The Thesis Series 4: The Conceptual Autonomy of Ancient Scholarship
Towards a Discipline Between the Bible and Cuneiform: Akkadian, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Ancient Scholarship
Over a century ago, in 1915, early British Assyriologist Theophilus Pinches suggested the authors of Genesis had consistently altered the Babylonian Flood narrative in the “11th book of Gilgamesh” [my italics][1] to deny the polytheism of Babylon[2]. Almost hundred years later, in 2014, Jared Pfost in his literary “Analysis of the Flood as a Semitic type-scene”, notes how the many gods, as well as the two-thirds divinity of Gilgamesh, would have been extremely offensive to the Genesis authors[3]. A century apart, both authors concluded that Gensis was an anti-polytheist polemic against Babylonian religion[4]. In working on this project, I found myself in the interesting situation of agreeing with the conclusion that the Flood story in Genesis’ likely served what we could call “polemic” purposes, while disagreeing completely with the analysis that brought Pinches and Pfost there. How does one solve that contradiction? Here, I will discuss first the concept of “polytheism”, before seeing how taking the distinction of “polytheist” and “monotheist” religion for granted may be affecting other areas of our scholarship, such as those dealing with Mesopotamian commentary-texts and our ability to see their relationship to Biblical exegetic traditions. Importantly, I think it would be too narrow to say polemic was the sole purpose of the Flood in Genesis. As I will argue, it was likely one purpose of many, and it likely did have to do with understandings of the human-divine relationship, and the meaning of the Flood. But it was also a stand-alone contribution to a discourse meant to be understood as its own terms, with a much broader scope than polemics.
Just like the Standard Version of Gilgamesh cannot be boiled down to either “borrowing” or a polemic against the Old Babylonian version, or how the Assyrian version of the creation epic Enūma Eliš cannot be boiled down to a “borrowing” or polemic against the Babylonian version (more on that later), Genesis as well, in my view, cannot be seen solely a ‘counter’ to the Gilgamesh Series: While it does, in a hypertextual manner, relate to alternate understandings of the divine and potentially the Flood (though as we shall see, the differences between the Flood itself in Gilgamesh and Genesis may not seem that far removed), there are a few important points to keep in mind: The relationship to Gilgamesh, as far as sources allow us to see, is neither inter, para, nor metatextual. It never tells us anything about any text outside the Bible it stands in relation to. And while we have seen that Genesis certainly is a densely and diversely composed work, it never explicitly gives us a particular hypotext either. In other words, whether it relates specifically to the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh Tablet XI, or in Atrahasis, as Pinches and Pfost would have it, we simply do not, and likely cannot know entirely. And so, while I am not here to declare Genesis 4-9 a direct and exclusive hypertext to the Standard Version of Gilgamesh, nor Exodus 1-2 to the beginning of the Sargon Legend, I will in this Part argue that awareness of Babylonian and Assyrian literary traditions in Biblical books seems very reasonable to suggest, and that they could likely have been a subject of polemics, worthy of engaging with, to our Biblical editors.
On that note, we saw again, Pinches and Pfost refer to the scholars behind the Bible as “authors”[5]. We have seen in Part 2 how the process of creation and edition of the texts of the Bible and the Standard Gilgamesh hardly lend themselves to “authors” in the modern sense of the word: Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni may well have been the perceived collector of the Gilgamesh epic, and Moses may well have been perceived to be the “author” of the Pentateuch, but in both cases, whether we take the native designations of origin for the physical texts literally, neither of these personages were understood to have “made up” what was written. The source was believed to be divine. In Part 3, we further saw how a focus on ancient scholarly interactions beyond their native environs, but with a dual consciousness of each native traditions’ Eigenbegrifflichkeit, as well as the transtextuality of its constituent literatures, may help us avoid some of the interpretive and comparative issues we have seen in Parts 1 and 2.
In this Part, following those directions, and spurred by the presence of the idea of “anti-polytheist” polemic in Genesis spanning a century, we shall explore why the distinction of “polytheist” and “monotheist” may in fact be hindering our understanding of the textual parallels at hand, exemplified by a brief discussion of the concepts of “commentary” versus “exegesis”. It is then suggested how focus on a discourse of the human-divine relationship, wisdom, and revelation, may be helpful parameters of investigation, exemplified by how they apply to our primary sources. I do not pretend to have conceived of the proper way of understanding the relationships between these texts, in fact I hope to have shown why we simply cannot know that for certain. Rather I hope this thesis series will serve as both a review and discussion of the nature of the relationship between Assyriology and Biblical scholarship, as well as a suggestion for potentially lucrative trajectories of collaboration between us. To begin with, let us discuss the concept of “polytheism”.
Polytheism, Monotheism, and Modern Concepts: Taking Ancient Polemic for Granted
As already hinted at, during the research for this series alone, the term “polytheism” and implicit conception of its meaning has appeared in numerous works.[6] However, sometimes the distinction of “polytheism” and “monotheism” may be blurring our vision, leading us to presume that a given contribution to a discourse could be entirely based on one, easily mistakable thing alone. The term “polytheist” in the way scholarship often wields it is itself a rather modern term (ca 1700s CE), often substitutable for ancient terms that could equally translate to “heretic”, “hedonist”, or “idolater”.[7] It has mostly been employed polemically, both in modernity and in ancient texts that have translated the polemic terms used as “polytheist”, and often when we look at discussions surrounding the number of gods, in context, it is not as clear cut or simple as the term makes it out to be.[8] For example, when 9th century Arab scholar Abū ’Īsā al-Warrāq decries the concept of Trinity, he is not engaging merely in a discussion of the number of gods, he is critiquing the Nestorian and Jacobite distinction of the one substance الجوهر الواحد al-jūhar al-wāhad of God from the hypostases الأقانيم al-’uqānīm[9] (the Father, the Son Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit).[10]
Daniel Dubuisson reminds us that categorizations such as “polytheist” and “monotheist” may not only be taking whichever text we take them from for granted, it may, in the case of modern, Western scholarship, risk reproducing (and -asserting) the Christian conception of God as the foremost.[11] It should be noted that while Dubuisson has a particular culprit in “Universalist, Western, Christian imperialism”, as he is writing in a specifically post-colonial context, I believe we can safely extend the risk of possessing misleading preconceptions of ancient religion to Muslims, Jews, Baha’i, Hindus, atheist, and any other modern scholars or institutions alike.
Many comments could be made about the “East” / “West” distinction and their respective association with “not-Christianity” and “Christianity”, as well as non-Greek thought and Greek thought, and as it may have been noted, that is in fact an underlying thread in this series as well. Reflecting on and being aware of the European scientific, literary, artistic traditions of the past few centuries, with their countless flaws and misconceptions, and their part in a maintained disparity of international power, are indeed important.[12] And for this reason, the critique of the use of modern categories applied to history should be applied consistently. In the case of Abrahamic religions, we are looking at over two millennia of religion, spread quite literally around the world, from Hong Kong to Cape Town, Svalbard to Auckland, from Nazareth to Nazareth, Pennsylvania. Does “West” and “East” for Dubuisson imply the same as غرب and شرق (“west” gharb and ”east” sharq in Arabic[13]) in 9th century al-Andalus? At which church denomination, and at which time, does Christianity transition from an “Eastern” to a “Western” religion? While Dubuisson is right to be critical of teleological “Universalism” in the sense of evaporating any distinction to stress some commonality, which can easily be manipulated or used to define “the normal”, that does not mean we cannot imagine there to be something common to humanity without it being an oppressive idea. It is probably difficult, if not impossible, for us to know how the heterodox ancient world was imagined by all its disparate inhabitants. What we can be sure of is that there are plenty of modern as well as ancient “Orientalisms” for us to trip over.
Taking for granted how the polemic aspect of the term “polytheism” may interfere with how we understand ancient spirituality can cause us to overlook important nuances, even in polemic literature. But further, while the current examples were from much outside our scope of investigation, Assmann has given us similar material for refuting the simplistic “polytheism to monotheism”-distinction, exemplified by the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten (ca. mid-14th century BCE)’s Aten-theology. The unity of the divines is an increasingly central aspect of both ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, not to mention Indian religion.[14] As such, boiling down the meaning of the discussion behind “polytheism”, or in other words, the discussion of “the Number of God(s)”, to referring solely to the physical count of divine entities, seems an unsustainable way to approach the sources and the theologies of the ancient scribes. If we are interested in untangling modern preconceptions about the religions, whatever that entirely entails, from the values of the scribes within whose hands these literary traditions were moulded, and in turn how well we can interpret the claims being made and their meanings in the texts, we have a growing list of preconceptions to keep in mind. With this small discussion of the dangers of too strongly distinguishing Mesopotamian and Abrahamic religion solely along the lines of “mono/polytheist”, we can return to a related question. Since Fowden considers exegesis central to the maturation of religions in late antiquity, I must raise the question I asked in the end of Part 3, as well as when I first read Garth Fowden (2013): Is ancient Mesopotamian commentary not “exegesis”?
