For students of my generation the appearance of Bertil Albrekt-son’s History and the Gods in 1967 provided a short cut to im-portant insights.4 In this ‘essay’, as it is termed in the subtitle, Albrektson showed that ideas of divine action in history that had widely been regarded as special to the Old Testament were, in fact, shared with her neighbours in Mesopotamia, the Hittite homeland and, more proximately, in the land of Moab. Albrekt-son also questioned whether the Old Testament talks of a divine
‘plan’ in history in quite the overarching way commonly assumed, and he cited Mesopotamian texts that give some evidence of di-vine plan in a more limited sense of the term.5 He suggested that the celebration of divine acts in history perhaps featured more prominently in the Israelite cult than was the case elsewhere. He noted the lack of historical reference in the Ugaritic cultic texts especially (115), and he concluded that what distinguished Israel from her neighbours was, if not the concept itself, the promin-ence that was given to it in the Israelite cult (116). Some years later Nicholas Wyatt sought to show that even the comparat-ively meagre textual evidence in the West Semitic region reflects
‘the presuppositions of theocratic history’,6 and already J.J.M.
Roberts had pointed out that the absence of hymns and pray-ers in the extant Ugaritic texts makes it dangerous to assume
4History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (CB.OT, 1), Lund 1967.
5Albrektson, History and the Gods, 68-97.
6N. Wyatt, ‘Some Observations on the Idea of History Among the West Semitic Peoples’, UF 11 (1979), 825-32 (831).
‘Comparativism’ and the God of Israel 47
too much about the importance or unimportance of history to Canaanite religion.7
In his final chapter Albrektson highlighted the Old Testament conception of the divine word as its truly unique possession. The idea of communicating divine words to humans may have been common near eastern currency, nevertheless the content of such divine communication within the Old Testament is ‘in several respects unique’ (122). In the divine word we learn about God’s thoughts and intentions, his nature and his claims in ways that are not experienced elsewhere. Albrektson’s essay added to the discomfiture of ‘Biblical Theology’ at a crucial point in the 1960s.
In the previous year, in his Old and New in Interpretation James Barr had been exposing the problems inherent in maintaining history ‘as a central and mandatory theological concept’.8 But neither Albrektson nor Barr denied that history was fundament-ally important for the writers of the Old Testament. Nor could they, for Israel is not India.
Prophecy
Albrektson’s suggestion that what truly separated Israel from her neighbours was the conception of God that came through the divine word leads directly into the prophetic domain, where once it was possible to hold discussion with minimal reference to contemporary non-Israelite phenomena. However, since George Smith’s publication, in 1875, of an oracle of encouragement to Esarhaddon (now listed as text K. 4310),9 a veritable ‘alternative prospectus’ of near eastern prophetic texts has become available.
These include not only the Neo-Assyrian prophecies, which in the 1990s have been made more accessible to non-Assyriologists, in the series State Archives of Assyria, but also the prophetic texts found in the royal archives of eighteenth-century Mari. Since 1875 the story has been one of increasing encroachment upon the uniqueness of the biblical institution of prophecy. It is clear that
7J.J.M. Roberts, ‘Myth Versus History: Relaying the Comparative Founda-tions’, CBQ 38 (1976), 1-13 (11).
8J. Barr, Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments, London 1966, 65-102 (68).
9G. Smith, ‘Addresses of Encouragement to Esarhaddon’, in: H.C. Rawl-inson (ed.), The Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, vol. 4, London 1875, no. 68 (cuneiform text only); translation by T.G. Pinches in: S. Birch (ed.), Records of the Past, vol. 11, London 1878, 59-72 (61-72).
the prophet figures of Mari could, as part of their prophetic com-missioning by a god, be allowed to witness the Divine Council in its decision-making.10 Something similar is described for the prophet Balaam in the Deir Alla plaster text from the first mil-lennium.11Again, cognate forms of the Hebrewaybin:, a term which previously had given the impression of being without an Akka-dian parallel, have been claimed for Mari (text 216 [A. 2209]) and Emar (text 387).12
However, whereas the Hebrew prophets were characteristic-ally concerned about ethical conduct and social obligation as well as national and international politics, their Mesopotamian coun-terparts have so far produced only a few syllables that express ethical concerns.13 From the Mari prophecies we have text A.
1121, in which Adad counsels Zimri-Lim through a prophet fig-ure: ‘When a wronged man or woman cries out to you, stand and judge their case.’ In text 194 (A. 4260) the god Shamash tells Zimri-Lim to decree a remission of debts and to direct people with a legal case to Shamash’s own feet. If we go forward to the Neo-Assyrian prophecies we shall find little or nothing by way of moral or ethical content. Parpola cites his texts 1.4.27-9 (‘Do not trust in man. Lift up your eyes, look to me’) and 2.3.17 (‘Man-kind is deceitful; I am one who says and does’), but it is a poor return for a night’s fishing.14 Nothing has happened in a thou-sand years to make prophecy the mouthpiece for divine calls to
10See the writer in ‘From Mari to Moses: Prophecy at Mari and in Ancient Israel’, in: H.A. McKay, D.J.A. Clines (eds), Of Prophets’ Visions and the Wisdom of Sages (Fs R.N. Whybray) (JSOT.S, 162), Sheffield 1993, 72.
11For text in transliteration, with English translation, see M. Weippert,
‘The Balaam Text from DeirAlla and the Study of the Old Testament’, in:
J. Hoftijzer, G. van der Kooij (eds), The Balaam Text from Deir Alla Re-evaluated: Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Leiden 21-24 August 1989, Leiden 1991, 153-8. Cf. also the admission of a ‘diviner’ to the Divine Council in the Old Babylonian text discussed by A. Goetze, ‘An Old Babylonian Prayer of the Divination Priest’, JCS 22 (1968), 25-9.
12See D.E. Fleming, ‘N¯abˆu and Munabbi¯atu: Two New Syrian Religious Personnel’, JAOS 113 (1993), 175-83; Idem, ‘The Etymological Origins of the Hebrew n¯abˆı: The One Who Invokes God’, CBQ 55 (1993), 217-24. The relevance of the Emar terms is queried by J. Huehnergard, ‘On the Etymology and Meaning of Hebrew N ¯ABˆI ’, ErIs 26 (Frank Moore Cross Volume; 1999), 88*-93* (91*-2*).
13Cf. Gordon, ‘From Mari to Moses’, 63-79 (77-8).
14S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (SAA, 9), Helsinki 1997, xlviii, cv, nn.
255-6.
‘Comparativism’ and the God of Israel 49
justice and righteousness. For that we have better places to look in Mesopotamia, for example the text ‘Advice to a Prince’.15
The Neo-Assyrian prophecies are largely concerned with kings and their welfare.16Even so, the preoccupation is often mundane and the undertakings of the god(dess) none too specific. Nor is there much at all that is predictive in the grand way of the Old Testament prophecies.17If all he knew was prophecy of this sort, we can easily understand how an exilic Judean prophet could ask in relation to developments in the late sixth century, ‘Who told this long ago? Who declared it of old?’ (Isa. 45:21). There clearly are formal and terminological correspondences between prophecy in its Levantine and Mesopotamian manifestations and Israelite prophecy, but these constitute a minor act of encroachment when once their content is taken into account.