Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament 9781607240150, 2012003151, 1607240157

Citation preview

Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament

Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its Contexts 16

The series Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its Contexts publishes academic works dealing with study of the Hebrew Bible, ancient Israelite society and related ancient societies, biblical Hebrew and cognate languages, the reception of biblical texts through the centuries, and the history of the discipline. Volumes in the series include monographs, collective works, and the printed version of the contents of the important on-line Journal of Hebrew Scriptures

Covenant and Grace in the Old Testament

Assyrian Propaganda and Israelite Faith

Robert D. Miller

9

34 2012

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2012 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2012

‫ܒ‬

9

ISBN 978-1-60724-015-0

ISSN 1935-6897

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Robert D., II. Covenant and grace in the Old Testament : Assyrian propaganda and Israelite faith / By Robert Miller. p. cm. -- (Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures and its contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Covenants--Biblical teaching. 2. Covenants--Religious aspects--Judaism. 3. God--Biblical teaching. 4. Grace (Jewish theology)--Biblical teaching. 5. Jews--Election, Doctrine of. 6. Assyro-Babylonian literature--Relation to the Old Testament. 7. Assyria--Religion. I. Title. BS1199.C6M55 2012 231.7'6--dc23 2012003151

Printed in the United States of America

ii

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Nihil Obstat: Rev. Christopher Begg, S.T.D., Ph.D. Censor Deputatus Imprimatur: Most Rev. Barry C. Knestout Auxiliary Bishop of Washington Archdiocese of Washington November 17, 2011 The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. There is no implication that those who have granted the nihil obstat or imprimatur agree with the content, opinions or statements expressed therein.

iii

“Leave fond reports to such as stories tell And covenants to those that buy and sell.” Michael Drayton, “Queen Katherine to Owen Tudor” (1597)

“I know there’s a place You walked Where love falls from the Trees My heart is like a broken cup I only feel right on my knees

I spit out like a sewer hole Yet still receive Your kiss How can I measure up to anyone now After such a Love as this?” The Who, “Who are You?”

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents ..................................................................................... v List of Illustrations ................................................................................. vii Preface ....................................................................................................... ix Introduction .............................................................................................. 1 1 The Shape of Scholarship on Covenant ...................................... 7 The Antiquity of Covenant ............................................................ 8 The Definition and Meaning of Covenant ................................ 18 The Covenant Formula ................................................................ 24 Summary: The Meaning of Covenant ........................................ 27 2 The Appeal to Extrabiblical Paradigms ..................................... 29 3 The Barrakab Inscription ............................................................. 49 A Brief History of Sam’al ............................................................. 49 The Text of the Barrakab Inscriptions....................................... 62 The Propaganda of Submission .................................................. 68 4 The Matrix of Assyrian Imperialism........................................... 77 5 The Israelite Counterparts ........................................................... 97 Biblical parallels ............................................................................. 98 Khen .......................................................................................... 99 ‛amal .........................................................................................103 yoshib ‛al kisse‚ .......................................................................109 melakim rabbim .....................................................................111 ṣadiq .........................................................................................114 qeṣot-ha‚areṣ ...........................................................................116 Summary and Addendum ..........................................................118 6 A Context for the Transfer ........................................................121 7 The Transmission of the Constellation....................................147 8 The Propaganda of Submission to Yahweh ............................159 ṣadiq ...............................................................................................160 ‘ebed...............................................................................................165 Khen ..............................................................................................167 v

vi 9

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The Creedal Context ..................................................................171 The Place of the Historical Credos...........................................171 Beyond Dating .............................................................................183 10 Election and Grace in Israelite Religion ..................................191 Covenant .......................................................................................193 Election .........................................................................................195 Grace .............................................................................................203 The King .......................................................................................207 11 The Triumph of Grace ...............................................................215 Rethinking Biblical Theology ....................................................215 Righteousness, Covenant, and the Servant King ...................222 Election .........................................................................................235 Grace .............................................................................................242 Bibliography ..........................................................................................251 Index .......................................................................................................315

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1. Map of the Levant, 9th-8th centuries B.C.. ................................... 51 Figure 2. Facsimile of Barrakab Inscription i. ............................................... 63 Figure 3. Bronze band from the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser III. . 93 Figure 4. Stone panel from the north-west palace of Asurnasirpa II ........ 94 Figure 5. Stone panel from central palace of Tiglath-Pilesar III. ............. 119 Figure 6. Black obelisk of Shalmaneser, detail............................................. 123 Figure 7. Balawat gate of Shalmaneser, detail. ............................................. 141

vii

PREFACE Systematic Theology has largely, if not wholly, ignored the category of Covenant, even in Theology of God, where it fits best.1 The exception to this has historically been in Reformed or Calvinist theology.2 Note the Westminster Confession (7.1): “He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant” all of God’s relations with humanity. From such Presbyterian and Reformed “Federal Theology” circles, covenant theology has of late entered popular Catholicism, largely unchanged in form.3 But such theological reflections 1 Gary D. Badcock, “God of the Covenant,” in Covenant Theology, ed. Mark J. Cartledge and David Mills (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2001), 69. 2 Badcock, “God of the Covenant,” 69; Petrus Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2006), 198-205; Craig G. Bartholomew, “Covenant and Creation,” Calvin Theological Journal 30 (1995): 11. 3 Compare the order of “expanding covenants” in Douglas Wilson, “Recovering the Masculine mind,” Credenda Agenda 7 (1995): 4-5; in John Murray, Covenants of Grace (1953; repr. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1988), 31; and, with chart, in O. Palmer Robertson, Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), 27, 62, 93-300, with Scott Hahn, Father who Keeps His Promises (Ann Arbor: Servant Publications, 1998), 31-35, with chart on the last page, and the chart in Scott Hahn, Understanding the Scriptures (Woodridge, IL: Midwest Theological Forum, 2005), 15. For discussion, see Edward O’Neill, “Scott Hahn’s Novelties,” New Oxford Review (June 2004): 23-30. In spite of any impact of the present study, the covenant genii may be difficult to put back in the bottle; see, e.g., http://www.salvationhistory.com/studies/courses/online/covenant_love . For a completely independent Catholic covenant theology, see Keefe, Covenantal Theology. For suggestions of earlier Federal Theology influences

ix

x

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

“are important tasks that require attention from scholars in the field. At times we are compelled to make textbooks or popular summaries … [but] this means, of course, that important questions are not given priority.”4 When I began this book, I thought it was about covenant. I learned it was about grace. But the two are greatly intertwined and fluid. We are granted – to paraphrase Christopher Morley -- in the eye and the anxious mind, the thematic synthesis we so fondly suppose we desire.5 Then to that wish for seeing steadily and completely is joined the pleasure of great notions like covenant and election and grace in alliance. As Santayana wrote, “The human mind at best is a sort of song; the music of it runs away with the words, and even the words, which pass for the names of things, are but poor wild symbols for their unfathomed objects.”6 Chapters 2 and 11 of this book are derived from seminar papers written for Prof. Brian Schmidt at the University of Michigan. Chapter 3 was a seminar paper written for Prof. Hayim Tadmor (1923-2005). At the time of that paper’s writing in 1992, it was about this history of Sam’al and the Barrakab Stele. It was not until 2004 that the connection with Israelite religion occurred to me. It was to become the key to this entire study. The research for this book was funded by a Visiting Fellowship to the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and I thank the Centre’s then President, Peter Oppenheimer, for the opportunity to spend four months in research in Oxford. During this time, I was also an Academic Visitor at Campion Hall, Oxford, for which I wish to thank the then Master, Rev. Peter L’Estrange, S.J. Funding was also provided by an American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant. I am grateful to Mount St. Mary's Seminary for allowing me the research sabbatical. Other individuals who on Pope Paul VI, see Norbert Lohfink, “Der Alte Bund im 4. Hochgebet,” Bibel und Liturgie 73 (2000): 40. 4 Frank Crüsemann, The Torah (trans. A. W. Mahnke; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), xiii. 5 Christopher Morley, “Sense of Place” (1944) repr. in The Ironing Board (Garden City: Doubleday, 1968) 6 George Santayana, Soliloquies in England (London: Constable, 1922).

PREFACE

xi

have provided helpful advice on this book include Gary Herion, Giorgio Buccellati, Jill Middlemas, Reinhard Kratz, Walter Moberly, Walter Houston, Anselm Hagedorn, Stuart Weeks, Nick King S.J., Peter Ryan S.J., Hugh Williamson, Ernest Nicholson, Michael Wensing, Kevin Cathcart, Stephen Hipp, Jack Lundbom, Mark S. Smith, Stephanie Dalley, Christopher Begg, Andrew Minto, Randall Heskett, and Joseph Wimmer O.S.A.. Fredrik Heiding, S.J., assisted me with translations from Nordic languages. Eileen Peregoy, O.S.F., Jamie Bannister, and Nathan LaMontagne provided indispensable editing. My wife Anne-Marie and sons William, Patrick, Joseph, and James deserve my utmost thanks for patience during my work and for uprooting to England for a semester. Most especially, I could not have completed this work – no more than any other – without Anne-Marie’s support. The volume is dedicated to Paul V. Redmond, friend, priest, and scholar, who over the past decade has reminded me of what became the conclusion of this book, that our core identity is “Beloved of God.” R.D.M. Washington, DC, 2012

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study is to explain how Israel understood its relationship with Yahweh. This ambitious enterprise begins with one Aramaic text from the periphery of the Neo-Assyrian vassal system and eventually leads to theological reflections on the nature of God’s dealings with humanity. En route, it explores the biblical notion of the covenant, the metaphor of God as king, the growth of the Deuteronomistic History, and the nature of oral tradition. The first half of this book examines the historical questions of Israel’s employment of Neo-Assyrian idioms to articulate their relationship to God, and the second unpacks the meaning of this language in the biblical context. A detailed survey of the chapters is provided further in this Introduction. Nevertheless, the progression of the treatment in this book is a journey to which I invite the reader but promise no unduly deliberate guidance. “Reading is discovery. To impose opinion is to weaken the sense of direction in thought and feeling, and to guard unduly against pitfalls is to limit opportunities of exercising perception and judgment.”1 The single question at the heart of this study is, “How did Israel conceptualize its relationship with God?” Chronological, textual, and other constraints will be applied to this question as we proceed, but this exploration begins with the note that for most contemporary thinkers, the immediate answer to the question is, “As covenant.” The term is variously and even contradictorily defined, but its applicability to the question is widespread. Norbert Lohfink explains, with a modicum of circumlocution, “There is ‘something’ that is spoken about; there are images and ideas with which the 1 Holbrook Jackson, Maxims of Books and Reading (London: The First Edition Club, 1934), 8.

1

2

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

biblical writers try to grasp what is meant by that ‘something’; and they can change. This is where talk about ‘covenant’ belongs. The ‘something’ which is spoken about is God’s relationship to particular persons, to his people, or to the whole human race.”2 The definition of “covenant” and the degree to which it describes Israelite conceptions of their relationship with God will be discussed in more detail at various points, and the term “covenant” will finally be rejected. The entire range of scholarly literature on covenant will be surveyed in Chapter 1. Petrus Gräbe claims there has been a “renaissance” of interest in covenant in recent years.3 However, this is an overstatement; we have not approached the “Bundesinflation” of the 1960s.4 Although much of the scholarship on covenant has been preoccupied with dating the idea of covenant, the word berit, and the covenant formula, much also has been learned that will set the stage for the following chapters. Chapter 2 explores one examination of covenant, the work of George Mendenhall endeavoring to draw parallels with Late Bronze age suzerainty treaties. These merit special attention because they are the most notable example of studying the covenant via ancient Near Eastern parallels, as I intend to propose in what follows. The merits and problems of Mendenhall’s work and that which has followed it will be presented. But narrowing the origin of covenant to ancient Near Eastern treaties will prove inadequate, and will necessitate a turn to other comparative material. Chapter 3 presents the specific ancient Near Eastern text that I will compare with the Hebrew Bible. The various texts of the Barrakab inscription from ancient Sam’al provide this comparand. This chapter presents a new translation of this text, with philologi-

2

21.

Norbert Lohfink, Covenant Never Revoked (New York: Paulist, 1991),

3 Petrus Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), xvii. 4 Erich Zenger, “Bundestheologie,” in Der Neue Bund im Alten, ed. Erich Zenger (Quaestiones Disputatae 146; Freiburg: Herder, 1993), 16. The end of that era was pronounced by Jonathan Bishop, Covenant: A Reading (Springfield: Templegate, 1982), 29.

INTRODUCTION

3

cal notes, and then situates the text within the history of Sam’al using methods of propaganda study to explain its meaning. Chapter 4 illustrates how the Barrakab inscription fits into the context of Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda. The words, images, and ideology of the text will be shown to be a vassal’s view of this propaganda. This means that the Barrakab inscription’s importance extends beyond its recording of Sam’al’s local history. It is our best illustration of how minor states on the western periphery of the empire absorbed and re-used Assyrian propaganda, and thus predicts what we will see in Israel and Judah of this period. Chapter 5 turns to the biblical parallels. Examples from the Hebrew Bible of language parallel to the Aramaic words of the Barrakab inscription are listed, particularly where there are multiple parallels in proximity, suggesting a semantic constellation. This is primarily an examination of linguistic parallels, although ideological, conceptual parallels are also mentioned. There is danger here, as “The number of instances in which the OT has hitherto been supposed to depend on foreign sources – small though that number is – is probably too large.”5 I will use caution in identifying places where the biblical authors use language likely taken from Neo-Assyrian propaganda. To eventually determine why this language was employed, it is of great importance to learn when these texts were written and by whom, and so this is given substantial attention in the chapter.6 “To be comparative means to be historical.”7 The parallels between biblical texts and Neo-Assyrian propaganda have to be explained in terms of historical contact, or at least “functional causality,” between the two entities.8 Chapter 6 offers a historical context 5 Morton Smith, “Common Theology of the Ancient Near East,” Journal of Biblical Literature 71 (1952): 146. 6 W. J. Phythian-Adams, Call of Israel (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 62. 7 Kevin J. Cathcart, “Comparative Philological Approach to the Text of the Old Testament,” in Old Testament in Its World, ed. R. P. Gordon and Johannes C. de Moor (Oudtestamentische Studiën 52; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 1. 8 Tremper Longman III, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1991), 35.

4

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

in which the transference of this language and ideology from Assyria to Judah could have taken place. It necessitates surveying the entire history of Assyrian relations with Israel and Judah, as well as eliminating possible sources for the language and ideology other than Assyria. Several timeframes for transference will be put forward. The timeframes considered in Chapter 6 will not correspond to the dating of the texts in Chapter 5. There is, in fact, a gap of a century between the proposed importation of the language and its use in the biblical examples. In Chapter 7, I will explain what “happened” to the language and how the tropes in question passed into writing. Accordingly, the nature of ancient authorship itself must be explored. This task involves employing linguistic anthropology and the modern study of oral tradition. The detailed exposition of the exilic origin of the Deuteronomistic corpus will explain how the “constellation of tropes” found in a text like Barrakab became part of the biblical text. While this chronological placement of the Bible’s use of these tropes will be important for meaning, the biblical comparands to those in the Barrakab text also had traditional meanings in ancient Israel. Moreover, the biblical writers embedded the terms into a narrative world that further shapes the meaning. Chapter 8 examines the meanings attached to the terms in question within the narrative world of the Hebrew Bible. It is also important to see where the biblical writers used this language. Some of it is concentrated in what Gerhard von Rad called the “short historical credos.” Chapter 9 therefore looks at the history of scholarship on these “credos,” revitalizing the idea as a functional category “which both issued from and moulded the life of a religious community.”9 We will see that the “Barrakab tropes” are used in illocutionary acts that serve to constitute the very identity of “God’s people” they describe. At this point, we will arrive at Israel’s conception of that identity, at the notion of a relationship with Yahweh. Chapter 10 provides a synthetic yet diachronic presentation of that “covenant” in 9 G. W. Anderson, “Israel’s Creed: Sung, not Signed,” Scottish Journal of Theology 16 (1963): 280.

INTRODUCTION

5

the context of the history of Israelite religion. The chapter treats notions of righteousness, “servant,” election, and grace as the previous chapters have drawn up the relation among these. The biblical writers articulated these ideas in illocutionary texts aimed at bringing the reading audience into the relationship with Yahweh, in formal statements addressed not only to the Israel of the narrative world, but to the reading audience as well -- to all reading audiences. Chapter 11 focuses on this aspect: how can a promise that concerns the people of the narrative world apply to those outside? Only by breaching the proscenium arch and bringing the reader into the performative transaction depicted in the text. This, then, is an exercise in biblical theology -- a biblical theology narrowly defined as a hermeneutical interpretation of the results of Chapter 10.10 Since “there is no biblical theology which is of itself independent, free from an implicit theological interpretation on the part of the interpreter,”11 Chapter 11 is explicitly written from a Christian perspective, overtly Catholic but ecumenical in scope. It presents the true conclusions of this book, not merely the meaning of covenant in the Hebrew Bible but the meaning of covenant and grace in the “Old Testament” as an overture to the theological study of these topics in Christianity.

Steven M. Baugh, “Hermeneutics and Biblical Theology,” Modern Reformation 2 (1993): 12-15. 11 Roland Murphy, “Can the Book of Proverbs be a player in ‘biblical theology’?” Biblical Theology Bulletin 31 (2001): 4. 10

1 THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT “Covenant” has been called “the overriding and unifying category in … OT theology,”1 “of fundamental importance in Old Testament Religion.”2 Others have said, “The idea of covenant is perhaps the most daring in the Bible and one of the most daring in all human history.”3 The main dissenter from this view is Samuel Terrien, who writes, “This motif alone cannot provide an adequate principle either for grasping the complexity of Israel’s cultus and faith during the centuries of their organic growth or for producing a coherent account of the emergence of Christianity.”4 Terrien claims that outside of Deuteronomy and a few psalms, covenant is of scant importance in preexilic literature, in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Second Isaiah, and the wisdom literature.5 It is ignored, he says, by the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, rabbinic literature, and Synoptic traditions of the New Testament.6 Certainly there are no great panegyrics to covenant in the Psalter, no praise of covenant as one of God’s blessings. We will take up this obvious disagreement among G. Hasel, Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 20. 2 G. W. Anderson, The History and Religion of Israel (1966; repr. Oxford: University Press, 1989), 35. Also André Chouraqui, “L’Alliance dans les Écritures,” Revue des Sciences Morales et de Politiques 150 (1995): 5. 3 Daniel J. Elazar, “Covenant and Community,” Judaism 49 (2000): 393. 4 Samuel Terrien, Elusive Presence (Religious Perspectives 26; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 23, 27. 5 Terrien, Elusive Presence, 24-25. 6 Terrien, Elusive Presence, 25. He admits, however, that covenant figures more than forty times in 1 Maccabees; Elusive Presence, 53 n.113. 1

7

8

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

scholars in the course of this study. This chapter is restricted to scholarly examination of Israel’s covenant with God, which itself has been consistent, fluid, and divisive. Your second paragraph will be GP Normal style and it will be indented. Here your insights are beginning to mount and your reader is hanging onto your every word. But, you realize, your argument is better laid out with headings in each chapter. If you choose to add section headings, it will affect styles. How do you do that?

THE ANTIQUITY OF COVENANT In the late 19th century, Julius Wellhausen (1844-1918) and his school considered the notion of covenant to be a late theological innovation, associated with the Hebrew prophets and the Deuteronomistic reform of the 7th century B.C. (2 Kgs 22:8-11), largely on the basis of source critical analysis of the biblical text.7 Because Wellhausen had assigned various “sources” in the Pentateuch to fairly specific dates, he found covenant primarily in Deuteronomic materials that he dated to the reforms of King Josiah described in 2 Kings 22. In the first quarter of the 20th century, however, scholars reacted to this understanding, arguing for greater antiquity for the covenant idea. Some of this case was made by the traditions-history and form-critical work of Hermann Gunkel, Sigmund Mowinckel, Albrecht Alt, and their students.8 Other source critics such as Walter Zimmerli looked at the covenant inauguration in Exod 24:3-8, when Moses descends the mountain and establishes the covenant. Zimmerli thought this account was basic to the notion of covenant and came from the so-called Elohist document, at least a century Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 413; John Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” in Covenant as Context, ed. A. D. H. Mayes and R. B. Salters (Oxford: University Press, 2003), 24. 8 Childs, Biblical Theology, 413; Ernest W. Nicholson, “Covenant in a Century of Study Since Wellhausen,” in Crises and Perspectives, ed. Johannes C. de Moor (Oudtestamentische Studiën 24; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 55-58. 7

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

9

earlier than Wellhausen had believed.9 From both angles, scholarship now saw the prophets and Deuteronomists as conservative reformers, appealing to early tradition, rather than as innovators.10 In 1965, Erhard Gerstenberger wrote, “Virtually all experts in the field, no matter what their background and philosophy, would endorse these fundamental assertions: … this concept originated most likely at the very beginning of Israel’s history.”11 Beginning in the 1960s, however, views began to turn again, with Wellhausen’s construct reasserting itself.12 One of the first examples was Alfred Jepsen, who saw little proof of covenant before the exilic period.13 In 1963, C. F. Whitley noted that the prophets of the latter 8th century show no knowledge of covenant. They base their indictments on unfaithfulness to the knowledge of God, rather than to any covenant.14 Whitley analyzed each covenant text. Exod 24:3-8 he found to be “an intrusion in an earlier narrative.” In Exod 34:10-28, “the Deuteronomic character of such 9 E.g., Walter Zimmerli, “Erwägungen zum Bund,” in Wort – Gebot – Glaube, ed. Hans Joachim Stoebe (Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments 59; Zurich: Zwingli Verlag, 1970), 187-88; Murray Lee Newman, Jr., People of the Covenant (1962; repr. London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1965), 29; cf. C. F. Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment in Israel,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22 (1963): 37. Cf. Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” 28. 10 Walther Eichrodt, “Darf man heute noch von einem Gottesbund mit Israel reden?” Theologische Zeitschrift (Basel) 30 (1974): 200-201; Leo Kritenski, Der Bund Gottes mit den Menschen nach dem Alten und Neuen Testament (Weider Bibel 10; Dusseldorf: Patmos-Verlag, 1963), 12; J. A. Thompson, “Covenant Patterns in the Ancient Near East,” Reformed Theological Review 18 (1959): 72. Cf. Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” 26. 11 Erhard Gerstenberger, “Covenant and Commandment,” Journal of Biblical Literature 84 (1965): 38. 12 Childs, Biblical Theology, 424; Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” 30; Ernest W. Nicholson, God and His People (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 191. 13 Alfred Jepsen, “Berith,” in Verbannung und Heimkehr, ed. Arnulf Kuschke (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1961), 178. 14 Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment,” 38-39; cf. Nicholson, “Covenant in a Century,” 64-65.

10

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

material is, however, obvious.” In Exod 19:3-6, the “eagles’ wings” “depend on Deuteronomy,” while the “holy nation” and “kingdom of priests” “can scarcely be earlier than the Priestly narrative.”15 Whitley concluded, “We may doubt if there was any notion of such a covenant before Deuteronomic times … a brilliant intuition of the author of the Book found in the Temple.”16 With Whitley, there may be more of Wellhausen than meets the eye.17 Part of Wellhausen’s late dating of covenant came from his own theology.18 While his sources for the Pentateuch had been derived by source criticism,19 they were put in a sequence according to the overall progress of history as his Protestant dogmatic system defined it.20 He had “combined scientific historiography with specifically Lutheran theological premises.”21 Similarly, Whitley concludes by hailing a historical Moses, but claimed, “We misinterpret the nature of his mission if we conceive of it as necessarily embracing the formulation of a code of laws which was to become the basis of later Judaism.”22 Whitley’s data deserves examination, but the quotation borders on anti-Semitism, and it is an easy slope from Wellhausen and de Wette to Gerhard Kittel’s Nazi propagandistic Das antike Weltjudentum (co-authored with Eugen Fisher in 1943), as Bishop has noted.23 Other scholars came to follow Jepsen and Whitley in accepting a prophetic-Deuteronomistic normative articulation of covenant, with some precursors from the so-called Yahwist source of Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment,” 40-42. Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment,” 42. 17 Gerstenberger, “Covenant and Commandment,” 38 n. 2. 18 John H. Hayes, “Wellhausen as a Historian of Israel,” Semeia 25 (1982): 55; Rolf Rendtorff, “The Paradigm is Changing,” Biblical Interpretation Sample issue (1992): 2-3. 19 Julius Wellhausen, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (1878; repr. New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 13. 20 Wellhausen, Prolegomena, 12. 21 Luke Timothy Johnson, in The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, ed. Luke T. Johnson and William S. Kurz (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 15 n.16. 22 Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment,” 48. 23 Bishop, Covenant, 95. 15 16

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

11

the Pentateuch, Hosea, and possible early sources of 1 Kings 1819.24 Yet Georg Fohrer also considered that in Joshua 7 and Genesis 15 knowledge of covenant could be traced back to nomadic early Israel, whose religion was constituted by covenant.25 The covenant idea could then be traced, via Judg 2:20; 2 Samuel 7; and 1 Kings 19, through the period of the judges and into the Monarchy.26 Why, after all, would Jeremiah speak of a “New Covenant” if the Israelite’s knew nothing of an old one?27 In 1969, Lothar Perlitt added more to the arguments of Jepsen and Whitley, arguing extensively that covenant was a Deuteronomistic development.28 Responding to objections such as Fohrer’s, Perlitt admitted that the covenant idea was present in Hosea and argued that the book of Hosea was itself written “with the assistance of Deuteronomistic covenant theology.”29 He admitted that Genesis 15, while difficult to determine, could hardly be other than E, yet a later hand had been over this literary work, adapting it greatly.30 Except for Ernest Nicholson and more recently Steven McKenzie,31 scholars of the English-speaking world remained skeptical of this late dating. Erhard Gerstenberger laments, “Certainly the discussion in Old Testament scholarship has gone on 24 Georg Fohrer, “Altes Testament – ‘Amphiktyonie’ und ‘Bund’?” Theologische Literaturzeitung 91 (1966): 893-94. 25 Fohrer, “Altes Testament,” 898. 26 Fohrer, “Altes Testament,” 899-900. 27 Fohrer, “Altes Testament,” 900. 28 Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament (Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament 36; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969); cf. Eckart Otto, “Die Ursprünge der Bundestheologie im Alten Testament und im alten Orient,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 4 (1998): 27-30; Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 45-46. 29 Perlitt, Bundestheologie, 52; also Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant (Diss. Marquette University, 1995) [hereafter, Kinship by Covenant (1995)], 92. 30 Perlitt, Bundestheologie, 72. 31 Nicholson, “Covenant in a Century,” 65-67; Steven L. McKenzie, Covenant (Understanding Biblical Themes 1; St. Louis: Chalice, 2000), 24; cf. Childs, Biblical Theology, 414; Otto, “Ursprünge,” 31-32.