Commentary and Exegesis: The Snowball-Effect of Taking-for-Granted
Even at first glance, the above question presents us with a challenge: “Exegesis” and “commentary” are both surprisingly ambiguous terms.[15] While a full etymological exploration is beyond our series, a few interesting notes can be made on the terms, as well as their distinction. “Commentary” seems in scholarship to refer in a rather broad sense to more or less critical engagement with texts, where the texts, as well as their interpretations, are discussed, commented upon, sometimes even interpreted further in the commentary itself.[16] As such, much like with “transmission” versus “creative addition” discussed in relation to “authorship” earlier, a picture emerges of “commentary” as a rather multifaceted activity, which can itself be highly creative. As we’ve noted earlier, Robson considers “commentary” practically synonymous with metatextuality.[17]
Interestingly, nothing about the definition of commentary we can extract from our literature is in direct contradiction to “exegesis”. And while exegesis by some definitions is specifically related to ‘holy scripture’[18], “commentary” is by no means excluded from engaging with divinely inspired literature – as discussed in Part 2, early rabbis even considered commentary, or exegesis, to be divinely sanctioned activities in themselves[19]. Fowden himself does not even seem to distinguish between the two,[20] Andrew George describes himself as performing exegesis on the Gilgamesh Series,[21] and Eckart Frahm, another mastodon Assyriologist, even notes that while subtle differences ostensibly exists between the terms “commentary” and “exegesis”, he consciously uses them rather interchangeably, equating them both to hermeneutics, as he believes that if there is a difference between them, that distinction is likely a rather late one.[22] As such, the question of why Mesopotamian commentary would not be exegesis may already have an answer: quite likely is.
On example of such Mesopotamian exegesis could be found in the Enūma Eliš, with the final recitation of Marduk’s fifty (plus) names during his elevation to rulership over the pantheon.[23] As van der Toorn notes, the postscript to this narrative encourages the continued repetition, memorization of, and reflection on these names between student and teacher, hinting somewhat at the use of this text in scribal education and practises. Van de Mieroop, following Bottéro’s original research, even shows how the 50 names hold deeper cosmologic meanings.[24] Ulla Koch argues that Mesopotamian commentaries essentially come in four forms: ‘factual’, explaining and defining phenomena; ‘philological’, explaining words or ideograms; ‘all-round’, essentially combining the former two; and ‘guides’ which present excerpts of different texts and restructure them for didactic purposes, or to survey their content[25].
Further, sometimes important Mesopotamian literature (I hesitate to call it “canonical”, see discussion of the “Stream of Tradition” in Part 3) is used to explain further existing texts. We see an example of this in 1st millennium BCE Babylonian medicinal commentaries[26], commenting on the first sub-section of the series called sakikku “symptoms” a series of prognostic and diagnostic medical omens, fairly standardized in the first millennium BCE[27]. In these texts, we are presented with a series of “if x, then y” statements, protasis and apodosis, fundamental to the Mesopotamian commentary genre.[28] Interestingly, the first two lines of this tablet gives us first an example of protases and apodosis, explaining that if an exorcist (āšipu) goes to a patient’s house and sees a potsherd standing in the street, the patient is dangerously ill and must not be approached[29]. The commentaries proceed to give an explanation as to why this is the interpretation of the potsherd. They analyse a few terms semantically and draw parallels to different terms referring to humanity and death, and even quotes what seems to be the Gilgamesh Series, specifically a section from Gilgamesh where Ea “the potter” makes Enkidu from clay to explain this connection between humans, broken potsherds, and death[30].
In my opinion, given the reviewed examples and discussions above, the idea that Mesopotamian “commentary” should not be “exegetic” seems not to hold up to scrutiny. And considering Mesopotamian commentaries as one thing, and Abrahamic exegesis as another, may in fact be a further symptom of the latent distinction of “polytheist” and “monotheist”. This brief commentary-example (which could and should be its own entire subject of research) hints that collation, refined reflection, interpretation, and discussion of literature did not emerge from nothing with the rabbinic movement in the centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. We may be seeing the contours of a more broadly distributed scholarly practice in the East Mediterranean and Mesopotamia in the 1st millennium BCE, which may well have later relatives, for example amongst the rabbis in the following millennium, as several scholars such as Frahm, Koch, Cavigneaux (Assyriologists), and Geller (Jewish studies and Babylonian Medicine), and have briefly pointed out already[31].
In fact, cuneiform interpretive practices were, as we have discussed in Part 3, extremely refined and steeped in scholarly, Sumerian-Akkadian linguistic ideology, evident even from lexical lists which often contain composite terms and concepts that seem impossible in real life[32]. With this, I argue we can say that for our purposes, nothing stops us from considering Mesopotamian commentary and interpretation to be “exegetic”. But can we then, based on this Part, as well as Part 3, presume some sets of interpretive and scientific practices to have been more common, and not entirely “at home” in one culture, between the different scribal cultures of the 1st millennium BCE East Mediterranean and Mesopotamia? I the following, I argue that it seems likely, based on a change in discourse over time, which can be gleamed from the textual parallels in the primary sources central to this series. This change, hinted to several time in previous Parts, pertains to the understanding amongst ancient scholars of the relation between foundational human figures, as well as humanity more broadly, and the divine, as well as to secret, revealed wisdom in scripture, and for the final part of this series, this is where I focus.
Foundational Figures and Didactic Narratives
“Find the cedar box, open its bronze-clasp, lift the lid, take up the lapis lazuli tablet, and read out all the tribulations Gilgamesh went through” (Gilgamesh I: 25-28). Thusly the introduction in the first tablet of the Standard Version of Gilgamesh encourages the reader. As Sophus Helle points out, the Gilgamesh Series wants to be read, and it claims, much like texts from the so-called narû-literature (a term with a relatively wide range of meanings that can be summed up to a kind of royal pseudo-autobiographic genre)[33] to contain knowledge recorded by the king whose life and deeds it portrays.[34] Briefly, narû-texts (which are relatively rare) concern themselves with recording significant events of great kings, often written in the first person, following the pattern of royal inscriptions, with a prologue, narrative, and epilogue. The prologue is often a kind of introduction to the protagonist’s life or current circumstances, and the epilogue often contains some message for future kings, with some kind of overarching instructional moral to it, and they are often somewhat poetic in style.[35]
The pointers given here, while not supposed to be exhaustive or definitive, provide helpful guiding characteristics. While narû is traditionally an Assyriological term meant for an Akkadian-language genre, the idea of a “pseudo-(auto)biographic” genre does not seem unfitting to bring into consideration to some extend for the purposes of this series. As mentioned, however, one aspect that seems common to much narû-literature (with some caveats) is the first-person narrator. If we take the first person as a necessity, only one of the four primary sources here could be considered strictly narû. Further, while Moses is certainly a leader, neither he nor Noah are considered kings, and the formulas of prologue-narrative-epilogue, while not absent in the Bible, do not adhere to the kind of structure of content we find in Akkadian narû literature, for example there is no challenge to future kings from Moses or Noah (nor Gilgamesh, strictly speaking, although it still does address the reader with an encouragement), as we saw in the Sargon Legend. As such, while the term narû is not fit to encompass our four primary sources, we can at least surmise that they have pseudo-biographic qualities to them, and as well that they portray great leaders or very significant persons from the point of view of the text that presents them, and they tend to have some teaching or morale to share.
Examples of didactic biographies, sometimes also referred to as hagiographies in Abrahamic context, are fairly common in the East Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, such as the ancient Egyptian ‘Instruction-literature’, examples include the Instruction of Kagemni, of Merikare, or of Any (interestingly with the named character in the title often being a vizier, apprentice-vizier or scribe working at the Egyptian court). These texts are, a bit like narû literature, very often pseudepigraphic, in that it likely is not written by the protagonist it claims, but still very much written in the context of a royal court, designed to give direction for policies or aims of kings and courts[36]. Further, we have Jewish-Hellenic texts from the late first millennium BCE much in the same vein, such as the Levantine Wisdom of Ben Sira or the Alexandrian Wisdom of Solomon[37], as well as Christian ones like The Life of Anthony by Athanasius of Alexandria.[38] One thing many of the texts mentioned here have in common, apart from their (to varying degrees) didactic and biographic qualities, are their association to Wisdom-literature.
