Old Testament in Its World

(1)

(2)

(3)

Old Testament Studies

published on behalf of the Societies for

Old Testament Studies in the Netherlands and

Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom

and Ireland

Editor

J.C. de Moor

Kampen Editorial Board

H.G.M. Williamson

Oxford

H.F. Van Rooy

Potchefstroom

M. Vervenne

Leuven VOLUME 52

(4)

The Old Testament in Its World

Papers Read at the Winter Meeting,

January 2003

The Society for Old Testament Study

and at the Joint Meeting, July 2003

The Society for Old Testament Study

and

Het Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in

Nederland en België

Edited by

Robert P. Gordon

&

Johannes C. de Moor

BRILL LEIDEN•BOSTON 2005

(5)

LC Control Number: 2004058584

Becking, Bob.

Between fear and freedom : essays on the interpretation of Jeremiah 30–31 / by Bob Becking.

p. cm.—(Oudtestamentische studiën = Old Testament studies, ISSN 0169-7226; d. 51)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-14118-9 (alk. paper)

1. Bible. O.T. Jeremiah XXX–XXXI—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. II. Oudtestamentische studiën; d. 51.

BS1525.52.B43 2004

224’.206—dc22 2004054639

ISSN 0169-7226 ISBN 90 04 14322 X

Publishers, Martinus Nijhoﬀ Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior

written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance

Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

(6)

Introduction

This volume brings together papers read at the Winter Meet-ing of The Society for Old Testament Study in BirmMeet-ingham, 6-8 January, 2003, and at the joint meeting of The Society for Old Testament Study and the Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in Nederland en Belgi¨e, in Cambridge, 21-23 July, 2003. The latter meeting was organised in coordination with the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting (20-25 July, 2003). The meetings had as their overarching theme ‘The Hebrew Bible against its Ancient Near Eastern Background’, and most of the papers presented in this volume have a Near Eastern as well as an Israelite-Old Testament dimension.

The beneﬁts of drawing upon the linguistic stock of the neigh-bouring cognate languages for the illumination of obscure words and phrases in the biblical text have long been appreciated. In the opening essay, however, K.J. Cathcart argues the further point that it may on occasion be justiﬁable to emend the Hebrew text in the course of applying the insights of comparative philology to textual cruces. With the use of worked examples, he illustrates the ways in which Akkadian, Ugaritic and Old Aramaic may help to solve problem readings in the Hebrew.

M. Dijkstra is concerned with the content of texts of an his-torical complexion. He commends Hans-Gustav G¨uterbock’s dis-tinction between what kings in antiquity had recorded for their own gloriﬁcation and truly historical writing in which posterity ‘selected and wrote what it wanted to remember from the past’. It was the latter that gave rise to historiography in the ancient Near East, and Israelite historiography is to be seen within the context of this development. Israel did not have to wait for Hero-dotus to develop a view on its history.

The conceptions of history held in Israel and in the adjacent countries are one of several topics that engage R.P. Gordon as he considers the question of comparativism’ and whether, and in what respects, it is possible to distinguish Israel from her neigh-bours. His conclusion is that the comparing and contrasting of intellectual and religious developments in Israel and among her neighbours is both legitimate and desirable.

The essay by A.C. Hagedorn reminds us that Israel also had neighbours to the west. While acknowledging the likelihood of

(9)

migrant craftsmen from the east settling in ancient Greece, Hage-dorn is interested in the reverse process, focussing on the points of contact between Greek and oriental in Palestine as a means of discovering something about the social identity of those Greeks who settled in Palestine.

Egypt, Israel’s most inﬂuential neighbour to the south, is the focus for comparison and contrast in the essay by P.S. Johnston on death and the dead in Egypt and in Israel. Johnston notes the positive aspects of death that are popularly associated with ancient Egypt, but also highlights a problem in that there are also clear indications that, in practice, the Egyptians failed to respect the dead, and were to a considerable degree sceptical and cynical about the afterlife. ‘Egyptian views on death and the afterlife were altogether more varied than often assumed.’ Such hope as there was and such preparations for death as were possible were the privilege of the well-to-do. In Israel, to judge from its scriptures, death was fairly uniformly regarded as ‘the negation of life, disrupting its activity and bringing separation from the divine presence’.

K.A. Kitchen, best known for his Egyptological work, is con-cerned here with the ‘transitional era of Western mini-empires (c. 1180-950 b.c.)’, which saw the ﬂourishing of the Neo-Hittite states, the Aramaean state of Aram-Zobah, and the Israelite ‘em-pire’ of David and Solomon. The Neo-Hittite states are seen as important from an Old Testament perspective, not only on ac-count of their historical interaction with Israel but also for the cultural background that they provide for the accounts of Israel-ite history in Samuel-Kings and Chronicles. Some ﬁlling in of the sparse narration of the biblical books is possible in the light of the recently published corpus of over 220 inscriptions in Hieroglyphic Luwian.

M.C.A. Korpel takes us several centuries further on as she considers the negative eﬀects on the Jewish people of the de-struction of the Jerusalem temple and the deportation of leading citizens to Babylonia. She claims that the general preoccupation with the restoration of Judah after the exile has deprived schol-ars of a proper appreciation of the disillusionment and pessimism that aﬀected Jewish communities in the Neo-Babylonian and Per-sian periods. The literary evidence, both biblical and archival, for

(10)

Introduction ix

the state of mind of Jews in Judah, Egypt and Babylon during this period gives ample illustration of the despairing re-evaluation of their religious faith and traditions that was going on. There was no full and instantaneous triumph of strict monotheism’ at the end of the exile.

N. MacDonald does not address the question of monothe-ism expressly within a Near Eastern setting, but his conclusion directs discussion back towards that larger environing world in which Old Testament faith developed. MacDonald seeks to apply insights from Systematic Theology to the discussion of mono-theism, noting that the term itself is a coinage of the English Enlightenment. He demonstrates the danger of imposing upon Old Testament texts a ready-made term and therewith a concep-tuality that is more restrictive than, and less truly descriptive of, what the texts actually say in relation to Israelite belief about God.

It is the transmission of traditions that engages M.E.J. Richard-son, who concentrates on Egyptian literature, ranging from Coptic tradition, in which the Gospel account of the Holy Family in Egypt develops into a number of links with speciﬁc sites, to the much-cited Merenptah Stele, with its mention of ‘Israel’. It is suggested that some texts that share motifs with Old Testament passages are also deserving of recognition as comparative’ ma-terial and therefore of inclusion in anthologies devoted to the presentation of such. It is also urged that consideration be taken of such matters as the purpose and the transmission of documents when they are cited in illustration of biblical texts.

Though she does pay attention to ancient Near Eastern parallels occasionally, J.E. Tollington retains a speciﬁcally Old Testament-Israelite focus in her examination of the relationships between Abraham and his wives. The accounts of the lesser’ wives, Hagar and Keturah, are truly ‘patriarchal’ in outlook, but it is not so in the depiction of Abraham and Sarah: ‘A close reading indic-ates that neither patriarchy nor matriarchy is the appropriate authority for God’s people.’

P.J.P. van Hecke, writing on pastoral metaphors, discusses the depiction of God as shepherd in relation to his people, but Van Hecke does not limit himself to positive imagery: he is also interested in negative evaluations of God as sheep-owner and

(11)

even as ‘anti-shepherd’. The justiﬁcation for this approach lies partly in the fact that ‘opposing metaphors’ from within the same domain may co-exist in a text. ‘Text’ may refer to biblical or, more generally, to Near Eastern texts, since, as Van Hecke shows, the non-Israelite texts have not only the traditional, positive use of the shepherd metaphor but also clear instances of the reversed form.

J.A. Wagenaar is largely concerned with the internal devel-opment of the festival calendar of Israel, including the relation between the agricultural seasons and the fixed-date prescriptions of the priestly calendar of Leviticus 23. The possibility of in-fluence from the Babylonian festival calendar is noted, and the Israelite Gezer calendar inevitably comes into the picture. The comparison between Israel and Babylonia becomes most pro-nounced when it is suggested that the transformation of Pesach-Massot into a New Year festival may mirror a similar transform-ation of the Babylonian New Year Festival, according to which equal ‘equinox years’, each of six months, were recognized. The use of words tropically is addressed by J.-W. Wesselius, who seeks to fill a lacuna in modern studies of wordplay in the Bible and related literature by highlighting possible occurrences in epigraphic material. Special attention is paid to the Phoenician Kilamuwa Inscription where the invocation of casus pendens is thought to illuminate the meaning of the opening lines. The same inscription, it is suggested, contains an example of polysemy in which the several possible significances of a word are each de-veloped subsequently in the text. The additional feature of the ‘trapdoor’, in which an expression that is ambiguous is taken in a different direction from that expected, is noted for Kilamuwa and the Bible, and further illustrates the point that word-play was ‘a very serious element in composing official texts’ in the literary culture shared by the Old Testament and Kilamuwa.