12

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

since then as though nothing had happened.”32 James Barr wrote, “With all the will in the world it is a little hard to believe that the covenant of Yahweh with Israel became significant only so late.”33 The similar response of George Mendenhall and those who followed him will be treated in Chapter 2. In 1973, Frank Moore Cross developed an elaborate model for the development of covenant in response to Perlitt and others. Drawing on Mowinckel’s postulate of a covenant renewal festival in the period of the judges, Cross argued that these festivals employed the sequence of Exodus, Conquest, and Covenant as seen in Joshua 24, a text Perlitt had said depended on 2 Kings 22.34 Subsequently, “the cultic form of traditions” was “dissolved in the interests of the historical or prose-epic form into which our sources recast available tradition.”35 The Exodus-Conquest-Covenant order was finally replaced by another order, where the Sinai pericope then was introduced into the narrative before the Conquest. This was the common tradition of the J, E, and P sources of the Pentateuch. Cross held that, “The thrust of historical events, recognized as crucially or ultimately meaningful, alone had the power to displace the mythic pattern”;36 a sequence entrenched in ritual could only be overturned by “older historical memory.”37 The ExodusCovenant-Conquest order more accurately reflected the actual order in which the events occurred. Cross believed the actual order survived both by historical memory and, ultimately, by a pre-league, pre-conquest cult. The Deuteronomist merely gave covenant “a new sense, coming to mean ‘unconditional promise or oath.’”38

32 Erhard Gerstenberger, Theologies in the Old Testament (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 238. 33 James Barr, “Some Semantic Notes on the Covenant,” in Beiträge zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie, ed. Herbert Donner. Göttingen: Vandenhoek and Ruprecht, 1977), 37. 34 Frank Moore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 84-85; Perlitt, Bundestheologie, 270. 35 Cross, Canaanite Myth, 84. 36 Cross, Canaanite Myth, 87. 37 Cross, Canaanite Myth, 85. 38 Cross, Canaanite Myth, 260.

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

13

Many were not convinced.39 Those who looked for covenant in pre-Deuteronomistic times instead followed the lead of Fohrer in seeing the Deuteronomistic covenant theology as pervasive and normative, but building on earlier notions.40 Arvid Kapelrud examined Genesis 15 as an example of such pre-Deuteronomistic covenant.41 His conclusion, however, was that the notion of covenant there was not significantly different from that in Deuteronomy.42 Adrien Schenker worked with 1 Kgs 18:10, 30-39, Elijah’s contest with the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel, in similar fashion. He determined the origin of covenant was in vows that lay Israelites made before a priest.43 Udo Rüterswörden examined the preDeuteronomistic prophetic material, and concluded that while the term berit is rare in this corpus, this is not necessarily true of the idea of covenant.44 Mic 6:3-5; Isa 3:13-15; and Jer 2:1-7 all depend on such an idea.45 Murray Newman considered the argument that “eagles wings” and “holy nation” were late to be “considerably weakened, however, if the Elohist epic is viewed as northern in origin and the theo-

39 But cf. Hans Lubsczyk, “Die Bundesurkunde,” in Pentateuchal and Deuteronomistic Studies, ed. Christian Brekelmans and Johan Lust (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 94; Leuven: University Press, 1990), 165. 40 Childs, Biblical Theology, 417-18; Heinz-Dieter Neef, “Aspekte Alttestamentlicher Bundestheologie,” in Bund und Torah, ed. Friedrich Avemarie and Hermann Lichtenerger (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 92; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996), 1-4; Norbert Lohfink, Studien zum Deuteronomium und zur Deuteronomistischen Literatur (SBAB 8; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1990), 1.352-53. 41 Arvid Kapelrud, “Covenant as Agreement,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 2 (1988): 36-37. 42 Kapelrud, “Covenant as Agreement,” 38. 43 Adrien Schenker, “L’Origine de l’Idée d’une Alliance entre Dieu et Israël dans l’Ancien Testament,” Revue Biblique 95 (1988): 188-90. 44 Udo Rüterswörden, “Bundestheologie ohne ‫ ברית‬,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 4 (1998): 99. 45 A. D. H. Mayes, “Covenant on Sinai and the Covenant with David,” Hermathena 110 (1970): 44-46.

14

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

logical and literary precursor of the Deuteronomic traditions.”46 Newman accepted Cross’s construct of a covenant cult, nuancing it as two separate liturgies: a liturgy at Shechem and Shiloh and Bethel known to the Elohist and a liturgy at Hebron and Jerusalem known to the Yahwist.47 Neither tradition was dependent on the other, yet since the name “Moses” was firmly embedded in both, they must both point to a common historical event.48 Common to both, and therefore reflecting the actual events, were a theophany on Mt. Sinai, with a ritual of ratification under Moses.49 The difficulty with the views of Cross and Newman is the dependence on the covenant renewal ceremony. Without this questionable hypothesis, which is discussed in detail in Chapter 9, both constructs fail.50 Yet Frank Crüsemann has pointed out that the later we date texts such as Deuteronomy 6 and 26 and Joshua 24, the more remarkable the absence of Sinai in these passages grows.51 This especially requires explanation in light of the presence of Sinai in such early texts as the Song of Deborah (Judg 5:5) and Deut 33:2-5, 26-29, and in later pre-Deuteronomistic texts like 1 Kings 19 (which probably imitates an older Sinai tradition).52 Sinai, as the place of God and his act of salvation, is an early tradition.53 Nevertheless, it is not clear that Sinai has a link to covenant in these early traditions. Thus, while Cross, Newman, and Crüsemann all present valuable arguments in favor of an early covenant tradition, their contributions are somewhat questionable. Kapelrud and Fohrer present

Murray Lee Newman, Jr., “The Continuing Quest for the Historical Covenant,” in Psalms and Other Studies, ed. Jack C. Knight and L. A. Sinclair (Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House, 1990), 160. 47 Newman, “Continuing Quest,” 161-62. A similar proposal had been made by Newman in People of the Covenant, 147, prior to Cross’s study. 48 Newman, “Continuing Quest,” 162-63; People of the Covenant, 20-21. 49 Newman, “Continuing Quest,” 163-65. 50 R. E. Clements, Prophecy and Tradition (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975), 10-11. 51 Crüsemann, Torah, 32. 52 Crüsemann, Torah, 32-35. 53 Crüsemann, Torah, 37. 46

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

15

stronger evidence that weighs against blanket acceptance of the late constructions by Wellhausen, Jepsen, Whitley, and Perlitt. What all of these quests for the temporal origin of covenant miss is that covenant is both foundational and adaptable in the Bible, “doing service repeatedly in a variety of key biblical contexts.”54 “New events and new ideas modified the forms in transition, and a relatively complete view of covenant before our era must take into account these modifications.”55 Dennis McCarthy, S.J.’s extensive study of postexilic notions of covenant shows a dynamic notion, moving from liturgical remembrance of God’s saving acts to narrative memory.56 Given the further difficulty of extricating old traditions from literary context,57 John Barton presents two options for a biblical theology of covenant. One option is to adopt some sort of canonical approach, treating the biblical text as a unified Scripture, even though it has a complex compositional history and even though the advent of covenant could be quite late.58 Rolf Rendtorff has taken such an approach, seeing the importance of Genesis 9, with “remembrance of” and “sign of” the covenant, harking back to Genesis 1 and also reiterated in Exodus 19 and 24: “In both cases, the original gift of God (creation/covenant) is counteracted by human sin; in both cases God determines to destroy the responsible human community (humanity/Israel); in both cases the future depends on one man (Noah/Moses); and in both cases the covenant is finally (re)established.”59 Both cases involve a “sign of the covenant” (Gen 17:11; Exod 31:12-17).60 Also in view of a canonical Badcock, “God of the Covenant,” 67-68. Dennis J. McCarthy, “Covenant in Narratives from Late OT Times,” in The Quest for the Kingdom of God, ed. H. B. Huffmon, Frank A. Spina, and A. R. W. Green (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1983), 77. 56 McCarthy, “Covenant in Narratives,” 86 and passim; also Silvia Linington, “The Term berit in the Old Testament,” Old Testament Essays 19 (2006): 691. 57 Crüsemann, Torah, 30. 58 Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” 31-32. 59 Rolf Rendtorff, “‘Covenant’ as Structuring Concept in Genesis and Exodus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 387-89. 60 Rendtorff, “Covenant as Structuring,” 392. 54 55

16

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

approach is the work of Scott Hahn: “The canonical method enables us to do ‘covenant theology’ without having to commit to one (or another) historical-critical view, much less wait for consensus, should it ever come.”61 In some of his works, Norbert Lohfink has taken a similar canonical approach.62 Yet Lohfink notes that this unified view fails when the New Testament enters into the discussion because covenant is not an overarching category for the New Testament.63 Nevertheless, there are problems with such canonical approaches, even when the goal is biblical theology. As Carlos Bovell has pointed out, the Bible itself makes no distinction “between a primary, authoritative” early Scripture “and a secondary interpretive tradition.”64 Moreover, if canon is the sole guide to interpret the Bible for theology, this cannot say anything about God or grace without taking a vantage point outside the text, which scholars invoking canon usually deplore.65 To latch on to the “final editor’s intent” seems trite, and themes in “canonical order” open to too many interpretations. Did ancient canonizers mean to reconcile divergent views?66 By asking questions about meaning without wrestling with the tedium of actual texts, about tradition without languages, about ideology without history, many canonical approaches “foreclose the possibilities for what the text might turn Hahn, Kinship by Covenant (1995), 5 n.10, 107 n.143; Scott W. Hahn, Kinship by Covenant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) [hereafter Kinship by Covenant (2009)], 24. Hahn’s view is colored by an antagonistic and somewhat ill-informed evaluation of “historical-critical” methods, exhibited in Scott Hahn and Karl Keating, “Scott Hahn on the Politicized Bible,” This Rock 7.9 (September 1996): 10-11, 14. 62 Norbert Lohfink, “Der Begriff ‘Bund’ in der biblischen Theologie,” Theologie und Philosophie 66 (1991): 170-75; cf. Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 26-28. 63 Lohfink, “Der Begriff Bund,” 169; Lohfink, Covenant, 20. 64 Carlos R. Bovell, “Scriptural Authority and Believing Criticism,” Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 3 (2005): 20, 22. Bovell’s examples are from James, Jude, and 1 Corinthians; pp. 20-22. 65 James Barr, Holy Scripture (Oxford: University Press, 1983), 137. 66 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old and New (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), viii. 61

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

17

out to mean on the basis of an already existing theory about what this meaning is bound to be.”67 Without exploring historically “likely presuppositions, questions of against what opposing force the passage is written, and the like ... over many questions one would simply have to say one did not know what the text could mean.”68 Finally, Lohfink himself acknowledges that the plurality of covenant theologies in the Old Testament cannot be reduced to a single voice.69 Barton’s second option is to consider covenant within the history of ideas, alongside the history of other institutions.70 This method will be adopted here. But that does not mean presenting a Salvation History, a Heilsgeschichte, as much as it requires a “History of Traditions,” a Traditionsgeschichte. The point is not that the traditions of the Old Testament do converge on their own into certain overriding themes, but that each addition does involve a change in the meaning of the whole.71 The importance of traditions history for the theological interpretation intended in this book will be shown in Chapter 11. Yet few will deny that the historical meanings of covenant have been acutely colored by the meaning in Deuteronomy; “regardless of the age and circumstances lying behind the Deuteronomic covenant formulation, its theology became the normative expression of God’s relation to Israel.”72 Even late in the postexilic period, the normative notion was Deuteronomy’s (Dan 9:4; Jdth 7:28; 13:20; Tob 13:6).73 John Barton, “Reading the Bible as Scripture,” paper presented to the Irish Biblical Association Annual Conference, Dublin, 2006. 68 Barr, Holy Scripture, 169. 69 Norbert Lohfink, “Kinder Abraham aus Steinen,” in Der ungekündigte Bund?, ed. Hubert Frankenmölle (Quaestiones Disputatae 172; Freiburg: Herder, 1998), 35, 37; but cf. 38. 70 Barton, “Covenant in Old Testament Theology,” 33-34. Terrien adopts the same stance; Elusive Presence, 33. 71 Norbert Lohfink, “Über die Irrtumslosigkeit und die Einheit der Schrift,” Stimmen der Zeit 174 (1964): 173. 72 Childs, Biblical Theology, 419; Bishop, Covenant, 143. 73 McCarthy, “Covenant in Narratives,” 81-82. Gary Knoppers notes the overwhelming influence of Deuteronomy even in the New Testament 67

18

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE DEFINITION AND MEANING OF COVENANT Considerable scholarly effort has also been spent defining covenant. Some have sought merely to define the Hebrew word berit, to which I will return in the following section, while others defined the broader idea of covenant. One definition offered was, “a bond in blood sovereignly administered.”74 Also suggested has been, “an elected … relationship of obligation under oath.”75 Another offered “a formal, ritually enacted ceremony mediated by the prophet or king in the temple, a ceremony in which the community is founded through the people’s indexical acceptance of the revealed

and Qumran community; “The Relationship of the Deuteronomistic History to Chronicles,” paper presented at the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010. Jan Joosten argues that in the Holiness Code the notion is quite different, derived from ancient Near Eastern “free city” grants; Jan Joosten, “Covenant Theology in the Holiness Code,” Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 4 (1998): 145-55, 163. This has been seriously questioned by Christophe Nihan, “Berit in the Priestly Literature of the Torah,” paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting (Vienna, 2007), for whom H’s view of covenant is similar to how D’s will be described herein. 74 Robertson, Christ of the Covenants, 4; Douglas Wilson, Future Men (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2001); “Thema.” Douglas Wilson is a controversial figure, widely accused of being a white supremacist and certainly one who argues the benefits of slavery (as a perusal of the Southern Poverty Law Center website would illustrate). It is noteworthy, however, that his definition of covenant is identical to Robertson’s, and in fact is ubiquitous in Theonomous / Reconstructionist Calvinism (see Preface, n. 3), not merely in Wilson’s Federal Vision Theology. On the Catholic tendencies of Wilson’s close associate Steve Wilkins, co-founder of Federal Vision Theology, see G. P. Waters, Federal Vision and Covenant Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2006), ix, 1, 94. 75 Gordon Paul Hugenberger, Marriage as Covenant (Vetus Testamentum Supplement 52; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 11.

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

19

law.”76 Gary Knoppers has defined covenant as “a formal agreement involving two or more parties.”77 Yet Knoppers admits that there is much variation in the idea of covenant. “Covenants may be mutually binding, but they need not be.”78 Covenant is “subject to a variety of configurations in a variety of historical contexts that resist complete definition.”79 Because of this fluidity in covenant, many scholars narrow the focus of study to the single word, berit. This term has been investigated for some time.80 A century ago, Johannes Pedersen analyzed the uses and parallel terms of berit.81 He observed that berit was linked to shalom (Ps 55:21; Job 5:23; Obad 7; etc.).82 Noting that berit was sometimes a pledge (Mal 3:1), at others an oath (2 Chron 15:12), he concluded no single modern term could translate berit.83 I shall return to this astute conclusion below. A seminal study of berit was Joachim Begrich’s 1944 essay.84 Begrich concluded the original use of the term referred to the form of relationship between Yahweh and Israel. Only later did the term come to refer to the actual document in which this relationship was John M. Lundquist, “Temple, Covenant, and Law in the Ancient Near East and in the Old Testament,” in Israel’s Apostasy and Restoration, ed. Avraham Gileadi (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1988), 295. 77 Gary Knoppers, “Ancient Near Eastern Royal Grants and the Davidic Covenant,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 116 (1996): 696. Similar, too is, Irvin A. Busenitz, “Introduction to the Biblical Covenants,” Masters Seminary Journal 10 (1999): 175. 78 Knoppers, “Ancient Near Eastern,” 696. 79 Knoppers, “Ancient Near Eastern,” 695-96. 80 On the particular phrase, berit `olam, see Steven D. Mason, “Eternal Covenant” in the Pentateuch (Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 494; New York: T & T Clark, 2008). 81 Johannes Pedersen, Der Eid bei den Semiten (Studien zur Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients 3; Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1914). J. Clifford Hindley, “The Meaning and Translation of Covenant,” Bible Translator 13 (1962): 90-101 relies almost entirely on Pedersen. 82 Pedersen, Eid bei den Semiten, 32. 83 Pedersen, Eid bei den Semiten, 43-44, 37. 84 Joachim Begrich, “Ein Beitrag zur Erfassung einer alttestamentlichen Denkform,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 60 (1944): 1-11. 76

20

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

laid down, at which point it became synonymous with terms like torah and mishpat.85 Begrich found most uses of berit to be Deuteronomic.86 Some thirty years later, Dennis McCarthy examined the semantic range of berit in Genesis and the Deuteronomistic history. He found that in the six berits of the Deuteronomistic history, all involved negotiation, most were formulated, most were bilateral, and all addressed relationships that already existed.87 In Genesis, both J and E strands, berits likewise had negotiation, were formulated, were usually unilateral, and built on existing relationships. They also included some “sign.”88 In 1973, Ernst Kutsch engaged in the most thorough study up to that point on the use of berit in the Old Testament, building on a shorter study he had published in 1967.89 One of his two main conclusions was that berit did not mean covenant at all, but Verpflichtung, “obligation.”90 His other conclusion was that in preDeuteronomistic times, uses of berit were mostly for interpersonal relations.91 There were two small groups of pre-Deuteronomic texts where a human-divine berit was present. In the first, Genesis Begrich, “Beitrag zur Erfassung,” 9-10. Begrich, “Beitrag zur Erfassung,” 10. 87 Dennis J. McCarthy, “Běrît and Covenant in the Deuteronomistic History” (1972; repr. in Institution and Narrative; Analecta Biblica 108; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1985), 37-38. 88 Dennis J. McCarthy, “Covenant Relationships” (1972; repr. in Institution and Narrative; Analecta Biblica 108; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1985), 57-58, 64-65. Similar conclusions obtain in Josef Scharbert, “Die Begriffe ‘Berîth’ und ‘Tôrah’ in den Pentateuchschichten,” in De La Tôrah au Messie, ed. Maurice Carrez, Joseph Doré, and Pierre Grelot (Paris: Desclée, 1981), 166-68. 89 Norbert Lohfink, “Bund als Vertrag im Deuteronomium,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 107 (1995): 214. 90 Ernst Kutsch, Verheissung und Gesetz (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 131; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), 27, 39; Ernst Kutsch, “Der Begriff ‫ ברית‬in vordeuteronomischer Zeit,” in Das Ferne und Nahe Wort, ed. Fritz Maass (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 105; Berlin: Alfred Töpelmann, 1967), 143. 91 Kutsch, Verheissung und Gesetz, 91; “Der Begriff,” 135-37. 85 86

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

21

15, Psalm 89, and 2 Sam 23:5, Yahweh obligates himself, speaks through a berit-vow or pledge. In the second, Hosea 2 and 8, Joshua 7, and Deuteronomy 33, Yahweh is the subject who has cut the berit that obligates Israel.92 In neither case was there any relationship between God and Israel. Kutsch then illustrated how Septuagint and early rabbinic interpretation led to berit being interpreted as covenant.93 Regarding the first conclusion, that of the basic meaning of berit, James Barr wrote a magisterial essay on the semantics of the term in 1977. Barr began by outlining the difficulty in finding an etymology of the word, pointing out also that an etymological quest for the meaning of berit was a misguided effort.94 Like Pedersen before him, Barr showed that berit was highly idiomatic, that its semantic field was very wide, covering agreement, treaty, promise, obligation, and more.95 Berit does not have any real synonyms in Hebrew.96 His conclusion was that the “chief characteristic of berit and the lexical constellation that surrounds it, as we have seen, is that it refrains from making this sort of mapping [as Kutsch and others would try] of the area.”97 Barr also noted that berit has no plural; although the Bible “clearly specifies a considerable number of covenants specifically attached to particular persons, times and places,” it is not possible in Hebrew to say, “covenants.”98 Some scholars accepted Barr’s warnings about berit’s large semantic range: “We must resist every attempt to narrow down the

Kutsch, Verheissung und Gesetz, 91-92; “Der Begriff,” 138. Kutsch, Verheissung und Gesetz, 204. Knoppers misunderstood Kutsch to be saying that covenant means only “oath or obligation”; Knoppers, “Ancient Near Eastern,” 695. 94 Barr, “Some Semantic Notes,” 23-24, 35. Also Robert Davidson, “Covenant Ideology in Ancient Israel,” in The World of Ancient Israel, ed. R. E. Clements (Cambridge: University Press, 1989), 324. 95 Barr, “Some Semantic Notes,” 27, 31. 96 Barr, “Some Semantic Notes,” 31-32. 97 Barr, “Some Semantic Notes,” 37. 98 Barr, “Some Semantic Notes,” 29-30; Busenitz, “Introduction,” 181. 92 93

22

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

terms used.”99 Gary Knoppers, Petrus Gräbe, Rolf Rendtorff, and others now agree with this conclusion.100 But others continued to provide base definitions for berit: “non-aggression pact” (Kapelrud),101 “legal contract” (Buchanan < Spinoza).102 Perlitt and others stay with Kutsch’s “obligation,”103 or accepted Kutsch with qualifications: “Though berit as such denotes ‘Verpflichtung,’ its general understanding was that of an agreement.”104 Werner Schmidt defines berit always as Verpflichtung, but outlines three synchronic variants: covenant as self-obligation (e.g., Josh 9:6-15; 2 Kgs 23:3), covenant obligating another (Ezek 17:12; 1 Kgs 20:34), and mutual obligation (Gen 21:27-32; 1 Kgs 5:26).105 He accepts Kutsch’s dating, since Amos, Isaiah, and Micah do not refer to covenant.106 The recent study by Silvia Linington contrariwise attempts to define berit both synchronically and diachronically.107

Hans-Joachim Kraus, “God’s Covenant,” Reformed World 35 (1979): 257-58. 100 McCarthy, “Covenant in Narratives,” 81; Knoppers, “Ancient Near Eastern,” 696; Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 9-11; Rendtorff, “Covenant as Structuring,” 391; Paul Wells, “Covenant, Humanity, and Scripture,” Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986): 23, 25. 101 Kapelrud, “Covenant as Agreement,” 38. 102 Baruch Spinoza, Tractus Theologico-Politicus (1670), chap. 16; George Wesley Buchanan, “The Covenant in Legal Context,” in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. DeRoo (Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement 71; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 28-35. 103 Schenker, “L’Origine,” 185; Thomas E. McComiskey, Covenants of Promise (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 63; Lothar Perlitt, “Covenant,” Encyclopedia of Chrstianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 1.710. 104 Moshe Weinfeld, “Berît – Covenant vs. Obligation,” Biblica 56 (1975): 124; cf. Lohfink, “Der Begriff Bund,” 166. 105 Werner H. Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube in seiner Geschichte (Neukirchener Studienbücher 6; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1990), 130. 106 Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube, 130-31. 107 Silvia Linington, “The Term berit in the Old Testament,” Old Testament Essays 15 (2002): 687-714, 16 (2003): 259-90, 18 (2005): 664-80, 19 (2006): 118-43, 671-93. 99

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

23

Others continued the search for semantic/etymological solutions. Pierre Buis’s 1976 study is in many ways more exhaustive than Kutsch’s.108 Buis analyzes the verbs, nominal complements, and determinatives associated with berit,109 words that occur in parallelism with berit,110 descriptions of berits in the Bible,111 and the etymology of the word.112 Unlike Kutsch, he finds four distinct types of berit, only three of which are obligation. He prefers to translate the other two as “promise” and “covenant.”113 The “promise” and two kinds of the “obligation” are unilateral (as Schmidt’s first type).114 The “promise” is seen in Genesis 9, 17; and 2 Samuel 7, and Buis concludes it is only ever made with individuals.115 The “obligation” berit (Exodus 24, 31; Joshua 24) is, he believes, based on Neo-Assyrian treaties (see Chapter 2).116 The “covenant” berit (Exodus 34; Deuteronomy 28-29),117 is, unlike the “promise,” a matter of human obligation, not divine commitment, a notion that only arrives with the Priestly Writer.118 Buis’s study has not received nearly the same attention as Kutsch’s, but it, also, is susceptible to Barr’s critiques that the semantic field of berit is decidedly wide and unmappable. Kenneth Kitchen has postulated BRT occurring as a loanword in Egyptian. Since it occurred mainly in texts of 1290-1170 B.C., Kitchen felt this proved Kutsch (and Perlitt et al.) were incorrect in Pierre Buis, La Notion d’Alliance dans l’ancien Testament (Lectio Divina 88; Paris: Cerf, 1976). 109 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 16-30. 110 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 31-32 111 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 34-40. 112 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 42-44. Gräbe’s analysis is limited to charting contextual meanings in the biblical texts; New Covenant, New Community, 38. 113 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 41, 45. 114 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 47. 115 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 58. Linington denies the berit in Genesis 17 is promise, since both partners have jobs to do; “Term berit in the Old Testament,” 19.694-95. 116 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 60-68. 117 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 72, 75. 118 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 105. 108

24

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the dating of berit and covenant.119 Weinfeld was also sceptical of Kutsch’s second conclusion, the absence of berit before Deuteronomic writings, asking both where the Deuteronomic uses of berit would have originated and whether texts like Genesis 15, 2 Samuel 23, and Deuteronomy 33, ought to be dated earlier.120 Nevertheless, contrary to the statement of Scott Hahn, neither of Kutsch’s conclusions has been abandoned in the scholarly world.121 Barr’s argument about the semantic range of berit has a diachronic side – the meaning of the word no doubt varied both chronologically and in a given period, as Linington has now shown.122 But it is unlikely that we will be able to chronicle this development even roughly. Most “key words” in the Hebrew Bible are marked by the theology of particular traditions and texts, yet there are connections.123 Covenant, election (see Chapter 10), and the Covenant Formula constitute one of the most important such connections.124 The problem with berit-studies is that firmly fixed terminology is rare. “Terms are important, indeed necessary orientation aids, but they are never the thing itself.”125

THE COVENANT FORMULA The Covenant Formula has been called the best summation of all covenant theology.126 Since, according to Rendtorff, the Covenant 119 Kenneth A. Kitchen, “The Fall and Rise of Covenant, Law, and Treaty,” Tyndale Bulletin 40 (1989): 122. 120 Weinfeld, “Berît, 125-27. 121 Scott Hahn, “Covenant in the Old and New Testaments,” Currents in Biblical Research 3 (2005): 285. 122 Linington, “Term berit in the Old Testament,” passim; Joseph Coppens, “Le Saddîq – ‘Juste,’ dans le Psautier,” in De La Tôrah au Messie, ed. Maurice Carrez, Joseph Doré, and Pierre Grelot (Paris: Desclée, 1981), 299-300. 123 Rolf Rendtorff, Canonical Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Deo Publishing, 2005), 432. 124 Rendtorff, Canonical Hebrew Bible, 432. 125 Rendtorff, Canonical Hebrew Bible, 432. 126 Jean L’Hour, La Morale de l’Alliance (Cahiers de la Revue Biblique 5; Paris: J. Gabalda et Cie, 1966), 35; Georg Braulik, “Joy of the Feast,”

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

25

Formula is one of the three vital connected themes of Israelite religion, and since it provides not a single term but a fixed Gattung to examine, it, too, has been the subject of several studies. Two will be discussed here. In 1980, Hans Heinrich Schmid published a study on the Covenant Formula, “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”127 Schmid summarizes previous, but largely ignored, work on the formula, especially that of Wellhausen and R. Smend, who first isolated the Gattung.128 Schmid stresses that this formula is not the concretization of “covenant” but stands as a foundation from which a concrete theology of covenant can be built.129 He follows Smend in concluding that the full, two-part formula does not predate the Babylonian Exile,130 although the formula brings a long history of Israelite self-understanding from earlier periods (even as early as Judg 5:3-5).131 The most thorough examination of the Covenant Formula is Rolf Rendtorff’s 1995 study.132 Like Schmid, Rendtorff stresses the (1980) repr. in Theology of Deuteronomy (Bibal Collected Essays 2; Berkeley: BIBAL Press, 1994), 28; Wells, “Covenant, Humanity,” 29. Perlitt, contrariwise, thinks it an artificial device of modern scholars; “Covenant,” 1.710. 127 Hans Heinrich Schmid, “Ich will euer Gott sein, und ihr sollt mein Volk sein,” in Kirche, ed. Dieter Lührmann and Georg Strecker (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1980), 1-26. 128 Rudolf Smend, Bundesformel (Theologische Studien 68; Zurich: EVZ-Verlag, 1963); Schmid, “Ich will euer Gott,” 1; Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 36-40. 129 Schmid, “Ich will euer Gott,” 19, 23. 130 Smend, Bundesformel, 5; Schmid, “Ich will euer Gott,” 1; also Kritenski, Bund Gottes, 42. 131 Schmid, “Ich will euer Gott,” 3; Smend, Bundesformel, 9, 11, 19. Buis had dated it to the 7th century; Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 72-73. Lohfink sees the prehistory of the formula in Deut 10:12-11:17; Norbert Lohfink, “Die Wandlung des Bundesbegriffs im Buch Deuteronomium,” in Gott in Welt, ed. Johannes Baptist Metz, Werner Kern, Adolf Darlapp, and Herbert Vorgrimler (Freiburg: Herder, 1964), 1.431-32. 132 Rolf Rendtorff, The Covenant Formula (1995; trans. Margaret Kohl; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998); Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 4145.

