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January 5, 2020 - April 11, 2021
The space of over a century allows current scholars to recognize that Delitzsch’s lectures were not motivated solely by a sense of scientific objectivity. He was a child of his culture as we all are, and his obvious nationalism can now be seen to have been encumbered with not only anti-Christian but also anti-Semitic sentiment.
Even as Assyriology and Egyptology (and also Hittitology) emerged as serious, autonomous, academic disciplines, the attention of many remained focused on the Bible. As discoveries of major archives followed one after another from the 1920s to the 1970s, each was greeted with initial excitement as scholars made great claims for the impact of the archive on the Bible. In most cases, time and more careful attention resulted in many, if not all, of the initial claims being rejected. Methodological maturity began to be displayed in the careful work of W. W. Hallo, who promoted a balanced approach
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We need to read the Old Testament in the context of its own cultural river. We cannot afford to read instinctively because that only results in reading the text through our own cultural lenses. No one reads the Bible free of cultural bias, but we seek to replace our cultural lenses with theirs. Sometimes the best we can do is recognize that we have cultural lenses and try to take them off even if we cannot reconstruct ancient lenses.
Identification of differences should not imply ancient inferiority. Our rationality may not be their rationality, but that does not mean that they were irrational.9 Their ways of thinking should not be thought of as primitive or prehistorical. We seek to understand their texts and culture, not to make value judgments on them.
Effective communication requires a body of agreed-upon words, terms, and ideas.
We need not figure out how Israel got such a concept or from whom they “borrowed” it. Borrowing is not the issue, so methodology does not have to address it. Likewise this need not concern whose ideas are derivative. There is simply common ground across the cognitive environment of the cultures of the ancient world.
Even when a biblical text engages in polemic or offers critiques of the larger culture, to do so its authors must be aware of and interact with current thinking and literature. When we compare the literature of the ancient Near East with the Bible, we are ultimately trying to recover aspects of the ancient cognitive environment that may help us understand the Israelite perspective a little better. By catching a glimpse of how they thought about themselves and their world, we sometimes discover ways that the Israelites would have thought that differ totally from how we think.
Occasionally comparisons within genres reveal very close similarities between the biblical and ancient Near Eastern literatures on the level of content. Such similarities do not negate the individuality of either. Even if the Hebrew Bible had the very same law or the very same proverb that was found in the ancient Near East, we may find uniqueness in how that law or proverb was understood or how it was nuanced by the literary context in which it was incorporated. At other times the Israelite version may not be noticeably different from the ancient Near Eastern example at any level.
These evolutionary theories had been birthed in an environment where theorizing led to models and hypotheses—but one in which those ideas could not be tested against empirical data.
A third area in which comparative study challenged the critical establishment was by providing evidence that certain cultural developments that had been supposed to be late actually came significantly earlier. In other words, the ancients had more sophistication than had been credited to them.
Resistance to comparative studies continues in some critical circles, especially those more focused on the biblical text simply as the literary output of an ancient culture. One result of this approach to the text is the conviction that there are no real historical events behind the text to reconstruct.
Polemical comparative studies can take many forms and in some ways can be thought of as dominating the field of study. Polemics are often encountered in the work of those who bring to the comparative task presuppositions about the biblical text that directly contradict the apparent claims of the text. When a scholar believes that Moses, Abraham, or David did not exist and that the texts are simply later legends that have grown up around fictional characters, comparative study is going to be used to substantiate that skepticism and vindicate it. Scholars who believe that no flood of cosmic
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many confessional scholars still find themselves defensive concerning cherished and traditional convictions about the biblical text and therefore find certain aspects of both critical scholarship and comparative study suspect or unacceptable.
In a book like Jonah, the tug-of-war goes back and forth. Critical scholars point out that the use of the title “king of Nineveh” demonstrates that the author is writing long after the time of the Assyrian Empire. In the putative time of the prophet Jonah, Nineveh was not the capital and it is claimed that the king would have been identified as the “king of Assyria.” But attempts to use cultural studies to undergird the biblical text point to the anarchy in Assyria at the time and the powerful role of regional governors,15 one of them being over the region of Nineveh.16 Added to this is the
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Consensus among confessional scholars is often based on tradition. These conclusions need constantly to be reevaluated with a critical eye by careful scholars who are not predisposed to either undermine or vindicate confessional conclusions. Consensus in critical circles has embraced theories that have created their own traditions, which need constant reevaluation.
Many readers of the Bible could arguably ignore with impunity the two roles already discussed. Many people in the pews feel no need of further illumination of the background—to them it is irrelevant to God’s Word. Similarly, those whose beliefs about the Bible are not under attack may feel no inclination to explore the defense of the text. They assume the text to be reliable and perhaps do not even care if others think differently. This third category, however, we ignore at our peril.