As has already briefly been mentioned, Wisdom has come to take a more central role in scholarship of religions the past 50 years, amongst others after Gershom Scholem pointed out the disregard for Wisdom and Mysticism in modern scholarship of Judaism in 1971, after whence Mysticism has enjoyed a great scholarly revival.[39] While a history of the research on Wisdom literature in the East Mediterranean and Mesopotamia is beyond our purposes, what is relevant for our series is that there seems to be some connection between the biographies of important or foundational figures to be emulated, and wisdom[40]. Further, though we mostly rely on conjecture with Biblical sources in this period, several scholars have proposed that it appears as if an ideal of divine, hidden wisdom, and of ancient scribes, often associated with (whether against or in support of) royal courts, as the gatekeepers, protectors, and transmitters of this wisdom, is gaining ground towards the late second-early first millennium onwards BCE.[41]
And with regards to the “extraction” of wisdom, returning briefly to the concept of exegesis, concerning the idea of “interpretation” itself, Akkadian pišru[42] and Hebrew pesher (which is in fact an Aramaic loan-word)[43], both translate to “interpretation”, but more significantly are both used in connection with interpreting writing, events, or different phenomena considered divine knowledge. Pesher, while only appearing in the Bible once (Eccl. 8:1), is used frequently in the Qumran texts to refer to interpretations and commentaries to existing texts. The Akkadian pišru is used to refer to anything from interpretation of writing, to interpreting omens for kings, to interpreting the course of the planets through the sky. In fact, the uses, and meanings of pišru and pesher in Qumran seem practically indistinguishable.[44]
Further, this discursive movement towards hidden, secret wisdom, has been argued by some scholars, such as van der Toorn and Sanders, to be connected to the social and political positions of scribes in the late 2nd-early 1st millennia BCE.[45] Sanders specifically points, with several interesting textual examples such as Deuteronomy, the Covenant Code, the Laws of Hammurabi, Assyrian vassal-treaties (specifically Esarhaddon’s vassal treaties), to an influx of a Mesopotamian “public power” and public law-genres to Hebrew Biblical literature in the early 1st millennium BCE, and then in the post-exilic period, Second Temple literature texts become both increasingly esoteric and Aramaic.[46] These are rather interesting points, and it allows for a few remarks: First, it should be noted that Sanders is keenly aware of the conjecture needed to make these kinds of proposals based only on our limited source material, and that, again, these should indeed be considered discursive changes, not “evolutions”, not “developments” in a linear, forward-moving sense. To put it another way, “influence” is something that happens between, not to and from. In fact, new texts the Israel-Judah area are appearing and being published, potentially even before the Assyrian conquest, which may well shed further light on the area in the future[47].
As Sanders points out, the first millennium BCE was an incredibly politically tumultuous period, many areas changing hands in unpredictable ways between writers/speakers of Luwian, Akkadian, Phoenician, and Aramaic[48] (not to mention Egyptian, Greek, etcetera later). As such, the early first millennium BCE, the same period that Esarhaddon’s vassal-treaties’ parallels to Deuteronomy are thought to have come into existence (ca. 7th centuries BCE), in some form or another, is a period that generally coincides with attempts from Jewish scribes to fashion an epic national history combined with a legal corpora, Ulrich argues, further reminding us that these texts, though written down here, lived their own lives in oral form as well.[49] As mentioned in Part 2, it is around this time, particularly at some time in the late 8th or early-mid 7th century, that our Sargon Legend (as in, the three tablets with Neo-Assyrian script) from Nineveh was put to clay. As such, before we move to close the Part with Gilgamesh, let us now dwell on Sargon and Moses.
Gods, Kings, and Ancestors: Legitimizing and Resisting Vassalage
As mentioned throughout this series, we have no clear-cut new evidence that allows for a secure dating of any of these sources. Nor can it establish clearly the relationship between them, however, it has and will hopefully argue for, if not persuasive, then at least interesting ways to approach these questions. While I give a fuller exposition of the discussions in a previous article[50], I will paint a quick picture here of my hypothesis concerning the Sargon Legend. As mentioned in Part 2, many changes took place around the accession of Sargon II to the Assyrian throne in ca. 722 BCE, such as a radical change in naming convention for Sargon and his following dynasty. These were not the only interesting places to take place, however. Further, Assyrian royal inscriptions from Sargon’s reign onwards become more literary in style and begin referencing works such as the Erra Epic or Enūma Eliš[51]. In fact, an “Assyrian version” of Enūma Eliš was authored in the period, which conflates the spelling of the father of gods, Anšar, who elevates Marduk head of the Babylonian pantheon Enūma Eliš, with the spelling of Aššur, the Assyrian supreme deity.[52]
And this seems fairly fitting, given that in the early-mid first millennium, the relationship between Assyria and Babylonia was indeed often characterized by rather dramatic and often violent conflict over who was the rightfully superior power in Mesopotamia[53], as well as what seems to be rather serious internal political conflict within the Assyrian empire. In fact, as mentioned in Part 2, debate surrounding Sargon II’s potential usurpation the throne from his brother Shalmaneser V is not new. For starters, Sargon II left us an inscription which states that the gods granted him kingship, essentially due to the incompetence of his brother[54] But apart from debates surrounding the meanings of his name in this connection, there are other intriguing factors to consider. For example, the Babylonian King List A considers a dynastic fracture to have happened already upon the accession of Sargon II, whom they considered of the “BALA”[55], which Fales argues should be read “Dynasty” of Baltil (Also the name of the oldest district in the city of Aššur, first capital of the Assyrian empire), which, rather mysteriously, Tiglath-Pileser III also associates himself with in a couple of inscriptions – and who the Babylonian King List A credits with having created the dual Assyrian-Babylonian kingship.[56]
Even more intriguingly for our purposes is the royal inscription The Sin of Sargon. There is some debate here, which we cannot go in detail with, but suffice it to say that as the text presents its narrator as Sennacherib. Yet where some scholars, such as Josette Elayi, thinks we should trust this to mean it was composed by/for Sennacherib[57]. Others such as Frahm, Landsberger, Tadmor, and Parpola believe that the text must date to the time of Sargon II’s grandson, and Sennacherib’s son, Esarhaddon. This is due to various reasons, for example, the text seems to indicate that Sennacherib may be dead when speaking, due to events that are related in-text. Further, we know Esarhaddon spent a lot of energy consolidating the Babylonian and Assyrian relationship after Sennacherib’s major sacking of Babylon, and the dramatic (violent) deaths of both Sargon II and Sennacherib.[58] Interestingly, following the sacking of Babylon by Sennacherib, Assyrian scribes also tried to handle this destruction of the city that arguably supplied much of Assyrian literary culture with compositions of different texts ridiculing Marduk, for example arguing the Akitu festival, typically understood to reaffirm Babylonian kingship through Marduk (and Nabû), was in fact celebrating Marduk’s imprisonment[59].
What is further intriguing about this text is that is tells us Sennacherib was ‘wrongfully’ stopped from paying tribute to the cult of Marduk, by making a statue of him, by pro-Assyrian (or anti-Babylonian depending how you look at it) scribes, which the story claims is what ended up “shortening his days”[60]. The Sin of Sargon highly stresses the importance of maintaining balance between the cults of Aššur and Marduk, and as Tadmor and Landsberger note, this is the only known cuneiform text which so explicitly shows us scribal opposition (seemingly even overruling) of the king.[61] Yet what the above shows us more generally, is that literary productivity can be said to have at times a rather direct relationship to royal courts and the political events that take place surrounding them. In fact, personages, figures, characters, can be emulated, names or titles can be changed, in order to rebuke or make rebuttals to what is considered ‘incorrect’ versions or interpretations of said characters or events. This slowly brings us to Exodus.