26

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

importance of the formula, noting its almost unvarying formulation and its direct link with berit in Genesis 17, Exodus 6, and Leviticus 26.133 Thus, the Covenant Formula is presented in the text for all covenants from Abraham’s to the Conquest.134 This means that the “formula is an important element in the theological structuring and accentuation of the Pentateuch,” in the canonical approach Rendtorff is known for.135 Rendtorff also found the formula was used much more systematically than the term berit.136 In the Deuteronomic material, the formula is linked with the theme of deliverance from Egypt.137 Moreover, building on Schmid, it is in particular in Deuteronomy, where the word occurs more than in any other book apart from Genesis, that “berit also belongs to the context of the covenant.”138 The formula is given “its most profoundly reflected treatment” in the Priestly material and in fact “embraces all the essential themes and aspects of the theology of the Priestly composition.”139 Nevertheless, in contrast to Schmid, Rendtorff concludes that “the linguistic formulations of the covenant formula themselves offer no peg on which to hang” a full explanation of Israel’s relationship with God.140

Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 83, 22, 43, 45. Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 26. 135 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 26, 45; see above. In his canonical approach, this leads Rendtorff to conclude that, “Seen from God’s side, it is the same covenant which he had already made with Abraham and confirmed for the Exodus generation”; Covenant Formula, 85. While this may relate to Barr’s observation of the non-existence of a plural “berits,” it will not be explored in this study. Cf. Lohfink, Covenant, 83. 136 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 57. 137 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 52. 138 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 53; David L. Baker, “Covenant: An Old Testament Study,” in The God of Covenant (Leicester: Apollos, 2007), 30. 139 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 49, 51; Nihan, “Berit.” 140 Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 79. 133 134

THE SHAPE OF SCHOLARSHIP ON COVENANT

27

SUMMARY: THE MEANING OF COVENANT Israel’s covenant relationship with God is its constitution, its vocation, and its salvation.141 Covenant is a multifaceted idea.142 It includes descriptive norms -- although it is more a motive for justice than a source of law -- and shared experience of God’s saving acts.143 It becomes a hermeneutic for interpreting history as continuance of those acts.144 It adopts a formal structure (as we shall see in Chapter 2) and involves ritual act,145 in that “Israel’s worship is to be understood as a practice of covenant whereby Israel variously receives and affirms the covenant, maintains and sustains the covenant, and takes steps to renew and revivify the covenant.”146 It involves a relationship between Israel and God.147 Moreover, in the Bible, “Covenant is always at God’s behest and on his initiative.”148

Hellmuth Frey, Das Buch der Gegenwart Gottes unter seiner Gemeinde (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1953), 191; Vinzenz Hamp, “Bund, Altes Testament,” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. J. Höfer and Karl Rahner (Freiburg: Herder, 1958), 2.770. 142 Lohfink, Covenant, 21. 143 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 69; Bartholomew, “Covenant and Creation,” 25. 144 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 192; Paul Beauchamp, “Propositions sur l’Alliance de l’Ancien Testament Comme Structure Centrale,” Recherches de Sciences Religieuses 58 (1970): 167. 145 Theodore J. Lewis, “Covenant and Blood Rituals,” in Confronting the Past, ed. Seymour Gitin, J. Edward Wright, and J. P. Dessel (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 342; Norbert Lohfink, “Ein Bund oder zwei Bünde in der heiligen Schrift,” in L’Interpretazione della Bibbia nella Chiesa, ed. Josef Ratzinger and T. Bertone (Collana Atti e Documenti 11; Rome: Liberia Editrice Vaticano, 2001), 289; Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 1.304-305. 146 Walter Brueggemann, Worship in Ancient Israel (Nashville: Abingdon, 2005), 8; see below. 147 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 70. 148 Rendtorff, Canonical Hebrew Bible, 433; Georg Braulik, “Gesetz als Evangelium,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 79 (1982): 135; Gustavo Nieto, “El Quiebre de Estructura Propuesto por Jeremías 31, 31-34,” Incarnate Word 1 (2006): 67. 141

28

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Taking Barton’s History-of-Ideas method, this study will follow McCarthy and Childs (and Fohrer, Neef, and Kapelrud, but not Jepsen-Whitley-Perlitt) in looking to the Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic understandings of covenant as the most overriding. “Deuteronomy … is the true formative influence, not only on DtH, but more generally on OT theology.”149 It will be shown in the next chapter that this period’s notion of covenant is particularly visible for other reasons. In light of Rendtorff’s work on the Covenant Formula, looking to this material means that covenant is closely related to the deliverance from Egypt, which will be important in Chapter 11. Rendtorff showed the close link the Covenant Formula has with berit in this material, and McCarthy’s work on berit shows the meaning here to involve bilateral agreement based on relationships that were already existing.150

J. Gordon McConville, Grace in the End (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 1993), 11 150 Without the link to berit, there is no indication that the Covenant Formula presupposes existing relationships; Rendtorff, Covenant Formula, 83. Yet despite this emphasis on Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic covenant, I would affirm with Fohrer that the idea behind covenant was not a late innovation but a slowly evolving understanding of Israel’s relationship with God; see also Lohfink, “Der Begriff Bund,” 162-63. 149

2 THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS The understanding of covenant will advance considerably by comparing the Israelite material with other ancient Near Eastern material. For example, comparison with Mesopotamian texts shows that it was not unusual to make a covenant with a deity.1 The Sumerian Urukagina of Lagash “made this covenant with Ningirsu [KA.KA eda-keš] that the powerful should not harm the widow and the orphan” (Urukagina Cylinder B, 12.23-28). Centuries later, a NeoAssyrian text K2401 speaks of “This tablet of the adê-covenant of Aššur” with Esarhaddon.2 In contrast, Yahweh’s covenant with the entire people of Israel appears to be unique -- with one possible exception. A text from Arslan Tash (KAI 27) describes Aššur making “an eternal covenant with us [ln].” It is unclear who the “us” is. While Cross and others consider the text authentic, Amiet and Texidor believe it is a forgery.3 1 R. P. Gordon, “Comparativism and the God of Israel,” in The Old Testament in Its World, ed. R. P. Gordon and Johannes C. de Moor (Oudtestamentische Studiën 52; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2005), 50; contra Jimmy Jack M. Robert, The Bible and the Ancient Near East (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 46. 2 Lewis, “Covenant,” 340. 3 F. M. Cross and R. J. Saley, “Phoenician Incantations on a Plaque of the Seventh Century B.C. from Arslan Tash in Upper Syria,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 197 (1970): 42-49; J. Texidor, “Les tablettes d’Arslan Tash au Musée d’Alep,” Aula Orientalis 1 (1983): 105-108; Pierre Amiet, “Observations sur les ‘Tablettes Magiques’ d’Arlsan Tash,” Aula Orientalis 1 (1983): 109; Ziony Zevit, “A Phoenician Inscription and Biblical Covenant Terminology,” Israel Exploration Journal 27 (1977): 11018.

29

30

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The most widespread use of ancient Near Eastern parallels has been the search for forms analogous to the covenant outside of Israel. George Mendenhall’s ideas about the Israelite covenant, more particularly the Sinai Mosaic covenant in Exodus 19-34, and the use of the “treaty” motifs therein have defined how many scholars discuss covenant.4 The theories of Mendenhall may be used as a starting point for examining covenant in a wider ancient Near Eastern context. However, his arguments cannot be accepted without substantial qualification, even as they are not rejected altogether. Mendenhall began by observing that the covenant at Sinai is regarded by a considerable portion of the biblical tradition as community making, as constitutional for Israelite identity.5 Mendenhall’s hypothesis was that the Sinai covenant was the instrument whereby diverse clans were bonded into a single sociopolitical entity.6 Only by such a covenanting could a heterogeneous community expand to include new groups and have a basis for responsibility for new laws. The Ethical Decalogue, or rather an Urdekalog of only commands and prohibitions, was the text of this Sinai covenant.7 It contained the stipulations of Yahweh – stipulations which defined justice for the community without spelling out the laws: they provided the basis for later law.8 As such, the Ethical Decalogue allowed for maximum self-determination on the part of the human community, imposing, in fact, only two obligations: the Sabbath and the honoring of parents. It was Mendenhall’s contention that the Israelite community had to have been founded this way if one were not to fall back on the tradition of Genesis that all the Israelites were genealogically related.9 Either law and the definition of justice originated organically within a homogeneous group – Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 30-33. George Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Pittsburgh: The Biblical Colloquium, 1955), 5. 6 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 5; George Mendenhall, “Between Theology and Archaeology,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 7 (1978): 32. 7 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 5-6. 8 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 5-6. 9 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 5. 4 5

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

31

a huge extended family, which Mendenhall rejected, or the heterogeneous group had to be constitutionally covenanted at Sinai.10 In a corollary study, Mendenhall analyzed the form this covenant constitution took.11 He found first that only treaties resemble the Sinai covenant, more specifically Hittite suzerainty treaties of 1400-1200 B.C.12 These Hittite suzerainty treaties showed the same mixture of apodictic and casuistic laws found in Exodus 21-23, and the same structure as the Sinai covenant. Mendenhall explicitly spelled out the structural parallels, and Klaus Baltzer later elaborated even further the extensive correspondence between the Hittite treaties and Exodus 19.13 The parallels in structure included the identifying of covenant giver, historical prologue (Exod 20:2), stipulations (the Decalogue), provision for deposit and periodic public reading of the covenant/treaty, witnesses, blessings and curses (all elsewhere in the tradition), ratification ceremony (Exodus 24), and formal procedures in the event of violation of the covenant/treaty.14 Walter Beyerlin expanded this analysis to show paral-

George Mendenhall, The Tenth Generation (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 21. 11 In fact, a separate work, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East, 1955, was a fusing of two 1954 articles in Biblical Archaeologist, “Ancient Oriental and Biblical Law,” and “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition.” 12 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 7. As of today, about forty Hittite treaties – nineteen of them suzerainty treaties -- have been found, along with four from Syria of the Late Bronze Age; Amon Altman, “How Many Treaty Traditions Existed in the Ancient Near East?” in Pax Hethitica,ed. Y. Cohen, A. Gilan, and J. L. Miller (Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 51; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 17. 13 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 32-38; Klaus Baltzer, The Covenant Formulary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 27-29; Lohfink, “Bund als Vertrag,” 215. 14 George E. Mendenhall, Ancient Israel’s Faith and History (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2001), 57-59. Such lists of structural elements of treaties were found, inter alia, in J. M. Munn-Rankin, “Diplomacy in Western Asia in the Early Second Millennium B.C.,” Iraq 18 (1956): 68-110. The most recent analysis of the structure of Late Bronze Age treaties is Altman, “How Many Treaty Traditions?” 24-27. 10

32

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

lels such as viewing the treaty’s clauses as the words of its author, affirmation of obligations, and other small-scale similarities.15 Joshua 24 was likewise found to follow the Hittite suzerainty treaty pattern, in fact even more closely than in Exodus.16 It was proposed, however, that the text in Joshua 24 had been edited by a later editor who was unfamiliar with the now-outdated Hittite suzerainty form. The text was that of a new covenant for a new group. The reason Sinai was not mentioned was that it was irrelevant: Joshua 24 was the extension of the Sinai covenant to tribes who were not present at Sinai, and was thus community making.17 Mendenhall hinted that the treaty form was not exactly “Hittite.” It was merely the common suzerainty treaty of the time, probably originating in Mesopotamia, for which Hittite treaties just happened to be the best attested.18 Later scholars have affirmed and expanded this caveat. This was not the “Hittite” treaty form, but rather the “standard international treaty convention of the period,”19 especially common in Syria.20 Thus, the appellation “Hittite” is best dropped, and “Late Bronze age suzerainty treaties” is a better term. Mendenhall used this second of his arguments, the parallel with the LB suzerainty treaties, to support his first argument about the nature and centrality of Sinai. By Neo-Assyrian times, the LB Walter Beyerlin, Origins and History of the Oldest Sinai Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 54-62. Paul Beauchamp, S.J., ties this whole structure to Lévi-Strauss’s psycholinguistics, as will be seen in Chapter 9; “Propositions sur l’Alliance,” 166-67, 169. 16 Hans-Joachim Kraus, Worship in Israel (trans. G. Buswell; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1966), 138-40; Baltzer, Covenant Formulary, 19-27. 17 Kraus, Worship in Israel, 136-37. 18 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 28; George Mendenhall, “The Suzerainty Treaty Structure Thirty Years Later,” in Religion and Law, ed. Edwin B. Firmage, Bernard G. Weiss, and John W. Welch (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 94. 19 R. A. F. MacKenzie, Faith and History in the Old Testament (New York: Macmillan Company, 1963), 46. 20 Hayim Tadmor, “Treaty and Oath in the Ancient Near East,” in Humanizing America’s Iconic Book, ed. Gene M. Tucker and D. A. Knight (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982), 130. 15

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

33

suzerainty treaty forms did not exist, and the Neo-Assyrian forms were much different.21 So the Sinai covenant must date from the Late Bronze age, the time of Moses. This was in keeping with Mendenhall’s conclusion that the eighth century prophets presupposed both the covenant and the Ethical Decalog.22 Mendenhall’s ideas found extensive adherence: inter alia, Beyerlin, Baltzer, Kenneth Kitchen, H. Huffmon, Delbert Hillers, Meredith Kline, Arvid Kapelrud, Klaus Koch, A. D. H. Mayes, James Muilenberg, David Noel Freedman, and even (then Cardinal) Joseph Ratzinger.23 Even Gerhard von Rad accepted the treaty parallel for the Sinai episode.24

Tadmor, “Treaty and Oath”; cf. Kenneth Kitchen, The Bible in Its World (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1977), 80. 22 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant; cf. W. T. Koopmans, Joshua 24 as Poetic Narrative (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 93; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 459; Dewey Beegle, Moses, The Servant of Yahweh (Ann Arbor: Pryor Pettengill Press, 1979), 234. 23 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 54; Baltzer, Covenant Formulary; Kitchen, Bible in Its World, 75-85; H. Huffmon, “The Exodus, Sinai, and the Credo,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965): 101-113; Silvia Linington, “Recent Trends in the Study of the History of Pre-monarchic Israelite Religion with Particular Emphasis on the Concept of the Covenant,” Verbum et Ecclesia 25 (2004): 136; Delbert Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (Seminars in the History of Ideas 1; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969); Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963), 14-15; Arvid Kapelrud, “Some Recent Points of View on the Time and Origin of the Decalogue,” Studia Theologica 18 (1965): 87; Klaus Koch, Growth of the Biblical Tradition (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1969), 21; Roland J. Faley, Kingdom of Priests (Rome: Pontificium Athenaeum Internationale Angelicum, 1960), 37-53 (although his opinion had changed by Roland J. Faley, Bonding with God [New York: Paulist, 1997], 11); Mayes, “Covenant on Sinai,” 46; James Muilenberg, “The Form and Structure of the Covenantal Formulation,” Vetus Testamentum 9 (1959): 347-65; David Noel Freedman and David Miano, “People of the New Covenant,” in The Concept of the Covenant in the Second Temple Period, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. DeRoo (Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement 71; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 7; Mills, Joshua to Kings, 110; Joseph Ratzinger, “New Covenant,” Communio 22 (1995): 637; René Lopez, “Israelite Covenants in the Light of Ancient Near East21

34

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Nevertheless, many criticisms have been raised against Mendenhall.25 First, scholars have posed serious textual problems for the Sinai episode as used by Mendenhall. The Ethical Decalogue is central to Mendenhall’s treaty. Even without its Priestly reworking, which Mendenhall grants, many have argued that the Ethical Decalogue was originally independent of the Sinai narrative.26 Mowinckel thought it was late, dating after the prophets but before the Exile.27 Likewise, Alt saw it as a sign of the decay of apodictic laws: “The Decalogue deliberately renounces a part of the customary literary form and phraseology in order to fulfil a need which the other lists could not cope with adequately within their stylistic limits, and which indeed they had raised the more urgently by their very incompleteness.”28 Yet in Mendenhall’s defense, there are some who see the Ethical Decalogue as coming from the socalled Elohist source, and as part of the entire Sinai complex.29 There is also a problem with Exodus 20:22-23:33, the Covenant Code, which Mendenhall sees as paralleling the LB suzerainty treaty mixture of apodictic and casuistic laws.30 Beyerlin holds that the Covenant Code has no connection with the Sinai tradition “and was only brought into a loose connection with it later.”31 Nevertheless, Mendenhall engaged in form criticism and traditions history, and not in source criticism. Form criticism by definition begins with narratives as they exist, and so Mendenhall should ern Covenants,” Chafer Theological Seminary Journal 9 (2004): 97-102; 10 (2004): 72-106. 24 Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology (trans. D. M .G. Stalker; New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 1.132. 25 Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 33-34. 26 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 12. 27 Sigmund Mowinckel, Le Decalogue (Paris: Librarie Felix Alcan, 1927), 161. 28 Albrecht Alt, Essays on Old Testament History and Religion (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1968), 158. 29 R. E. Clements, Prophecy and Covenant (Studies in Biblical Theology 43; 1965; repr. London: SCM Press, 1969), 74. 30 Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, 32-38. 31 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 1; also A. Philips, Ancient Israel’s Criminal Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 20-33.

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

35

be viewed as doing a different sort of project from those who would criticize him for his mixing of sources. Of course, for those for whom covenant is a post-prophetic tradition, discussed in Chapter 1, a Late Bronze age parallel cannot work. Some have argued that Sinai is not a covenant at all, let alone a treaty.32 Graham Davies holds that one cannot tell if covenant was used to describe Israel's relationship to Yahweh at the stage of the Sinai pericope.33 Brevard Childs sees no evidence of covenant in J's account of Sinai.34 Much of this is a debate over terminology: Kapelrud, while denying it is covenant, sees the Sinai episode as community forming, constitutional, and justice-defining, which is what Mendenhall meant by covenant.35 The biggest challenge to Mendenhall, however, is his use of the Late Bronze age treaties as analogy. Many features that belong in Late Bronze age treaties are missing from the Sinai account proper, namely the witnesses, the deposit in a sanctuary, and the blessings and curses.36 It is also questionable whether the opening clause of the Ethical Decalogue is a historical prologue.37 Mendenhall and his supporters argue that these are elsewhere in the Mosaic tradition. The witnesses may be the forces of nature (Deut 32:1; Isa 1:2; Jer 2:12; Mic 6:1-2).38 In fact, nature as witness is acceptable, they maintain, in a Late Bronze age treaty, but not in a Neo-Assyrian one.39 Additionally, Joshua 24 has both a stone as a witness and the people as witnesses against themselves.40 The deposit of the law in the Ark is found in Deuteronomy 10 and 1 Kgs Kapelrud, “Some Recent Points,” 84. Graham I. Davies, “Sinai, Mount,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1992), 6.49. 34 Brevard S. Childs, Book of Exodus (Louisville: Westminster Press, 1974), 348. 35 Kapelrud, “Some recent points,” 84. 36 Nicholson, God and His People, 58. 37 Nicholson, God and His People, 68. 38 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 60; Hillers, Covenant, 53-54; Beegle, Moses, 211. 39 George Mendenhall and Gary Herion, “Covenant,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1992), 1.1181. 40 Beegle, Moses, 211; Koopmans, Joshua 24, 406. 32 33

36

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

8:9. The blessings and curses are found explicit in Deuteronomy 28 and 31.41 And the opening clause of the Ethical Decalogue need not function alone as the historical prologue; the events of the Exodus are narratively presupposed. Thus, Meredith Kline attempted to present the entire book of Deuteronomy as one long Late Bronze age treaty.42 This by no means answers the criticism. If Exodus 19, rather than 20:1-2, is the historical prologue, it is “an entirely different character from the historical prologue in the treaties,” it is theophany.43 It has been argued that the Ethical Decalogue cannot be treaty stipulations, because treaty stipulations are usually casuistic not apodictic.44 Late Bronze age treaties have no mediators in the sense that Moses is for Sinai.45 The matter of ratification, if it is that, in Exodus 24 is unlike the Late Bronze age suzerainty treaties. Exodus 24 has two traditions. In vv 3-8 is a communion sacrifice and blood rite, of which the blood rite is central and earlier and the sacrifice is derivative.46 It is unique with its twofold sprinkling of blood and use of young men instead of priests.47 The other tradition is a sacred meal, reminiscent of the patriarchs,48 although Nicholson argues that there is no meal here, but that “beheld God, and ate and drank” in v 11 means merely “beheld God and lived.”49 Most uses of the phrase, however, seem quite literal (e.g., Gen 24:54; 26:30; Judg 19:4, 6; 2 Sam 11:13; etc.). None of these rituals appears in the Late Bronze age suzerainty treaties. As for Joshua 24, where fewer treaty elements are missing, one runs into dating problems. Mendenhall acknowledges this, suggesting that late authorship of the final form may be the reason

Mendenhall, Law and Covenant; Beegle, Moses, 212. Kline, Treaty of the Great, 48-49. 43 Nicholson, God and His People, 69. 44 Gerstenberger, “Covenant and Commandment,” 42, 46. 45 Childs, Book of Exodus, 348. 46 Nicholson, God and His People, 69. 47 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 38. 48 Beyerlin, Origins and History, 34. 49 Ernest W. Nicholson, “The Origin of the Tradition in Exodus XXIV 9-11,” Vetus Testamentum 26 (1976): 149, 151. 41 42

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

37

why only curses are present (blessings are absent in Neo-Assyrian treaties).50 A stronger criticism against Mendenhall's analysis is aimed at his conclusion regarding the date of the Sinai tradition. Frankena and then other scholars acknowledged that some treaty parallels exist with the Sinai covenant, but the strongest parallels are with Neo-Assyrian treaties.51 Blood rites, for example, are common in Neo-Assyrian and even Greek examples.52 The sacred covenant meal in Exodus 24 resembles the covenant meal in the “Covenant with Aššur” text K2401 (see above), lines 27-32.53 Eckart Otto shows parallels of Neo-Assyrian loyalty oaths with Deuteronomy 13 and 28 and argues for Neo-Assyrian models for all covenant language from Genesis 15 to Joshua 24.54 Many have concluded that Mendenhall's case for Late Bronze age treaties as the background for the biblical covenant “in reality ... has yielded little that is of permanent value. The resemblance is ... merely superficial.”55 On the other hand, some would say “the 50 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1185. Interestingly, Johannes Pedersen had suggested decades earlier that the curses were borrowed from the Neo-Assyrian kudurru; Pedersen, Eid bei den Semiten, 105-107. 51 R. Frankena, “The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon and the Dating of Deuteronomy,” Oudtestamentische Studiën 14 (1965): 122-54; Bernard Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics of Legal Innovation (Oxford: University Press, 1997), 122, 132; Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 34-36; Moshe Weinfeld, “Berit,” Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 2:268-69. 52 Moshe Weinfeld, “The Common Heritage of Covenantal Traditions in the Ancient World,” in I Trattati nel mondo Antico, ed L. Canfora, Mario Liverani, and C. Zaccagnini (Saggi di Storia Antica 2; Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1990), 186-87. 53 Lewis, “Covenant,” 342, 345. 54 Otto, “Ursprünge der Bundestheologie,” 38-45, 56-61; “Political Theology,” 62. McKenzie accepts much of Otto’s presentation; Covenant, 32-34; For Deuteronomy 13, see also Levinson, "The Neo-Assyrian Origins of the Canon Formula in Deuteronomy 13:1," in Scriptural Exegesis, ed. Deborah A. Green and Laura Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 31-34. 55 Nicholson, God and His People, 81; also Newman, “Continuing Quest,” 162, sees treaty parallels in E but not J.