The aid of comparative study might sometimes be needed to help with a minor detail. For instance, when Sennacherib sends his representatives to present terms to Hezekiah after Jerusalem has been besieged by the Assyrians, the officers are referred to as Tartan, Rab-saris, and Rabshakeh. In the American Standard Version, for one, these are treated as proper names. Comparative study has been able to clarify that these are titles of important officers, thus resulting in the NIV translation: “The king of Assyria sent his supreme commander, his chief officer and his field commander” (2 Kings
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vaticinium ex eventu—a
There is no such word as “religion” in the languages of the ancient Near East. Likewise, there is no dichotomy between sacred and secular, or even between natural and supernatural.
It would be difficult to discuss with ancients the concept of divine intervention because in their worldview deity was too integrated into the cosmos to intervene in it. For the most part, deity is on the inside, not the outside. The world was suffused with the divine.
All experience was religious experience; all law was spiritual in nature; all duties were duties to the gods; all events had deity as their cause. Life was religion and religion could not be compartmentalized within life.3
In the Memphite Theology the gods are brought into being by Atum separating them from himself.5 One way that creation was expressed was by “the mouth which pronounced the name of everything.”6
which is significant in that the Hebrew God brought the world into being and delegated the naming of creatures to the first man, placing man on an elevated status—making him godlike in ANE terms.
We must understand, however, that the birth of the gods does not relate to their physical or material existence. It relates to their functions and roles because their birth is connected to the origins of natural phenomena.20
COMPARATIVE EXPLORATION 4.1: Ontology and Theogony in Israel When we compare the ancient Near Eastern ideas of ontology and theogony to the biblical portrayal of Yahweh, we see some significant similarities and differences. The most obvious difference is seen in the absence of any theogony in Israel. The biblical text offers no indication that Israel considered Yahweh as having an origin, and there are no other gods to bring into existence either by procreation or separation. Since the cosmos is not viewed as a manifestation of divine attributes, Israel’s cosmogony develops without any need of
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we nevertheless cannot miss the common role-oriented descriptors when attributes are defined. More than that, the biblical depiction of Yahweh insists that he is the only God, which, given the ontology laid out above, indicates that there is no jurisdiction or role allotted to any other deity. This will be discussed at greater length in “Comparative Exploration 6.3” on the Decalogue.
it would be interesting to see if Michael Heiser (whose work I have not read in any capacity) has any counterpoints to this idea.
A specific text that is informed and illuminated by this ontological understanding is Psalm 14:1 (cf. 53:1), “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ ” As becomes clear in the rest of the psalm, this statement implies that the “fool” has concluded that God will not act against his corrupt ways. “Existence” is thus defined in relation to the Deity’s activity.
Moses’s question concerns which identity of the deity is pertinent to the mission on which he is being sent. A number of names had been attached to the ancestral Deity in the founding accounts, many given on the basis of an encounter in which a particular attribute was manifest. This diversity of names is also reflected in Exodus 6:2–3, where God indicates that there were some names that had been manifest to the patriarchs but that he had not yet acted in ways that would manifest the identity bound up in the name Yahweh. His statement does not suggest that the patriarchs had never been
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The name Yahweh would then designate “a God who creates” in the sense of “a God who enters a relationship.”c This could be a rather generic epithet for a personal god, but it could also lay the foundation for the key concept of a covenant God, for this engendering becomes synonymous with choice (= election). We might recall that besides naming and giving a function, creating often involves separating—so here Israel is separated out, given a function (Exod. 19:5–6), and in that way Yahweh is causing them to exist as his covenant people.
People in the ancient world found their own identity in their community. Since they tended to think of the gods as being similar to them in many ways, they believed that the gods also found their identity in community. It was therefore essential that there be a community of the gods. Without a community, where would the gods find identity?
In the ancient world, major decisions among the gods were made in the community of the gods. Most likely a perception modeled after human government of an early period, this view understood the gods as deliberating and governing as an assembly.