Finally, P.J. Williams considers the meaning of the Hebrew term ‘Rephaim’ and its apparent Ugaritic cognate RPUM, and in par-ticular the possibility that the terms may mean ‘healers’. The vocalisation of the biblical term, however, does not necessarily support such a derivation, and the meaning of Rephaim-RPUM is regarded as remaining an open question.

(12)

Kevin J. Cathcart Campion Hall, Oxford – United Kingdom

The Comparative Philological Approach

to the Text of the Old Testament

1 Introduction

1

One of the events in the 1960s which many Old Testament scholars remember well was the publication of James Barr’s Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament.2No less interesting were some of the lively reviews of that book.3 It is important to note that Barr does not regard his work as an introduction to the discipline of comparative philology. He is more concerned with the ‘application of philological means to elucidate Old Test-ament passages which would otherwise be regarded as obscure or corrupt’.4 Accordingly, it may be helpful to begin with Barr’s very useful deﬁnition of comparative philology:

This term has meant the comparative study of language groups within which signs of a common historical origin can be detected; ‘comparison’ is not a general discussion of similarities and diﬀences, but the construction of an historical common scheme within which the material of related languages can be placed.5

Thus, to be comparative means to be historical, and employing the comparative philological method for the study of the text of the Old Testament involves the general comparative study of the Semitic language family. Barr distinguishes two types of treatments (his term): the textual treatment and the philological treatment. Generally speaking, the textual critic deals with a text

1_{Whereas elsewhere in this volume Hebrew is printed in Hebrew type,}

the Editors decided in this case to maintain the transliterated Hebrew the author used in his manuscript to facilitate comparison with the other Semitic languages he cites.

2_{J. Barr, Comparative Philology and the Text of the Old Testament, Oxford}

1968.

3_{See, for example, the reviews by M.J. Dahood, ‘Comparative Philology}

Yesterday and Today’, Bib. 50 (1969), 70-9; W.L. Moran, CBQ 31 (1969), 238-43.

4_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 10.} 5_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 77.}

(13)

in which a graphic error has occurred during transmission. The scholar who applies the comparative philological method does not posit a diﬀerent original text, but seeks to elucidate the ex-isting one. One can assume that Barr’s textual treatment (or ap-proach) includes, for example, emendations proposed on the basis of other Semitic texts like the Ugaritic texts recovered from Ras Shamra. Let us take an example. In 2 Sam. 1:21 (David’s lament over Saul), it has been proposed that˜_´_se_dˆ_{e t}e_rˆ_um¯_{ot should be}

emended to read ´sera terˆum¯ot, ‘upsurging of the deeps’, com-paring KTU 1.19:I:45. I am not concerned here with the strengths and weaknesses of this proposal,6 made on the basis of a similar Ugaritic text. I simply make the point that, if the˜_{is emended,}

it seems to belong to the category of a ‘textual treatment’ rather than, or perhaps as well as, a philological one. Of course, this par-ticular case may illustrate the not uncommon situation in which one works with a combination of the textual and comparative approaches. Although it is true that the philological approach may often justify rare or anomalous words, the same approach may also bring about the identiﬁcation of a word that is not rare at all. (See the discussion of Heb. y¯apˆıah_{. and Ugar. yph}_{. below.)} Finally, it is interesting to note that Emmanuel Tov regards sup-port from cognate languages, especially from Ugaritic, as leading to ‘linguistic emendations’ because they involve ‘some form of emendation, namely, in vocalization’.7 Nevertheless, in this con-nection it is salutary to read Barr’s contribution on the ‘fallib-ility’ of the consonantal text, in which he quite rightly criticises philological scholars, as he calls them, for their inconsistency in the use of emendation.8 However, excesses in some philological treatments should not deter scholars from engaging in the com-parative philological approach. Sound philological proposals do make us generally cautious about tampering with the text. On the other hand, wholesale reckless emendation of the biblical text that we associate with scholarship of a previous era cannot be used to block convincing and sensible solutions based on

emend-6_{See, however, J.P. Fokkelman, ‘´}_se_dˆ_{e t}e_rˆ_um¯_{ot in II Sam 1, 21a: A}

Non-Existent Crux’, ZAW 91 (1979), 289-292; S. Talmon, ‘The “Comparative Method” in Biblical Interpretation – Principles and Problems’, in: F.E. Greenspahn (ed.), Essential Papers on Israel and the Ancient Near East, New York 1991, 381-419 (405-6).

7_{E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Assen 1992, 363.} 8_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 191-4.}

(14)

The Comparative Philological Approach 3

ation. Quite rightly Barr stresses the need to be conscious of the ‘balance of probability’ in textual and philogical approaches to the text. After examining many issues and sending out several warnings, Barr sums up as follows:

These criteria are not rules the simple observation of which will certainly lead to a right result. They themselves are probable rather than absolute; and sometimes they may seem capable of working in either direction.9

It would be impossible to address all the points which arise in dis-cussing the comparative philological approach, so I have chosen some worked examples that I think are interesting in the light of recent research and epigraphical discoveries. Conscious of some of the pitfalls of the philological approach, highlighted in partic-ular by Barr, I shall now set out some examples of philological treatment that involve the use of comparative data from Akka-dian, Ugaritic and Old Aramaic, and which have a direct bearing on the text of the Old Testament. I admit shamelessly that to some extent my own particular interests have guided my choices, but I am quite conﬁdent that I am not inﬂuenced by that factor which Barr says is ‘more social than genuinely linguistic’, namely ‘the love of the scholar for his own specialization’.10 _{My choices}

scarcely need justiﬁcation. Akkadian is the most widely attested Semitic language of the ancient Near East and its great import-ance is self-evident. Ugaritic and Old Aramaic texts meet some of the criteria suggested by Barr for making preferences between sources. These texts are written in Northwest Semitic languages; they come from the Syro-Palestinian area, and they are near to the Old Testament period in time.11

2 Examples Using Akkadian

Although it is not always recognised, for Old Testament scholars one of the most signiﬁcant developments in ancient Near East-ern studies during the nineteenth century was the decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform by Edward Hincks and Henry Cres-wicke Rawlinson.12The basic decipherment was accomplished by

9_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 288.} 10_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 111.} 11_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 112-13.}

(15)

Hincks in a series of papers between 1846 and 1852.13 _{One can}

only imagine Hincks’s excitement when he was able to read Akka-dian words that were not names of persons or places, or when he identiﬁed for example, the mention of Jehu son of Omri in the inscription on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III in 1851. Among Hincks’s papers in the Griﬃth Institute, Ashmolean Mu-seum, Oxford, there is a fragment of a paper that is the beginning of an article on ‘Hebrew Roots Compared with Assyrian, No. 1’. It begins as follows:

In addition to the light which the recent discoveries in Assyrian literature throw on the history, chronology and geography of the Bible, it may be expected that the lan-guage of the inscriptions, which is of the same family as the languages of the Old Testament, will illustrate obscure pas-sages of the Bible by giving the true meaning of roots that are of rare occurrence in Hebrew, perhaps hapax legomena; and also by giving the true derivations of Hebrew nouns, of which the verbal roots have been hitherto only conjec-tured.14

The ﬁrst entry in his draft article is on the Hebrew root s.rb, which occurs four times in the Hebrew Bible: as a passive verb in Ezek. 21:3; as an adjective in Prov. 16:27, and as a noun in Lev. 13:23, 28. Hincks had correctly translated a line in the great pavement inscription from Nimrud in which he identiﬁed a verb s.ar¯abu. The line reads: dam¯eˇsunu ˇ_{sadu as.rup,}15 _{which he renders: ‘with}

their blood the mountains I reddened’. Hincks read the verbal form as.rup as as.rub, so he identiﬁed it with the Hebrew verb

Decipherment of Mesopotamian Cuneiform’, in: K.J. Cathcart (ed.), The Edward Hincks Bicentenary Lectures, Dublin 1994, 30-57. See also Daniels’ contribution on decipherment in: P.T. Daniels, W. Bright (eds), The Writing Systems of the World, London 1996, 141-59; and Cathcart, ‘The Age of De-cipherment: the Old Testament and the Ancient Near East in the Nineteenth Century’, in: J.A. Emerton (ed.), Congress Volume: Cambridge 1995 (VT.S, 66), Leiden 1997, 81-95. There is still no good critical account of H. C. Rawl-inson’s contribution to the decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform (not to be confused with the decipherment of the Old Persian cuneiform writ-ing system). There is much useful background information, however, in M.T. Larsen, The Conquest of Assyria: Excavations in an Antique Land, London 1996.