38

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

evidence that Israel uses the treaty-form … is irrefragable. There is not another literary form from among those of the ancient Near East which is more certainly evident in the Old Testament,” but disagree on what period treaties are being paralleled.56 Perhaps attempting to break this impasse, another postMendenhall model is that of Moshe Weinfeld.57 For him, covenant was first law and the observance of the particular laws (Exod 24:38). Next the notion of the suzerainty treaty was brought in and covenant developed according to that form (Joshua 24). By this, Weinfeld means a generic suzerainty treaty structure common to the entire second and first millennia (see below).58 Finally, the Deuteronomic author had both of these traditions available and mixed them into a homiletic framework. Since the Neo-Assyrian loyalty oaths were the closest thing to the form the Deuteronomic author found in the covenant tradition, he used them to shape his text.59 Weinfeld, Otto, and Levinson suggest that Manasseh’s oath of loyalty to Esarhaddon was written and left in Jerusalem, where it served as a model for Deuteronomy 13 and 28.60 Yet it is unclear if Dennis J. McCarthy, “Covenant in the Old Testament,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 27 (1965): 221. 57 Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 58 So also Menahem Haran, “The Bĕrît ‘Covenant,’” in Tehillah leMoshe, ed. Mordechai Cogan, Barry L. Eichler, and Jeffrey H. Tigay (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1997). 59 Cf. Nicholson, God and His People, 67-68; Lohfink, “Kinder,” 29-30. 60 Moshe Weinfeld, “Traces of Assyrian Treaty Formulae in Deuteronomy,” Biblica 46 (1965): 417-27; Eckart Otto, “Political Theology in Judah and Assyria,” Svensk Exegetisk Ǻrsbok 65 (2000): 62-65; Levinson, “Canon Formula,” 30, 35; Levinson, “The Bible’s Break with Ancient Political Thought to Promote Equality – ‘It ain’t Necessarily So,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 61 (2010): 7-8; Levinson, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty as the Source for the Canon Formula in Deuteronomy 13:1,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 130 (2010): 337, 339, 344-46. So, too, Richard D. Nelson, “Realpolitik in Judah (687-609 B.C.E.),” in Scripture in Context II, ed. William W. Hallo, James C. Moyer, and Leo G. Perdue (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 180; and Christoph Koch, Vertrag, Treueid und Bund (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 383; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 96. 56

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

39

such an oath would have been common enough for such borrowing, since such oaths were only used in cases of abnormal succession to the Assyrian throne, such as Assurbanipal’s.61 Esharhaddon’s Succession Pacts were manifestly unique,62 while vassal treaties like Ashkelon’s, alliance treaties like Scythia’s, mutual defense treaties like Lydia’s, and other permutations were all distinct.63 And there is not a shred of physical evidence for the presumption that a loyalty oath of Esarhaddon was stored in Jerusalem. Weinfeld has also shown, however, that much of the covenant terminology of ancient Israel, when defined broadly to include the Decalogue, Covenant Code, and Deuteronomy, was ubiquitous in the ancient Near East from most ancient Sumerian times unto the Greco-Roman period.64 So, while there are examples contemporary 61 Tadmor, “Treaty and Oath,” 151; Patricia Dutcher-Walls, “Sleeping Next to the Elephant,” in From Babel to Babylon, ed. Joyce R. Wood, John E. Harvey, and Mark Leuchter (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 455; New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 183; William S. Morrow, “Cuneiform Literacy and Deuteronomistic Composition,” Bibliotheca Orientalis 62 (2005): 206; contra Levinson, “Canon Formula,” 30. 62 Unique to Esarhaddon, that is; there are several concurrent examples, most recently one discovered in 2010 at Tell Tayinat by the University of Toronto excavations. This discovery makes it harder, but not impossible, to argue that the loyalty oaths of Esarhaddon are not vassal treaties at all but oaths imposed on portions of the Assyrian population, as per Mario Liverani, “The Medes at Esarhaddon’s Courty,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 47 (1995): 58; and Altman, “How Many Treaty Traditions?” 29-30 n.71; among others. Parpola and Watanabe held that these oaths could have been secondarily put to use as vassal treaties, and perhaps this happened at Tell Tayinat; Simo Parpola and K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths (State Archives of Assyria 2; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988), xxx-xxxi. 63 Tamás Dezső, “Assyrian Expansion Techniques,” paper presented at the Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, Jerusalem, 1998; Angelika Berlejung, “The Assyrians in the West, Colonialism or Development Policy?” paper presented at the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010. 64 Moshe Weinfeld, “Covenant Terminology in the Ancient Near East and Its Influence on the West,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 93 (1973): 190-99; Weinfeld, “The Loyalty Oath in the Ancient Near

40

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

with Deuteronomy, they are terminologically not unlike loyalty oaths in earlier Aramean contexts or in later times.65 Dennis McCarthy showed that the elements of treaties are the same from Eannatum of Lagash down to Esarhaddon, and so cannot be used to date the biblical examples.66 The treaty form was at once too uniform over time and too varied within a given period to be used as Mendenhall intends. “The diversity of treaty texts entailed that there was not a single, unambiguous form with which to draw comparisons.”67 This has allowed Otto to turn to the Neo-Assyrian world, and Walter Zimmerli and Frank Polak to look to Old Babylonian-period treaties from Mari for parallels.68 Still other authors have appealed to completely different ancient Near Eastern analogies. In a 1999 essay, Seock-Tae Sohn proposed that Mesopotamian marriage and, to a lesser extent, adoption formulas underlie the Israelite covenants.69 Some of this East,” Ugarit Forschungen 8 (1976), 379-89; Weinfeld, “Common Heritage,” 176-82; see, inter alia Homer, Iliad, 19.190-91. Levinson hints at this in “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” 337-38. 65 Whitley, “Covenant and Commandment,” 42-43 n.27. 66 Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (Analecta Biblica 21; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1978), 7, 122. 67 Koopmans, Joshua 24, 457. 68 See above on Otto; Zimmerli, “Erwagungen zum Bund,” 171, 189; Frank H. Polak, “The Covenant at Mount Sinai in the Light of Texts from Mari,” in Sefer Moshe, ed. Chaim Cohen, Avi Hurvitz, and Shalom M. Paul (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2004), 122-27. Moshe Held had earlier used Mari treaties in comparison with Genesis 15; Moshe Held, “Philological Notes on the Mari Covenant Rituals,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 200 (1970): 32-40. Jean-Georges Heintz found antecedents for the Deuteronomic expression “with all your heart” in Mari treaties; Jean-Georges Heintz, “Dans la plénitude du Coeur,” in Ce Dieu Qui Vient, ed. Raymond Kuntzmann (Lectio Divina 159; Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1995), 31-38. One might also compare the attempt to parallel 18 th-century B.C. texts from Šušarra to a supposed covenant offered in 2 Sam 2:6 in Giorgio Buccellati, “2 Sam. 2, 5-7,” Bibbia e Oriente 4 (1962): 233. 69 Seock-Tae Sohn, “‘I Will Be Your God and You Will Be My People,’” in Ki Baruch Hu, ed. R. Chazan, William W. Hallo, and Lawrence H. Schiffman (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 357, 364-68, 372. Sohn had proposed the theory in nuce in The Divine Election of Israel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 184-89.

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

41

link is inherent in the biblical text, as when Jer 31:31-33 connects covenant and “husband.”70 But Sohn’s analogous marriage contracts are from the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600 B.C.)71 Sohn’s view of covenant as marriage has been wedded by Hahn to the observation of Gordon Paul Hugenberger and others that marriage is berit throughout the Old Testament.72 If covenant is marriage, and marriage is berit, Hahn concludes, then berit, meaning covenant, is marriage throughout the Old Testament,73 or at least “an agreement that establishes a sacred family bond,”74 the latter a view shared by Mary Nwachukwu.75 Yet this hardly makes sense when Job makes a covenant with his own eyes (Job 31:1) or when God makes a covenant with day and night in Jer 33:20. Nor does it accord with, inter alia, the integral connection of covenant with “servant,” ’ebed, as outlined in Chapter 8, below. Moreover, while Sohn, “I Will Be,” 358. Sohn, “I Will Be,” 360-63. 72 Hugenberger, Marriage as Covenant, 280-338; Buchanan, “Covenant in Legal Context,” 38-39. 73 Hahn, “Covenant in the Old,” 266. The notion of covenant always meaning marriage is also held by Donald J. Keefe, Covenantal Theology (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991), 1.314; 2.19. Such a view allows that “The family thus represents the immanent principle of the covenant”; Hahn, Kinship by Covenant (1995), 657. This is also a tenet of Federal Vision Theology; Waters, Federal Vision, 11. A recent study echoing Hahn’s view, based entirely on Hugenberger and early 20thcentury scholarship on ancient Israelite society, is Călin Sechelea, “The Relationship Between God’s Covenant with His People and Marriage in the Old Testament,” Studia Theologica 8 (2009): 250-73. 74 Hahn, Understanding the Scriptures, 20; Kinship by Covenant (1995), 51; Father Who Keeps, 27. This view seems to go back to Martin Buber; I and Thou (New York: Scribners, 1970), 128; although Hahn (e.g., Kinship by Covenant (1995), 29, 35; Kinship by Covenant (2009), 3, 28) credits Frank Moore Cross, From Epic to Canon (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1998), 3-21. A “Google” search will reveal the ubiquity of this definition in recent Catholic catechetical materials. For a substantial critique of Cross’s kinship-by-covenant and especially of any connection of blood with this notion, see Lewis, “Covenant,” 343, 348. 75 McKenzie, Covenant, 12; Mary S. C. Nwachukwu, Creation-Covenant Scheme and Justification by Faith (Tesi Gregoriana Serie Teologia 89; Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2002), 144. 70 71

42

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the marriage image of Yahweh’s relationship with his people is found in many places in the Old Testament, “there is not a trace” of it in Deuteronomy, the book most about covenant.76 The only way to salvage this view of covenant for Deuteronomy is to define it as “a kinship type of covenant that is expressed in terms of vassalage.”77 Is this not, then, a “vassalage type of covenant?” Finally, the ancient Near Eastern comparative material that Polak and Sohn bring in for comparison from very early periods cannot be paralleled with the biblical material without determining “the nature of the particular tradition under consideration, its literary form, what occasioned it, how it may have been used in the life of the people,” none of which Polak or Sohn (or Hahn) do.78 Mendenhall and Herion responded to many of their critics in their 1992 essay on covenant.79 They argue that only a modern Westerner would expect strict formal correspondence between the Late Bronze age suzerainty treaties and a parallel in the biblical text. “The author (or editor) responsible for its final canonical shape did not believe that he had to pattern the text of the Sinai covenant deliberately after the LB suzerainty treaties (if he even knew what they were).”80 There are holes in the structural correspondence, they agree, but it is noteworthy that there are any corresponding elements at all, elements which cannot be explained aside from the Late Bronze age suzerainty treaty analogy.81 76 William L. Moran, “The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 25 (1963): 77-78. 77 Nwachukwu, Creation-Covenant Scheme, 151; Hahn, Kinship by Covenant (1995), 78, but cf. p. 139. 78 Newman, People of the Covenant, 19. McConville maintains the opposite, that comparisons with other ancient Near Eastern literature must be done prior to and independently of any internal criticism of the biblical text; Grace in the End, 61. 79 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant.” 80 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1184; italics original; “Between Theology and Archaeology,” 32. 81 Noel Weeks, “Covenant and Treaty,” Lucas 16 (1993): 20-21 maintains that similarities in culture and common metaphysical notions led to similar forms in Israel and Late Bronze age Hittite society. Hahn’s views appear similar; Kinship by Covenant (1995), 14 n.25.

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

43

Mendenhall points out that in Neo-Assyrian treaties there is no nature as witness, no historical prologue or deposit or public reading, no pretense of transcendent moral or ethical formulation, no blessings -- all of which are associated with the definition of covenant in the Sinai tradition.82 “What is surprising in that later milieu [of the redactor or Yahwistic or Deuteronomistic author] is that any blessings were enumerated at all, something not predictable from the structure and content of the Assyrian loyalty oaths. It is difficult to imagine how an Israelite scribe of that time could invent the covenant idea and include blessings.”83 Also foreign to the Neo-Assyrian treaties are the ideas held in common by the Late Bronze age treaties and the Sinai tradition, “e.g., the motif of a relationship based on gratitude and a sense of obligation to values shared by the suzerain and vassal alike.”84 Yet on other accounts, Mendenhall is not correct: while there are examples of nature as witness to treaties from the Hittites but not the Neo-Assyrians, there are examples as late as Homer and the Punic world.85 Treaties were deposited much later than Hittite times, usually by erecting them as steles,86 and the deposit of Hittite treaties is only mentioned in four documents belonging to three of the nineteen treaties.87 Public reading of loyalty oaths was, in fact, practiced in Neo-Assyrian times, as well as Greek.88 An historical prologue occurs in the Neo-Assyrian treaty of Assurbanipal and the

Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1181-82; Mendenhall, “Suzerainty Treaty Structure,” 93; Weeks, “Covenant and Treaty,” 12, 14; A. Barucq, “La Notion d’Alliance dans l’Ancien Testament et les Débuts du Judaïsme,” in Populus Dei, ed. Henri Cazelles et al. (Rome: Communio, 1966), 1.61. 83 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1184; italics original. 84 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1187. 85 Weinfeld, “Common Heritage,” 190. 86 Weinfeld, “Common Heritage,” 190-91; e.g., the Agdistis Shrine Oath at Philadelphia in Anatolia. 87 Altman, “How Many Treaty Traditions?” 27 88 Weinfeld, “Common Heritage,” 189; e.g., Esarhaddon’s loyalty oaths and the 7th-century BC Greek Cyrene-Thera Pact. 82

44

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Qedar tribe.89 The blessings, as Mendenhall asserts, are absent in first-millennium treaties.90 Noel Weeks concludes his exhaustive study of the issue with the summation that, “It comes down to subjective judgment. Are the similarities sufficient to argue for some common connection?”91 And if so, which period’s treaties fit best is likewise a subjective judgment. Both Mendenhall and Weinfeld have explained the divergences from Late Bronze age treaties by saying that later authors/redactors did not recognize the earlier treaty forms in the traditions they received.92 They reinterpreted according to what they knew, Neo-Assyrian treaties.93 The later authors could not help but use current definitions of “treaty” when transmitting the tradition and defining “covenant.”94 Most of these studies fail to break with the treaty model itself. The question has merely become which period’s treaties are the model for the covenant. The difficulties with a Neo-Assyrian treaty background to Deuteronomy, for example, cannot be ignored simply because Mendenhall may be wrong. As stated above, treaties like Esarhaddon’s loyalty oath were only used in situations of abObv. 4′-11′; Antony F. Campbell, “An Historical Prologue in a Seventh-century Treaty,” Biblica 50 (1969): 535. There may have been a historical prologue, now lost, in Esarhaddon’s treaty with Baal of Tyre; there are no historical prologues in Esarhaddon’s loyalty oaths; Altman, “How Many Treaty Traditions?” 32. 90 E. C. Lucas, “Covenant, Treaty, and Prophecy,” Themelios 8.1 (1982): 20. 91 Noel Weeks, Admonition and Curse (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 407; New York: T & T Clark, 2004), 157, 164, 178. 92 Mendenhall, “Suzerainty Treaty Structure,” 95. John M. Lundquist similarly finds the origin of covenant in temple oaths, over which a treatycovenant form has been laid; “Temple, Covenant, and Law,” 295. 93 Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 35; Dennis J. McCarthy, “Compact and Kingship,” in Studies in the Period of David and Solomon and Other Essays, ed. Tomoo Ishida (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 75. 94 Mendenhall and Herion, “Covenant,” 1183; S. Dean McBride, Jr., “Polity of the Covenant People,” (1987) repr. in Constituting the Community, ed. John T. Strong and Steven S. Tuell (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 26 n.19. 89

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

45

normal succession to the Assyrian throne like Assurbanipal’s, and we cannot assume such terminology was known in Jerusalem to allow for the borrowing that Otto, Levinson, and Koch describe.95 The Assyrians employed multiple permutations of treaties, many of which do not resemble the biblical covenant; there is no “NeoAssyrian treaty form” with which to draw comparisons,96 and the semantics of Esarhaddon’s loyalty oath can be found in much later times.97 Israel’s covenant terminology was ubiquitous in the ancient Near East from Sumer on.98 The treaty form was probably at once too uniform over time and too varied within a given period to be used as Otto, Levinson, and Koch intend.99 As William Morrow has written, “The biblical scholarship just cited [Otto and Levinson] stands in tension with Assyriologists sceptical about Akkadian literacy in the Western periphery of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.”100 Moreover, as Chapter Six will show, the period of substantial AsDutcher-Walls, “Sleeping Next to the Elephant,” 183; Morrow, “Cuneiform Literacy,” 206; Juha Pakkala, Intolerant Monolatry in the Deuteronomistic History (Publications of the Finnish Exegetical Society 76; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 43; Pakkala, “Der literar- und religionsgeschichtliche Ort von Deuteronomium 13,” in Die Deuteronomistische Geschichtswerke, ed. Markus Witte et al. (Beiträge zur die Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 365; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006), 125-37; Martti Nissinen, “The Dubious Image of Prophecy,” in Prophets, Prophecy and Prophetic Texts in Second Temple Judaism, ed. Michael H. Floyd and Robert D. Haak (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 427; New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 27-30. 96 Koopmans, Joshua 24, 457. 97 Philip R. Davies, “Josiah and his Law Book,” in Good Kings and Bad Kings, ed. Lester L. Grabbe (Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 393; New York: T & T Clark, 2007), 73. 98 Polak, “Covenant at Mount Sinai,” 122-27; Heintz, “Dans la plénitude du Coeur,” 31-38 ; Weinfeld, “Covenant Terminology,” 190-91; “The Loyalty Oath,” 379-89; “Common Heritage,” 176-82. 99 Juha Pakkala, “The Date of the Oldest Edition of Deuteronomy,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 121 (2009): 389. 100 William Morrow, “‘To Set the Name,’ in the Deuteronomic Centralization Formula,” Journal of Semitic Studies 55 (2010): 377; so also Jerald S. Cooper, “Cuneiform,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1992), 1.1217. 95

46

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

syrian influence on Judah’s literati was far more extensive than the one moment of Esarhaddon’s loyalty oath.101 We have access to only a small portion of the potential ancient intertexts that the biblical writers drew on, which would have included not only unpreserved ancient Near Eastern texts but oral literature, as well.102 However, this monograph will not disprove the Neo-Assyrian treaty source; that is beyond its scope. The treaty background may be part of the picture. As Rob Barrett has opined, “Deuteronomy’s resistance to precise dating should be viewed less as a failure of historical method than as a demonstration of the breadth of the historical traditions upon which it draws.”103 But while Esarhaddon’s Loyalty Oath may provide a good explanation for Deuteronomy 13 and 28, I shall propose in the next several chapters another ancient Near Eastern parallel that better elucidates the biblical idea of covenant. Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda presents a much stronger case than treaty language of any period for a source for biblical covenant imagery.104 The occurrence of this language in the Barrakab inscriptions discussed in the next chapter, as well as in Neo-Assyrian propaganda and the biblical text, suggests a more convincing mechanism for the transmission of this language than Deuteronomists plagiarizing the copy of Esarhaddon’s loyalty oath supposedly left in the Jerusalem chancery. 101 Richard D. Nelson, “Response to Thomas C. Römer, The SoCalled Deuteronomistic History,” in “In Conversation with Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History,” ed. Raymond F. Person Jr., Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (2009) article 17: 9. 102 David Carr, “The Many uses of ‘Intertextuality’ in Biblical Studies,” paper presented at the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010. 103 Disloyalty and Destruction (Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 511; New York: T & T Clark, 2009), 37. 104 Note Simo Parpola, “Assyria’s Expansion in the 8th and 7th Centuries and Its Long-Term Repercussions in the West,” in Symbiosis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past, ed. William G. Dever and Seymour Gitin (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003), 105, who sees the Deuteronomic concept of God “heavily indebted to Assyrian religion and royal ideology,” rather than treaty. I will argue that the royal ideology is key.

THE APPEAL TO EXTRABIBLICAL PARADIGMS

47

My aim, however, is to explain how ancient Israel understood its relationship with Yahweh, and not to find a date for covenant, or even to locate its origin (or those of the Covenant Formula or berit). Such studies are, however, scientific (at least in intent); they are the pursuit of folklorists or anthropologists: that is of people using the [biblical] stories not as they were meant to be used, but as a quarry from which to dig evidence, or information, about matters in which they are interested. A perfectly legitimate procedure in itself – but ignorance or forgetfulness of the nature of [the] story (as a thing told in its entirety) has often led such inquirers into strange judgements. … It is more interesting, and also in its way more difficult, to consider what they are.105

105 J. R. R. Tolkein, “On Fairy-Stories,” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ed. C. S. Lewis (Oxford: University Press, 1947), 47-48.

3 THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION The ancient text I propose for comparison with Israelite “covenant” language is the Barrakab inscription, a royal inscription in Aramaic produced by King Barrakab of Sam'al in the 8th century B.C. This minor state in northwestern Syria briefly existed in the first millennium B.C. without achieving any sort of international might. However, analysis of the Barrakab inscription in the context of the history of Sam’al shows that the Barrakab text needs to be read as an example of internal propaganda favoring Assyrian overlordship -- the propaganda of submission.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SAM’AL The state of Sam'al was located nearly in the juncture of Syria and Asia Minor at the northeast corner of the Mediterranean Sea (See map, Fig. 1). It was situated on the east side of the Amanus Mountains, at their base, southwest of the Ceyhan River on one of the narrowest parts of the plain between Antioch and Marash.1 In the period in question, this put Sam'al east of Que (Cilicia), north of Unqi (Patina, Kullani), south of Gurgum, and west of Carchemish and Arpad (Yahan, Bit Adini). The name Sam'al is a shortened form of Sam'alla (as in a stele of Tiglath-pileser II found in Iran, line II.17).2 Sam'al is the Assyrian name for the state, rarely used by its own rulers (I shall return to this point below).3 By the local

Robert Francis Harper, “A Visit to Zinjirli,” Old Testament Student 8 (1889): 184. See Simo Parpola and Michael Porter, eds., Helsinki Atlas of the Near East in the Neo-Assyrian Period (Helsinki: Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2001), 2, 18. 2 Lee D. Levine, Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae from Iran (Royal Ontario Museum Occasional Papers 23; Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 1972), 18. 3 H. Sader, Les états araméens de Syrie depuis leurs fondation jusqu’à leurs transformation en provinces Assyriennes (Tübingen: Köhler, 1984), 181; K. 1

49

50

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

rulers it was called Y'DY (as in the texts of the kings Kilammuwa and Panammuwa II), a name never found in Assyrian documents.4 The name Y'DY may be Luwian, the Indo-European language of the Neo-Hittite kingdoms,5 and should not be vocalized as Ya'udi (see below).6 It is unlikely that Y'DY and Sam'al refer to two distinct places or that Y'DY was part of a greater Sam'al.7 At most, Sam'al may refer to modern Zenjirli, the capital of Y'DY,8 or it may simply be multiple names for the same state. Additionally, Sam'al was known as Bit Gabbari after its eponymous dynastic founder (cf. Arpad = Bit Agusi; Guzana = Bit Bakhiani; etc.).

Lawson Younger, Jr., “Panammuwa and Bar-Rakib,” Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University 18 (1986): 101. 4 Sader, Les états araméens, 181. 5 J. David Schloen and Amir S. Fink, “New Excavations at Zincirli Höyük in Turkey (Ancient Sam’al) and the Discovery of an Inscribed Mortuary Stele,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 356 (2009): 6; André Lemaire and J. –M. Durand, Les Inscriptions Araméenes de Sfiré (École Pratique des Hautes Études IVe Section, Sciences historiques et philologiques 2, Hautes Études Orientales 20; Paris: Librairie Droz, 1984), 82. “Thousands of Luwian-speakers inhabit[ed] the Hatti Land by the end of the Hittite New Kingdom;” H. Craig Melchert, The Luwians (Handbook of Oriental Studies 68; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 84. 6 J. David Hawkins, “The Neo-Hittite States in Syria and Anatolia,” Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 3.1.397. 7 E. G. H. Kraeling, Aram and Israel (Columbia University Oriental Studies 13; New York: Columbia University Press, 1918), 131. 8 Kraeling, Aram and Israel, 131; Sader, Les états araméens, 181. In August 2006, excavations were renewed at Zenjirli after more than a century. These excavations by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago are under the direction of David Schloen. It is likely that they will shed new light on the history of Sam’al so important for this chapter, and possibly discover new inscriptions that may affect this study as a whole.

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

Figure 1. Map of the Levant, 9th-8th centuries B.C. By the author.