As seen in the above, political turmoil was a major challenge for Sargon II both in and outside the Assyrian heartland when he ascended (as usurper or not) the Assyrian throne, more recent publications such as Troels Arbøll’s recent monograph (2023) corroborate further the picture of unrest amongst Levantine vassals and neighbours of vassals to Assyria.[62] As discussed in Part 2, by the late first millennium BCE, it seems an idea was starting to take hold amongst Biblical scribes of being inheritors and transmitters of revelations, which Moses, who also came to be seen as the author of the Pentateuch, received on Mount Sinai. This idea would only become more systematized in the later Mishnaic and Talmudic traditions. However, van der Toorn argues that in Deut. 17:18-19, 31:9, and 34:10-12, such an idea is already applied to the Levites, who are specifically considered the inheritors of the Law and of Moses’ office. This association may well have been grounds for or a legitimizing (not excluding both as simultaneously possible) factor in the elevated social status of the mid-first millennium Hebrew scribes in the first place.[63] Interestingly, van der Toorn further points out that in comparing lists of Temple staff in Nehemiah (ca. 4th century BCE), the Seleuchid charter of Antiochus III (late 3rd-early 2nd century BCE), and the Synoptic Gospels (ca. late 1st century CE), we see that where Nehemiah lists “Levites”, the charter of Antiochus III and the Synoptic Gospels lists “scribes (of the Temple)” in place of “Levites”[64].
While Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni probably cannot be considered a “prophet” in any Biblical sense, it is interesting to note that a scholarly self-perception tied to a particular, named master scribe to whom important literature (which, in Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni’s case does include literature concerning characters that could be considered closer to “prophetic”, though I will get back to that) was attributed by later scribes, is a tendency between these scholarly milieux. We have also seen that scribes did get involved in political discourse as well, also in their literary work. As always, where we must in the first millennium BCE always build on conjecture when it comes to the Biblical, but really also cuneiform sources, though they are greater in number, if the use of literature and engagement of Mesopotamian scribes in high politics seen in the case of the Sargonid dynasty is anything to go by, we may be able to posit some ideas concerning the respective births of Sargon and Moses, in their respective literary contexts. As van der Toorn puts it, the scribes associated with Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles on one hand, and the priests associated with Deuteronomy, on the other, may be considered counterparts to the scribal scholars of Mesopotamia and Egypt[65].
Importantly, as Sanders argues, also in the context of van der Toorn’s study, this does not mean we can speak of one, single scribal culture, but rather of different scribal cultures which to some extend partook in a larger, international discourse between these individual scribal environments[66]. And while van de Mieroop argued that the cuneiform tradition, with its highly particular historical conditions, its bilingualism, and most importantly the writing system itself, cannot be considered to be “fully translatable” to other scribal epistemologies due to these peculiarities (see Part 3), Sanders points out that at Aramaic and Akkadian have been rather close since at least the 9th century, and Aramaic could very well have become a direct medium between Hebrew and Akkadian literature in the late centuries of the first millennium BCE, with the increasingly Aramaic-native makeup of Mesopotamian and Levantine scribes.[67] Of course, it is also worth remembering while not the same as Akkadian and Sumerian, Hebrew and Aramaic, particularly as Hebrew diminishes as a spoken language, does in some sense seem to come as “partner-languages”, both in text and practice (for example “live” translation/interpretations of sermons to Aramaic in synagogues in the early 1st millennium CE)[68].
The idea of Deuteronomy as a response, or rebuke of the Assyrian claim to be rightful liege of Israel and Judah, or the Levantine states more broadly, has certainly been suggested before[69]. Assyrian vassal treatises, which be start seeing from around the 9th century BCE, were fully public texts. They were translated, displayed, and read aloud in temples both in Assyrian and in their vassal territories. As such, these treatises would be performed in the local language, with Assyrian and local representatives present, highlighting that writing was not the only medium through which scribes could have become familiar with such literature.[70] In fact, a copy Esarhaddon’s vassal treaty has been found in Tell Tayinat (very close to Antioch)[71]. Taken together with the developing idea of Moses’ authorship of both Deuteronomy, and Pentateuch more broadly, and his increasingly central role for the heart of the Biblical tradition itself, finding a narrative of Moses’ life which recounts a birth on par, not emulating, with one of the perceived greatest enemies of Biblical scribes at this time, Sargon II, and the dynasty he spawned, may not be so strange.
I am neither here to claim Sargon necessarily got the birth narrative from the Bible, or that the Bible necessarily got it from Sargon, Lewis already made a detailed exploration of just how frequent the child-exposure is around the Mediterranean, being shared also by figures such as Cyrus the Great, who has a much more positive Biblical representation[72]. What I want to suggest is that scribes or scholars from different environments, with different self-perceptions, different religious propensities and different beliefs about the world and the cosmos, could formulate and engage in discourse regarding such topics as local, ethnic, cultural, religious heritage, sovereignty, and royal policy, through literature. One way to engage is such discourse was through narrative development and edition.
In the case of Sargon II, or his ascendants, an awareness of, or a need for a unitary figure that could justify the rule of the Assyrian Sargonid dynasty, by planting it firmly in power bases and traditions of both Babylonia and Assyria, could have proven an effective literary move along the lines of what we have seen with the Sin of Sargon or the Assyrian Enūma Eliš. The presence (albeit it limited regardless) of one of the four known fragments of this story being outside Assyria and with Neo-Babylonian elements (see Part 2), suggests to us that it did exist to some extent outside the courts of Nineveh. Further, the ever-elusive oral element bars us from knowing much certainly. The child-exposure narrative could easily have been present as a cultural reference both in Mesopotamia and the Levant. Potentially, for all we know, it could have also been a useful move for the Assyrian court with regards to (new) vassals who may have also shared such stories of local heroes and leaders, which Assyrian scribes could have recognized as “distorted” versions of the “true”, Assyrian version (in their eyes), or simply a useful tool to adopt for a Sargonid imperial ideology.
In the case of the Biblical scribes, we can equally surmise that whether a birth-narrative was associated to Sargon or Moses first, its association to Moses in this form, in the context of his position in Jewish religion as a leader and prophet, and a founding figure of the modern (in the first millennium BCE) Jewish identity, and more specifically of the Jewish scribal identity and sovereignty. Returning to Robson’s terms (see Part 3), the Sargon legend and the story of Moses combine several layers of transtextuality, some referring to native traditions we are unable to reconstruct. And with regards to each other, I purposefully leave it open as to what we could consider hypo or hypertext. It may be that the distinction is in fact too simplistic, both texts stand in a relationship to each other, but it is not a uniform or one-directional relationship. Potentially, if we should view Deuteronomy, and by extension the perceived authorship of Moses, as reflections of the status of scribes, and as responses to Assyrian hegemony, Moses’ birth in isolation could be seen as hypertextual to the Sargon’s birth in the Sargon Legend, but only in that this birth-element, which potentially already was a known trope, also in the Levant, was consciously chosen to rebuke foreign rule over Israel and Judah.
They seemingly exist for rather different reasons, albeit both reasons connected to events and paradigms of power in the late-mid 1st millennium BCE, and they emerge in a scribal context that gives them meaning and function. They are both contributions to a discourse of power. The place of the scribes over, say, priests, would be elevated to greater and greater degrees until we reach the Rabbinic Judaism of the late 1st millennium CE. Moving our awareness of the Biblical critiques of Mesopotamian thought beyond a simple disgust with “polytheism” may help highlight less visible elements of polemic. In this light, the politics of kings, the literature of scribes, and the position they hold in society, seem intimately tied to each other, and attempting with (hopefully) increasing precision to understand what caused our scribes to formulate their ideas and narratives as they did may be key to further understanding the parallels we find in Mesopotamian and East Mediterranean literature. Before returning to make concluding remarks, we must also deal a bit further with the ever-secretive Wisdom, and with foundations of another kind as we approach our last pair of sources.
They Who Saw the Deep and the Face of the Waters
In Part 2, I highlighted changes from Old to Standard Babylonian Versions (at least changes that were only fully “standardized” in the first millennium BCE). And apart from the inclusion of the Flood account is the addition of an introduction and epilogue that arguably refocus the entire narrative[73], stressing the value of Gilgamesh’ achievement ultimately as the knowledge he brought back from his journey, and even more specifically, that he passed it on. Gilgamesh, as Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni, may not be a prophet like Moses, and this makes sense, they are entirely different figures which hold vastly different positions in their respective traditions. But Gilgamesh’ crowning achievement says a lot about the editors of the Standard Edition. Texts like the Gilgamesh Series or Enūma Eliš in my view cannot simply be taken together as a kind of “Mesopotamian Bible”, but we have seen in our brief review of our medical commentary-tablet above that Gilgamesh could be referred to explain interpretations of texts and ideas about what human beings are made of. While I have purposefully avoided talking about “canon” too much, as I think the focus on the term itself can be distracting, the Gilgamesh Series was an important text, not just because of its entertainment value.