13_{See K.J. Cathcart, P. Donlon, ‘Edward Hincks (1792-1866): A}

Biblio-graphy of his Publications’, Or. 52, 1983, 325-56.

14_{Griﬃth Institute, Oxford: Hincks Correspondence, MS 558.}

(16)

s.¯arab, missing the identification of s.ar¯apu which would later be made with s.¯arap, ‘to smelt, refine’. Modern dictionaries of Akka-dian list s.ar¯apu, ‘to smelt and refine metals; to fire clay tablets or bricks; to burn; to dye textiles, ivory, leather, even mountains red’.16 Hincks’s knowledge was imperfect, but his instincts were correct and his interpretation of s.¯arab in the biblical texts was accurate: Ezek. 21:3, nis.re_bˆ_{u, ‘shall be scorched’; Prov. 16:27,}

ke¯eˇs s.¯arebet, ‘as a scorching fire’; Lev. 13:23, 28, s.¯arebet, ‘in-flammation, redness; scar’. It is, of course, true that misuse of the newly deciphered texts from Mesopotamia led to the excesses of pan-babylonianism, but there is no doubt that the study of Akkadian and Sumerian texts has contributed enormously to the understanding of the Old Testament. In this article, however, I am concerned with comparative philological data from Akkadian. The unsatisfactory translations of mlh lbtk (Ezek. 16:30) in many modern English Bibles illustrate what might be described as an example of wilful resistance to knowledge gained from comparat-ive philology. The NRSV has: ‘How sick is your heart’; the NAB, ‘How wild is your lust’, and the JPSV, ‘How sick was your heart’. The JPSV translator does admit in a footnote that, on the basis of the Akkadian, a change of vocalisation will give, ‘How furious I was with you’. The NEB and REB have a satisfactory version: ‘How you anger me!’ The correct understanding of this verse was first published by David Hartwig Baneth in 1914, when he pub-lished a suggestion made by his father Eduard Baneth that Akk. libb¯ati malû, ‘to become angry with’, had a counterpart in Ezek. 16:30.17 It was noted that the same idiom occurred in Aramaic too. Godfrey Rolles Driver made the same proposal in 1928, and elaborated on it in 1931.18 _{All the main Hebrew lexicons admit}

this identiﬁcation by Baneth, and the Akkadian loan has been subjected to further scrutiny by Harold Cohen19and again

thor-16_{CAD [S.], 1962, 102-5; J. Black et al. (eds), A Concise Dictionary of}

Akkadian, Wiesbaden 2000, 334. Note Neo-Babylonian s.ar¯abu.

17_{D.H. Baneth, ‘Bemerkungen zu den Achikarpapyri’, OLZ 17 (1914), 251,}

n. 1.

18_{G.R. Driver, ‘Some Hebrew Words’, JThS 29 (1928), 393; Idem, ‘Studies}

in the Vocabulary of the Old Testament III’, JThS 32 (1931), 366. Joseph Fitzmyer added a new Aramaic occurrence in 1961; see J.A. Fitzmyer, ‘A Note on Ez 16, 30’, CBQ 23 (1961), 460-2.

19_{H.R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena in the Light of Akkadian and}

(17)

oughly by Paul Mankowski in his very important published Har-vard dissertation.20 Among early modern commentators, G.A. Cooke21 accepted the Akkadian and Aramaic evidence for the correct understanding of the text, but some commentators still prefer the interpretation apparently intended by whoever pointed the˜_{. The interpretation of the Akkadian loanword, lbh, ‘anger’,}

as a cognate of Heb. l¯eb, ‘heart’, is an example of a loanword in the consonantal Hebrew text of the Bible being wrongly inter-preted in the Massoretic text. It is interesting to note that the

Ì _{(‘How should I dispose of your daughter?’) and the} Í _(‘Why

should I judge your daughter?’) did not interpret lbtk as ‘your heart’.

Among the many useful contributions to the study of the Biblical Hebrew lexicon in Mankowski’s work on Akkadian loan-words, the section on sibilants in his phonological analysis is highly informative for Hebraists. He writes: ‘The single most im-portant diagnostic tool for identiﬁcation of loans in BH is the treatment of sibilants’.22_{He draws attention to the fact that, in}

Akkadian, sibilants written with ˇs-signs had the Babylonian pro-nunciation [ˇs] but the Assyrian pronunciation [s]; and sibilants with s-signs had the Babylonian pronunciation [s] and the Assyr-ian pronunciation [s]. Perhaps one of the best-known examples of the representation of Akk. ˇs by Northwest Semitic s is that in the Hebrew words misk¯en¯ut, ‘poverty’, in Deut. 8:9, and misk¯en, ‘poor man’, in Qoh. 4:13; 9:15, 16. Akk. muˇsk¯enu, ‘commoner’ (as for example in the Code of Hammurabi), also had the mean-ing ‘poor man’. The sibilant indicates that the Akkadian word entered Hebrew and Aramaic via Neo-Assyrian.23

Another good example of a loanword with Heb. s for Akk. ˇs is Heb. t.aps¯ar, Akk. t.upˇsarru, which occurs twice in the Old Test-ament, in Jer. 51:27 and Nah. 3:17. The spelling of the Hebrew form with s corresponding to Akk. ˇs points to a borrowing from

20_{P. Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew (HSS, 47),}

Winona Lake 2000, 77-80.

21_{G.A. Cooke, The Book of Ezekiel (ICC), Edinburgh 1936, 171-3.} 22_{Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords, 155.}

23_{There is a fascinating discussion of the transmission of Akk. muˇ}_sk¯_{enu into}

other Semitic languages and then into the Romance languages, in Mankowski, Akkadian Loanwords, 97-9, who fails, however, to give Heinrich Zimmern his due, cf. H. Zimmern, Akkadische Fremdwörter als Beweis für babylonischen Kultureinfluss, Leipzig 1914, 47.

(18)

Neo-Assyrian. Klaas Spronk is under the impression that t.aps¯ar occurs in Isa. 33:18 also, but the word there is s¯op¯er.24 Notice, however, that t.aps¯ar is in the apparatus for that verse in BHK, as part of a proposed emendation of s¯op¯_{er. At Jer. 51:27, t.aps¯ar} is used of a military oﬃcer, and one can compare ˇs¯_{ot.¯er, with the} sense of ‘marshal’ or ‘quartermaster’, in Josh. 1:10; 3:2. I continue to hold the view that, in Nah. 3:17, t.aps¯ar is a palace functionary. Furthermore, I see no reason to change my long-standing view that the parallel word minz¯arayik should be emended slightly to manz¯azayik, as proposed long ago by H. Torczyner.25_{No defence}

of the˜_{stands up to scrutiny. Akk. manz¯}_{azu is a well-known term}

for a palace functionary (see manz¯az ekalli ), so manz¯azayik is an excellent parallel to t.aps¯arayik. I have discussed elsewhere my interpretation of the significance of these terms and the roles of these palace officials or functionaries.26The Vulgate custodes tui has led some scholars to propose the identification of Heb. minz¯ar with Akk. mas.s.aru, ‘guardian, guard, sentinel’. This proposal does not stand up to scrutiny. One would have to assume nasal-isation of the geminate consonants, which, although well attested in Imperial Aramaic, is not found in Biblical Hebrew. Mankowski examines the possibility of an Aramaic loan route but finds it vir-tually impossible to sustain. As he says, mas.s.ar is not attested in any Aramaic dialect, and the hypothetical *mas.s.ar > *mans.ar > *manzar > Heb. minz¯ar is problematic.27_{Finally, it is possible}

that me_{s.¯ur¯ah in Nah. 2:2 should be repointed to mas.s.¯ar¯ah and} related to Akk. mas.s.artu, as in the Akk. mas.s.arta nas.¯aru, ‘to stand guard’. Nah. 2:2, n¯_{as.ˆor mas.s.¯ar¯ah, may be rendered ‘stand} guard’.