51

52

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Landsberger has divided the history of Sam'al into five periods, the first three of which concern this study.9 The first period of his division is from settlement of the region to the establishment of a city (at the site known to-day as Zenjirli) as a consolidated center.10 The region of Sam'al was settled at an early date. Current excavations show the site of Zenjirli to have been settled around 2500 B.C.11 Excavations at nearby Gedikli have uncovered remains as early as the late Chalcolithic (late 5th- early 4th-millennia B.C.). 12

After the Hittite Empire disintegrated around 1200 B.C., Sam'al was populated by migrant Cilicians who, although neither Syrians nor Hattusans, called themselves Hittites. Some Luwian speakers had probably begun to arrive in Sam’al even earlier than this.13 Thus, Sam'al was one of several Neo-Hittite states, with Tubal, Gurgum, Carchemish, Arpad, Unqi, and others, which emerged between the two zones of Aramean concentration along the Khaibur River and south of the Orontes around Damascus.14 Unfortunately, this period of Sam'al's history is poorly documented, and so little can be concluded about the state as a Neo-Hittite entity.15 Landsberger's second phase is from the institution of Semitic kingship until incorporation into the Assyrian client-state system. It was customarily conjectured that the dynastic eponymous ancestor Gabbar(i) and his followers were semi-nomadic Arameans who crossed the Euphrates around 920,16 or 900 as per Sader,17 con-

Benno Landsberger, Samal (Veröffentlichungen der Türkischen historischen Gesellschaft 7.16; Ankara: Druckerei der Türkischen Historischen Gesellschaft, 1948), 1.11 10 Landsberger, Samal, 12. 11 Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 6. 12 U. B. Alkim, “The Amanus Region in Turkey,” Archaeology 22 (1969): 289, 287. 13 Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 7. 14 O. R. Gurney, The Hittites (London: Penguin Books, 1990). 15 Landsberger, Samal, 40; Sader, Les états araméens, 183. 16 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 437; Landsberger, Samal, 37. 17 Sader, Les états araméens, 307. 9

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

53

quered Neo-Hittite Sam'al, and assimilated the culture.18 Given newer questioning of whether Samalian is actually Aramaic at all, the lack of any archaeological hallmark of the Arameans, and the lack of any disruption to the Luwian states between Zenjirli and the Euphrates by this supposed Aramean invasion, this conjecture cannot be assumed.19 There were Semitic peoples living in Sam'al prior to Luwian hegemony, probably Amorites who provided the Semitic name, Sam'al, meaning “left” or “north.”20 From this point on, Sam'al was a weak state, requiring outside help to repulse even the feeblest of enemies, as will be seen below. Economic problems were endemic, as illustrated by the texts of Kilammuwa and Panammuwa I.21 Assuming the Semitic rulers were not Arameans, a slow Aramaization nevertheless took place, especially in contact with Assyria.22 Throughout its history, Aramean Sam'al allied itself more often with Assyria than with the other Aramean states. Some have suggested that this may have been because of the large Luwian population of Sam'al, a larger percentage than in any of the neighboring Aramean states.23 Although Hawkins maintains that most of Sam'al's population were Aramean; neither Sader nor Hawkins give the evidence for their views.24 It is noteworthy that although the dynasty was Semitic, and had such Aramean-named individuals as Gabbar(i) and Hayanu (or Ḥ ayyā), it also had rulers with Hittite (Luwian) names such as Kilammuwa and Panammuwa, and these are among the later rulers.25 Such Neo-Hittite names for Semitic individuals connote not ethnicity but political decisions on the part of those who chose

Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 381; Landsberger, Samal, 42. Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 9; “Searching for Ancient Sam’al,” Near Eastern Archaeology 72 (2009): 207-208. 20 Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 6. 21 Sader, Les états araméens, 186, 188. 22 Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 9. 23 Sader, Les états araméens, 189. 24 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 375. 25 Melchert, Luwians, 274. The only Luwian inscription found at Zenjirli, in fact, is a signet ring of Barrakab; Melchert, Luwians, 284. 18 19

54

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

them.26 The reason is unlikely to be ethnic strife, because ethnic conflicts in general appear to not have been particularly strong or even present at all times in ancient southwestern Asia. We may note the presence of Hurrians in Ugarit and West Semites in Alalakh.27 The current excavators of Sam'al highlight both the persistence of distinct ethnic identities and the fusion of different traditions in Sam'al.28 The rulers of Sam'al can be established by coordinating several inscriptions. The first five rulers appear on an Early Late-Hittite style colossus of Kilammuwa, and again on Kilammuwa's Phoenician inscription.29 The last six rulers are known from the Zenjirlidialect Aramaic text of Panammuwa II. Dates here given are those of Sader,30 except Gabbari's, discussed above, unless otherwise noted: Gabbar(i) 920-870 BMH (or BNH) 870-860 Hayanu (or Hʋayyā) 860-840 Ša'īl, his son 840-825 Kilammuwa, son of Hayanu 825-81031 QRL 810-790 Panammuwa I, his son 790-770 Bar-Tsur, possibly his son 770-760 A usurper 760-743 32 26 Mario Liverani, “Nationality and Political Identity,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1992), 4.1032. The iconography, for example, is wholly Aramean; Melchert, Luwians, 284; and Barrakab himself had an Aramaic seal; F. von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli (Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen 14; Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1911), 5.73. 27 Liverani, “Nationality and Political Identity,” 1032. 28 Schloen and Fink, “New Excavations,” 10; “Searching,” 217. 29 ANET 500-501 ; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 385-86, 397. 30 Sader, Les états araméens, 307. 31 Hawkins's (“Neo-Hittite States,” 386) variant dates yield 840-830 for Kilammuwa; there is no evidence that Kilammuwa was a usurper as Landsberger (Samal, 60) argued. 32 The usurper cannot possibly be an “Azriyau” as per Kraeling and others; see Stephanie Dalley, “Yahweh in Hamath in the 8th Century

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

55

Panammuwa II, son of Bar-Tsur 743-732 33 Barrakab(el) 732-?? 34

Within this dynastic framework, the history of Sam'al can be reconstructed. Nothing is known before the reign of Hayanu.35 Then, there is mention of Sam'al in the Kurkh Monolith Inscription of Shalmaneser III of Assyria (859-824). This text36 should be used with caution, as it contains many scribal errors, omissions, and insertions,37 but it does recount Shalmaneser III's first thrust westward, his campaign of year one (859-858). The goals of this incursion were economic, not political, control of the West, and to obtain a corridor to the seacoast and to the Cilician metal mines.38 Shalmaneser routed eastern Bit Adini, and Gurgum and Kummukh (Commagene) submitted quickly, but he was opposed at the Sam'al border by a coalition of Hayanu of Sam'al, Bit-Adini, Carchemish, and Unqi (Patina), probably under the leadership of Carchemish.39 B.C.,” Vetus Testamentum 40 (1990): 21-32. cf. Kraeling, Aram and Israel, 125. 33 The latter date is quite certain; see below. 34 The theophoric element in his name is of the god Rakkabel, the dynastic god as well as a local god [see ANET 501; Ralf-B. Wartke, Sam’al (Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2005), 86; Landsberger, Samal, 45], a local form of the Aramean moon-god [see Landsberger, Samal, 46; James A. Montgomery, “Notes on Early Aramaic Inscriptions,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 54 (1934): 421]. The king's name, therefore, would be Barrakkabel or Birrakkabel. 35 Wartke, Sam’al, 57. 36 ANET 277-281; Daniel David Luckenbill, Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylon [hereafter ARAB] (1927; repr. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 1.599-600. 37 Nadav Na‘aman, “Two Notes on the Monolith Inscription of Shalmaneser III from Kurkh,” Tel Aviv 3 (1976): 94; Hayim Tadmor, “Que and Musri,” Israel Exploration Journal 11 (1961): 144. 38 Hayim Tadmor “Assyria and the West,” in Unity and Diversity, ed. Hans Goedick and J. J. M. Roberts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 38; J. du Plat Taylor, M. V. S. Williams, and J. Waechter, “The Excavations of Sakce Gözü,” Iraq 12 (1950): 68. 39 Landsberger, Samal, 30; Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 38; Shigeo Yamada, The Construction of the Assyrian Empire (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 3; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), 95.

56

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The coalition was defeated at Lutibu in Sam'al, and Shalmaneser advanced into Unqi.40 The coalition again attacked him in Unqi, now with additional support from Que and Khilakku. Shalmaneser was once more victorious, erected a stele, and retired,41 with only Bit-Adini being formally annexed (in 856).42 From the same Kurkh Monolith text, there is a tribute list from Shalmaneser's year 2 (858857) that includes Hayanu of Sam'al along with Unqi, Arpad, Carchemish, and others.43 Sam'al was not involved in the coalition of Syrian rulers who opposed Assyria at the battle of Qarqar in 853, although such close neighbors as Hamath and Arvad were involved.44 This is an example of Sam'al's reluctance to enter into the multiple anti-Assyrian leagues that its neighbors contracted in the 9th and 8th centuries. The Phoenician text of Kilammuwa reports that King Kilammuwa “hired cheaply” the king of Assyria to help him against the attack of the Danunites.45 This text likely refers to events sometime between 840 and 831, and the Assyrian king would be Shalmaneser III.46 The Danunites likely refers to Adana, a subject city of Que on the Ceyhan River.47 That Sam'al was unable to defend against this small power without outside aid is testimony to 40 William W. Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” Biblical Archaeologist 23 (1960): 158; Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 38; Josef Tropper, Die Inschriften von Zincirli (Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas 6; Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 1993), 11. 41 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 391; Na‘aman, “Two Notes”; Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 67. 42 Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 38. 43 Wartke, Sam’al, 57; A. T. Olmstead, “Shalmaneser III and the Establishment of the Assyrian Power,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 41 (1921): 357; Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 117. 44 ANET 277-281. 45 It was not the Danunites who hired the Assyrian monarch against Kilammuwa, as Landsberger had read (Samal, 59). 46 Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 69; Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 163; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 397. 47 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 397; Sader, Les états araméens, 188; Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 199 n. 422. Previously, the Danunites had a large kingdom centered at Tabal, from which they were ousted by Warpalawas.

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

57

the chronic weakness of Sam'al.48 There is no direct record of the events in question in Assyrian documents, but there were several campaigns to Que in 839, 833, and 832, any of which could relate to the events of the Kilammuwa text.49 With the reign of the Assyrian king Šamši-Adad V (824-811), the power of Assyria in the West dramatically decreased. ŠamšiAdad could not hold on to anything located west of that portion of Bit Adini on the Assyrian side of the Euphrates.50 This period was one of Aramean ascendancy in the West that, aside from the reign of Adad-nirari II (811-783), lasted until 740. Unfortunately, little can be established about Sam'al's role in this ascendancy. With Adad-nirari III, there was some Assyrian resurgence. In 808, he defeated Guzana. From the Pazarcek Stele and Tell Rimah Stele (and British Museum #131124 from Dur-Katlimmu, dubbed the “Sheikh Hammad Stele”) there is an account of the campaign in 805-803 against “Eight Kings of Hatti.”51 This latest antiAssyrian alliance was dominated by Arpad, and included Unqi, Gurgum, Melid, and Sam'al under King Panammuwa I. Adad-nirari defeated the alliance at Paqarkhubani. To sometime around this point belong the events narrated in the Zakkur Stele.52 This text relates how Damascus (likely the dominant power), Sam'al, Que, Unqi, Gurgum, Arpad, and Melid opposed Hamath, and how Hamath was rescued by its gods, presumably by the hand of Assyria. Hawkins has dated these events to 796, equating them with the campaign to Mansuate mentioned in the It seems splitting hairs to argue that the Kilammuwa’s statement that the Danunite king was “more powerful than I” does not imply that the Danunites had somehow defeated Sam’al, as does Simon B. Parker, “Appeals for Military Intervention,” Biblical Archaeologist 59 (1996): 215. 49 ARAB 1.577; Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 38; Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 68. 50 Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 163. 51 Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 165; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 400; Alan Millard and Hayim Tadmor, “Adad-Nirari in Syria,” Iraq 35 (1973): 59. 52 ANET 501-502; Sigurður Hafþórsson, A Passing Power (Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 54; Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2006), 65-66. 48

58

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Eponym Chronicle, when Adad-nirari adjusted the Arpad/Hamath border in favor of Hamath.53 Na‘aman argues that this date is too soon after the defeat of 803 for the North Syrian powers to have posed such a threat.54 Further, Adad-nirari's account of his attack on Damascus does not mention a coalition. Na‘aman puts the events in 805-804, during the campaign against the “Eight Kings of Hatti.” But if so, one must explain why Arpad, such a principal power in the 805-803 conflict, appears in Zakkur under the leadership of Damascus.55 Millard and Tadmor, therefore, propose a pre805 date, for which Na‘aman again finds no direct evidence.56 Millard also will allow for a dating of 775-772, when the Eponym Chronicle lists a campaign against Damascus and Hatarikka (Hadrach).57 What is important is that Assyria had temporarily thwarted Aramean hegemony, and that Sam'al here did participate in an anti-Assyrian alliance. Under Shalmaneser IV (783-773), Ashur-dan III (773-755), and Ashur-nirari V (755-745), Assyria again lost its hold on the West. The Assyrians abandoned the garrison at Bit Adini in 778, and made no advances other than an occasional foray to Hatarikka under Ashur-dan and a minor expedition against Arpad under Ashur-nirari.58 This was a period of Aramean hegemony in the South, but Hallo has suggested that Urartu gained the upper hand in the North.59 Du Plat Taylor et al. maintain that Urartu may have 53 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 403-404. The eponym system was the basis of the Assyrian calendar, with each year given the name of an Assyrian official. Lists of these officials, in chronological order, often added after the official’s name and title a cryptic entry about what significant even took place that year involving the king. 54 Nadav Na‘aman, “Forced Participation in Alliances in the Course of the Assyrian Campaigns to the West,” in Ah, Assyria, ed. Michael Cogan and Israel Eph‘al (Scripta Hierosolymitana 33; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 85 55 Millard and Tadmor, 64. 56 Millard and Tadmor, “Adad-Nirari in Syria,” 85. 57 Alan Millard, “Adad-Nirari III, Aram, and Arpad,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 105 (1973): 163. 58 Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 166-67. 59 Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 167.

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

59

held sway as far south as Aleppo.60 In 800, Melid was paying tribute to Urartu, and perhaps Urartu's participation with a North Syrian group of states against the recrudescence of Tiglath-pileser III in 743 was a part of some battle for hegemony.61 Since Melid was tributary, it is probable that Kummukh and Azalla were as well, and if in fact Urartan dominion was felt as far as Aleppo, then Gurgum, Bit-Adini, and Sam'al would have been included. There is however, nothing in Sam'alean texts to suggest such a situation. Around 760, King Bar-Tsur of Sam'al and many of his courtiers were killed in a palace coup.62 A usurper took over, and BarTsur's son Panammuwa II fled to Assyrian refuge. This information is recounted in the Panammuwa II text written in Zenjirli Aramaic by Barrakab.63 This was not an unparalleled event. In 759, a similar palace coup occurred in Guzana, in which a new dynasty took control, a dynasty likely outside Assyrian influence.64 There is no evidence that the coup in Sam'al was by nature an anti-Assyrian act,65 but there are several pieces of circumstantial evidence for this conclusion. It was the Assyrians who later reinstated the house of Bar-Tsur (see below); the revolt occurred during the nadir of Assyrian power in the Sam'al area; and a flight of fancy could reconstruct a scenario of palace intrigue in Zenjirli with pro-Assyrian factions and pro-Urartan or pro-Damascus factions. Mention also should be made of the Sefire text, where some read Y'DY (=Sam'al) in line 9 of Sefire IB.66 Without discussing the many issues of this text, which are beyond the scope of this chapter, the mention of Sam'al would describe Sam'al as part of, or at least the definition of the edge of, the land under Arpad submitting to the allodial Assyrian administrator Šamši-ilu.67 Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 69. Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 69. 62 Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 14. 63 See Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 408; Sader, Les états araméens, 185; Parker, “Appeals for Military Intervention,” 217. 64 Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 167. 65 Sader, Les états araméens, 186. 66 Lemaire and Durand, Inscriptions araméenes, 81. 67 Lemaire and Durand, Inscriptions araméennes, 89. 60 61

60

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

With the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745-727), Assyria began to wax rapidly in its power in the region. Tiglath-pileser reinstalled Panammuwa II as king of Sam'al in 743.68 Sam'al did not participate in the coalition of Arpad, Gurgum, Melid, Kummukh, and Urartu against Assyria,69 and probably it was for this reason that Panammuwa II was further rewarded with large amounts of land formerly belonging to Gurgum (see the Panammuwa text).70 In 740 Tiglath-pileser conquered Arpad. This marked a new phase for imperial policy. The “New Campaigns” of Tiglath-pileser (those in the West) now led to the provincialization of Syria through direct annexations and the establishment of governors instead of client kings.71 In 738, Tiglath-pileser reached the Beqac, and annexed Unqi. From this period, Panammuwa II of Sam'al is mentioned giving tribute to Assyria along with Damascus, Judah, Tyre, Que, Carchemish, Gurgum, and others. This text72 is a Summarizing Inscription, and therefore not in any chronological sequence but rather arranged by grouping Assyria's foes and clients geographically, combining multiple campaigns against the same foe.73 Nevertheless, this tribute of Sam'al can be reasonably dated to 738, and likely not to 741.74 On the Tiglath-pileser stele from Iran, line II.17, Sam'al is again listed as giving tribute in 737 with Damascus, Judah, Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 15. Hallo, “From Qarqar to Carchemish,” 171; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 410; Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 69. 70 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 412; Plat Taylor et al., “Excavations,” 70. 71 J. N. Postgate, “The Land of Assur and the Yoke of Assur,” World Archaeology 23 (1992): 247-48. 72 ARAB 1.772; ANET 282-284; Summary text 7.8’ in Hayim Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 170-71. 73 Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 53-138; Peter B. Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria in the First Millennium BC,” in Anfänge politischen Denkens in der Antike, ed. Kurt Raaflaub (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 24; Munich: Oldenbourg, 1993), 79. 74 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 411; A. Kirk Grayson, “Assyria: Tiglath Pilesar III to Sargon,” Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 3.2.71; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 16. 68 69

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

61

Tyre, Byblos, Que, Melid, Tabal, Kummukh, Gurgum, Carchemish, and others.75 Sam'al's participation in the Syro-Ephraimite War, in which Assyria intervened at Judah's request against Damascus and Israel in 735, was firmly with the Assyrian camp. Panammuwa II himself perished in the siege of Damascus while fighting for Assyria (as known from the Panammuwa II text).76 It is thus appropriate that Landsberger classifies the reigns of Panammuwa II and Barrakab as his third period, that of Assyrian client state.77 Another tribute list, the Nimrud Clay-Tablet Inscription of 732,78 lists Panammuwa again giving tribute together with Edom, Que, Judah, and Gaza. It is into this precise historical context that the Barrakab inscription belongs. It must date between 732 and 727 to fit after the death of Panammuwa at Damascus and still during the reign of Tiglath-pileser.79 Franz Rosenthal estimates the date as 730.80 The implications of this time frame for the text’s production will be discussed further below. There remains only one more issue for the history of Sam'al, that of its annexation by Assyria. Unfortunately, there is no extant Assyrian record for this annexation. The most likely option is that it occurred under Shalmaneser V (727-722), for whom there are no texts. Since neither Tiglath-pileser nor Sargon II mention annexing Sam’al, it should belong to Shalmaneser.81 The problem with this is that it limits the reign of Barrakab to a maximum of ten years, and he was responsible for a great amount of construction that may

Levine, Two Neo-Assyrian Stelae, 19, 13; Stele IIIA.17 in Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 108-109, 265, 268. 76 Wartke, Sam’al, 62; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 414; Kraeling, Aram and Israel, 127. 77 Landsberger, Samal, 11. 78 ANET 282; ARAB 1.801; Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 414; Luckenbill's [1927] date of 728 is too late. 79 Herbert Donner and W. Röllig, Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1964), [hereafter KAI] 2.232 ##216-17. 80 ANET 501. 81 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 415; Landsberger, Samal, 72; Sader, Les états araméens, 186. 75

62

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

not fit into this period.82 Sam'al was a province by 708 in the reign of Sargon II (722-705). From 708 (681 as per Landsberger is too late83), Sargon's Prism Fragment “A” mentions an Assyrian governor of Sam'al .84 So Sargon held Sam'al as a province but never claimed to annex it.85 Sometime during this same period, the palace at Zenjirli was destroyed by fire, and remained in ruins for fifty years.86

THE TEXT OF THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTIONS At this point, it will be useful to present the texts of the two larger Barrakab inscriptions and one of the smaller ones, with some philological comment (the vocalization/transliteration of these Imperial Aramaic inscriptions can only be approximated).87 The paragraphing of my translation is according to Younger:88 Introduction, Accession, Ascension of the Dynasty, and Construction of the Palace.

Landsberger, Samal, 72. Landsberger, Samal, 72. 84 ARAB 2.197 “A” and “B” are really parts of the same prism (Tadmor, “Campaigns of Sargon”). 85 Hawkins, “Neo-Hittite States,” 416; Landsberger, Samal, 73; Hayim Tadmor, “The Campaigns of Sargon II of Assur,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 12 (1958): 88. 86 Kraeling, Aram and Israel, 129, 131; Landsberger, Samal, 79. 87 Q.v., Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 174. 88 Younger “Panammuwa and Bar-Rakib,” 91-103; cf. Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 133. 82 83

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

63

Figure 2. Facsimile of Barrakab Inscription i; Von Luschan, Ausgraben in Sendschirli, 379.

Barrakab i (Fig. 2)89 is carved on a 1.3m x 62m block alongside a relief of Barrakab in Assyrian clothing, inscribed under his arm.90 The text runs:

In addition to Tropper, Inscriften von Zincirli, older editions include KAI 2.233 #216; ANET 501; J. C. L. Gibson, Textbook of Syrian Semitic Inscriptions (Oxford: University Press, 1975), 2.87-92 #15. 90 Barrakab precedes an attendant with a fly whisk, in a cliché scene of Assyrian art; Mark W. Hamilton, “The Past as Destiny: Historical Vi89

64

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 1 ‚ănâ Bir[rā]kkab 2 bar (or bir) Panāmmuwa mĕlek Śam’āl 3 ‛ăbed Tugultāpaleysār mārĕ‚ (or mārē‚ or mĕrē‚) 4 rib‛ay ‚arqā‚ biṣdeq ‚ābî wĕbiṣdeqî 5 haw tĕbanî mār‚î Rākkab‚ēl 6 wĕmār‚î Tugultāpaleysār ‛al 7 kursē‚ ‚ābî ûbayĕt ‚ābî 8 ‛ĕmēl min kul wĕrāṣĕt bĕgilgāl 9 mār‚î mĕlek Aššûr bĕmiṣ‚at 10 mālkin rabrăbin ba‛ĕlay 11 kĕsap wĕba‛ĕlay zĕhāb wi‚aḥzēt 12 bayĕt ‚ābî wĕhayṭibtēh 13 min bayĕt ḥad mālkin rabrăbin 14 wĕhitan‚abô ‚aḥḥāy malkayyā‚ 15 lĕkol mah ṭābat (or ṭubat) baytî 16 wĕbay ṭab layĕtâ lĕ‚abāhay 17 malkê Śam’al hā‚ bayĕt Kilamuwā 18 lĕhōm pĕhā‚ bayĕt śitwā’ 19 lĕhōm wĕhā‚ bayĕt kayēṣā’ 20 wĕ‚ănâ bĕnayēt baytā‚ zĕnah

(1) I am Barrakab [properly, Birrakkabel], (2) son of Panammuwa, king of Sam (3)'al, servant of Tiglath-pileser, lord of (4) the fourths of the earth. With the uprightness of my father and my uprightness (5), my lord Rakkabel (6) and my lord Tiglath-pileser seated me on (7) the throne of my father. Now my dynasty was the most (8) wretched of all, yet I ran at the wheel of (9) my lord the king of Assyria in the midst of (10) great kings, owners of silver, (11) and owners of gold. I took over (12) my dynasty and made it better (13) than the dynasty of any one of the great kings. (14) My brothers were envious (15) of all that was good in my house. (16) My ancestors, the kings of Sam'al, did not have a [decent] palace. (17) There was the palace of Kilammuwa (18) for them, there was a winter palace (19) sion in Sam’al and Judah under Assyrian Hegemony,” Harvard Theological Review 91 (1998): 228.

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

65

for them, and there was a summer palace. (20) I have built this palace. Textual notes: 2) bir/bar: a closed stressed i with r or a laryngeal shows the pattern bir>bar. Panammuwa is a Luwian/Lycian name, PANA-MUUA, or in the Luwian dialect used as Neo-Hittite Hieroglyphics, Pana-muwata/i.91 3) “Servant”: Postgate, following Moses Finley, prescribes the term “client” instead of “vassal” to avoid any feudal connotations.92 Donner views Barrakab’s relationship to Tiglath-pileser, described as ‛ăbed and characterized by ṣĕdeq (line 4) as analogous to a devotee’s relationship with a god.93 4) The expression, “Lord of the Fourths of the Earth,” is directly derived from the Akkadian expression šar kibrāt erbettiti.94 Some scholars suggest translating ṣĕdeq here as “legitimate,” as may be required in certain Ugaritic and Byblian texts.95 In both Keret and the Byblos Yehimilk inscription, however, ṣdq[h] occurs in parallel with yšr[h], which would suggest “upright.”96 The phrase “because of my/my father’s uprightness” occurs in an eight-century bilingual inscrip91 P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, Luwian Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera (Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui 10; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1961), 116, 155, 167 92 Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 252. 93 Herbert Donner, “Ein Orthostatenfragment des Königs Barrakab von Sam’al,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Orientforschung 3 (1955): 89-90. Nevertheless, Donner also describes ṣadiq as a characteristic term of the diplomatic discourse of North Syrian princes; “Orthostatenfragment,” 89, 96. 94 Donner, “Orthostatenfragment,” 87; Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 229 n.56; Tropper, Inscriften von Zincirli, 134. 95 Perhaps in Keret and the 10th-century Yehimilk inscription (ANET 499); also with this meaning is a 3rd-century Cypriote inscription about Ptolemy II; John J. Scullion, “Righteousness (Old Testament),” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday, 1992), 5.724-35; Jože Krašovec, Justice (ṢDQ) de Dieu dans la Bible Hébraïque et l’Interprétation Juive et Chrétienne (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 76; Freiburg: University Press, 1988), 45. The main proponent of this translation is James Swetnam, who suggests “legitimate” in most West Semitic inscriptions; James Swetnam, “Some Observations on the Background of TSDYQ in Jeremias 23:5a,” Biblica 46 (1965), 29-32, 34. 96 Krašovec, Justice, 46.

66

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

tion from Karatepe and a seventh-century tomb inscription from Nerab, in both places with the meaning “upright” making the most sense.97 ‚ābî> Syriac ’ab = my father. 7) ûbayĕt is the construct form of the absolute bay, as in Syriac.98 8) ‛ML should be translated “to be wretched,” rather than “to labor” or “to profit.”99 This meaning of ‛ML occurs in line 26 of Sefire text A and line 36 of Sefire text B.100 wĕrāṣĕt is from the root RHT = RWṢ, “to run/flow”101 and not from RZT as per Cross and Freedman.102 11) wi‚aḥzēt is the perfect normal form. 12) wĕhayṭibtēh is the first person singular perfect haphal of YṬB with a third person masculine singular suffix.103 14) wĕhitan‚abô is 3rd person masculine plural, but the root is uncertain. It is neither the hophal of NTN as Müller proposed, nor the hitnaphal of Y’B as Donner and Röllig suggest.104 It may be Donner and Röllig's other alternative, ’BH, as the Akkadian abitu or Arabic abu (cf. Exod 10:27), or from YNB, NYB, or N’B in the etpa’al, which is the preference of Cross and Freedman and Younger.105 The probable meaning is “envious.”106 16) wĕbay ṭab is not one word. There is a clear division on the inscription between

ANET 499-500, 505. Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, pp. 282, 299. 99 Parker prefers “to accomplish”; Stories in Scripture and Inscriptions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 160 n.8. 100 Landsberger, Samal, 71; KAI 222A.26, 222B.36; J. Hoftijzer and K. Jongeling, Dictionary of North-west Semitic Inscriptions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 2.871. The meaning “to labor” in Barrakab is accepted, inter alia, by Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 135. 101 Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 135, 282. 102 Frank Moore Cross and David Noel Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1952), 30. 103 KAI 233; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 136. 104 D. H. Müller, “Die Bauinschrift des Barrekub,” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 10 (1896): 195; KAI 233. 105 Cross and Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography, 30; Younger, “Panammuwa and Bar-Rakib,” 100 n. 38; K. Lawson Younger, Jr., “The Bar-Rakib Inscription,” in The Context of Scripture, ed. William W. Hallo (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), 2.161. See Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 13637, 298 for full discussion of the options. 106 Landsberger, Samal, 71; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 136. 97 98

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

67

the words,107 and no assimilation can have taken place between a supposed original final t of the first word and the actual initial ṭ of the second as Gibson suggests.108 The form bay is merely the absolute of the word “house,” as in the Syriac (see note for line 7). 17) hā‚ is a present existential particle, not a deictic particle as Cross and Freedman maintain.109 The final word on this line is the name Kilammuwa, and not the word kullāmû, “all of them,” as suggested by Torrey.110 18) pĕhā‚ is the conjunction pe, “and,” plus the existential particle, not the 3rd person masculine singular personal pronoun.111 śitwā‚ is loaned to Hebrew as ŚTW.112 19) kayēṣā’ shows a dissimilation of an emphatic q to k before an emphatic ṭ.113 Barrakab inscription ii114 is a 44.5cm x 45.5cm fragment that shows part of the face and arm of a man in Assyrian garb. Its first two lines duplicate Barrakab i.1-3a, and then it reads: 3 4 5 6 7 8

wĕ‚elāhay bayĕt ‚ābî ṣa[diq ‚ănâ ‛im mā]r‚î wĕcim ‛abday bayĕt [mār‚î mĕlek Aššûr] wĕṣadiq ‚ănâ ‛imē[h kol wĕṣadiqin banî] min bĕnê ko[l] . . . nabšāt hôm . . . [wĕnĕtan Rā]kkab‚ēl ḥēnî qadā[m mār‚î mĕlek] 9 Aššûr wĕqadām . . . b . . .

