Abstract (2025 GPT Edition)

Title: Bet-ʾAvé: Reconstructing the Household Cluster as a Template for Sustainable Settlement
Author: Colby Gray, M.A. (Ball State University, 2010)

This project explores the bet-ʾavé—the kinship-based household cluster of pre-monarchic Israel—as a prototype for sustainable community design in the 21st century. Drawing on biblical anthropology, ecological systems theory, and regenerative planning, it reconstructs the bet-ʾavé as a self-sufficient social-spatial unit that integrates production, stewardship, and worship within a coherent landscape economy.

The study advances a methodology of design hermeneutics: reading ancient social patterns through ecological and architectural constraints to infer spatial form and land-use logic. It then applies this model to a contemporary site in the Killbuck/Mud Creek subwatershed of Delaware County, Indiana, examining how a ~150-person community might achieve ecological balance through shared infrastructure, distributed ownership, and covenantal governance.

The thesis argues that the bet-ʾavé embodies enduring design principles—modularity, subsidiarity, and reciprocity—that remain relevant to modern sustainability discourse. By situating ancient wisdom within contemporary environmental and urban challenges, this work proposes a bridge between theology and territorial design: a vision of settlement as both ecological praxis and moral covenant.