3 Examples Using Ugaritic

The close aﬃnity of Ugaritic to Hebrew within the classiﬁcation of the Semitic languages is just one of the factors that has en-sured its pre-eminence in the study of the language, literature and religion of ancient Israel. Progress in the study of Ugaritic

24_{K. Spronk, Nahum (HCOT), Kampen 1997, 139.} 25_{H. Torczyner, ‘Presidential Address’, JPOS 16 (1936), 7.}

26_{K.J. Cathcart, ‘Micah 2:4 and Nahum 3:16-17 in the Light of Akkadian’,}

in: Y.L. Arbeitman (ed.), Fucus: A Semitic/Afrasian Gathering in Remem-brance of Albert Ehrman, Amsterdam 1988, 197-200.

(19)

continues unabated. In this article I conﬁne my remarks to some Ugaritic lexical items that bear directly on Old Testament texts and have (or should have) impacted on modern versions.

One of the more interesting discoveries for the Biblical Hebrew lexicon is the identiﬁcation of the Hebrew noun y¯apˆıah_{. , cognate} with Ugar. yph_{. , ‘witness’. This was already noted by Mitchell} Da-hood in 1958.28 In the 1960s Samuel Loewenstamm published a more detailed article on y¯apˆıah_{. and Dahood again made further} important observations.29William McKane was convinced by the Ugaritic evidence and accepted the interpretation of y¯apˆıah_{. in} Proverbs as a noun meaning ‘witness’.30 In 1978 Dennis Pardee reviewed all the Ugaritic and Hebrew evidence carefully and he presented an excellent systematic examination of all the texts.31

The noun y¯apˆıah_{. occurs at least once in the Psalms, six times} in Proverbs and once in Hab. 2:3. Many modern translations of the Old Testament adhere to the long-standing analysis of ypyh. as a form of the verb pwh_{. , ‘to blow, breathe’. At Hab. 2:3 the} RSV ‘it hastens’ and the NEB ‘it will come in breathless haste’ recall BDB’s ‘panteth (hasteth) towards the end’. The REB ‘it will testify to the destined hour’ is deﬁnitely an improvement, and the JPSV ‘A truthful witness for a time that will come’, is obviously based on the new knowledge about Ugar. yph..32 _The

NRSV, on the other hand, is rather unsatisfactory. For Hab. 2:3 it has, ‘it speaks of the end’, and in Prov. 14:5 we are back to the old ‘breathes out lies’. Thankfully, the REB with ‘honest wit-ness’ for y¯apˆıah_.emˆun¯ah at Prov. 12:17, for example, has given its approval to a noun y¯apˆıah_{. , ‘witness’, as do most of the newer} dictionaries of Biblical Hebrew.33

28_{M. Dahood, ‘Some Ambiguous Texts in Isaias’, CBQ 20 (1958), 47-8, n.}

21.

29_{S. Loewenstamm, ‘y¯}_ap¯_ea_h

. , y¯ap¯ıah. , y¯apˆıah. ’, Leˇs. 26 (1962), 205-8 (re-printed with some additions in: S.E. Loewenstamm, Comparative Studies in Biblical and Ancient Oriental Literatures (AOAT, 204), Neukirchen-Vluyn 1980, 137-45); M. Dahood, Proverbs and Northwest Semitic Philology, Rome 1963, 45; Idem, ‘Hebrew-Ugaritic Lexicography III’, Bib. 46 (1965), 319-20; Idem, Psalms I (AB, 16), Garden City 1965, 169.

30_{W. McKane, Proverbs: A New Approach, London 1970.} 31_{D. Pardee, ‘yph}

. , “witness” in Hebrew and Ugaritic’, VT 28 (1978), 204-13.

32_{K.J. Cathcart, ‘Legal Terminology in Habakkuk 2:1-4’, PIBA 10 (1986),}

103-10.

(20)

Much has been written on Ugaritic-Hebrew parallelism in po-etry. Here I simply wish to comment on a remark by Barr. He writes:

Where Ugaritic words are used for the elucidation of Heb-rew, it should be remembered that the meanings of many of these depend in the ﬁrst place on parallelisms in Ugaritic, and the same caution has to be used in any reliance on these Ugaritic meanings.34

I think that I understand Barr’s worries here, but I suggest that we should be just as cautious about reliance on Hebrew mean-ings. Let me take an example. The parallel pair h¯arˆım geb¯a ôt, ‘mountains hills’, is common in biblical poetry, and notably so in the psalms and the prophetic books, especially Isaiah. In Ugaritic literature the equivalent pair is ˙gr gb , plur. ˙grm gb m, and this Canaanite pair has survived in Num. 23:9.35One may translate Num. 23:9 as follows: ‘I see him from the top of the mountains, I watch him from the hills’. The NRSV has ‘crags’ for s.¯urˆım, the REB ‘rocky heights’. This preference for ‘rocks, rocky heights’ is remarkable. It is true, of course, that, elsewhere in the Old Testament, s.ûr means ‘rock, rocky ground, place of refuge’. Now, a search of Driver’s translation of the Ugaritic texts is quite revealing.36_{There we find ‘rocks’ for ˙grm and ‘mountains’}

for gb m. The rendering ‘mountain’ for gb is quite surprising and really inexplicable, not least because in his glossary Driver had ‘hill, hillock’ for this word.37 _{In the second edition of Canaanite}

Myths and Legends, Gibson too has ‘rocks’ for ˙grm, but he does correctly translate gb m as ‘hills’.38 I think that ˙grm must be translated as ‘mountains’ in the Ugaritic texts.39 _{I prefer the}

translation ‘mountains’ for s.¯urˆım in Num. 23:9, but I am open

Hebreo-Espa˜nol, fasc. 4, Valencia 1991, 300; D.J.A. Clines (ed.), The Dic-tionary of Classical Hebrew, vol. 4, Sheﬃeld 1998, 251.

34_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 282.}

35_{So for the ﬁrst time, W.F. Albright, ‘The Oracles of Balaam’,JBL 63}

(1944), 212, n. 22. See also S. Gevirtz, Patterns in the Early Poetry of Israel (SAOC, 32), Chicago 1963, 56-7.

36_{G.R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, Edinburgh 1956, 97, 109,}

111.

37_{Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends, 146.}

38_{J.C.L. Gibson, Canaanite Myths and Legends, Edinburgh}2_1978.

39_{This also follows from the equivalence ˙grm =}d_H

˘UR.SAG.MEˇS, see now D. Pardee, Les textes rituels (RSO, 12), t. 1, Paris 2000, 292, 306.

(21)

to any persuasive arguments that it means ‘rocks, cliffs’. I have chosen this example to show how familiarity with the frequent Biblical Hebrew word s.ûr, ‘rock’, has influenced not only our translation of the text in Numbers 23:9, but even some transla-tions of Ugaritic texts.

4 Examples Using Old Aramaic

Old Aramaic inscriptions are a rich source for philological re-search and are particularly relevant for the study of the Old Testament.40As long ago as 1964 Delbert Hillers quite rightly pointed out that the Aramaic inscriptions of Seﬁre provide many interesting and close parallels to Old Testament literature.41_Since

the 1970s, the corpus of Old Aramaic texts has expanded. There is the very important late ninth-century Neo-Assyrian/Aramaic bilingual from Tell Fakhariyah, and more recently we have seen the publication of thirteen lines of a reasonably well-preserved Aramaic text found at Buk¯an in Iranian Azerbaijan, south-west of Lake Urmia.42 _{In this article several interesting lexical items}

are chosen from the Seﬁre inscriptions.