(3) . . . and the gods of my dynasty. Up[right I was with] (4) my lord and with the servants of the dynasty (or palace) of [my lord

Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 137; Mark Lidzbarski, Handbuch der nordsemitischen Epigraphik (Weimar: Verlag von Emil Felber, 1898), vol. 2, plate 24. 108 Gibson, Textbook, 2.91. 109 Cross and Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography, 30. 110 Charles C. Torrey, “New Notes on Some Old Inscriptions,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete 26 (1912): 90. Torrey’s translations of lines 6 and 16 are equally tendentious. 111 So, Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 138. 112 KAI 234; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 138. 113 Cross and Freedman, Early Hebrew Orthography, 31; Gibson, Textbook, 2.91; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 138, 282, 298. 114 KAI #217; Gibson, Textbook, 2.92-93 #16. 107

68

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the king of Assyria], (5) and upright I was with [him more than any; and my sons were upright] (6) more than the sons of any… (7) Their souls are . . . (8) [and] Rakkabel [gave] me favor before [my lord the king of] (9) Assyria and before . . . Note: 7) nabšāt hôm may not be nabšāthôm, as Gibson reads and as I have translated here.115 There is a divider between the words on the inscription.116 nabšāt may be a stative verb from the root NBŠ = NPŠ, napš, “to cut off” or “break off.”117 Barrakab inscription iv118 is a fragmentary text, 18.8 x 15 cm.119 It is mostly fragments of words, but lines 4 and 5 are identical with lines 4-7 of Barrakab i. In the discussion that follows, Barrakab i will be treated as the main text.

THE PROPAGANDA OF SUBMISSION Texts like the Barrakab inscriptions can be used “as a source of knowledge on the author of the document . . . his way of entering in contact both with the event and with the public.”120 The texts “serve as a mirror of how these kings saw themselves, and what they wanted their ‘image' to be in the eyes of their subjects and enemies.”121 It would be most useful to examine Barrakab’s desired way of entering into contact with the condition of Assyrian overlordship and with the public audience of his inscriptions. In this reading, the text becomes a work of propaganda. For Liverani, propaganda “offers possibilities of analysis . . . of the Gibson, Textbook, 93. Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 143. The divider is clear in the image in Lidzbarski, Handbuch, vol. 2, plate 24. 117 KAI 236. But a word spelled nabš would be pronounced exactly like napš anyway, since a b is devoiced at the end of a syllable before an unvoiced letter, so the word could be spelled either way; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 143, 282. 118 KAI 237 #220. 119 Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 147. 120 Mario Liverani, “Memorandum on the Approach to Historiographic Texts,” Orientalia 42 (1973): 179. 121 A. Leo Oppenheim, “Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empire,” in Propaganda and Communication in World History, ed. D. Lasswell, D. Lerner, and H. Speier (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1979), 1.117. 115 116

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

69

cultural environment in which the event is set, and of a complex network of reactions which the event causes among different sections of the public.”122 How can the text be read as propaganda? The standard methodologies of propaganda analysis establish that one must begin with inferring from content what the goal or strategy of the propagandist is.123 This content includes such things as literary structure and terminology and choice of medium -- here the actual position of the Barrakab steles.124 A second step is to infer from the goal of Barrakab what his policy must have been, his preferred outcome for the situation of the time.125 To examine the content, there is first a situational context to the text -- to whom was it directed?126 The Assyrian king was some 350 miles east and is presumably not the intended audience.127 Propaganda is more often directed to the inner subjects of a given state.128 It is not clear where the more complete Barrakab inscription i stood, as it was found in the 1891 excavations of Zenjirli lying loose amidst the rubble south of a large facade of Barrakab.129 Koldewey originally believed it had stood on the western end of the facade, matching the stele found in situ at the eastern end.130 Yet there was no direct evidence for this view, and a nearly identically arranged facade in Palace J had merely one stele at one end and nothing at the other.131 Von Luschan found a stand of sorts northLiverani, “Memorandum,” 191. A. L. George, Propaganda Analysis (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1959), 48. 124 Liverani, “Memorandum,” 179. 125 George, Propaganda Analysis, 49. 126 George, Propaganda Analysis, 111. 127 Nor ought we to assume there were “local Assyrian officials” to impress, as per Parker, “Appeals for Military Intervention,” 218. 128 Mario Liverani, “Propaganda,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1992), 5.474. 129 von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 4.255, 377-78. 130 R. Koldewey, “Die Architektur von Sendschirli,” in Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli (Mittheilungen aus den orientalischen Sammlungen 12; Berlin: W. Spemunn, 1898), 2.167-68. 131 von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 4.255. 122 123

70

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

west of a staircase in building K in the northwest district of Zenjirli, the measure of which exactly fit the Barrakab stele. 132 Standing here, the stele would have been on the left side of the main entry, facing the morning sun, exactly as the Kilammuwa stele had stood left of the entry to Palace J.133 Thus the text was in plain view for anyone entering the palace to see. Written documents could only be read by a small minority of the populace, but this minority -- cult officials, scribes, members of the court, other Aramean rulers -- was precisely those engaged in public activities, and so the only ones who mattered.134 Just what Barrakab wanted to say to these people can be examined with connotational semantic analysis.135 The content of the text has a multiplicity of implications. In lines 5-6, Barrakab places Tiglath-pileser on equal ground with the prime god of the state of Sam'al and its dynasty. This is not atypical of client rulers, as the Seleucid Antiochus IV declared that he obeyed the Roman Senate as he did the commands of gods (C. Sallustius Crispus, frag. 413).136 When Barrakab stated in lines 7-8 that his dynasty was most wretched, he not only used the typical motif of priority over predecessors,137 but he provided a “largely biased reconstruction of past relationships in the historical introduction.”138 It was more accurately Panammuwa II, not he, that the king of Assyria had installed on the throne (lines 6-7), although the situation may have been akin

von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 4.255. von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 4.377-78. 134 Liverani, “Propaganda,” 475; John Malcolm Russell, The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions (Mesopotamian Civilizations 9; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 1, 4; C. Mark McCormick, “Sennacherib of Assyria: Architectural Rhetoric and the Claims of the King,” paper read at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 2005. 135 Liverani, “Memorandum,” 181. 136 P. C. Sands, The Client Princes of the Roman Empire (Cambridge Historical Essays 16; Cambridge: University Press, 1908), 153. 137 Frederick Mario Fales, “Kilamuwa and the Foreign Kings,” Die Welt des Orients 10 (1979): 7. 138 Liverani, “Propaganda,” 474. 132 133

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

71

to that of Roman client kings who required Roman confirmation for legitimacy.139 The idiom “ran at the wheel of my lord” in line 8 implies both subjection and privilege.140 When written idioms refer to “gestures” or bodily actions, such as this, Gruber has shown that the primary meaning is that of the non-verbal gesture.141 Gruber has also shown certain generality in literature and life with regard to such nonverbal communication.142 Yet “running alongside the wheel” is a rare motif. There is a sixth-century B.C. Greek illustration of Nike running alongside the chariot of Heracles en route to his battle with Kyknos, but this is hardly related.143 It is not a claim by Barrakab “to be a high-ranking Assyrian official,” as proposed by Hamilton.144 Perhaps it is similar to the statement on a 12th-century B.C. boundary stone from Sippar that “Shitti-Marduk, head of the house of Bit-Karziabku, whose chariot was on the right flank of the king [Nebuchadnezzar I], his lord, did not lag far behind, but kept his chariot ready,” where vassalage is involved.145 Nine times in inscription i (and twice in inscription ii), some form of bay, “house,” is used. But the different connotations range from “throne” or “dynasty,” both related to the patrimonial repetitions of ‚ābî, to “house” or “palace,” which resonate with the royal vocabulary of the various forms of mlk and mr‚. The next step in analysis of the text is to explore structural characteristics, such as those examined by Younger.146 That is, Sands, Client Princes, 60-61, 65. Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 255. 141 Mayer I. Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication in the Ancient Near East (Studia Pohl 12.1; Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1980), 19. 142 Gruber, Aspects of Nonverbal Communication, 11. 143 Mary B. Moore, “Attic Black Figure from Samothrace,” Hesperia 44 (1975): 234-50. 144 Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 229. 145 Text B.2.4.11 col. 1, lines 25-27 = lines 35-37. Bit-Karziabku was a Kassite clan village that had been given certain privileges; Grant Frame, Rulers of Babylon (Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Babylonian Periods 2; Toronto: University Press, 1995), 33. 146 Younger, “Panammuwa and Bar-Rakib,” 91-103; George, Propaganda Analysis, 89. 139 140

72

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

where in the text something is said and the number of times it is said are important. Barrakab mentioned his loyalty to and dependence on the king of Assyria three times, once in each of the first three sections of his text, before the fourth section describing the construction of the palace, reinforcing that it is only through Assyria that the palace construction was possible.147 The forms of ‚ābî and bay are semantically linked throughout the inscriptions. This is paralleled by the semantic link between forms of mār‚ and mlk. These semantic links tie all four sections of inscription i together, emphasizing in the last section the thronedynasty-house-palace of Barrakab. Communication context includes not only such structural features, but also syntactic and linguistic features.148 Thus, it is noteworthy that while Kilammuwa's text was in Phoenician, and Panammuwa II's text, written by the same Barrakab, was in Zenjirli-dialectic Aramaic,149 the Barrakab inscriptions are in good Imperial Aramaic, the language of the Assyrian Empire.150 The choice of language both designated the primary audience and in itself conveyed an ideological message.151 Furthermore, Barrakab

147 It is therefore not true that “Attributing wealth to vassalage is difficult to explain,” as suggested by Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 230. 148 George, Propaganda Analysis, 111. 149 The eighth-century inscription of Kattammuwa, a servant of Panammuwa II, discovered in 2008 by the University of Chicago Neubauer Expedition, seems to be in a previously unattested Aramaic dialect situated between Samalian and Old Aramaic; Eudora J. Struble and Virginia R. Herrmann, “An Eternal Feast at Sam’al,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 356 (2009): 16; Dennis Pardee, “A New Aramaic Inscription from Zincirli,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 356 (2009): 52-53, 66. 150 Zenjirli-dialect Aramaic may be “a branch of Aramaic which became increasingly independent around 1000 B.C. and which failed to follow Aramaic through to its subsequent innovations”; Paul-Eugene Dion, “The Language Spoken in Ancient Sam’al,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 37 (1978): 118. For a contrary view, see John Huehnergard, “What is Aramaic?” ARAM 7 (1995): 261-82. 151 Barbara N. Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact in Imperial Assyria,” in Language and Culture in the Near East: Diglossia, Bilingualism, Reg-

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

73

called himself king of Sam'al, not Y'DY. He was the only king of Sam'al to use this Assyrian name for his country.152 Thus, his text expresses his subjection not only in its content but also in its semantics. The recurring terms of Barrakab inscription i are “house,” bay, “father,” ‚abi, forms of “good,” ṭab, and the contrast of servant, ‛abed, and lord, mār‚ and mĕlek. The chain of these terms suggests cosmic order both in imagery of political relationships and in vocabulary that is semantically tied to a filial or patrimonial/patrilineal ordering. The cosmic world view (suggested also by the seasonal references in the inscription) is mapped in terms of patrimony. There is continuity in Tiglath-pileser seating Barrakab on the throne of his own father, but the use of ṭab shows that the present is better than the past. Son surpasses father because of the new subservience to Assyria. And this elevated status of the son, along with his righteousness achieved through loyalty to the overlords of the cosmos, is better than owning silver and gold. The inscription proudly presents Barrakab as a loyal client of Assyria. There is no hint of reticence. Additionally, the stele presents the message that this paternal clientship is desirable. It can be inferred that Barrakab's goal was for his audience to view the political situation in this way. He was apparently attempting to silence any anti-Assyrian voices of the sort that may have had a role in the revolt against Bar-Tsur. When he stated his own benefits accrued from Assyrian dominance, these were benefits to all Sam'al. There is no difference; Barrakab was Sam'al. “It is in the king, then, that the people of a certain territory are identified as a group.”153 With examples from ancient Syria, Buccellati has shown that, even under foreign domination from Mesopotamia, “The people, then, constituted a unity personified in the king.”154 isters, ed. Shlomo Izre'el and Rina Drory (Israel Oriental Studies 15; Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 51. 152 Sader, Les états araméens, 181; Younger, “Panammuwa and BarRakib,” 101. 153 Giorgio Buccellati, Cities and Nations of Ancient Syria (Studi Semitici 26; Rome: Instituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente, 1967), 59. 154 Buccellati, Cities and Nations, 64; see also 57, 68-69 n.185.

74

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

From this goal can be inferred Barrakab's preferred outcome, a willing acceptance of the status quo of cosmological order. “In many cases such propaganda is confined to rationalizing an existing situation, to transforming unconscious actions of members of a society into consciously desired activity that is visible, laudable, and justified.”155 This is not to say that there were not benefits for Sam'al in the patron-client arrangement. Barrakab could not make his people favor Assyria without reason.156 The arrangement with Assyria elevated the king of Sam'al to the same rank as his neighbors in a sort of cosmic adjustment.157 This is the meaning of running beside Tiglath-pileser's wheel “in the midst of great kings, owners of silver and owners of gold” (lines 10-11). As the incident with Kilammuwa and the Danunites shows, this was not a status that Sam'al could have achieved without Assyria.158 Security was only one benefit Assyrian patronage brought. In sum, as Postgate puts it “we should not see the client rulers as cowering in their citadels waiting to be irradiated with Assyrian influence, but absorbing the scene in Nineveh, fingering the tapestries and envying the silverware,”159 or, in Hamilton’s words, “like Indians stopping a cricket match for tea or holding a durbar for Queen Victoria.”160 A comprehensive reading of the Barrakab inscriptions within the context of the history of Sam'al shows that the text works as a piece of propaganda of submission, a cosmology of sorts, presented by a ruler interested in engendering a genial acceptance of Jacques Ellul, Propaganda (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 74. Ellul, Propaganda, 33. 157 Sader, Les états araméens, 188. 158 Cf. C. C. Shoemaker and J. Spanier, Patron-Client State Relationships (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1984), 21. 159 Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 260. If this was Barrakab's strategy, it is not clear whether he succeeded. Throughout the reign of Tiglathpileser, he must have, but there is no description of the final fate of Sam'al under Shalmaneser V. Whether Sam'al revolted, rejecting the propaganda of the Barrakab inscription, and was crushed, or whether it was merely annexed in an almost clerical step, cannot be established. In any event, independence did not even last through Barrakab's own reign. 155 156

160

Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 230; Dutcher-Walls, “Sleeping,” 190.

THE BARRAKAB INSCRIPTION

75

the fatherly dominance of Assyria. Sam'al was not unique among Assyrian clients, and, given the paucity of texts by Assyrian clients, the sentiments expressed and underlying the Barrakab stele would have been equally at home in many other states.161 This is quite important, for it means that Barrakab does not merely illustrate the terms of Neo-Assyrian propaganda that will be presented in the following chapter. Barrakab is even more so a witness to West Semitic reception of this propaganda, receptions such as must have occurred – we shall see – in Judah.

161 Simonetta Ponchia, L’Assiria e gli Stati Transeufratici (History of the Ancient Near East / Studies 4; Padua: Sargon, 1991), 74.

4 THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM The Barrakab inscription fits into the history of Neo-Assyrian expansion, but before exploring this fit and before exploring the biblical counterparts of this language, we must rule out other possible origins of the various motifs found in Barrakab.1 For instance, the contents of the inscription perhaps come from Sam’al’s own past originally, despite their concordance with Neo-Assyrian events. The constellation of tropes of the inscription might originate in either the Neo-Hittite world or the Aramean, both of which shaped Sam’al’s development. This will be important when comparing the biblical material in Chapter 5. If the “Barrakab constellation” is Aramean, for example, it could have passed several ways to Israel without any Assyrian role at all. Or the motifs may have emerged first in an Aramean setting and then entered Neo-Assyrian ideology, passing from Assyria finally to Israel.2 “Aramaization” of Assyr1 William W. Hallo, “Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting,” in Scripture in Context, ed. Carl D. Evans, William W. Hallo, and John B. White (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs 34; Pittsburgh: The Pickwick Press, 1980), 10; Longman, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography, 33. 2 Hayim Tadmor, “The Aramaization of Assyria,” in Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn, ed. Hans-Jörd Nissen and Johannes Renger (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1982), 455, argued this was the case for the Loyalty Oaths, although Parpola points out that “the alleged Aramaic treaty tradition largely is a myth,” with no real examples; Simo Parpola, “NeoAssyrian Treaties from the Royal Archives of Nineveh,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 39 (1987): 183. The idea has been resurrected now by Christoph Koch, “Zwischen Hatti und Assur,” in Die Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerke, ed. M. Witte et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 2006), 379406.

77

78

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

ia was substantial; witness the use by one Pan-Aššur, “apparently of noble lineage and of exalted position, bearing a purely Assyrian name, [who] in the time and at the very court of Sargon used an Aramaic seal.”3 To a considerably lesser extent, the language could have passed into Israel without an Assyrian connection if the tropes are Neo-Hittite. In any of these cases, the dating of the related biblical material is not especially helpful, since “the relevant [Aramean or Hittite] influence may have taken place long before the actual text … was written. So the matter is highly complex.”4 So even if we can specify when the related biblical material “[w]as written, this would not answer the question of when the image … entered Israelite tradition. Not only is it possible that the ideas … circulated in Israelite tradition prior to the actual writing of the text, but Mesopotamia and Israel were in contact by trade for the entirety of Israel’s existence as a nation, and contact between Mesopotamia and Palestine extended back even into the Late Bronze Age (the narrative setting of the Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob stories).5

Aramean relations with Israel go back into the proverbial mists of Israelite prehistory.6 Relations between Israel and the Arameans were extensive early in the reign of Ahab.7 In the 9th-7th centuries, Aramean cultural influence shows up considerably in the archaeological record for regions north and east of the Sea of Galilee.8 M. Sprengling, “An Aramaic Seal Impression from Khorsabad,” American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 49 (1932): 54; Tadmor, “Aramaization of Assyria,” 450. 4 Middleton, Liberating Image, 123. 5 Middleton, Liberating Image, 144. 6 See M. Görg, “Aram und Israel,” Vetus Testamentum 26 (1976): 499500; Benjamin Mazar, “The Aramean Empire and its Relations with Israel,” Biblical Archaeologist 25 (1962): 98-120. 7 Winfried Thiel, “Erwägungen zur Aramäisch-Israelitischen Geschichte im 9. Jh. v. Chr.,” in Nachdenken über Israel, Bibel und Theologie (Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Judentums 37; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1994), 126. 8 Hafþórsson, Passing Power, 250. 3

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

79

There is little that can be called Aramean “royal propaganda,” however. Aramean kings were not given long lists of titles as the Assyrian kings were.9 While the king receives cult offering in art, he was never portrayed as divine.10 But if the Barrakab inscription is invoking an age-old Hittite convention, this may reinforce Mendenhall’s Hittite suzerainty treaty analogies described in Chapter 2. Hoffner has proposed many literary borrowings from the Hittite world.11 There may have been Anatolian individuals in Palestine or trade with Anatolia from the 12th century onward.12 However, evidence for such contact is so meagre that one cannot propose Israel appropriated Neo-Hittite royal ideology.13 Moreover, Hittite ideology is of a different sort. In the second half of the second millennium, ideologically designed Hittite texts base everything upon precedence. Not that actual historical precedence dictates policy, but an appeal is made to historical precedence – real or constructed – to justify and explain current practices. The treaty between the Hittites and Kizzuwatnan King Shunasharu is a clear example.14 Other examples include the Hittite chancery constructing relations with Ugarit and the TalmiSharruma treaty with Aleppo.15 There is no similarity with Barrakab. In addition to the possibility that the transfer of motifs to Israel was pre-Assyrian, it may also have been post-Assyrian. The “propaganda of submission,” coming from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, might have also been quite popular in the Neo-Babylonian or even Persian periods. It will be necessary to show that the Barrakab Paul–Eugène Dion, Les Araméens à l’âge du Fer (Études Bibliques n.s. 34; Paris: Librairie Lecoffre, 1997), 246. 10 Dion, Araméens, 244. 11 Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., “Ancient Israel’s Literary Heritage Compared with Hittite Textual Data,” in Future of Biblical Archaeology, ed. James K. Hoffmeier and Alan Millard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 182-92. 12 Robert D. Miller II, Chieftains of the Highland Clans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 49. 13 Buis, Notion d’Alliance, 120. 14 Mario Liverani, Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004), 72 15 Liverani, Myth and Politics, 74. 9

80

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

ideology and vocabulary that appears to show up in Israel are, in fact, Assyrian, and not of Babylonian or Persian provenance. There is considerable evidence on Persian imperialism, and it is, in fact, quite different from what the Barrakab inscription reveals. At first glance, a parallel might be seen in Achaemenid policy of restoring local cults as a strategy for imperial management: finance the provincial temples to pacify the locals.16 Yet Persian imperial land policy sought to nullify “land claims by any group rooted in the notion of familial or tribal possessions,” which is quite contrary to the intonations of the Barrakab inscription, and the Persians engaged in massive population reorganization unlike anything Sam’al had experienced by the time of Barrakab.17 Moreover, the self-portrait of the Persian kings is quite different from that of Assyria. The Persian king is a part of Ahura Mazda’s beneficent creation, which in turn provides happiness, serenity, and prosperity to humanity.18 To participate in this blissful state, all owe obedience and tribute to the Persian king.19 While a postexilic date is possible, the Persian imperial world was sufficiently different to eliminate this possibility. The Neo-Babylonian ambit is more difficult. Middleton has argued:

The Xanthus Stele of Artaxerxes III Ochus (359-338) describes imperial restoration of a Temple of Leto in Lycia (text in A. DupontSommer, “L'inscription araméenne,” in Fouilles de Xanthos [Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1979], 6.129-77), and the Udjahorresne Inscription of Darius I (521-486) to the Temple of Neith at Sais in Egypt (text in Miriam Lichtheim, AEL 3.36-41). 17 Kenneth Hoglund, “The Achaemenid Context,” in Second Temple Studies (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 117; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1991), 1.62. 18 Amélie Kuhrt, “Achaemenid Images of Royalty and Empire,” in Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity, ed. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger (History of the Ancient Near East Monographs 11; Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria, 2010), 91. 19 Kuhrt, “Achaemenid Images,” 92; with examples from a text of Xerxes from Persepolis and another text from the tomb of Darius; “Achaemenid Images,” 97. 16

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

81

There are simply no large extant collections of Babylonian tablets comparable to the famous Assyrian collections. … Sixthcentury Neo-Babylonian texts, which might in principle supplement the testimony of extant seventh-century Neo-Assyrian texts, are significantly underrepresented in the archaeological record. It must be established if ideas similar to those found in the seventh-century Neo-Assyrian … texts formed part of Neo-Babylonian royal ideology in the 6th century, when Israel was in exile.20

While David Vanderhooft found disparate ideas of imperial rule between the Assyrians and Babylonians,21 a thorough reexamination of the same material by Jill Middlemas found Vanderhooft to have read too much into the data and Assyrian administrative policy to have continued in the West in NeoBabylonian times.22 This does not mean that royal ideology as presented to conquered and vassal peoples continued the same; neither Vanderhooft nor Middlemas have sufficient data to establish or disprove ideological continuity. The fact that the Assyrians had treated the Babylonians entirely differently than their other subjects – the Assyrian king assuming the indigenous kingship, for example -- might suggest that Babylon did not have the opportunity to “learn” the Assyrian royal propaganda.23 The extant Neo-Babylonian royal propaganda is considerably different from that of the Neo-Assyrians (and of Barrakab). Neo20 Middleton, Liberating Image, 124, 136; Jill Middlemas, The Troubles of Templeless Judah (Oxford Theological Monographs 13; Oxford: University Press, 2005), 54. 21 David Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Later Prophets (Harvard Semitic Monographs 59; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 61-114. 22 Middlemas, Troubles, 61, 69. 23 For other examples, see Grant Frame, “God Aššur in Babylon,” in Assyria 1995, ed. Simo Parpola and R. M. Whiting (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997), 55-64; Karen Radner, “Assyrian and Non-Assyrian Kingship in the First Millennium BC,” in Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity, ed. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger (History of the Ancient Near East Monographs 11; Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria, 2010), 30.

82

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Babylonian inscriptions emphasize the king’s devotion to the gods, particularly how he restored their cults and his faithfulness to their wishes.24 The Amil-Marduk Fragment and Nabonidus’s Inscriptions 1-19, A-B, and Z are all examples of this.25 Nabonidus’s Inscription 15.16-25 even has Marduk instruct Nabonidus to carry some bricks on his horse, which one cannot imagine an Assyrian ruler writing (other than for Babylonians: see below).26 Nebuchadnezzar’s Prism Fragment VIII similarly emphasizes his role as instrument of Marduk.27 In general, Babylonian propaganda emphasized the benevolence of the king in contrast to abusive predecessors.28 Babylonian royal propaganda lacks the “global prowess” of Neo-Assyrian counterparts.29 Moreover, the phrase “Lord of the Fourths of the Earth,” found in the Barrakab inscription i (lines 34), although commonplace in Assyria after Tiglath-pileser I, is barely attested in the Neo-Babylonian texts.30 There remains another possibility. Even if the matrix of Assyrian imperial ideology was not that of the Neo-Babylonians, “an ancient idea may well be used at a later date (with transformed meaning), and indeed Israel had significant cultural contact with … Mesopotamia over long periods of time.”31 The Babylonian Exile 24 Hayim Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, and Historiography,” in Assyria 1995, ed. Simo Parpola and R. M. Whiting (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997), 334. 25 For the Amil-Marduk Fragment, see Hanspeter Schaudig, Die Inschriften Nabonids von Babylon and Kyros’ des grossen (Alter Orient und altes Testament 256; Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2001), 589-90. For the Inscriptions, e.g., Inscription 1, cols. 1-4; 7.38-56; 8-9; 10.2-31; Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Reign of Nabonidus (Yale Near Eastern Researches 10; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 21-27, 38-41. 26 Beaulieu, Reign of Nabonidus, 108. 27 Paul-Richard Berger, Die Neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 4.1; Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker, 1973), 59. 28 Middlemas, Troubles, 56. 29 Peter B. Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity in Imperial Assyria,” in Text, Artifact, and Image, ed. Gary Beckman and Theodore J. Lewis (Brown Judaic Studies 346; Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2007), 165 30 Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity,” 165. 31 Middleton, Liberating Image, 123.