As I have briefly touched upon, one element often forgot in religious scholarship has been that of Mysticism, and its centrality and connection to various antique, late antique, and medieval forms of religion[74]. Ignoring mystical thought may well be a hinderance to our understanding of intellectual discourse, and the centrality of revelation, in the first millennia, BCE as well as CE. When approaching our literature, it is important to take both the final editions of our texts seriously, but equally to take seriously that they weren’t always in that form, and that the editors’ role must not be understated.[75] In Israel and Judah, scribes were inheritors of the revelation of Moses. In Babylon, Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni was an important binding figure for several high-standing scribal families, and a work directly identified with him claimed to be transmitted memory of Gilgamesh himself, bringing back secret knowledge about the foundations of the world.
As we saw examples of with Pinches and Pfost, and plenty others exist, it has been claimed that the Gilgamesh Series was a less refined, more pessimistic, or “polytheist” explanation of human mortality, and the recklessness of the gods[76]. But is it so simple, or are we taking for granted an ancient polemic? As pointed out earlier by Van der Toorn and George, while we cannot know if it is true, Sîn-Lēqi-Unninni was seen as the responsible editor of the Standard Gilgamesh, and a foundational figure in his own right[77]. And there is still both something fitting and telling about it, whether he is the man responsible for the Standard edition of Gilgamesh or not, some groups of Babylonian scribes certainly considered themselves part of an intellectual tradition spanning at least half a millennium, hinted also in the term ṭupšarrūtu “scribalhood”.[78]
As we have discussed (see Part 3) ancient scribes, whether Babylonian or Judahite, were masters of a tradition that did not just include simply “reading”, but a much more refined practise of textual engagement, interpretation, and discussion. This is not to say that this way of engaging with literature was a Mesopotamian invention, since we do not have access to most writings of the Ancient Near East that were written on papyrus, parchment, wax boards, and other such perishable materials (by comparison to clay), we can know nothing in that regard. It is only to say that such a way of engaging with text was surely also present in Mesopotamia, at least in the first millennium BCE, and that in fact the combined bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian linguistic heritage, combined with the nature of the cuneiform script, seems to have provided incredibly fertile grounds for such activities.
The presence of this kind of engagement with text, and the very mobile nature of ancient scribes, as well as the apparent fluidity of both Biblical and cuneiform literature at the time of the Qumran community, would seem to suggest that late antique exegetic methodology and epistemology did not simply appear in the combination of Aristotle, Plato, and late 1st millennium BCE Judaism, in the context of the Roman empire. Rather it seems to have grown out of antique intellectual environments that likely spanned the East Mediterranean and Mesopotamia, and which was actively engaging in these interpretive, exegetic activities, and on their ways founding many different schools of thought and traditions of literature, which participated in discourse on ranges of topics, all of which are only available to us today through the opaque, fractured, endlessly diverse literary bodies they leave behind[79].
Worthington argues that Gilgamesh is not “a creation story”.[80] In a sense, he is correct: If you compare all of Gilgamesh to all of Genesis, yes, we will have to look to another text, Enūma Eliš, for a similar “world creation” as the one we see in the beginning. But I find myself hard pressed to not consider both Noah’s plot ark and Gilgamesh’s plot ark as at least “foundational”. When we look at each respective text by themselves – that is, Gilgamesh Tablet XI, and Genesis books 6-9, they are even foundational in similar respects sometimes: In Genesis, in the period after the flood to the time of Abraham (Gen. 6-12), we see a noticeable shortening of the average lifespans of our main characters. If the way the Flood, as seen in the Standard version of Gilgamesh, is representative of the seeming logic in various Mesopotamian king lists[81], where kings after the Flood also have gradually decreasing lifespans, then both Floods have a drastic, though gradual impact on the lengths of human lives, that is, on their mortality.
And while we can never place ourselves inside the minds of our ancient scribes, some of the other themes of the Gilgamesh Series; the human (well, at least Gilgamesh’) want for immortality; the inevitability of (physical) death; the wisdom in knowing the foundations of the world: They could imply that the reference, maybe even the addition of a Flood narrative, in Gilgamesh, but possibly in Genesis too, was very much purposefully chosen for the thematic parallels between the Flood and mortality. When Pfost points to the potentially “offensive” 2/3rd divinity of Gilgamesh to the Biblical authors, arguably, he may be reading Gilgamesh with a similar polemic to the one he posits for the Bible: Gilgamesh is described as two-thirds divine, yes, but as Helle also points out, the entire point of the story centres around his inescapable humanity and mortality. In the end, Gilgamesh has become irrevocably human[82]. Other phrases, such as the one we encountered when the Flood in Gilgamesh XI settled, describing the sea ša imtaḫṣu kīma ḫayyālti “that had struggled like a woman giving birth”(Gilgamesh XI: 132), along with the idea that most humanity, if not a great number of people and places, were completely wiped from the face of the earth, in my mind could imply at least a foundational narrative or (re-)birth. Human beings may ultimately come from the divine, but we are human all the same.
Interestingly, of course, the Flood as presented to us in Gilgamesh is further removed than in Genesis. Gilgamesh has it relayed to him second-hand, it is not “baked in” to the narrative, men presented as a recollection of a separate event. Here we may see the rather different scopes of composition for the Bible and Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh does not try to be an all-encompassing narrative of everything. Rather, it could have a more hypertextual, meta-reflective attitude to concepts known outside this story, for example in the Sumerian King List, and like with the shortening lifespans, not necessarily explicitly stated here, it rather deals with the implications of this idea. In this view, Genesis, for of all, does not “borrow” from Gilgamesh.
The Flood motif, like the child-exposure motif, may well have had a connection to an idea of a radical redefinition of the relationship between human beings and the divine across Near Eastern cultures. If a Jewish scribe was exposed to some version of Gilgamesh – and we know they were to some extent, for Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim, and Humbaba all appear as Nephilim in various Dead Sea Scrolls and Books of Giants – they may well have experienced not just “evil polytheism”. More complexly, and this is nothing more than a qualified guess, it could have been viewed as “misunderstanding” the Flood and its implications, or the characters involved in it, warranting a proper explication.[83] Again, it may make much more sense to consider both texts contributions to discourse, here concerning the mortality of humans, our place in the world, and our relationship with the divine.
Even in line with Theophilus Pinches and Jared Pfost, Assyriologist Martin Worthington and theologist Eugene Fischer both argue that Genesis and Gilgamesh are concerned with establishing a proper understanding of theology, morality, the place of humans in the world, and divine justice[84]: As Fischer puts it, and as Worthington quotes, Genesis and Gilgamesh both “seek to establish a theology of divine justice in the face of the of mystery of death and in the context of the concept of a universal flood”.[85] So even for proponents of the idea that “polytheism” was the driving force in the Bible’s distain for Mesopotamian religion, it is not the mere number of divinity that is discussed here.
To be clear, we can take the “monotheist” claims of the Bible seriously as a self-understanding, and a genuine critique. Philosophy and Wisdom traditions’ preoccupation with delineating and numbering the divine is a relatively common subject of debate across the East Mediterranean, from Plato to the Torah[86] - potentially also in the Enūma Eliš with Marduk’s adoption of names[87]. To sum up the point of Genesis, and its disagreement, strictly to the rather literal "amount of gods", rather than allowing for the possibility of a more refined contribution to a larger and more technical discourse, which contains many diversely motivated stances and rebuttals on different topics, may in fact be obscuring our understanding of both the subject matter, but more widely the way in which it took part in its wider context.
Gilgamesh and Genesis are likely in the same boat, with regards to the Flood. Probably, it makes most sense to think that none of them “own” it more than the other, it existed outside their respective narratives before it was included in them. In Gilgamesh’ case, with Atrahasis, with the Bible, we do not entirely know. But potentially, it was employed exactly because the Flood alluded to the themes the scribes wanted to discuss with them. As discussed in Part 2, a version of Gilgamesh existed in the levant in the Late Bronze age. And as with Sargon and Moses, while we should be careful with assigning 1-1 relationships to composite texts, we can surmise that the Flood in both Gilgamesh and Genesis stands in a hypertextual relationship to other, earlier flood-narratives. As mentioned in Part 2, these two texts were both fluid towards the end of the first millennium BCE. And though we do not have any affirmation that Genesis’ editors were thinking about Gilgamesh, as mentioned, there is some likelihood they would have been familiar with Gilgamesh in some form. And as we’ve seen with the history of conquest and exile between Babylonia, Assyria, and the Jewish kingdoms of the South Levant, polemic is perhaps not unexpected.
