn that he discovered the methods necessary to distill the negative and positive effects of NZT. In some of the final shots of the movie, Morra is running a highly successful campaign for the Senate, and it's implied he has what is necessary to attain the most powerful office in the world--that of President.

Morra's life should have ended as it did for everyone else who took the drug. Instead, he defies reality and achieves everything he sets his heart to, even if everything he does is fundamentally selfish.

But why would the producers refuse a realistic ending? That would despoil the illusion. After all, what else is the secular dream, but to use God's gifts without consequence, and supplant the divine with our own purposes.

Morra will eventually die like everyone else. Though he has become the most splendid of all roses, the Christian remains the amaranth, destined alone to be the eternal blossom.

"For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?"

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Polygamy and the Bible: A Literary Approach

Jason Engwer has discussed polygamy on exegetical and theological grounds.

I'd like to approach the topic from a different angle.

1) There's a basic distinction between showing and telling:

You can use words to explicitly render a judgment on an action. The use of direct speech or writing typically fills this role.

Land of the Vine

An overview of viticulture in ancient Israel:

The ubiquity of the vine and its products in the Old Testament gives sufficient testimony to the economic and social importance of wine in ancient Israel. In Numbers 13 the prodigious cluster of grapes that the two spies carry between them is symbolic of the prosperity of the Promised Land. Time and again in the prophets the vine, or its fruit, is used as a symbol of Israel.

Vines require an annual rainfall of between 400 and 800 millimeters, with most of the rain in winter and early spring. Temperatures need to be above 20°C during fruiting and below 10°C for some of the winter. Vines thrive best on loamy or stony soil that is not overly fertile. Most of Palestine is ideally suited for viticulture, and the vine had long been cultivated when the Israelite tribes first settled the land. Establishing a vineyard was a significant undertaking, and we are fortunate to possess a detailed account in Isaiah 5:1-7. The prophet describes the planting of vines and the building of a wall, tower, and winepress. Vines were cultivated in a number of ways, and we know that both allowing the vine to trail along the ground and training it upward were both used in Israel (Ezek. 17:6-8). It is likely that trailing vines were most common. After four or five years the vine would begin to produce a usable crop of fruit.

The grape harvest occurred around July and August. At the time the grape clusters were cut down and placed into baskets. With very little delay they were taken to nearby winepresses. Many presses carved out of rock have been discovered in Palestine. They are to be found out in the fields close to where the grapes were grown. At the presses the grapes were trodden underfoot, with the juice flowing through a conduit into a vat below. Mechanical means of pressing were probably not introduced until the Hellenistic or Roman period. A number of biblical texts refer to the joyful shouting and singing that accompanied the treating of grapes (e.g., Isa. 16:10; Jer. 48:33). The process of fermentation probably began in the collecting vats, and this first stage of fermentation probably took two to five days. After this the wine was purified, bottled, and placed in storage chambers for the second, slower stage of fermentation and maturing. This process lasted six months, during which time carbon dioxide was released through holes in the jars.

The frequent references to wine in the Old Testament suggest that it was not only the principle alcoholic beverage, but the principle drink, period. Whether it was watered down before consumption, as was the practice of the Greeks and Romans, or drunk undiluted is uncertain. Isaiah’s disparaging comparison of Judah’s righteousness to “wine mixed with water” (1:22) might suggest that there was a preference for undiluted wine. Estimates of the level of wine consumption in ancient Israel have been made on the basis of the remains of wine production facilities and storage rooms. Shimon Dar estimates up to a liter of wine per person per day. Even if wine was spoiled, it could still be used, as is evident from its use as an adjunct to bread in Ruth 2:14.

The climatic demands of the vine ensured that viticulture had a very small role in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Here beer was the principle beverage, and wine was restricted to the elites. Some scholars have equated the biblical shekar, which appears on a number of occasions in the Old Testament, with beer. It is perhaps more likely that this was a generic form for alcoholic drinks. The esteem of wine in Egypt and Mesopotamia led to wine being a profitable export for the Israelite states. At Ashkelon and Gibeon archaeological finds have demonstrated the existence of industrial-scale wine production in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. These were developed to supply the neo-Assyrian empire. In a later period it is striking that the biblical historians draw attention to vinedressers being exempted from the exile by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:12). It is likely, then, that Palestine was valued during the periods of the Assyrian and Babylonian hegemony principally for its ability to supply wine for consumption in the royal court and by elites.

Nathan MacDonald, What Did the Ancient Israelites Eat?: Diet in Biblical Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing, 2008), 22-23.

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