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

83

was Israel’s closest contact with Mesopotamian cultures. The Assyrian ideology, preserved as it was in monuments and inscriptions, could have been adopted by the Israelites in the Babylonian Exile even if it was not the Neo-Babylonian royal ideology at all.32 The difficulty with this proposal is that Assyrian royal propaganda was not applied in Babylon under Assyrian rule, and so it is unlikely that such Assyrian propaganda would have been known sufficiently in Israel’s exilic surroundings to be adopted. Babylon received messages of reconciliation from the Assyrian regime, except in Sennacherib’s later years.33 Babylon was given special status within the empire.34 The Assyrian king assumed the figurative elements and titles of Babylonian kingship.35 No other state’s incorporation into the empire was reflected in the Assyrian titulary.36 The Assyrian king even participated in ritual incumbent upon the king of Babylon.37 The Assyrian kings rarely erected victory monuments in Babylon,38 and the inscriptions they did erect there (e.g., building inscriptions), incorporated Babylonian traditional styles.39

Cf. Richard D. Altick and John J. Fenstermaker, The Art of Literary Research (4th ed.; New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993), 112. 33 Barbara Nevling Porter, Images, Power, Politics (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 208; Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993), 77-78. 34 Porter, Images, Power, Politics, 78; Steven W. Holloway, Assur is King! Assur is King! (Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 10; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002). 35 Porter, Images, Power, Politics, 78-79. 36 Porter, Images, Power, Politics, 80. 37 Porter, Images, Power, Politics, 82, 93; Barbara Nevling Porter, Trees, Kings, and Politics (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 197; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2003), 52. When Assurbanipal and his brother, Šamaššum-ukin, king of Babylon, both performed the same ritual, the resultant ideological confusion may have helped precipitate the Babylonian revolt; see Porter, Trees, Kings, and Politics, 58. 38 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 294. 39 E.g., the Black Stone of Lord Aberdeen; Barbara Nevling Porter, “Conquest or Kudurrus?” in The Tablet and the Scroll, ed. Mark E. Cohen, Daniel C. Snell, and David B. Weisberg (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1993), 197; Barbara Nevling Porter, “Public Relations and Political Survival in An32

84

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

For the present, the Barrakab inscriptions can be firmly dated within the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and its motifs and language are woven into that fabric, as this chapter will illustrate. Additionally, since the ideology expressed in the Barrakab inscriptions is aimed at the Assyrian king, while Israelite counterparts are instead directed to God, this chapter will discuss the royal ideology of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.40 Aware of how quickly new interpretations arise, based on new discoveries, new methodologies, and advances in understanding of relevant languages, I follow mainstream, reliable interpretations of the texts in question.41 Where I differ from them, I have done so recognizing that my own views on the matters are tentative and subject to correction. We need “to go beyond the simple categories of ‘conquest’ and ‘tribute.’”42 Assyrian propaganda itself made expansion look like conquest,43 and the “finished product” of empire was polyvalent. Note, for instance, that Tyre was neither a vassal nor a province but something in between.44 To take a fresh look, I will consider the Neo-Assyrian Empire using anthropological World Systems Theory.45 World Systems Theory draws its theoretical framework from sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein.46 Wallerstein defined a worldcient Assyria,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 140 (1996): 166, 169. 40 Middleton, Liberating Image, 147. 41 Middleton, Liberating Image, 150. 42 Mario Liverani, “The Growth of the Assyrian Empire in the Habur / Middle Euphrates Area.,” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 2 (1988): 82. 43 Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, “Consensus to Empire,” in Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. Hartmut Waetzoldt and Harald Hauptmann (Heidelberger Studien zum alten Orient 6; Heidelberg: Orientverlag, 1997), 81. 44 Bustenay Oded, “Phoenician Cities and the Assyrian Empire in the Time of Tiglath-Pileser III,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 90 (1974): 47 45 Carla M. Sinopoli, “Archaeology of Empires,” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 161. Core-periphery analysis is central to DutcherWalls, “Sleeping,” 184-89. 46 Immanuel Wallerstein, “A World-System Perspective on the Social Sciences,” British Journal of Sociology 27 (1976): 343-52.

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

85

system (the hyphen is important, see below), in which multiple cultural groups, which represent one or more polity, are bound into relations of core, semi-periphery, and periphery -- the economically strong and those dependent, exploited, tributary, etc. to them.47 This interregional or macroregional interaction system is dynamic, and trade is central.48 The "world" refers not to some worldwide scope of the system, but to the identification of the parameters of this system with a "world" -- something that is not cultural, political, or ethnic, but rather based on modes of production, on how the cultural, political, and ethnic all work together in a dynamic system of commerce.49 The model was originally solidly Marxist.50 Labels of "core" and "periphery" were applied more generally than evidence warrants. Caution must also be exercised in this regard. The core-periphery relationship will here be shed of its Marxist oppressor/oppressed dichotomy. Wallerstein's original vision was focused on modern societies, so his discussion of pre-capitalist world-systems envisioned only world-empires: the world-system was contiguous with a political unity, which expanded, incorporating autonomous pre-state minisystems, until its bureaucracy outweighed the appropriable surplus and then contracted, releasing off minisystems.51 Although J. Schneider, Schortman and Urban, and Kohl showed that the ancient world-systems need not have been political empires, they are still the most ideal cases for the theory’s employment.52

Wallerstein, “World-System Perspective,” 346. R. Blanton and G. Feinman, “The Mesoamerican World System,” American Anthropologist 86 (1984): 673-82 49 Wallerstein, “World-System Perspective”; Blanton and Feinman, “Mesoamerican World System.” 50 R. Chirot, Review of I. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, Social Forces 59 (1980): 538-43. 51 Wallerstein, “World-System Perspective,” 345-46. 52 J. Schneider, “Was there a Pre-capitalist World-System?” Peasant Studies 6 (1977): 20-29; E. Schortman and M. Urban, “Modelling Interregional Interaction in Prehistory,” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 11 (1987): 37-95; P. Kohl, “The Use and Abuse of World System Theory,” Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory 11 (1987): 1-35. 47 48

86

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Lines between societies, especially formal patron-client lines, transmit information. Some of this information, interacting between elites, can set off feedback loops in social systems. In peripheries, economic development will occur in response to trade with cores, even without direct imperial rule or liege structure. When peripheries develop, cores will of necessity also change, and the entire pan-regional system "coevolves."53 While peripheries depend on the relationship with the core, especially since cores have multiple peripheries (although the opposite can also be true), the core elites also depend on the trade with the peripheries for their elite status.54 The development and change in the peripheries is not exogamous change, diffusion from the core, but an enlargement of the scope of the region experiencing endogamous change.55 Mitchell Jack Allen has analyzed the Neo-Assyrian Empire as a world-system, outlining the procurement of goods, development of markets, and manipulation of local trade.56 In the NeoAssyrian world-system, development is evident.57 After a uniform foreign policy from 1200 to 750 BC, the Assyrians embarked on a territorial empire from the time of Asurnasirpal II on.58 Once Assyria had established economic control over an abundance of provinces and vassal states, those peripheries began to develop “artifiSchortman and Urban, “Modeling Interregional Interaction,” esp. p.72; Kohl, “Use and Abuse,” 14. 54 P. Kohn, “Use and Abuse,” 15. 55 Timothy C. Champion, “Introduction,” in Centre and Periphery: Comparative Studies in Archaeology, ed. Timothy C. Champion (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 10. The relation is largely what is called Peer Polity Interaction -- similar discussions of "contagious change" apply; Colin Renfrew, “Introduction,” in Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change, ed. Colin Renfrew and John Cherry (Cambridge: University Press, 1986), 7. 56 Mitchell Jack Allen, Contested Peripheries: Philistia in the Neo-Assyrian World-System, (diss., University of California Los Angeles, 1997), 118-31, 154-62, 189-94, 199-210. 57 See the extensive study contained in Bradley J. Parker, “Archaeological Manifestations of Empire,” American Journal of Archaeology 107 (2003): 525-58. 58 Liverani, “Growth of the Assyrian,” 84, 90. See further below on Asurnasirpal II. 53

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

87

cially” and eventually become markets themselves.59 The Assyrian Empire needed an increasing supply of raw materials and luxury items. This transformed regional cottage industries into large-scale production.60 Specialized manufacturing is apparent, as in the olive oil industry at Ekron, “the largest industrial centre of any kind in the ancient Near East.”61 “The effect was the formation of a new supernational system of political control in the eastern Mediterranean basin which produced the pax Assyriaca, 70 years of unparalleled growth and development, and an international trading network which spanned the Mediterranean.”62 Even Judah was affected, as it was between the reign of Tiglath-pileser and the Sennacherib’s invasion that the many stamped, “tax marked,” lmlk jar handles appeared throughout Judah, indicating an increasingly sophisticated administrative and economic system.63 At Gezer, business transactions were recorded in the standard Neo-Assyrian legal formulae.64 The role of royal ideology in such a world-system was to provide “legitimation for and explanations of [these] extant and emergent inequalities, especially in relations between superordinate and subject populations.”65 The “imposition of an imperial ideology [was] through … economic intervention,” as described above.66 If Dezső, “Assyrian Expansion Techniques.” Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century B.C.E.,” in Recent Excavations in Israel (Archaeological Institute of America Colloquia & Conference Papers 1; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1995), 61. 61 Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century,” 63, 69. Assyrian art appears at Ekron at the same time; Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century,” 72. 62 Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron in the 7th Century,” 61. 63 Blakely and Hardin, “Southwestern Judah,” 38. A contrary assessment, with Judah not a part of the imperial network, is that of Seymour Gitin, “Neo-Assyrian Empire and Its Western Periphery,” in Assyria 1995, ed. S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1997), 83-84. 64 R. A. S. Macalister, Excavation of Gezer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1910), 1.23-29, tablets 1-2. 65 Sinopoli, “Archaeology of Empires,” 167; Allen, Contested Peripheries, 135-36. 66 Gitin, “Neo-Assyrian Empire,” 77. 59 60

88

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

one focuses, then, on what ideology does, more than on its content,67 a development is clear from the drive for economic domination of the West under Shalmaneser III (e.g., campaign of 859) and the “imperialism” and Kulturkampf of Tiglath-pileser (from 745).68 In all these cases, we should see the symbolic systems as ultimately originating in the king.69 Indoctrinating local elites in the ideology was the primary goal of Neo-Assyrian propaganda.70 The Barrakab inscription(s) borrows directly many motifs and terms from Assyrian royal propaganda.71 Barrakab’s visual depiction is drawn from Assyrian art.72 The expression, “Lord of the Fourths of the Earth” (inscription i, lines 3-4), is directly derived from the Akkadian expression šar kibrāt erbettiti.73 It occurs in the Sinopoli, “Archaeology of Empires,” 167. Parpola, “Assyria’s Expansion,” 100; Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 251; Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien (State Archives of Assyria Studies 10; Helsinki: University Press, 1999), 319. NeoAssyrian notions of kingship were indebted to the Middle Assyrian period. Peter Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation,” paper presented at the Social Science History Institute of Stanford University, Palo Alto, 2001; Stephen J. Garfinkle, “The Assyrians,” in Current Issues and the Study of the Ancient Near East, ed. Mark W. Chavalas (Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians 8; Claremont: Regina Books, 2007), 72. Notions of imperialism, however, were more “defensive” in that era; Garfinkle, “Assyrians,” 73. 69 Parpola, “Assyria’s Expansion,” 101; Oppenheim, “Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires,” 1.112. 70 Allen, Contested Peripheries, 195-96. 71 None of these terms are Akkadian loanwords into Aramaic; Stephen A. Kaufman, Akkadian Influence on Aramaic (Oriental Institute Assyriological Studies 19; Chicago: University Press, 1974). 72 Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 228. 73 Or šar kibrāti irbitum; Donner, “Orthostatenfragment,” 87; Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 229 n.56; Tropper, Inschriften von Zincirli, 134. Kibru is literally a river bank, and the sense is the edges of the earth, not its four quarters. Originally this expression may not have referred to the edges of the earth, but rather to what it means lexically, i.e. the four river banks. It was in effect the Mesopotamian term for Mesopotamia introduced by Naram-Sin when he for the first time effectively controlled both rivers (in their basin south of the Taurus). By Assyrian times, it has changed meaning, as the Aramaic translations show. 67 68

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

89

(Chicago) Oriental Institute Prism edition (689 BC) of Sennacherib’s 691 Taylor Prism (col. 1, lines 1-19).74 It is more than an empty title; in the cosmological imperial ideology of the 9th century onward, the king was the center of the world, over humanity, engaged in extending his institutional rule over the physical world.75 The god Aššur “ruled over all gods, and, as a corollary, the political reality on earth should therefore be that all peoples acknowledged the sovereignty of Aššur’s representative.”76 Thus, Assyrian expansion was construed theologically, and the Assyrian Empire was merely “bringing into earthly political reality the order that obtained in the heavenly realm.”77 The statement that “Maintenance of the exterior state through military conquest and tribute [was] achieved through the person of the all-powerful king” was presented in visual art, such as Asurnasirpal II’s throne room (see below).78

ARAB 2.115 #233 (Col. 1, lines 1-2); Daniel David Luckenbill, Annals of Sennacherib (Oriental Institute Publications 2; Chicago: University Press, 1924); Friedrich Delitzsch, Assyrische Lesestücke (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1912), 62-78. 75 Luckenbill, Annals, 66.2-3; Frederick Mario Fales, L’Impero Assiro (Rome: Editori Laterza, 2001), 22; Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 84; Garfinkle, “Assyrians,” 78. 76 Radner, “Assyrian and Non-Assyrian Kingship,” 25; Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation;” Frederick Mario Fales, Guerre et Paix en Assyrie (Conférences de l’École pratique des hautes Études 2; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2010); Bustenay Oded, War, Peace, and Empire (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Eichert Verlag, 1992), 13, 21, 169-71, citing examples from Shalmaneser I, Adad-nirari I, Tiglath-pileser I, Adad-nirari II, Adad-nirari III, Asurnasirpal II, Shalmaneser III, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal; Machinist, “Kingship and Divinity,” 153-59; Machinist, “Der Gott Assur und dir imperiale Anspruch assyrischer Herrscher,” in Assur – Gott, Stadt und Land, ed. Johannes Renger (Colloquien der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft 5; Berlin: Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 2011), 417 with example from Esarhaddon. 77 Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation”; Machinist, “Gott,” 407, 429. 78 Mehmet-Ali Ataç, Mythology of Kingship in Neo-Assyrian Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 88; Irene Winter, “Royal Rhetoric and the Development of Historical Narrative in Neo-Assyrian Reliefs,” Studies in Visual Communication 7 (1981): 21. 74

90

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

The vassal describing himself as the emperor’s “servant,” Akk. ardu, is ubiquitous.79 The client kings recognized that their “legitimacy flowed from the Assyrian king and was dependent on the maintenance of good relations with him as a faithful servant,”80 as seen in Barrakab i, lines 3-6, and ii, lines 4-5. The ṣědeq which Barrakab claims he and his father displayed will be an important term when related to the Hebrew ṣadiq. There is no direct cognate in Akkadian.81 The closest semantic parallel is kittu, often translated “righteous.”82 In that meaning, it is a virtue of which Sennacherib is described as guardian, also in the Taylor Prism.83 Sennacherib is the lover of justice (mīšaru).84 Thus any breach of right behavior with the Assyrian king, any breach of ṣadiq, is not rebellion but “sin.”85 A good vassal, on the other hand, speaks honestly and forthrightly with the king, as one Sharruemuranni claims to.86 The king, moreover, is the source and dispenser of such kittu, as seen as early as the 13th-century Victory

79 Donald Leroy Waterman, Royal Correspondence of the Assyrian Empire (University of Michigan Humanistic Studies 18; Ann Arbor: University Press, 1930), vol. 2; Bustanay Oded, “Ahaz’s Appeal to Tiglath-Pileser III in the Context of the Assyrian Policy of Expansion,” in Studies in the Archaeology and History of Ancient Israel, ed. Michael Heltzer, Arthur Segal, and Daniel Kaufman (Haifa: University Press, 1993), 65. 80 Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation,” italics added. 81 Franz Rosenthal, “Sedaka, Charity,” Hebrew Union College Annual 23.1 (1950): 423. Mesopotamian authors borrowed the West Semitic root ṢDQ with the lexically-unrelated shattuku, which derives from the Sumerian sa2-dug4; Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 425. 82 CAD 8:468-71 sub “Kittu A.” 83 ARAB 2.115 #233 (Col. 1, line 4). 84 Line 5; cf. CAD 10.2.116-19 sub “mīšaru A.” Sennacherib ubiquitously uses the unique titles of “Keeper of kitti; lover of mīšari”; Hayim Tadmor, “Sennacherib, King of Justice” (2004), repr. in “With My Many Chariots I have Gone Up the Heights of the Mountains,” ed. Mordechai Cogan (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2011), 57. Tadmor adeptly explains the political motivation for this in “Sennacherib,” 58-62. 85 ḥâṭu; ARAB 2.120 #240 (Col. 3, lines 1-49); Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 88. 86 K5291 = ABL 317, line e20.

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

91

Hymn of Tukulti-Ninurta I over the Kassite Kashtiliash.87 And it is by his wars of conquest that the Assyrian king establishes this kittu and mīšaru.88 Tiglath-pileser I connects his kittu u mīšaru-spreading warfare to his title as Lord of the Four Quarters of the Earth, when he is called ša ina kibrat arba’i mēšari ultalliṭuma,89 and Assurbanipal links the titles in several texts.90 The “favor” (Aram. khen) that “Rakkabel gave” Barrakab “before the king of Assyria” in Barrakab ii.8 is admittedly not the most common usage of the cognate Akkadian term an-ni, which means “approval” or “a promise” or a “yes” answer from divination.91 Yet 87 Text A, col. 2, line 21; Erich Ebeling, Bruchstücke eines Politischen Propaganda-Gedichtes aus einer Assyrischen Kanzlei (Mitteilungen der Altorientalischen Gesellschaft 12.2; Leipzig: Harrassowitz, 1938), 9-10. Other examples of the Assyrian king as dispenser of such order come from Shalmaneser I, Tiglath-pileser I, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal; Oded, War, Peace, and Empire, 30-32. The terms kittu and mīšaru do occur in one propagandistic text of Nabonidus, called by Schaudig the “King of Justice” text, which says that Nabonidus upholds righteousness and justice in the law courts (lines 2.22, 3.5, 4.3), but these references seem unique in Neo-Babylonian propaganda and restrict the sense to the judicial system. See Schaudig, Inschriften Nobonids, text P2. The expression, Šar kittu u mīšaru, “king of righteousness and justice,” is Old Babylonian in origin; Pongratz-Leisten, Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien, 287; cf. Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 92. 88 Examples can be found for Tiglath-pileser I, Adad-nirari I, Sargon II, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal; Oded, War, Peace, and Empire, 37; Hayim Tadmor, “World Dominion,” in Landscapes: Territories, Frontiers, and Horizons in the Ancient Near East, ed. L. Milano, S. de Martino, F. M. Fales, and G. B. Lanfranchi (History of the Ancient Near East 3; Padua: Sargon, 2000), 1.55. Mêšaru is already paired with ṣidqu at Ugarit, in KTU 1.40. 89 AKA 63.47; Oded, War, Peace, and Empire, 37. 90 L. Kataja and R. Whiting, Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period (State Archives of Assyria 12; Helsinki: University, 1995), #25 (K211), lines 5-6; #26 (K2729), line 6. 91 Miguel Civil, Ignace J. Gelb, Benno Landsberger, A. Leo Oppenheim, and Erica Reiner, Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (Chicago: University Press, 1968), 1.2.134-36; e.g., Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, 3.291=K828 and Manfred Dietrich, The Babylonian Correspondence of Sargon and Sennacherib (State Archives of Assyria 17; Helsinki: University Press, 2003), 64-65 #68 r.19.

92

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the meaning of “favor” or “grace” (here bestowed by Nabu) can be seen in a letter of Sennacherib to Esarhaddon.92 The Assyrians promulgated this ideology by several mechanisms. Ongoing persuasion, expressing royal political ideology in rhetoric or “beaming that ideology as propaganda,”93 was “essential to the very statehood of Assyria.”94 The Assyrian Empire maintained an effective propaganda program by means of its inscriptions.95 “It may not be too much to say that they represent the major public statements of the Assyrian central government.”96 Assyrian kings from the 12th century onward reported setting up steles while on campaigns, both in remote locations and in subjugated cities.97 Such remote steles could be merely a royal statue or a stele with inscription.98 When inscriptions were included, they gave praise to the god Assur or recounted the king’s own mighty deeds, specifically those on the campaign in question.99

92 Waterman, Royal Correspondence, #1452 = Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters, 14.1452 = K1620b. It may also occur in a Babylonian lamentation, H. C. Rawlinson, Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia (London: British Museum, 1875), 29 #5 = Heinrich Zimmern, Babylonische Busspsalmen (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1885), 22-23, 95. 93 Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 22. 94 Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, and Historiography,” 334; Simo Parpola, “Neo-Assyrian Concepts of Kingship and Their Heritage in Mediterranean Antiquity,” in Concepts of Kingship in Antiquity, ed. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Robert Rollinger (History of the Ancient Near East Monographs 11; Padua: S.A.R.G.O.N. Editrice e Libreria, 2010), 37. 95 Ebeling, Bruchstücke, 1; Radner, “Assyrian and Non-Assyrian Kingship,” 28; Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, and Historiography,” 335; Porter, “Public Relations and Political Survival,” 171. The same idioms appear in court letters as on inscriptions; Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 99. 96 Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 80. 97 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 273, 294; Oppenheim, “NeoAssyrian,” 114. 98 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 291. The latter account for eleven of Yamada’s twenty cases. 99 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 293.

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

93

Sometimes narrative art was combined with text, as on Shalmaneser III’s wooden Balawat Gate (Fig. 3).100 In this “coherent complementary composition,”101 the expression “lord of the four quarters of the earth” is presented by visual images.”102 Sennacherib was the first to widely exploit the use of the epigraph, a written label or caption identifying scenes in visual art.103

Figure 3. Bronze band from the gates of the palace of Shalmaneser III. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Used by permission.

At other times, visual images alone were used (from the time of Shalmaneser III on), as in Asurnasirpal II’s south wall throne room reliefs (Fig. 4).104 By means of chiasm and symmetry, these present the king as sole protagonist in history, its main actor.105 In a

Thomas Hertel, “The Balawat Gate Narratives of Shalmaneser III,” in Assyria and Beyond, ed. Jean G. Dercksen (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2004), 312-13. 101 Hertel, “Balawat Gate,” 312. 102 Hertel, “Balawat Gate,” 303-307. 103 Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 25. 104 Hans G. Guterbock, “Narration in Anatolian, Syrian, and Assyrian Art,” American Journal of Archaeology 61 (1957): 65-70; Stephen Lumsden, “Narrative Art and Empire,” in Assyria and Beyond, ed. Jean G. Dercksen (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2004), 366, who suggests that an interpretive guide might have been provided for visitors. In any case, “The throneroom reliefs may thus be seen as a very explicit and extensive rendering … of the essence of the Standard Inscription: the articulation of the right order of the universe. … The Standard Inscription is a highly condensed formulation of the titles and activities of the king”; Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 18; Ataç, Mythology, 88. 105 Lumsden, “Narrative Art and Empire,” 370. 100

94

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

heraldic way, the king is made to bridge the divine and human worlds, proclaiming what was at the time a new royal ideology.106

Figure 4. Stone panel from the north-west palace of Asurnasirpa II, Room B, Panel 19. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Used by permission.

While Asurnasirpal’s was the first Neo-Assyrian palace, it is questionable whether this style of narrative monument began with him.107 The White Obelisk in the British Museum may be an abridgement of a Nineveh throne room wall narrative of TukultiNinurta II (890-884) or even Tiglath-pileser I (1115-1077).108 The intended audience for such monuments included both Assyrian elite and foreign dignitaries.109 Delegations of vassals 106 Paul Collins, “Attending the King in the Assyrian Reliefs,” in Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, ed. Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2010), 186; Lumsden, “Narrative Art and Empire,” 372-74, 378-79. The provincial system began with Asurnasirpal; immediately after his reign begins the Eponym Chronicle, with its list of provincial governors, as well as formal statistics; A. T. Olmstead, “Assyrian Government of Dependencies,” American Political Science Review 12 (1918): 69. 107 As per Elise Auerbach, “Emphasis and Eloquence in the Reliefs of Tiglath-Pileser III,” Iraq 51 (1989); and Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 3. Cf. Holly Pittman, “The White Obelisk: The Problem of Historical Narrative in the Art of Assyria,” The Art Bulletin 78 (1996): 334. 108 Pittman, “White Obelisk,” 334, 347-48, 351-52. 109 ARAB 2.413; Ataç, Mythology, 89; Lumsden, “Narrative Art and Empire,” 376; Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 107.

THE MATRIX OF ASSYRIAN IMPERIALISM

95

waited for admission to the royal presence in courtyards filled with such monuments.110 “The viewer [could] immediately take in the essential information.”111 Even building inscriptions, hidden away in foundations, often had a duplicate clay copy made accessible to contemporaries.112 Was the propaganda machine effective, not only in Assyrian provinces but also in the vassal states like Judah?113 Steven Holloway maintains, “The degree to which Assyrian royal clients actually ‘bought’ into the public transcript is notoriously difficult to isolate.”114 But Barrakab’s inscriptions are indicators that they did. There is considerable evidence that Barrakab was not Assyria’s one “success story.”115 “The model displayed by the king of Sam’al may be easily applied to other vassal lands.”116 Vassal rulers of the Medes from the reigns of Shalmaneser III to Tiglath-pileser III (858-727) express great joy at being vassals, even volunteering for such status.117 In a bilingual Phoenician/Luwian text discovered in 1997 in Çineköy, King Warikas of Adana praises the relationship in Barrakab-like terms.118 A Neo-Assyrian royal emblem appeared on

110 A. Kirk Grayson, Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C. (Toronto: University Press, 1991), 1.293; Barbara Nevling Porter, “For the Astonishment of All Enemies,” Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies 35 (2000): 16; Garfinkle, “Assyrians,” 80. 111 Auerbach, “Emphasis and Eloquence,” 80; Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 22. 112 Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 111, whose evidence is for Esarhaddon. 113 Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 98. 114 Holloway, Assur is King, 227. 115 Dion, Araméenes, 259. 116 Lanfranchi, “Consensus to Empire,” 85. 117 Karen Radner, “An Assyrian View on the Medes,” in Continuity of Empires?, ed. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Michael Roaf, and Robert Rolliner (History of the Ancient Near East 5; Padua: Sargon Press, 2003), 53. 118 Paul-Eugene Dion, “Ahaz and Other Willing Servants of Assyria,” in From Babel to Babylon, ed. Joyce R. Wood, John E. Harvey, and Mark Leuchter (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 455; New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 140-41.

96

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the wall of the gigantic, 7th-century Temple Complex 650 of Ekron.119 This adoption of Assyrian idioms attests to the success of the propaganda program.120 But the meaning for the individual vassal varied. We will not see “consistency in use and contextual association one would expect for symbols of authority.”121 This is because reasons for adoption of the motifs vary from one peripheral polity to another.122 Some Assyrian vassals gained land by their status (e.g., Matti of Atuna), others legitimacy on the throne (e.g., Daltâ of Ellipi), others were promoted “to an ideologically higher rank” (e.g., the Mannean kings).123 This chapter has shown how the tropes of the Barrakab inscriptions are drawn from Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda. The propaganda was intentionally packaged for consumption in the western vassal systems, and was absorbed by those vassals and clients with much of its ideological baggage attached. We will now turn to parallels in the Hebrew Bible.

119 Seymour Gitin, “Philistia in Transition,” in Mediterranean Peoples in Transition, ed. Seymour Gitin, Amihai Mazar, and Ephraim Stern (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1998), 173. 120 S. Shennan, “Interaction and change in third millennium B.C. western and central Europe,” in Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change, ed. Colin Renfrew and John Cherry (Cambridge: University Press, 1986), 143. 121 As expected by D. P. Braun, “Midwestern Hopewellian exchange and supralocal interaction,” in Peer Polity Interaction and Socio-Political Change, ed. Colin Renfrew and John Cherry (Cambridge: University Press, 1986), 122. 122 Shennan, “Interaction and Change,” 147. 123 Lanfranchi, “Consensus to Empire,” 82-83, 85. This was even true of the elites of lands annexed as provinces, as with the place of Itu’eans in the Assyrian army; Lanfranchi, “Consensus to Empire,” 84-85.