The Space Between
In this Part, I discussed how many preconceptions and ancient polemics, such as the distinction of monotheism and polytheism, may be obscuring our view of our study subject, if we take them for granted. Further, I have hoped to show how this for granted has wider implications for how we discuss and think about different “non-Abrahamic” genres such as the Mesopotamian Commentary genre of the first millennium BCE. Finally, I have argued how going beyond these ancient polemics and conceptions alone, trying to zoom out and understand if we can gauge from trends, discourses, and the employment of motifs and their associated meanings, may help us to not get lost in questions scholars have gotten lost in for centuries. I may not have presented much particularly new or ground-breaking here (although I have not found discussions surrounding exegesis in the context of Sargon and Moses anywhere). Rather, I have mere tried pulling together a few threads that were already present in our scholarship, in a sense both to highlight how little we know, but also to show that if we zoom out, perhaps we know a little more than we think we do. My proposed contextualizations of the present primary sources are not meant to be definitive, they are meant to be exploratory, suggestive of a way to approach them.
What appears, I argue, when surveying these diverse works and more recent scholarship surrounding them, is an approach to textual production and scholarly-intellectual interaction that spans various Assyriological and Biblical scholarships, and in fact seems promising points of convergence between our disciplines, both in understanding our ancient source material, and attempting comparisons, but also each other’s contemporary scholarly traditions. While Garth Fowden makes a valuable and important contribution with his longue-durée focus on exegesis and the development of religious dogma and institutions[88], I have hoped to show that if we truly want to explore the process of maturation, and the scholarly environments it happened in and between, we cannot simply take Augustus, Jesus, Hellenic Judaism, and Greek philosophy as the beginning.
This is not a call for Assyriologists and Biblical scholars to become experts on each other’s fields as well as their own. But instead, a plea for them (us) to understand the challenges with our respective literature, and learning to wield the languages we each specialize in, could already go a long way. However, potentially, in the spirit of our ancient scribes, one could conceive of an educational programme, which taught Aramaic, Akkadian, and Hebrew, as the three central languages of study – Assyriology and Biblical scholarship are, after all, large categories, and a new specialization which makes use of the vast space, and growing acknowledgement of this space, in between them, could hold potential for future research. As I have hoped to show, techniques and knowledge from one field cannot do the work alone.
We must on the one hand remember that our studied traditions, and our modern scholarly traditions, have their Eigenbegrifflichkeit. And at the same time, to study the parallels that so tantalizing inhabit the space between these texts, we may want to also remember that an Eigenbegrifflichkeit of intellectual networks, environments, and practises themselves, in 1st millennium BCE Mesopotamia and the East Mediterranean, is likely a third element to keep in mind. As with contemporary academics, the stages, and contexts in which we meet and interact with our international colleagues have their own logics, systems, and practises typically slightly different from our local academic practises. In this sense, a conceptual autonomy of the ancient scholarship we study between each tradition, may come together with a conceptualization a modern home-field that encompasses and gains its own autonomy “between” Assyriology and Biblical scholarship.
In the final Part of this series, a brief conclusion from the thesis itself will be expanded into a short essay, based on thoughts that did not make in into the thesis, as well as thoughts based on the feedback given by my supervisors and censor. In this Final Part, I also provide a full literature list for the entire thesis for ease of accessibility for anyone interested in further reading. For now, I must again thank you for reading along so far!
Literature
Assmann, Jan. 2007. “Monotheism and Polytheism”. In Johnston, Sarah Iles (Ed.) Ancient Religions. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.
Bremmer, Jan. 2010. ”From Holy Books to Holy Bible: An Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity”. In (ed Popovic, Mladen) Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism. Brill. Pp. 327-360.
Bottéro, Jean. 1977. “Les noms de Marduk, l’écriture et la ‘logique’ en Mésopotamie Ancienne“. In Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of J.J. Finkelstein. Hamden.
Cavigneaux, Antoine. 1982. ”Remarques sur les Commentaires a Labat TDP 1”. In Journal of Cuneiform Studies. Vol 34, 3/4. The University of Chicago Press, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique: Paris.
Dell, Katherine J. 2008. “Wisdom”. In (ed. Lieu, Judith M.; Rogerson, J. W.) Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Pp. 409-417.
Dubuisson, Daniel. 2019. The Invention of Religions. Bristol: Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Galter, Hannes D. 1986. “Probleme historisch-lehrhafter Dichtung in Mesopotamien”. In Keilschriftliche Literaturen: Ausgewählte Vorträge Der XXXII. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Münster, August 8th-12th 1985. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin.
Geller, M. J. 2004. “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud”. Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 259.
Graham, William A. 1987 and 2005. “SCRIPTURE”. In (Eds Jones, Eliade et al) Encyclopaedia of Religions. Vol 1, 2nd Edition (2005). Gale.
Jacobsen, Thorkild. 2019. “And Death the Journey's End: Epic of Gilgamesh”. In Foster, Benjamin R. (translator, editor). The Epic of Gilgamesh. Norton Critical Editions: Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. Norton: New York, London.
Knysh, Alexander. 2017. Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism. Princeton University Press.
Koch, Ulla S. 2015. “Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods Sources from the First Millennium BCE”. In (Eds Frahm, Eckart; Jursa, Michael) Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record. Vol 7. Ugarit Verlag: Münster.
Koch, Ulla S. (Westenholz, Ulla K.) 1995. Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination. In The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies series, Publication 19. Museum Tusculanum Press: Copenhagen, Viborg.
Louth, Andrew. 2007. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Miglio, Adam E. 2023. “The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1–11: Peering into the Deep”. In Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East monographic series. Routledge: London, New York.
Pfost, Jared. 2014. ”An Analysis of the Flood as a Semitic Type-Scene”. In (eds. Mason Brock M; Gimenez, Jasmin) Studia Antiqua. Birmingham Young University Print Services. Pp. 1-22.
Pinches, Theophilus. 1915. ”The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories”. In (eds Maunder, E. Walter) Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. Vol XLVII. Harrison and Sons. Pp. 301-328.
Pongratz-Leisten, Beate. 2015. Religion and Ideology in Assyria. Walter de Gruyter Inc: Boston/Berlin.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
Sanders, Seth L. 2017. From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon. Mohr Siebeck.
Schäfer, Peter. 2024. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. Princeton University Press.
Schäfer, Peter. 2004. Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah. Princeton University Press.
Schäfer, Peter. 1981. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 2. Mohr Siebeck.
Scholem, Gershom. 1995 (1971). The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Schocken Books, New York.
Tadmor, Hayim; Landsberger, Benno; Parpola, Simo. 1989. “The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will”. In State Archives of Assyria vol. 3/1. Sargon. Pp. 3-51.
Thomas, David (editor, translator). 1992. Anti-Christian polemic in early Islam: Abū ’Īsā al-Warrāq’s “Against the Trinity”. Cambridge University Press.
Van der Toorn, Karel. 2007. Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London.
Worthington, Martin. 2021. “Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story”. In The Ancient World. Taylor & Francis.
Lexicographic Sources
Arts, Tressy (ed.). 2014. Oxford Arabic Dictionary. Oxford University Press.
[1] Notice the use of ”book” here: This kind of (quite literally) ”biblicizing” language applied to the Gilgamesh Series (famous for not being books, amongst others) is a great example of the lack of Eigenbegrifflichkeit that was, as we have explored, dominant in early Assyriological-Biblical studies. Specific quote found in Pinches, Theophilus. 1915. ”The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories”. In (eds Maunder, E. Walter) Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. Vol XLVII. Harrison and Sons. Pp. 301-328: 323.
[2] Pinches, Theophilus. 1915. ”The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories”. In (eds Maunder, E. Walter) Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. Vol XLVII. Harrison and Sons. Pp. 301-328: 324-326.
[3] Pfost, Jared. 2014. ”An Analysis of the Flood as a Semitic Type-Scene”. In (eds. Mason Brock M; Gimenez, Jasmin) Studia Antiqua. Birmingham Young University Print Services. Pp. 1-22: 15-16.
[4] Ibid., 13-22; Pinches, Theophilus, The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories, 323-328.
[5] Pinches, Theophilus, The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories, 324; Pfost, Jared, An Analysis of the Flood as a Semitic Type-Scene, 6.
[6] Some examples include Fischer, Eugene. 1970. “Gilgamesh and Genesis: The Flood Story in Context”. In The Catholic Biblical Quarterly. Vol 32, 3. Catholic Biblical Association. Pp. 392-403; Miglio, Adam E. 2023. “The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1–11: Peering into the Deep”. In Studies in the History of the Ancient Near East monographic series. Routledge: London, New York; Pfost, Jared. 2014. ”An Analysis of the Flood as a Semitic Type-Scene”. In (eds. Mason Brock M; Gimenez, Jasmin) Studia Antiqua. Birmingham Young University Print Services. Pp. 1-22; Pinches, Theophilus. 1915. ”The Old and New Versions of the Babylonian Creation and Flood Stories”. In (eds Maunder, E. Walter) Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute. Vol XLVII. Harrison and Sons. Pp. 301-328; von Rad, Gerhard. 1961. “Genesis: A Commentary”. In Old Testament Library. The Westminster Press: Philadelphia; Worthington, Martin. 2021. “Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story”. In The Ancient World. Taylor & Francis.