Without an informed understanding of the divine council it had become commonplace for interpreters to read the Trinity, or at least plurality in the godhead, into the plurals in Genesis, though most did not hesitate to admit the unlikelihood that the Israelites understood the text in those terms.d
Even as we have come to understand the Old Testament better in light of the ancient worldview, we are able to see sharp contrast in the way that the concept of the council has evolved to suit the theology of Israel. This is an example of what is found many times throughout the Old Testament. Confessional scholars would not think in terms of God revealing the concept of a divine council to Israel. It is just there in the background, not necessarily borrowed from the broader culture, but simply a part of how people thought in the cognitive environment of the ancient world. Nevertheless, the
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Every aspect of what we call the natural world was associated with some deity in the ancient Near East. The result is that the term “natural world” would be meaningless or nonsensical to them. There was nothing about the world that was natural. There was no purely natural cause and effect, no natural laws, no natural occurrences—everything was imbued with the supernatural (another artificial category).38
The birth of the sun god is coterminous with the origin of the sun (neither functions/exists without the other), thus explaining the oft-mentioned correspondence between theogony and cosmogony. Though the god is the controlling party in the functioning partnership, the god has no existence separate from, outside, or above the sun. The sun is the manifestation of the god and the expression of the god’s attributes. The god is the power behind the sun. Because of this, we might also conclude that our categories of cosmogony (origins of the cosmos) and cosmology (operations of the cosmos) are
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H. C. Brichto has noted: “Biblical religion not only removes the One God from the domain of mythology, but as often noted, it demythologizes creation itself, and this even while it echoes with the constructs of pagan mythology.”b
b. Brichto, Names of God, 57. I would rephrase the last clause to suggest that it is not a pagan mythology that is heard in the echo, but an ancient cognitive environment.
When individual gods are addressed in prayer, attributes are often named and titles listed. It is here that we find the most optimistic portrayals of the gods.
Theologians tend to think of God’s goodness as the aggregate of his moral qualities.69 Theologians would typically understand God’s goodness as affirming that God could do no evil. In the ancient Near East there would be no outside standard to measure by, so good and evil would not be categories that could easily be applied to the gods. For Yahweh the standard is Yahweh’s own character, therefore making it impossible for him to do evil—good is defined by what he does. In both cases discussion and definitions quickly become either relative or circular, making the philosophical issue moot. What
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Were the Israelites any different from their neighbors in the ways they thought about the nature of deity? Did they think of Yahweh as having an inherent essence or simply as a deity who acted in particular ways? How would we know? Consistency might be one way. Another might be to observe affirmations of character even when actions seemed to suggest otherwise. A third would be to observe whether they show an inclination to deduce abstractions about the deity in a way that is distinct from the others in the ancient Near East.
though Yahweh was viewed as intensely personal, this did not lead to a polytheism that provided him with a divine community. Instead, people are created to serve as community for him, and the covenant eventually comes to give structure to that community.
Israelites had to be constantly reminded by the prophets that Yahweh is not like a human and not like the other gods.
Worship took place at temples, but temples were not designed primarily to provide a place for worship.2 They were designed to be residences for deities and, as such, were places for the performance of cultic rituals.
it would be logical to understand the garden as the antechamber to the holy of holies. Eden proper would be the holy of holies, and the garden adjoins it as the antechamber. In this regard it is of importance to note that the objects that were kept in the antechamber of the temple sanctuary are images intended to evoke the garden.f The menorah is a symbol of the tree of life,g and the table for the bread of the Presence provided food for the priests.
“To the members of any ancient Mesopotamian urban community, the vast economic resources and complex administrative apparatus of its temple existed in order to minister to the needs and comfort of the city’s patron god or goddess, for his or her numinous presence therein was believed to be the fundamental prerequisite for success in all human endeavors.”51
sacrifices should not be viewed as simply a way to redress offense or deal with sin. Sacrifices are the means by which worshipers built relationship with the gods.
How did people or priests discern what rituals would satisfy the gods? Israelites believed that Yahweh had revealed to them what he expected, but in the ancient Near East there was no such revelation. Lacking such revelation, people and priests were left to deduce what might please the god. For that they depended on their knowledge of what would please a king.
when all possible ritual recourse had been followed and still evidence pointed to an angry god—they could only guess what he might want.62
The main difference seen in the cognitive worldview of Israel concerned the extent to which Yahweh had needs that were met by rituals, or the way in which the giving of gifts influenced deity. At the same time, we should not think that the main role of sacrifice was to deal with sin. Israel’s “clearing” sacrifices addressed the impact of sin on sacred space68 as they expunged contamination, but they had many other sacrifices designed to direct their worship toward Yahweh.
[Mesopotamian religiosity] was made up above all of a “centrifugal” feeling of fear, respect, and servility with regard to the divine; that the divine was portrayed in the human model (anthropomorphism) and was spread out over a whole society of supernatural beings, gods (polytheism), whose needs people were expected to fulfill and whose orders were to be carried out with all the devotion, submission, but also generosity and ostentation that were thought to be expected by such lofty figures. Furthermore, it was resolutely and exclusively a prehistoric religion without holy scriptures,
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The ordinary commoner in the ancient world had little relationship with religion at that level (aside from the festivals and other spectacle events such as processions). The religion practiced at the popular level can be called “family religion” because it had its base in the family unit rather than in the individual.