The following words occur in Sefire III:4: whn yqrq mny qrq, ‘Now if a fugitive flees from me’.43 _{Here we find two forms of}

the verb qrq, ‘to flee’, which in later Aramaic is rq, that is, with ayin in first position. In Job 30:3, 17 we find the dislegomenon ¯araq, which means ‘to gnaw’. This meaning ‘to gnaw’ is accepted by most scholars, who cite Arab. araqa and point out that the Vulgate has rodebant in v. 3. In his commentary on Job, Marvin Pope writes with regard to v. 3:

40_{See K.J. Cathcart, ‘The Curses in Old Aramaic Inscriptions’, in: K.J.}

Cathcart, M. Maher (eds), Targumic and Cognate Studies: Essays in Honour of Martin McNamara (JSOT.S, 230), Sheﬃeld 1996, 140-52; S.A. Kaufman, ‘Recent Contributions of Aramaic Studies to Biblical Hebrew Philology and the Exegesis of the Hebrew Bible’, in: A. Lemaire (ed.), Congress Volume: Basel 2001 (VT.S, 92), Leiden, 2002, 43-54.

41_{D.R. Hillers, Treaty-Curses and the Old Testament Prophets (Biblica et}

Orientalia, 16), Rome 1964, 77.

42_{A. Lemaire, ‘Une inscription aram´}_{eenne du VIIIe s. av. J.-C. trouv´}_{ee `}_a

Bukˆan (Azerba¨ıdjan iranien)’, StIr 27 (1998), 15-30; Idem, ‘The Old Aramaic Inscription from Bukan: A Revised Interpretation’, IEJ 46 (1999), 105-15.

43_{Text as in J.A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Seﬁre (BibOr,}

(22)

The word rq which occurs only here and in v. 17 be-low may also mean ‘go away, ﬂee’ or the like. Either sense would be acceptable here, e.g. ‘Roaming the arid steppe’ as with the Targum (rqyn rˇsy y br s.h.yy [‘the wicked were ﬂeeing in a parched land’]).44

Now the third edition of Koehler-Baumgartner lists three inter-pretations of˜_h¯_{a ¯}_ore_{qˆım s.iyy¯ah in v. 3.}45_{First, a ﬁgurative one:}

‘the gnawing of drought’. Second, the proposal to insert iqqe_rˆ_e,

‘roots’, before s.iyy¯ah. This is followed by the REB: ‘they gnawed roots in the desert’. Finally, the interpretation found in theÌ_and Ê: ‘They ﬂee into the wilderness’. In support of this last inter-pretation, which, as we have just seen, Pope thought was valid, Koehler-Baumgartner lists Jewish Aramaic, Syriac and Mandaic rq; Old Aram. qrq, and Arab. araqa. There is also the sugges-tion that, of the three interpretasugges-tions given, the last is unlikely. Unfortunately, the compilers of the lexicon have not seen the incompatibility of the various words which they believe to be cognates. The initial q in Old Aram. qrq indicates proto-Semitic d_{. ; therefore a Hebrew cognate would have s. and an Arabic} cog-nate would have d_{. .}46_{Compare, for example, the common Semitic}

word for ‘earth’: Aram. arq¯a/ ar ¯_{a, Heb. eres., Arab. ard.. The}

Ê _{translator naturally understood ¯}_{araq as if it were an Aramaic}

word. The Ì _{oiJ feuvgonte" suggests the same. If there is an}

Ar-abic verb araqa, ‘to ﬂee, depart’ (and I have not found it in the lexicons), it simply cannot be cognate with the Aram. eraq, ‘to ﬂee’, for, as we have seen, its initial consonant would have to be d_{. . It is best, therefore, to do what BDB did and have in the} lexicon of ancient Hebrew only the entry ¯araq, ‘to gnaw’, citing Arab. araqa with the same meaning.

There is another interesting example of an Old Aramaic word with q in Seﬁre III: 6, rqh trqhm, ‘you must placate (appease) them’.47This verb is cognate with Heb. r¯_{as.¯ah, ‘to be acceptable,} pleasing’. I have drawn attention elsewhere to the use of this

44_{M. Pope, Job (AncB, 15), Garden City 1965, 193. I have inserted a}

translation of theÊ.

45_{L. Koehler, W. Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the}

Old Testament, study edition (ed. M.E.J. Richardson), Leiden 2001, 888-9.

46_{See the brief but perceptive remarks on the etymology of Aram. qrq/ rq,}

by Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Seﬁre, 146.

(23)

verb in the Hadad (Zenjirli) inscription, line 22, which, although fragmentary, has zbh_{. h w’l yrqy bh, ‘his sacrifice, and may he not} look favourably upon it’, which can be compared with Amos 5:22, ‘Even if you offer me burnt offerings and your gift offerings, I will not accept them (l¯_{o ers.eh)’.}48 Or is the sense, ‘I will not be appeased’ ?

In the final section of this paper, I offer a new proposal to remove a particular difficulty in Nah. 2:14. The precise meaning of several words in this verse could be debated, but the discus-sion here will be confined to the problematic˜_rikb¯_{ah. This word}

causes difficulty because of the third person feminine singular suf-fix and the mention of ‘chariots’ in the context. Some scholars, most recently J.J.M. Roberts,49 think that ‘chariots’ breaks the metaphor of the lion. Accordingly, with theÌand 4QpNah frags. 3+4 col. I, 10, Roberts reads rubbek¯ah, with a second masculine singular suffix, and thinks that it, like t.rpk (he reads t.arpek¯a for

˜_{t.arp¯ek) later in the verse, refers to the plundered wealth stored}

up in Nineveh. Driver pursued the lion metaphor even further by emending ˜ _rikb¯_{ah to rohb¯}_{ek, ‘your pride’, and} ˜ _{mal ¯}_ak¯_ek¯_eh

(probably to be read mal ¯akayik ) ‘your ambassadors, messen-gers’, to ma ak¯al¯ek, ‘your feeding’.50 Not surprisingly, Driver’s proposals found their way into the NEB. But it is rather surpris-ing to ﬁnd that the JPSV thought the emendation to ma a_k¯_al¯_ek,

‘your feeding’, worth mentioning in its footnotes. The reference to lions disappears altogether if one follows Fitzmyer’s proposal to take kpyr as the word for ‘village’, attested with this spelling in the Haddad and Panammu inscriptions and in some late Old Testament texts.51Robert Gordon notes that, while mainÊ_MSS

have understood the ˜ _ke_{pˆırayik as ‘your princes’, some MSS}

interpreted it as ‘your villages’.52Roberts, as most scholars have done, interprets kepˆırayik as referring to troops or oﬃcials. But let us return to rikb¯ah. The Ì _{plh'qov" sou and 4QpNah rwbkh,}

‘your throng’, clearly support a reading rbk(h) in the Old

Test-48_{Cathcart, ‘Curses in Old Aramaic Inscriptions’, 143.}

49_{J.J.M. Roberts, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah: a Commentary,}

Louisville 1991, 63.

50_{G.R. Driver, ‘Linguistic and Textual Problems: Minor Prophets, II’,}

JThS 39 (1938), 271.

51_{Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Seﬁre, 159-60.}

52_{K.J. Cathcart, R.P. Gordon, The Targum of the Minor Prophets (The}

(24)

ament text. But how is this to be interpreted? Does it refer to ‘plundered wealth’, as argued by Roberts and others before him, or does it refer to persons? The latter seems to be the interpret-ation of the Qumran pesher, 4QpNah, frags 3+4 col. I, 10-11: ‘ “Your throng” are his gangs of soldiers [. . . ]; “his cubs” are his nobles [and the members of his council, . . . ] and “his spoil” is the wealth which [the pries]ts of Jerusalem accu[mulated]’.53

Now there is a curse in Seﬁre I:39-40, which in translation reads: ‘[Just as] this calf is cut in two, so may Matiel be cut in two, and may his nobles (rbwh) be cut in two.’54_{This is one of several}

references to the king and his nobles in the curses. The king is even threatened with being burned like a wax figure (Sefire I:37). I propose being burnt tentatively to read rabbayik and suggest the following version for Nah. 2:14: ‘I shall destroy your nobles (or chief officers) in a pall of smoke, and the sword will devour your young lions.’ We may compare Nah. 3:15, ‘There fire will devour you, the sword will destroy you, it will devour you like a young locust’, and Job 1:15-16 for the destroying sword and fire; and Jer. 39:13; 41:1 for the ‘chief officers (rabbê) of the king’.

The selection of texts that has been examined from a philolo-gical point of view in this article illustrates how much has been, and can be, accomplished in the study of the Old Testament text. Much still remains to be done. For example, it would be very in-structive to carry out a detailed study of the lexical overlap of ancient Hebrew with other Semitic languages, especially Ugar-itic. I am thinking here of the sort of thing that Barr55 _{has done}

on a sample basis. I have done a limited sample with Ugaritic, but a more extensive study would be very useful. In an age when the ‘dumbing down’ of language requirements is increasing, it is important to encourage young scholars to work in the ﬁelds of textual criticism and comparative Semitic philology.