[7] Assmann, Jan. 2007. “Monotheism and Polytheism”. In Johnston, Sarah Iles (Ed.) Ancient Religions. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: 17.
[8] Assmann, Jan. 2007. “Monotheism and Polytheism”. In Johnston, Sarah Iles (Ed.) Ancient Religions. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England.
[9] Salmoné, Habib Anthony. 1889. An Advanced Learner's Arabic-English Dictionary. Beirut. Librairie du Liban: s.v. قَاْنِيْمُ.
[10] Thomas, David (editor, translator). 1992. Anti-Christian polemic in early Islam: Abū ’Īsā al-Warrāq’s “Against the Trinity”. Cambridge University Press: 77-79.
[11] Dubuisson, Daniel. 2019. The Invention of Religions. Bristol: Equinox Publishing Ltd: 35-40.
[12] Likely the most well known example of the discussion and critique of this phenomenon is Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
[13] Arts, Tressy (ed.). 2014. Oxford Arabic Dictionary. Oxford University Press. S.v. غَرْب, شَرْق.
[14] Assmann, Monotheism and Polytheism, 17-26.
[15] Cancik-Lindemaier, Hildegard. 1990. “Exegese,” in: H. Cancik et al. (ed.), Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol. 2, Stuttgart, 394-400.
[16] For a few examples relevant to us of literature discussing commentary, see Fowden, Garth. 2013. Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused. Princeton University Press. Princeton; Fraade, Steven D. 1991. From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in
the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy. SUNY Press, Albany; Frahm, Eckart. 2011. “Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation”. In (Eds Frahm, Eckart; Jursa, Michael) Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record. Vol 5. Ugarit Verlag: Münster; Koch, Ulla S. 2015. “Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods Sources from the First Millennium BCE”. In (Eds Frahm, Eckart; Jursa, Michael) Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record. Vol 7. Ugarit Verlag: Münster; van de Mieroop, Marc. 2016. Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia. Princeton University Press: Princeton, Oxford.
[17] Robson, Eleanor, Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First Millennium Assyria and Babylonia, 36.
[18] While a discussion of the concept ”holy scripture” is beyond this series, see Bremmer, Jan. 2010. ”From Holy Books to Holy Bible: An Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity”. In (ed Popovic, Mladen) Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism. Brill. Pp. 327-360, as well as Graham, William A. 1987 and 2005. “SCRIPTURE”. In (Eds Jones, Eliade et al) Encyclopedia of Religions. Vol 1, 2nd Edition (2005). Gale.
[19] Holtz, Barry W., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classical Jewish Texts, 12-15; Zetterholm, Karin, Jewish Interpretation of the Bible: Ancient and Contemporary, 6-7.
[20] Fowden, Garth, Before and After Mohammad: The First Millennium Refocused, 165-166.
[21] See his chapter 10 header ”Synopsis and Exegesis of the Standard Babylonian tablets” in George, A.R. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 444.
[22] Frahm, Eckart, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation, 9.
[23] The logic of behind this enumeration of names was noted already by Assyriologist Jean Bottéro in 1971, see Bottéro, Jean. 1977. “Les noms de Marduk, l’écriture et la ‘logique’ en Mésopotamie Ancienne“. In Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of J.J. Finkelstein. Hamden.
[24] van de Mieroop, Marc, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia, 7-9.
[25] Koch, Ulla S. 2015. “Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods Sources from the First Millennium BCE”. In (Eds Frahm, Eckart; Jursa, Michael) Guides to the Mesopotamian Textual Record. Vol 7. Ugarit Verlag: Münster: 34-35.
[26] For a few extensive treatments see Cavigneaux, Antoine. 1982. ”Remarques sur les Commentaires a Labat TDP 1”. In Journal of Cuneiform Studies. Vol 34, 3/4. The University of Chicago Press, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique: Paris; George, A.R. 1991. Babylonian Texts from the Folios of Sidney Smith. Part Two: Prognostic and Diagnostic Omens, Tablet 1. In Revue d'Assyriologie. Vol. 85. Pp. 137–67.
[27] George, A.R. 1991. Babylonian Texts from the Folios of Sidney Smith. Part Two: Prognostic and Diagnostic Omens, Tablet 1. In Revue d'Assyriologie. Vol. 85. Pp. 137–67. For a great micro-history following an Assyrian exorcist, Kiṣir-Aššur, which gives a good impression of the life of an āšipu, as well as the functions of medicinal texts in 1st millennium Assyria, see Arbøll, Troels P. 2021. Medicine in Ancient Assur: A Microhistorical Study of the Neo-Assyrian Healer Kiṣir-Aššur. Ancient Magic and Divination Series (Eds Abusch, Tzvi; Guinan, Ann K.; Heeßel, Nils P.; Rochberg, Franchesca; Wiggerman, Frans A. M.). Vol 18. Brill.
[28] Koch, Ulla S., Mesopotamian Divination Texts: Conversing with the Gods Sources from the First Millennium BCE, 33-35.
[29] George, A.R., Babylonian Texts from the Folios of Sidney Smith. Part Two: Prognostic and Diagnostic Omens, Tablet 1, 142-143.
[30] Ibid., 147, 152-153.
[31] Frahm, Eckart, Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries: Origins of Interpretation, 370-377; Geller, M. J. 2004. “Akkadian Healing Therapies in the Babylonian Talmud”. Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte 259. Koch, Ulla S. (Westenholz, Ulla K.) 1995. Mesopotamian Astrology: An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination. In The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Near Eastern Studies series, Publication 19. Museum Tusculanum Press: Copenhagen, Viborg: 149-151.
[32] van de Mieroop, Marc, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia, 10-16, 30-45. Van de Mieroop’s work provides in general a thought-provoking interpretation of Mesopotamian cuneiform practises and epistemology, which, while too long to review fully here, is highly recommended.
[33] Narû can typically be translated to ”stelae” or an inscribed stone monument CDA s.v. “Narû”. For more on Narû literature, Galter, Hannes D. 1986. “Probleme historisch-lehrhafter Dichtung in Mesopotamien”. In Keilschriftliche Literaturen: Ausgewählte Vorträge Der XXXII. Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Münster, August 8th-12th 1985. Dietrich Reimer Verlag, Berlin. Güterbock, H. G. 1934. “Die historische Tradition und ihre literarische Gestaltung bei Babyloniern und Hethitern bis 1200,” In Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete, 42. Pp. 1–91; Lewis, Brian. 1980. The Sargon Legend. American Schools of Oriental Research: 87-95; Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. 1997. Legends of the Kings of Akkade. Eisenbrauns. Winona Lake, Indiana: 16-21.
[34] Helle, Sophus. 2022. Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, its Past, and its Passion. Yale University Press, New Haven & London: 148.
[35] Lewis, Brian. 1980. The Sargon Legend. American Schools of Oriental Research: 87-88.
[36] Lichheim, Miriam. 2019 (1976). Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New Kingdom. pp. 135–146, University of California Press: 92-116, 176-239, 459-494.
[37] Schäfer, Peter. 2004. Mirror of His Beauty: Feminine Images of God from the Bible to the Early Kabbalah. Princeton University Press: 19-38.
[38] Mena, Peter Anthony. 2019. Place and Identity in the Lives of Antony, Paul, and Mary of Egypt: Desert as Borderland. Springer International Publishing, Palgrave Macmillan: 25-60.
[39] For more examples see footnote 1, Part 3. A few important ones (including Scholem) in this context are Louth, Andrew. 2007. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford; Schäfer, Peter. 1981. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 2. Mohr Siebeck; Scholem, Gershom. 1995 (1971). The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Schocken Books, New York; Sanders, Seth L. 2017. From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon. Mohr Siebeck.
[40] For a few examples of discussions of this function, see Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. 2007. ”The Social and Intellectual Setting of Babylonian Wisdom Literature”. In (Ed Clifford, Richard J.) Wisdom Literature in Mesopotamia and Israel. Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta; Dell, Katherine J. 2008. “Wisdom”. In (ed. Lieu, Judith M.; Rogerson, J. W.) Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Pp. 409-417.
