"BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY"

The poetry of the creation story provides the basis for this sweeping statement and for the dominance of human beings over other creatures which accompanies it. A practical rationale was provided by the Talmudic discussions which deal with children as part of the labor force, so helping a family to prosper. They represented a way of transferring property from one generation to another and so an assurance that one's efforts would continue into the future. Children also provided care in old age and a safety net throughout life. Some of these concerns were already echoed in the Book of Proverbs , Job and Psalms.

A major issue was human survival in the often hostile natural world. The havoc caused to herdsmen and farmers by wild animals was real with dangers to people and livelihood. The more sweeping natural calamities brought total disaster to the whole population. A plague of locusts could devastate an entire farming area, as would floods, droughts, hailstorms, along with epidemics and much else. As long as the natural world was seen as hostile, it needed to be overcome or at least repressed. We, in the late twentieth century see all of this somewhat differently. The chief destructive force in the natural world now is humanity, and we have managed in one form or another to remove many, though by no means all, of the traditional scourges. This has caused us to take a second look at the natural world and to change our practical policies. Population control is one of those changes; it is now as necessary for human self-preservation as an expanding population was earlier. An interpretation of the Creation story led us in the direction of"Be fruitful and multiply" for a hundred generations. Now that the human condition has changed, we should look at this grand story again, and we will find that it may equally well take us in another direction.

The key element of the first chapters of Genesis is a balanced view of the universe with God as the creator. Every portion of the Creation has its own sphere. An orderly plan is laid out and executed; humanity plays the dominant role in it. Humanity is to rule over all of this, to dominate but not to destroy. Seen in that light, the principle role of the human population is to rule and preserve. During the initial stage, humanity needed to be placed in a sufficiently strong position so that this mandate could be carried out. Now that

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