53_{F. Garc´ıa Mart´ınez, E.J.C. Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls (study}

edi-tion), vol. 1, Leiden 1997, 336-7.

54_{Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Seﬁre, 47.} 55_{Barr, Comparative Philology, 162-4.}

(25)

‘As for the other events . . . ’

Annals and Chronicles in Israel and the Ancient Near East

1 Introduction

One of the best-known turns of phrase in biblical tradition, with which the author, presumably of Deuteronomistic provenance, refers to his sources, runs as follows in the AV and RSV:

Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, behold they are written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel (1 Kgs 14:19).

Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam . . . are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah . . . (1 Kgs 14:29).

and so on (for instance 1 Kgs 11:41). As a devout child listening to my father’s readings after the evening meal, running continu-ously through the Bible, I knew that the rest of the story could be found and, if need be, checked in the Book of Chronicles. I still remember how disappointed I was as a young theological student, when I found out that ‘the Chronicles’ were not what they seemed to be, the source of the Books of Kings. But then a more intriguing quest was born, the search for the lost chron-icles, the lost history – history-sources of which we know only the titles, such asrv;Y:h' rp,se_{‘The Book of the Just (or: Yaˇsar)’ (Josh.}

10:13; 2 Sam. 1:18) or hw:hy“ tmoj}l]mi rp,se _{‘The Book of the Wars}

of Yhwh’ (Num. 21:14). Some scholars deem such references to be a learned, but fictional, pia fraus. There is little to prove this point. Some modern scholars have difficulty in accepting the idea that texts sometimes existed beyond texts, texts different from the texts in front of us, but nevertheless their ‘sources’.

‘As for the other events of Rehoboam’s reign . . . are they not written in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of Judah?’ You may have noticed the diﬀerence. In NIV, ‘the Book of the Chronicles’ is ‘the Book of the Annals’. What is the diﬀerence? The Concise Oxford Dictionary says:

(26)

‘As for the other events . . . ’ 15

annals• pl.n. a record of events year by year➤historical records;

chronicle• n. a written account of important or historical events in the order of their occurrence.

In his seminal studies on the historical traditions of ancient Meso-potamia and Anatolia, Hans-Gustav Güterbock formulated a fun-damental distinction between ‘historical records’ in which royalty prescribed what they wanted to be remembered for by posterity and a kind of historical literature in which posterity selected and wrote what it wanted to remember from the past.1 The latter form marked the birth of ancient Near Eastern historiography. It is my view that scholars have often ignored this distinction between annals and chronicles in comparative studies. The dif-ference in the dictionary does not seem great, but the definition of chronicle may imply a different order of occurrence from year to year, or at least a deliberate recording and selection of events from the viewpoint of the chronicler. I would like to discuss some of the problems of Israelite historiography in the context of Near Eastern historiography from this viewpoint.

2 Historiographic Background and Roots

of Israelite Historiography

In my study of the summary statement, ‘He who calls the eras from the beginning’ (Isa. 41:4) in the Festschrift for Henk Leene,2 I discussed the question whether the belief in Yhwh’s historical intervention and his power to call up history by his command was

1_{H.G. G¨}_{uterbock, ‘Die historische Tradition und ihre literarische}

Gestal-tung bei Babylonier und Hethitern bis 1200’, ZA 42 (1934), 1-2, 13. Also: A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (TCS, 5), New York 1975 (=AssBabC ); A.K. Grayson, ‘History and Historians of the Ancient Near East: Assyria and Babylonia’, Or. 49 (1980), 140-94, esp. 188-9 = ‘As-syri¨e en Babyloni¨e’, in: E. Otto et al., Geschiedschrijving in het oude Nabije Oosten (Supplementen ‘Ex Oriente Lux’, 3), Leiden 2000, 37-98, esp. 91-2; J. van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History, New Haven 1983, 91-2; M. van de Mieroop, Cunei-form Texts and the Writing of History (Approaching the Ancient World), London 1999, 25-7.

2_{M. Dijkstra, ‘ “He who calls the Eras from the Beginning” (Isa. 41:4):}

From History to Eschatology in Second Isaiah’, in: F. Postma, K. Spronk and E. Talstra (eds), The New Things: Eschatology in Old Testament Prophecy. Festschrift for Henk Leene (ACEBT.S, 3), Maastricht 2002, 61-76.

(27)

a concept of Second Isaiah’s own design (for instance, as distinct-ive from Geschichtskonzepte in the Book of Ezekiel),3or whether it was consonant with the ideas of Israelite historiography as part of ancient Near Eastern historiography. It was my conten-tion that this formula implied a view of history and its periodicity that emerged in the first millennium bce, in particular in the Na-bonassar Era (after 747 bce), and was disseminated in the centres of learning of the ancient Near East, whence they also influenced ancient Jewish historiography and Second Isaiah’s concept of his-tory. This contention depended, however, on the premise that a certain historical awareness based on conceptions such as divine intervention, alternations of good and bad periods and the like, emerged in historiographic genres of the first millennium bce, such as the Synchronic King List, the Babylonian Chronicles and even documents of prognostic historiography (so-called Akka-dian Apocalypses). It is at present unwarranted to distinguish between a cyclical, deterministic and immanent concept of his-tory in Mesopotamia and a linear (teleological) and transcendent view of history in Israel, as has often been done.4 Assyriological scholars have rightly refuted this schematic simplification used in Old Testament studies.5 At present, the debate about ancient Near Eastern historiography revolves not so much around such differences between historiography in the Bible and the ancient Near East, but around method, in particular, the approach to ‘sources’ of information and their analysis in relation to

mater-3_{T. Kr¨}_{uger, Geschichtskonzepte im Ezechielbuch (BZAW, 180), Berlin}

1989.

4_{A view which was deﬁnitely challenged by the ground-breaking work}

of B. Albrektson, History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Histor-ical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (CB.OT, 1), Lund 1967. See also: Van Seters, In Search of History, 57-9. For evidence indicating that the step from an immanent to a transcend-ent view of history could take place in the Umwelt, see K. van der Toorn, ‘Prophecy between Immanence and Transcendence: A Comparison of Old-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian Prophecy’, in: M. Nissinen (ed.), Prophecy in its Near Eastern Context: Mesopotamian, Biblical and Arabian Perpectives (SBL Symposium Series, 13), Atlanta 2000, 71-87.

5_{W.G. Lambert, ‘History and the Gods: A Review Article’, Or. 39 (1970),}

175 n.7; Idem, ‘Destiny and Divine Intervention in Babylon and Israel’, OTS 17 (1972), 70-1; A.K. Grayson, Babylonian Historical-Literary Texts, Toronto 1975, 21 n.34; Idem, Or. 49 (1980), 191 = ‘Assyri¨e en Babyloni¨e’, 95; M. deJong Ellis, ‘Observations on Mesopotamian Oracles and Prophetic Texts: Literary and Historiographic Considerations’, JCS 41 (1989), 151, 179-81.

(28)

ial and social culture. The classical Ereignisgeschichte or histoire ´

evénementielle in the terminology of the École des Annales (F. Braudel) is a legacy of the optimistic late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw Assyrian-Babylonian royal inscriptions, Old Testament ‘sources’ (whether or not reconstructed)6 as immedi-ate information for reconstruction of what appears to be political history. However, this intermediate relation between text and his-tory posed a problem in modern theory of hishis-tory under the in-fluence of modern linguistics, not only in biblical studies, but also in Assyriology.7 _{At the most, documents are facts in themselves,}

but do not contain immediate historical facts, let alone events. They are messages or narratives with relative and limited histor-ical value that can only be included, interpreted and understood in a more comprehensive histoire conjoncturelle.8 History is not simply the history of kings and officials, but, in the approach of the École des Annales, supposes also involvement of official and private archives, material culture, architecture and iconography, in short, of all the different genres of culture in their

Eigenbegriﬀ-6_{On the problem of calling the Old Testament a ‘source’ of historical}

information, see B. Becking, ‘Inscribed Seals as Evidence for Biblical Israel: Jeremiah 40.7–41.15, par exemple’, in: L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Can a ‘History of Israel’ Be Written? (JSOT.S, 245), Sheﬃeld 1997, 69.