[41] Frahm, Eckart. 1997. Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften. Vienna: Institut für Orientalistik; van de Mieroop, Marc, Philosophy before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia, 117-138; Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 153-196; Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 55-66, 76-85.
[42] CDA P s.v. ”pišru” (the verb also has the aspect of “loosening”, “releasing”)
[43] BDB s.v. פֵּ֫שֶׁר
[44] Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 103. See See CDA P s.v. “pišru” for several pages of examples.
[45] Ibid., 105- ; Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 157-158.
[46] Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 155-159.
[47] One such is example is Arbøll’s recent (2023) book. See footnotes 27 and 48.
[48] Ibid., 170-171. A small, recently published collection of tablets from Syrian Ḥamā has likewise hinted to us at the seemingly rather fluid circumstances of linguistic interactions and languages in use simultaneously at this site in the early 1st millennium, with regards particularly to Luwian, Aramaic, and Akkadian: Arbøll, Troels P. 2023. ”The Cuneiform Texts from the Danish Excavations of Ḥamā in Syria (1931-1938): Letters, Administrative Documents, Scholarly Texts, Inscriptions, and Seals”. In Scientia Danica, Series H, Vol. 4. The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters.
[49] Ulrich, Eugene. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Developmental Composition of the Bible, 5.
[50] Boes Lorenzen, Magnus Arvid. 2024. “Divine and Conquer: Ancestors, Gods, and the Right to Rule". In (editors Drewsen, Anne; Poulsen, Anne; Sletterød, Marie D.) Chronolog Journal, Issue 2. Royal Library of Denmark: Tidsskrift.dk.
[51] Pongratz-Leisten, Beate. 2015. Religion and Ideology in Assyria. Walter de Gruyter Inc: Boston/Berlin: 319-322.
[52] Tadmor, Hayim; Landsberger, Benno; Parpola, Simo. 1989. “The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will”. In State Archives of Assyria vol. 3/1. Sargon. Pp. 3-51: 29-39; Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 134-135.
[53] Elayi, Josette, Sargon II, King of Assyria, 217-219; Frahm, Eckart. 2017. “The Neo-Assyrian Period”. In A Companion to Assyria. Hoboken, NJ. John Wiley & Sons. Pp. 161-208: 176-187; Tadmor, Hayim; Landsberger, Benno; Parpola, Simo, The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will, 30-32.
[54] Elayi, Josette, Sargon II, King of Assyria, 25.
[55] Lit. Bal(a)-til.KI
[56] Fales, Frederick Mario. 2014. "The Two Dynasties of Assyria". In Gaspa, Salvatore; Greco, Alessandro; Morandi Bonacossi, Daniele; Ponchia, Simonetta & Rollinger, Robert (eds.) From Source to History: Studies on Ancient Near Eastern Worlds and Beyond. Münster: Ugarit Verlag: 203-229.
[57] Elayi, Josette, Sargon II, King of Assyria, 214-215.
[58] Frahm, Eckart, The Neo-Assyrian Period, 185-187; Tadmor, Hayim; Landsberger, Benno; Parpola, Simo, The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will, 15-32.
[59] Frahm, Eckart, The Neo-Assyrian Period, 186.
[60] This is the wording Elayi takes to mean that he got tired of the bickering of pro-Assyrian and pro-Babylonian scribes, and argues it was composed in Sennacherib’s lifetime, where Frahm, Tadmor, Landsberger, and Parpola lean more towards it referring to death.
[61] Landsberger, Benno; Parpola, Simo, The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will, 24-34.
[62] Arbøll, Troels P., The Cuneiform Texts from the Danish Excavations of Ḥamā in Syria (1931-1938): Letters, Administrative Documents, Scholarly Texts, Inscriptions, and Seals, 13-14, 28, 30; Elayi, Josette, Sargon II, King of Assyria, 3-30; Frahm, Eckart, The Neo-Assyrian Period, 161-187.
[63] Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 107.
[64] Ibid., 94-96.
[65] Ibid., 96.
[66] Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 7-8, 134-135.
[67] Ibid., 153-196.
[68] Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 167-173; Boyd, Samuel L. 2021. “Language Contact, Colonial Administration, and the Construction of Identity in Ancient Israel: Constructing the Context for Contact”. In Harvard Semitic Monographs. Vol 66. Brill: Leiden, Boston: 48-226; Shinan, Avigdor. 2006. ”The late Midrashic, Paytanic, and Targumic Literature” in The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 4.[Pp. 678-698].Cambridge University Press.
[69] Ibid., 384-397; Holtz, Barry W., Back to the Sources: Reading the Classical Jewish Texts, 63; Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 157.
[70] Sanders, Seth L., From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon, 177-178.
[71] Lauinger, Jakob. 2012. ” Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary”. In Journal of Cuneiform Studies. Vol. 64. University of Chicago Press. Pp. 87-113.
[72] Lewis, Brian, The Sargon Legend, 211-276.
[73] Jacobsen, Thorkild, And Death the Journey's End: Epic of Gilgamesh, 226-237; Miglio, Adam E., The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1–11: Peering into the Deep, 26.
[74] Dell, Katherine J. 2008. “Wisdom”. In (ed. Lieu, Judith M.; Rogerson, J. W.) Oxford Handbook of Biblical Studies. Pp. 409-417. Gershom Scholem made this argument already ion 1971, and since then many others have pointed to and researched the role of Mysticism more actively: A few examples (including Sholem): Louth, Andrew. 2007. The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, Oxford; Sanders, Seth L. 2017. From Adapa to Enoch: Scribal Cultures and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon. Mohr Siebeck; Schäfer, Peter. 2024. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism. Princeton University Press; 1981. Schäfer, Peter. 1981. Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur. Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 2. Mohr Siebeck; Scholem, Gershom. 1995 (1971). The Messianic Idea in Judaism: And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality. Schocken Books, New York.
[75] Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 16.
[76] Numerous modern interpretations of Gilgamesh as expressions of individual or collective destiny, early humanism, and many others, also exist: Jacobsen, Thorkild, And Death the Journey's End: Epic of Gilgamesh (2019); Miglio, Adam E., The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1–11: Peering into the Deep, 1-9; von Rad, Gerhard. 1961. “Genesis: A Commentary”. In Old Testament Library. The Westminster Press: Philadelphia; Stewart, Jon., The Epic of Gilgamesh, 43; Wasserman, Nathan., The Flood: The Akkadian Sources, 131-140; Worthington, Martin, Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story, 399-405.
[77] Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 127-128; George, A.R. 2003. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 28-30.
[78] Robson, Eleanor. 2019. Ancient Knowledge Networks: A Social Geography of Cuneiform Scholarship in First Millennium Assyria and Babylonia. UCL Press: 4-5.
[79] Van der Toorn, Karel, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, 133-142.
[80] Worthington, Martin, Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story, 407.
[81] Marchesi, Gianni. 2010. "The Sumerian King List and the Early History of Mesopotamia". In (Eds. Liverani, Mario; Biga, M. G.) Ana turri gimilli: Studi dedicati al Padre Werner R. Mayer, S. J., da amici e allievi. Vicino Oriente 5. Roma: 231–248; Steinkeller, Piotr. 2003. "An Ur III Manuscript of the Sumerian King List". In Literatur, Politik und Recht in Mesopotamien: Festschrift Fur Claus Wilcke. Pp. 267–292.
[82] Helle, Sophus., Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic with Essays on the Poem, its Past, and its Passion, 182.
[83] Goff, Matthew. 2009. “Gilgamesh the Giant: The Qumran Book of Giants' Appropriation of "Gilgamesh" Motifs”. In Dead Sea Discoveries. Vol 16, 2. Brill. Pp. 221-253; Miglio, Adam E., The Gilgamesh Epic in Genesis 1–11: Peering into the Deep, (2023).
[84] Fischer, Eugene, Gilgamesh and Genesis: The Flood Story in Context, 392-394; Worthington, Martin, Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story, 407-409.
[85] [85] Fischer, Eugene, Gilgamesh and Genesis: The Flood Story in Context, 393; Worthington, Martin, Ea’s Duplicity in the Gilgamesh Flood Story, 409.
[86] Dell, Katherine J., Wisdom, 409-417; Boyarin, Daniel., Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity, 113-127,
[87] Bottéro, Jean. 1977. “Les noms de Marduk, l’écriture et la ‘logique’ en Mésopotamie Ancienne“. In Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of J.J. Finkelstein. Hamden.
[88] Undoubtedly, institutions like temples, palaces, homes of writers and editors, will be extremely important to take into consideration in future research.