7_{M. Liverani, ‘Memorandum on the Approach to Historiographic Texts’,}

Or. 42 (1973), 178-94. A useful survey is A.M. Bagg, ‘Geschichtsschreibung in der Assyriologie’, WO 29 (1998), 98-108. The article is a review of W. Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer, M¨unster 1995, as a recent example of Ereignisgeschichte in contrast to collections of modern historiographic essays on ancient Near Eastern studies such as M.T. Larsen (ed.). Power and Pro-paganda, Copenhagen 1979; F.M. Fales (ed.), Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (OrAnt.C, 17), Rome 1981. Other representatives of this ‘sceptical’ approach to Meso-potamian historiographic texts are A.L. Oppenheim, M. Civil, F.R. Kraus, H. Tadmor and G. van Driel. Against this ‘sceptical’ approach see W.W. Hallo, ‘The Limits of Skepticism’, JAOS 110 (1990), 187-99; A.R. Millard, ‘Story, History and Theology’, in: A.R. Millard et al. (eds), Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in its Near Eastern Context, Winona Lake 1994, 37-64 (esp. 53-64).

8_{B. Becking, ‘Chronology: A Skeleton without Flesh? Sennacherib’s}

Cam-paign as a Case-study’, in: L.L. Grabbe, ‘Like a Bird in a Cage’: The Invasion of Sennacherib in 701 bce (JSOT.S, 363), Sheﬃeld 2002, 46-71, esp. 71; but see also the criticism of Braudel’s three-causes model by Ch. Lorenz, De constructie van het verleden: een inleiding in de theorie van de geschiedenis, Amsterdam 1998, 145-6.

(29)

lichkeit.9 _{Historiography needs a basic factual and chronological}

framework. Chronology is still the backbone or even ‘skeleton’ of history,10 and, as such, there is nothing wrong with creating a histoire événementielle,11_{but to provide it or revive it with flesh}

and blood is a diﬀerent matter.

Mesopotamian and biblical historiography share many as-pects and elements of a common ancient Near Eastern belief sys-tem, in particular the idea of divine intervention and a view of the past as a sequence of good and bad times. Furthermore, they often show the same mixture of human and divine action, myth and legend, and aetiological interest, as well as the author’s cri-ticism and disapproval.12 In most of its literary aspects, biblical historiography is a variant form of ancient Near Eastern histori-ography, except for its fundamental confession of Yhwh’s exclus-iveness and the singular emphasis on recalling and remembering ‘Israelite history’ in worship (Deut. 26:3-10; 32:7; Ps. 78:3-4). But such a form of liturgical remembrance is, after all, no less biased and ideological in character than the creation of history serving to legitimate a cult or dynasty in the ancient Near East. Historical memory is everywhere more ‘adjusted to what really serves the present than to what may “really” have happened and cannot in fact be altered’.13 So I doubt whether biblical authors were and could be the first historians or creators of history. With some confidence, I still quote Huizinga’s definition of history, as has been done by numerous students of biblical and ancient Near Eastern history: ‘History is the intellectual form in which a

civil-9_{See Van de Mieroop on history from above and from below (Cuneiform}

Texts and the Writing of History, 39-85, 86-105).

10_{Becking, ‘Chronology’, 67-71.}

11_{So also Bagg, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, 103; Van de Mieroop, Cuneiform}

Texts and the Writing of History, 55.

12_{Some of these aspects have been noted by J. Barr, ‘Story and History in}

Biblical Theology’, JR 56 (1976), 1-17. He also noted an absence of critical evaluation of sources and reports, but I agree with Millard (‘Story, History and Theology’, 39-40) that this aspect is not completely absent either in biblical (in particular Deuteronomistic) or in Babylonian historiography. See below.

13_{B. Halpern, The First Historians: The Hebrew Bible and History, San}

Francisco 1988; Idem, ‘History as a Jewish Problem’, in: J. Neusner et al., From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism: Intellect in Quest of Understanding. Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, vol. 1, Atlanta 1989, 3; M. Z. Brettler, The Creation of History in Ancient Israel (JSOT.S, 148), Sheﬃeld 1992,2_1995,

(30)

ization renders account for its past.’ Historiography was born in an axial period of ancient Near Eastern civilisation and biblical historiography took its part in it. Cultural heritage, ideology and theory-loadedness play their part in any form of historiography, ancient or modern, so within the variety of theories of history, Huizinga’s definition allows proper space and place for ancient Israelite and Mesopotamian historiography within the bounds of their mutual Eigenbegrifflichkeit.14Already in the Umwelt of Is-rael, we find an historiographic interest that took historiography a step further than the res gestae, i.e. recording the deeds of the king and his officials, namely to the development of a literary historical tradition.15

3 A Survey of ‘Babylonian’ Chronicles

What is the diﬀerence between annals and chronicles? Annual re-ports or annals usually relate to the military, cultural and polit-ical achievements of a particular king or dynasty, often year after year. Usually such annals are in autobiographical style, but oc-casionally annalistic inscriptions are in biographic style, perhaps because, as some scholars suppose, they were compiled from cur-rent war journals.16 Annalistically structured records appear in royal inscriptions of, for instance, the Third Dynasty of Ur as early as the beginning of the second millennium bce, but the

14_{W.E. Krul, ‘Huizinga’s deﬁnitie van de geschiedenis’, in: J. Huizinga,}

De taak der cultuurgeschiedenis, samengesteld, verzorgd en van een nawoord voorzien door W.E. Krul, Groningen 1995, 284; F.R. Ankersmit, De spiegel van het verleden, Exploraties 1: Geschiedtheorie, Kampen 1996, 7-9; Van Seters, In Search of History, 1; DeJong Ellis, JCS 41 (1989), 182-4; Becking, ‘Inscribed Seals as Evidence for Biblical Israel’, 66; but see also the problems with this deﬁnition in Brettler, Creation of History in Ancient Israel, 11. Note that Peter Machinist also emphasised this Eigenbegriﬄichkeit in his lecture ‘The Old Testament in Comparative Perspective’ (SOTS/SBL 2003 Cambridge).

15_{This is seemingly the point missed by Brettler, Creation of History in}

Ancient Israel, 11. Even if Huizinga made a sharp distinction between history and literature and if, according to Brettler, modern scholarship may not do so, this correction applies also to Israelite and Mesopotamian historiographic tradition.

16_{This theory of war journals in combination with letters (reports) to the}

deity as Vorlage for the Assyrian annals is in Mayer’s view essential for the credibility of the inscriptions (Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst, 56-59); but for the pitfalls of this theory, see Grayson, Or. 49 (1980), 164-70 = ‘Assyri¨e en Babyloni¨e’, 64-67; Bagg, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, 105.

(31)

genre may go back to kings from the third millennium such as Sargon of Akkad, and even to pre-Sargonic times.17 Collections of such annual reports written on tablets and stored in archives for consultation, study and reference are known in Mesopotamia only from the Late Middle Assyrian Period onwards (1132-935 bce). Similar texts are found in Anatolian archives such as the pinaˇsdar ‘(masculine) acts’ compiled in chronological order. They are annalistically composed texts, which approach the later chro-nographic texts, being the earliest examples of ancient Near East-ern historiography.18 _{We think here especially of the Annals of}

Mursilis II (ca 1300 bce), in particular the decennial records, series of ten years of annals (TUAT, 1/5, 471-81), which were ex-tracts, taken and summarised from extensive running yearbooks. The genre of the chronicle, with its fundamental focus on the past, its selective structure, eclectic preference and hardly hid-den historiographic bias emerges after the ﬁrst quarter of the ﬁrst millennium. But it did not appear out of the blue. The change in viewpoint from annals to chronicles is a gradual one. In essence, annals focus on the exploits of their sponsor in time and space. Though they may show interest in the past (usually the recent past), their focus is the present, not the past.19In some early his-torical texts, even as early as the Sumerian hishis-torical inscription of Enmetana of Lagaˇs (ca 2400 bce), there are historical surveys summing up events that constitute the prelude to the present

17_{See the survey W.W. Hallo, ‘Sumerian Historiography’, in: H. Tadmor,}

M. Weinfeld, History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Bib-lical and Cuneiform Literatures, Jerusalem 1983, 9-20; R.E. Averbeck, ‘The Sumerian Historiographic Tradition and its Implications for Genesis 1-11’, in: A.R. Millard et al. (eds), Faith, Tradition, and History, Winona Lake, Indiana 1994, 79=102. It follows the observations of Grayson, Or. 49 (1980), 142; D.O. Edzard, RLA 6, 77-86; Van de Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History, 59-75. Beside the most interesting predecessor of Assyrian-Babylonian historiography, i.e. the Sumerian King List, there is the ‘Tummal Chronicle’, actually a building chronicle. See, however, the criticism of the designation ‘chronicle’ by Edzard, RLA 6, 85-86.

18_{H.G. G¨}_{uterbock, ‘Hittite Historiography: A Survey’, in: Tadmor,}

Wein-feld, History, Historiography and Interpretation, 30-1 = ‘Hettitische geschied-schrijving: een overzicht’, in: Geschiedschrijving, 108.

19_{J. Renger, ‘Vergangenes Geschehen in der Text¨}_{uberlieferung des}

al-ten Mesopotamien’, in: H.-J. Gehrke, A. M¨oller (eds), Vergangenheit und Lebenswelt: Soziale Kommunikation, Traditionsbildung und historische Be-wußtsein, T¨ubingen 1996, 9-60; Van de Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History, 25.

(32)

situation. In that particular text, the previous history comprises a period of about 150 years, divided into a distant past (Mesilim of Kiˇs, ca 2550 bce) and the recent past (Eanatum, the uncle and predecessor of Enmetena).20_{Such reviews of the past often occur,}

leading up to the occasion for which the inscription was made. A good example is the early Hittite Anitta text (CTH 1),21 which is actually a compilation of inscriptional tablets.22_{The technique}

of reviewing the recent past (sometimes even the distant mythical or legendary past)23 as a ‘historical’ introduction and then de-scribing the current state of aﬀairs stemming from this previous history, is best known from Hittite tradition.24Famous examples are the Proclamation of Telepinu and the Apology of Hattusilis,25 but such historical reviews also appear often in treaty texts, after the preambles,26 and in West Semitic royal inscriptions, such as the Kulamuwa inscription (lines 2-8) and the Mesha stela (lines 5-8).

However, such texts have sometimes been called chronicles, but they are not really part of this genre, since they follow no

sys-20_{See the discussion of this text by Averbeck, ‘Sumerian Historiography’,}

93-8; Th.J.H. Krispijn, ‘Het relaas van Enmetana, stadvorst van Lagasj over de strijd met Umma om het Guedana’, in: R.J. Demar´ee, K.R. Veenhof, Zij schreven geschiedenis: historische documenten uit het oude Nabije Oosten, Leiden 2003, 3-9.

21_{Hittite texts referred to after E. Laroche, Catalogue des textes hittites}

(EeC, 75), Paris 1971.

22_{As noted by Van Seters, In Search of History, 106-7; see further G.}

McMahon, ‘History and Legend in Early Hittite Historiography’, in: Faith, Tradition, and History, 149-57, esp. 151. Indeed, Van Seters minimises its importance, but McMahon seems to overstate its innovative character. Its annalistic structure does not make it a kind of early Hittite history.

23_{As in the Hittite Zalpa legend (CTH 3), H.A. Hoﬀner, ‘The Queen of}

Kanesh and the Tale of Zalpa’, in: W.W. Hallo (ed.), The Context of Scrip-ture, vol. 1: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World, Leiden 1997 = ContS 1, 181-182 (1.71), discussed in the literature cited in n. 22.

24_{See H.A. Hoﬀner, ‘Histories and Historians of the Ancient Near East:}

the Hittites’, Or. 49 (1980), 283-332; G¨uterbock, ‘Hittite Historiography: A Survey’, 21-35 = ‘Hettitische Geschiedschrijving: een overzicht’, 99-113; McMahon, ‘History and Legend in Early Hittite Historiography’, 149-57.

25_{See the new translation and comments of Th.P.J. van den Hout in}

re-spectively, ContS 1, 194-98 (1.76) and 199-204 (1.77); also H. de Roos, ‘De troonsbestijging van Hattusili III’, in: Zij schreven geschiedenis, 169-79.

26_{Examples may be found in ContS 1, 94, 96, 98-9, 100; E. von Schuler,}

‘Die akkadische Fassung des Vertr¨ages zwischen Suppiluliuma I. von Hatti und Niqmaddu II. Von Ugarit’, Staatsvertr¨age, TUAT 1/2, 131-4.

(33)

tematic chronology.27_{A good example is also the ‘Synchronistic}

History’ from the library of Assurbanipal (AssBabC 21). This historiographic work is not a chronicle in the proper sense, but actually contains a chronologically arranged survey of Assyrian-Babylonian relations from the 15thcentury bce until the reign of Adad-Nerari III (870-783 bce), within the framework of the set-tlement of a boundary dispute. This document suggests itself as being the copy of a royal inscription on a stela that once allegedly marked the border between both countries. To what extent the text was ﬁctitious in character, but created to be ‘legal proof’ of the fortunes of war that led to the ﬁxation of the present border, is a matter of debate.28An interesting feature is the suggestion of precise factuality that is clare et distincte, but using pre-existing chronographic records with a hardly hidden political agenda. Apart from this kind of extract in monumental inscriptions, un-fortunately few library copies of such annalistic records have been preserved in Assyria.29 This Synchronistic Chronicle (AssBabC

27_{Such a misnomer is, for instance, the Hittite ‘Palace Chronicle’ (CTH 8);}

cf. McMahon, ‘History and Legend’, 153; J. Klinger, ‘Aus der sogenannten “Palastchronik” ’, TUAT, Erg¨anzungslieferung, G¨utersloh 2001, 61-4.

28_{Grayson, AssBabC, 50-6; Grayson, Or. 49 (1980), 181-2 = ‘Assyri¨}_{e en}

Babyloni¨e’, 83-4; J.A. Brinkman, ‘The Babylonian Chronicle Revisited’, in: T. Abusch et al. (eds), Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near East-ern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran (HSS, 37), Harvard 1990, 73-104; Hallo, Origins, 140-1.

29_{Fragments in Grayson, AssBabC, 184-9; J.-J. Glassner, Chroniques m´}

eso-potamiennes, Paris 1993, 174-8. All these fragments, presumably belonging to the same text, have the library of Tiglath-Pileser I as their provenance (1143-1076 bce). They comprise a period from Enlil-Nirari (ca 1329 bce) up to Tiglath-Pileser I (ca 1050 bce). The text does survey the Assyrian-Babylonian conflicts but that does not make it a chronicle. See my remarks above on the Synchronistic History (AssBabC 21). About the possible exist-ence of early Assyrian chronicles, see Grayson, Or. 49 (1980), 181, n. 191a = ‘Assyrië en Babylonië’, 84, n. 200; H. Tadmor, ‘Observations of Assyrian Historiography’, in: M. deJong Ellis (ed.), Essays on the Ancient Near East in Memory of Jacob Joel Finkelstein (MCAA, 19), Hamden 1977, 211, in contrast to Van Seters, In Search of History, 82-4. Whether this text was a chronicle in the proper sense remains to be seen, for it is at present too fragmentary to warrant such a designation. It is remarkable that we have so many Assyrian annals, especially in monumental fashion, but that such archival historiographic works, comparable to the Babylonian Chronicles, seem to have been absent from the Library of Assurbanipal, despite so many other texts witnessing to the existence of a historical tradition (king lists – even one synchronistically arranged – historical epics, prophecies of Marduk and ˇSulgi, the Weidner Chronicle and so on).

Old Testament in Its World

Old Testament Studies

published on behalf of the Societies for

Old Testament Studies in the Netherlands and

Belgium, South Africa, the United Kingdom

and Ireland

J.C. de Moor

H.G.M. Williamson

H.F. Van Rooy

M. Vervenne

The Old Testament in Its World

Papers Read at the Winter Meeting,

January 2003

The Society for Old Testament Study

and at the Joint Meeting, July 2003

The Society for Old Testament Study

and

Het Oudtestamentisch Werkgezelschap in

Nederland en België

Robert P. Gordon

&

Johannes C. de Moor

Contents

Introduction

The Comparative Philological Approach

to the Text of the Old Testament

1

Introduction

2

Examples Using Akkadian

3

Examples Using Ugaritic

4

Examples Using Old Aramaic

‘As for the other events . . . ’

1

Introduction

2

Historiographic Background and Roots

of Israelite Historiography

3

A Survey of ‘Babylonian’ Chronicles