5 THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

The Barrakab inscription has occasionally been connected to the Hebrew Bible before. Alan Millard presented the history of Sam’al as a “parallel to the events of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.”1 Mark Hamilton compares the inscriptions with Deuteronomy’s rejection of Assyrian propaganda.2 He notes that both texts “discuss economics, politics, contacts with the outsider, and the role of the native king,”3 but that Deuteronomy and Barrakab reach opposite conclusions. While Hamilton’s work encroaches on the method employed here, it does so only slightly. Hamilton merely considers Barrakab to share contemporary concerns with Deuteronomy. This chapter instead will identify passages in the biblical text that employ the language of the Barrakab inscriptions, near cognates of that language, or Neo-Assyrian antecedents of the Barrakab language. The presumption that links these biblical texts to Barrakab and ultimately to Neo-Assyrian royal propaganda is that the linguistic types underlying the texts are governed by patterns and appear in typical formulaic expressions.4 Broader parallels with the ideology of 1 Alan Millard, “Die Geschichte Israels auf dem Hintergrund der Religionsgeschichte des alten vorderen Orients,” in Israel in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Gerhard Maier (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus Verlag, 1996), 27. 2 Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 235, 237, 239-40. 3 Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 247. 4 Rolf Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism Reconsidered,” Interpretation 27 (1973): 435-36. Knierim points out that this triad of formmood-and-Sitz im Leben was Gunkel’s original program, not the triad of form-function-and-Sitz which became standard for Form Criticism; “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 436 n. 3.

97

98

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Barrakab will be discussed in Chapter 9. That the parallel language derives from the Neo-Assyrian period and not from any earlier or later one was already proven at the start of Chapter 4. For now, nothing will be said about the meanings of these parallels or how the language of Barrakab or broader Assyrian royal propaganda may have entered Israel, which will be the focus of Chapter 6.

BIBLICAL PARALLELS Let us look again at the Barrakab Inscriptions. The “Servant,” ‛ăbed, of the “Lord of the Four Quarters of the Earth,” a servant “most wretched,” ‛ĕmēl, by grace, ḥēn, was “seated on a throne,” tĕbanî ‛al kursē‚, “in the midst of the great kings,” bĕmiṣ‛at mālkin rabrăbin, and responded, in turn, by being “righteous,” ṣdeq, with his lord. This is how Israel describes its own relationship with Yahweh. The “servant,” ‛ebed (e.g., Isa 45:4), of the lord of the “edges of the earth,” qeṣot-ha‚areṣ (Isa 40:28), in their “wretchedness,” ‛amalenu (Deut 26:7), by, ḥēn “grace” (Exod 33:12-17), was “seated on a throne,” yoshib ‛al kisse (1 Sam 2:8), in the midst of the “great kings,” melakim rabbim (Jer 27:7), and responded with ṣedaqa “righteousness” (Deut 6:24).5 The similarities are striking (each of these words will be unpacked at length in what follows). Stepping back from language for the moment, the notions contained in Barrakab’s self-presentation, his propaganda of submission, are ubiquitous in biblical Israel’s self-presentation. Israel presents its origins as not merely humble (as did the Romans and many other peoples), but downright disgraceful.6 They were slaves in Egypt. God chose them and raised them from this status; they did not “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” Quite explicitly, he did not raise them up for their inherent greatness, “for you are the least of all peoples” (Deut 7:7).7 God is continually concerned that Israel not “claim for themselves the glory” (Judg 7:2) or

“House” and “father” will also appear with the same wide range of meanings as in the Barrakab inscriptions. 6 Paul D. Hanson, People Called (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 25. 7 Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube, 135. 5

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

99

“the righteousness” (Deut 8:17; 9:4a).8 “With extraordinary consistency and heroic honesty, Israel glorifies its God at the cost of belittling itself.”9 Israel’s traditions go to great pains to illustrate their Barrakabesque creed that “We’re not worthy.”10 But if the correlation of overall motifs of the biblical tradition and the Barrakab inscriptions is bracketed for now, shifting the focus “from the message signified by the words to the words, the signifiers, themselves,”11 there are clear terminological parallels, as well. This chapter will focus on such parallels. In spite of the lesson biblical scholars learned from James Barr’s magisterial 1961, Semantics of Biblical Language, that words alone cannot serve as the bearer of theological meaning, everything in reading texts must start from the words, and so here we begin. Now, certain of these terms, like ṣadiq (see Chapter 4) and khen are commonplace in the Hebrew Bible, and so will not be highlighted here unless they occur in conjunction with other Barrakab terms. Finally, note that “a detailed examination of the biblical passages mentioned is not necessary to our purpose: if their primary details are set out in tabulated form, their points of concurrence and the fact of their variation on a common theme become patent.”12 Khen Khen does merit some independent treatment, however. The standard expression is khen be‛enayim, “grace in X’s eyes.” Khen can also Georg Braulik, “Development of the Doctrine of Justification in the Redactional Strata of the Book of Deuteronomy,” (1989) repr. in Theology of Deuteronomy (Bibal Collected Essays 2; Berkeley: BIBAL Press, 1994), 160; “Gesetz als Evangelium,” 151. 9 R. A. F. MacKenzie, Faith and History in the Old Testament (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1963), 43. 10 Robert D. Miller II, “Deuteronomistic Theology in the Book of Judges?” Old Testament Essays 15 (2002): 411-16. 11 Mary E. Mills, Joshua to Kings: History, Story, Theology (T & T Clark Approaches to Biblical Studies 7; London: T & T Clark, 2006), 69. 12 Nicolas Wyatt, ‘There’s such Divinity doth Hedge a King’ (Society for Old Testament Study Monographs 5; Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 35 (this essay originally published 1986). 8

100

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

occur with the preposition be- and without “eyes” (Jer 31:2; Nah 3:4; etc.) or with no preposition (Zech 12:10; Ps 84:12; etc.). It occurs once with the preposition liphne (Esth 8:5) and once with le (Zech 4:7). The Aramaic expression in Barrakab ii is khen qadam, which is most similar to the instances without “eyes.”13 The word khen is frequently used by the so-called Yahwist, especially in Genesis (Gen 19:19; 32:6; 33:8; 34:11; etc.). It is never directly linked to the covenant. Yet the thickest concentration of the word is in Exodus 33:12-17, where it occurs four times (and once more in 34:9, just after the Covenant Formula of “I will be your God...” in vv 6-7).14 “The theology of Exodus 32-34 is essentially covenant theology.”15 The text presents Moses as the covenant mediator.16 Israel has broken the still-fresh covenant by worshiping the golden calf. When God threatens to annihilate them, Moses debates God into sparing them. Moses can be this bold only if he has divine favor or “grace.”17 Although both Targums Onqelos and Pseudo-Jonathan translate khen here as “compassion,” r‛myn,18 the context calls for “favor” or “grace,” which is the reading of the Septuagint (charis) and Vulgate

The root is present at Ugarit: in KTU 1.10.12, it occurs as yḥ nn, in isolation due to the fragmentary nature of the text. In KTU 1.65.6, it is an attribute of El. 14 Ina Willi-Plein, “Der Sinai als Kristallisationspunkt von Israels Gotteserfahrung und Gottesdienst,” Bibel und Kirche 4 (2007): 243. 15 Meshullam Margaliot, “The Theology of Exodus 32-34,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1994), vol. A, 43. 16 James Muilenberg, “The Intercession of the Covenant Mediator,” in Words and Meanings, ed. Peter R. Ackroyd and Barnabas Lindars (Cambridge: University Press, 1968), 176; Margaliot, “Theology of Exodus 3234,” 43-44. 17 Muilenberg, “Intercession of the Covenant,” 177. 18 Bernard Grossfeld, The Targum Onqelos to Exodus (Aramaic Bible 7; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1988); Martin McNamara, Robert Hayward, and Michael Maher, Targum Neofiti 1: Exodus; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Exodus (Aramaic Bible 2; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994). 13

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

101

(gratiam).19 Moses, like Barrakab, stands in special favor before his overlord that enables him to perform certain actions.20 Then in 33:19, God refers to his own giving of khen, in parallel to “compassion” (RḤM): “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious,” khannoti ‚et-’asher ‚akhon.21 The Septuagint has here chosen to use eleēsō. This is the conclusion to God’s debate with Moses.22 It is a clear imitation of the revelation of the divine name in Exod 3:14, ‚ehyeh ‚asher ‚ehyeh, so it is tying “grace-giving” to Yahweh’s very being.23 Because the “unified, coherent”24 account in 33:1a, 12-17 is consistent with Yahwistic language and is not likely to be from the Priestly Source, it was long ago assigned to the Yahwist,25 while 1823 was considered Deuteronomic.26 Yet the statement of God in v 19 is realized in 34:5-6, so perhaps the Deuteronomic unit is larger. 34:9, probably Deuteronomic, is connected in form and language

19 Bonifatius Fischer, Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem (Stuttgart: Württemberger Bibelanstalt, 1969). This is the critical edition of Jerome; the Nestle-Aland and Bibliorum sacrorum nova vulgata editio are merely Latin translations of the Masoretic Hebrew text. 20 August Dillmann, Exodus und Leviticus (Kurzgefasstes Exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament 12; Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirzel, 1880), 346. 21 D. R. Ap-Thomas, “Some Aspects of the Root Ḫ in the Old Testament,” Journal of Semitic Studies 2 (1957): 142. 22 David Noel Freedman, “God Compassionate and Gracious,” Western Watch 6 (1955): 7. 23 Margaliot, “Theology of Exodus 32-34,” 47-48. 24 Muilenberg, “Intercession,” 176; Margaliot, “Theology of Exodus 32-34,” 43-44. 25 Georg Beer and Kurt Galling, Exodus (Handbuch zum Alten Testament 3; Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1939), 157; H. Holzinger, Exodus (Kurzer Hand-commentar zum Alten Testament 2; Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1900), 108; Francis I. Andersen and A. Dean Forbes, The Hebrew Bible: Andersen-Forbes Analyzed Text (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008), sub. Exodus 33. 26 Bernard Renaud, L’Alliance: Un Mystère de Miséricorde (Lectio Divina 169; Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1998), 47

102

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

with 33:12-13, 16-17.27 In fact, 33:12-34:9 in its entirety depicts Moses and his relationship with God uniformly.28 The unit may even start as early as 33:1, for 33:3 and 5 share language with 34:9, and all this material is united by the theme of divine presence.29 There is complexity here: 33:1-4 and 33:5-6 are doublets, and 33:19-23 does not exactly rely on what precedes it.30 But the edited text of 33:1-34:9 shows numerous signs of being a Deuteronomic text, with its preoccupation with divine presence relating to the Exile (cf. Isa 49:14).31 Zenger considers the message of 33:1-34:9, summed up in 34:6-7, to reflect both Neo-Assyrian state ideology and the power politics of the Jerusalem monarchy.32 The Zechariah 4 occurrence of khen is also important, for reasons outlined in Chapter 9. Part of likely-intrusive vv 6b-10a,33 the chosen stone in verse 7 “will be greeted with shouts of Khen! Khen!” This is an odd use of the word. Many have translated it as “beautiful,” based on Prov 17:8.34 Targum Jonathan has “majesty.”35 The Vulgate preserves the meaning of khen: Gratiam gratiae.36 The mean27 Michael Konkel, Sünde und Vergebung (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 58; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006), 175; Walter Gross, Zukunft für Israel (Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 176; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1998), 128. 28 Renaud, L’Alliance, 69. 29 Gross, Zukunft für Israel, 128; Renaud, L’Alliance, 68; Konkel, Sünde, 175. 30 Renaud, L’Alliance, 70, 73, 84. 31 Renaud, L’Alliance, 83, 86, 183-84, 239, 305; Wyatt, There’s such Divinity, 48. 32 Erich Zenger, “‘Gott hat keiner jemals geschaut’ (Joh 1, 18): Die christliche Gottesrede im Angesicht des Judentums,” Abschiedsvorlesung presented at Dies Academicus of the Institut für Katholische Theologie, July; online at http://ivv7srv15.unimuenster.de/zrat/Abschiedsvorlesung%2014.%20Juli%202004%20Kurzf assung.doc). 33 Karl Marti, Das Dodekapropheton (Kurzer Hand-commentar zum Alten Testament 13; Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1904), 415. 34 Carol L. Meyers and Eric M. Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah 1-8 (Anchor Bible; Garden City: Doubleday, 1987), 249. 35 Alexander Sperber, Bible in Aramaic (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962). 36 Fischer, Biblia Sacra.

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

103

ing is, no doubt, the approbation of the stone, perhaps the capstone of the temple, related to the symbolic stone in Gen 49:24; Deut 32:31, 37; Isa 28:16.37 But the obscure word choice and its repetition is “evidence of the ritual context of this verse.”38 Marti had related it to cultic Mesopotamian building inscriptions.39 ‛amal The other terms highlighted above from Barrakab occur in groups, and so there is no clear order in which to approach them. The subheadings in what follows indicate the words in primary focus for each section, but as will be seen, the other terms occur in the same verses and so need to be treated at the same time. That is, in fact, precisely the point: the Israelite counterparts of the “Barrakab constellation of tropes” appear in clusters. One of the main goals of this chapter will be to determine where (and from what period) those clusters occur. As described in Chapter 3, the translation of ‛ĕmēl as “wretched” is contested. The term occurs in Judg 10:16 as ‛amal, usually translated here “misery,” although elsewhere it, likewise, has the meaning “labor” (e.g., Psalm 73:50).40 The Septuagint renders it here kopō, “weariness,” which is also the reading of the early Arabic version.41 In Job 3:20, Deuteronomy 26 (see below), and its two occurrences in Habakkuk require the meaning “wretched,” and can easily be supported in Exodus 33 and Ps 90:10. Judges 10:1-18 has typically been assigned to the exilic “Dtr2” redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (DtrH).42 The composiSamuel H. Hooke, Siege Perilous (London: SCM Press, 1956), 235, 246-47. 38 Meyers and Meyers, Haggai, Zechariah, 249. 39 Marti, Dodekapropheton, 414. 40 Yehezkiel Kaufmann, Book of Judges (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sepher, 1962), 216, in Hebrew. The Syriac has “affliction,” while the Chaldean has “labor”; Brian Walton, Biblia Sacra Polyglotta (London: Thomas Roycroft, 1655). 41 Walton, Biblia Sacra Polyglotta. 42 Brian Peckham, The Composition of the Deuteronomistic History (Harvard Semitic Monographs 25; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1985), 73; Enzo Cortese, Deuteronomistic Work (Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Analecta 37

104

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

tional history of the Deuteronomistic History has been hotly debated in recent years and is beyond the scope of this monograph. There has long been debate between the “Göttingen School’s” adherence to Martin Noth’s original exilic dating and Frank Cross’s seventh century dating.43 Recently, Raymond Person and Walter Dietrich have placed most of the composition in the postexilic, Persian Period.44 On the other hand, “The last four decades have seen the propagation of theories of multiple pre-exilic redactions of the DtrH.”45 Others have challenged “Deuteronomicity” of the DtrH, noting the absence of the “Torah of Moses” in 1-2 Samuel - and even in Josiah’s reform -- and the paucity of references to the Book of the Law throughout.46 Since Deuteronomy gives great at47; Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1999), 21-55; Walter Dietrich, “Niedergang und Neuanfang,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion (Oudtestamentische Studiën 42; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 47. Alternatively, earlier scholars saw an Elohistic or JE root here, nevertheless with heavy Deuteronomistic editing: Karl Budde, Die Bücher Richter und Samuel (Giessen: J. Rickers’sche Buchhandlung, 1890). 43 Raymond F. Person, Jr., The Deuteronomistic School (Society of Biblical Literature Studies in Biblical Literature 2; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2002), 33; Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, 285-86; Middlemas, Troubles, 11; Rainer Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie (Beiträge zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 316; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 260-61; Antony F. Campbell and Mark O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 3, 14-17. A rather scathing critique of the Göttingen School is found in Jeremy M. Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 396; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 9798, 110-11. 44 Raymond F. Person, Jr., The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles (Ancient Israel and Its Literature 6; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2010), 11; Person, Deuteronomistic School, 56-63, 73-81; Walter Dietrich, „Vielfalt und Einheit im Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk,“ in Houses Full of All Good Things, ed. Juha Pakkala and Martti Nissinen (Helsinki: Finnish Exegetical Society, 2008), 182-83. It is noteworthy that Person also sees Deuteronomistic influence on or redaction of Zechariah 1-8 (see above); Person, Deuteronomistic School, 141. 45 Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest, 102. 46 R. E. Clements, “The Former Prophets and Deuteronomy,” in God’s Word for Our World, ed. J. Harold Ellens, Deborah L. Ellens, Rolf P.

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

105

tention to sacrifices, festivals, and priesthood, while the DtrH does not, Graeme Auld has reversed the DtrH hypothesis and sees Deuteronomy as derived from the books of the Former Prophets.47 In light of Auld’s and other evidence, the books of Joshua through 2 Kings are apparently not a unitary corpus.48 Yet, these still show features influenced by Deuteronomy; thus, these may be loosely termed a “Deuteronomistic History.”49 For several reasons, much of this corpus may be dated to around 620: The common expression “until this day” fits 620 best and Josiah’s mention by name in the prophecy in 1 Kgs 13:2 is so blatantly ex eventu that its time of “fulfillment” must be near to that of the author’s own.50 Since the Deuteronomistic editor judges kings on their adherence to a law book that he admits was a belated discovery, it is unlikely that the editor’s work was much later than that supposed discovery: “The later one shifts the composition of the story, the more difficult it becomes to explain it.”51 Yet it is difficult to assign particular verses to this or that precisely datable redaction,52 and one may Knierim, and Isaac Kalimi (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 388; London: T & T Clark, 2004), 1.90-94; K. L. Noll, “Deuteronomistic History or Deuteronomic Debate?” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 32 (2007): 333-34; Knoppers, “Relationship.” 47 Graeme Auld, Samuel at the Threshold (Society for Old Testament Study Monographs; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Press, 2003), 189-200; so also Reinhard G. Kratz, Composition of the Narrative Books of the Old Testament (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 157-58. 48 Kratz, Composition of the Narrative, 416-17; Noll, “Deuteronomistic History,” 314, 336-44. 49 Kratz, Composition of the Narrative, 163; Person, Deuteronomistic History, 7. 50 Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 20-22; Jeffrey C. Geoghegan, Time, Place, and Purpose of the Deuteronomistic History (Brown Judaic Studies 347; Providence: Brown University, 2007), 64; Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest, 124. Contra Noll, “Deuteronomistic History,” 323. 51 Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics, 10. 52 As do Richard D. Nelson, The Double Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981); and Mark A. O’Brien, The Deuteronomistic History Hypothesis (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 92; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &

106

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

prefer a slow, continuous redaction process.53 I follow Thomas Römer, Rainer Albertz, and Brian Peckham in seeing the seventh century as the starting point for Deuteronomistic literary production, a history that was only fully conceived in the Exile.54 But in either the traditional O’Brien-Nelson model or the uniform Römer-Peckham model, Judg 10:10-16 belongs to the Exilic period.55 Another use of ‛amal as “wretched” is likewise from a Deuteronomic context, Deuteronomy 26:7. This text will be important in Chapter 9. The Israelite worshiper offering firstfruits is supposed to recite a historical “creed,” wherein he recalls (in the first person) that when in bondage in Egypt, Yahweh saw Israel’s “affliction” (‛aniy), “misery” (‛amal), and “oppression” (lakhaṣ), and Ruprecht, 1989); also, potentially, Noll, “Deuteronomistic History,” 31920. 53 Albertz, Israel in Exile, (Society of Biblical Literature Studies in Biblical Literature 3; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 281; Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 19. The difference is more one of focus: the Cross model allows for such redaction but concentrates on the stages; Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest, 102-103. 54 Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 43, 71; his list of items that would not fit a postexilic context is on p. 67; Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 270; Rainer Albertz, Israel in Exile, 271-302; Peckham, Composition of the Deuteronomistic, 73; Rex Mason, Propaganda and Subversion in the Old Testament (London: SPCK, 1997), 67; Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics, 13; Nadav Na’aman, Past That Shapes the Present (Essays and Papers in Jewish Studies Bearing on the Humanities and the Social Sciences 3; Jerusalem: Orna Hess, 2002), 55, 68; Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest, 146. No doubt there is material earlier than Josiah, as well; Kratz, Composition of the Narrative, 209; Hutton, Transjordanian Palimpsest, 107-108; building on earlier work by Eduard Nielsen, “Historical Perspectives and Geographical Horizons,” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 11 (1978): 81-84, 86; and Ernest Nicholson, Deuteronomy and Tradition (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), 114, 121-23. 55 Cortese, Deuteronomistic Work, 55, 133. Noth’s exilic DtrH writer was situated in Babylonian-period Judah, not in the Exile, because Noth saw local traditions centred around Bethel and Mizpah in the sources of the history; Middlemas, Troubles, 11. Albertz places the exilic Deuteronomistic school in Babylon with the majority of the scribal elites (but cf. Chapter 7); Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 299-300.

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

107

like Tiglath-pileser for Barrakab, brought Israel out of this.56 Many interpret the ‘amal here as “labor” or, by extension, “slavery.” Thus, all manuscripts of the Vulgate have laborem.57 Targum Neofiti 1 has “labor/slavery,” ‛bwdn.58 The Septuagint has mochthon, which means either toil or distress.59 The context supports the latter.60 Deuteronomy 26 shows other parallels to Barrakab inscription i. “Father,” ‚ab, occurs in verses 3 and 7, “house” in v 11. Inheritance is referenced in verse 1. As we have seen, these are also important tropes that are found in Barrakab and that are part of its narrative worldview.

Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube, 14. Johannis De-Rossi, Variae Lectiones Veteris Testamenti (Parma: Regio Typographeo, 1785). 58 Martin McNamara, Targum Neofiti 1: Deuteronomy (Aramaic Bible 5A; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987); Alejandro Díez Macho, Neophyti 1 (Textos y Estudios ‘Cardenal Cisneros’ 8; Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1970). 59 John William Wevers, Septuaginta (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977); Carlo Cercellone, Bibliorum Sacrorum Graecus Codex Vaticanus (Rome: Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, 1869). 60 Norbert Lohfink, “‘Small Credo’ of Deuteronomy 26:5-9,” (1971; repr. in Theology of the Pentateuch (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1994), 287. The reference in the following verse to God’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm” (in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, it is oddly a “mighty hand” and “prospering seed”; Ginsburger, Pseudo-Jonathan) may relate to a NeoAssyrian iconographic motif. There is an Assyrian gesture, known as the ubānu tarāṣu, of the king or a god with his finger outstretched, as seen on the Balawat Gate described in Chapter 4. Its description occurs in the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic (13.24-25) and in a text of Esarhaddon; Hertel, “Balawat Gate,” 304-305. It is meant to display communication, usually positive, between the gods and man, such as blessing or healing; Ursula Magen, Assyrische Königsdarstellungen (Baghdader Forschungen 9; Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1986), 53-54, 95-96. Although Yahweh’s “mighty hand and outstretched arm” is likewise a gesture of saving intervention, since the Hebrew for “finger,” is ‚eṣba‛ (Exod 8:15; 31:18), it is not a perfect parallel. Furthermore, while the phrase is a cliché of the Deuteronom[ist]ic works (Deut 4:34; 5:15; Josh 4:24; 1 Kgs 8:42), it is also found in earlier material (Exod 3:19; 6:1 [of Pharaoh]) and in Egyptian texts (EA 286.12; 287.27; 288.14, 34). 56 57

108

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Deut 26:1-19 is assigned to Dtr2, and the debate over its dating will be presented in Chapter 9.61 The passage is placed as the ending frame of the legal corpus in Deut 25:5-16.62 The great difficulty dating Deuteronomy’s strata is related to the issues of dating the Deuteronomistic History.63 While the connection of an UrDeuteronomy in chapters 12-26 with the law book of Josiah is a truism,64 there are still occasional attempts to connect it with Hezekiah’s reform.65 How much belongs to the book’s early exilic crystallization is disputed.66 Lundbom considers the entire book preexilic, with chapters 1-28 being seventh-century, chapters 29-30 pre-Jeremiah, and chapters 31-34 contemporary with Jeremiah.67 Carsten Vang has also argued for the unity of chapters 1-28 and their preexilic dating.68 On the other hand, Deuteronomy (or at least this portion) offers abundant hope for the exilic community, Peckham, Composition of the Deuteronomistic, 73. Georg Braulik, “Die Abfolge der Gesetze in Deuteronomium 1226 und der Dekalog,” in Das Deuteronomium, ed. Norbert Lohfink (Louvian: Peeters Press, 1985), repr. in Studien zur Theologie des Deuteronomiums (Stuttgarter Biblische Aufsatzbände 2; Stuttgart: Katholische Bibelwerk, 1988), 241. 63 Kratz, Composition of the Narrative, 132. 64 Mark O’Brien, “The Book of Deuteronomy,” Currents in Research: Biblical Studies 3 (1995): 102; McConville, Grace in the End, 16; Antony F. Campbell and Mark O’Brien, Rethinking the Pentateuch (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 98-99; Carsten Vang, “The So-Called ‘UrDeuteronomium’,” J-Hiphil 6 (2009) http://www.seej.net/index.php/hiphil/article/viewArticle/40: 3. But see serious challenges to this view by Pakkala, “Date,” 390-401; Davies, “Josiah,” 70-76. 65 Moshe Weinfeld, “Deuteronomy, Book of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday, 1992), 2.168-82; Jack R. Lundbom, “Inclusio and Other Framing Devices in Deuteronomy I-XXVIII,” Vetus Testamentum 46 (1996): 315; following Willy Staerk, Das Problem des Deuteronomiums (Beiträge zur Förderung Christlicher Theologie 29.2; Gutersloh: C. Bertelsmann, 1924), 135. 66 J. H. le Roux, “Holy Nation was Elected,” in Exilic Period, ed. W. C. van Wyk (Ou-Testamentiese Werkgemeenskap in Suid-Afrika 25-26; Pretoria: Ou-Testamentiese Werkgemeenskap in Suid-Afrika, 1983), 67. 67 Lundbom, “Inclusio and Other Framing,” 315. 68 Vang, “So-called Ur-Deuteronomium,” 10-14. 61 62

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

109

while its description of the land and the king would not fit a postexilic setting.69 yoshib ‛al kisse‚ Several passages that speak of God’s lifting up the lowly, while not using the word ‛amal, do utilize the Barrakab expression “seat on a throne,” tĕbanî ‛al kursē‚ > yoshib ‛al kisse‚. Beginning at the end, the latest of these is Sirach 11:1. The verse says that Wisdom “seats them among the princes,” like Barrakab “in the midst of great kings, owners of silver and owners of gold.” The Hebrew text has toshib among the nedibim, borrowing an expression from Psalms and the Song of Hannah (see below).70 The Greek for the verb “seated” is kathisei, or in Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, kathisē.71 Those raised are not the ‘amal but the dal and anawim < ‛aniy (cf. Deuteronomy 26).72 The nedibim “princes” they are raised up with are, in the Greek, megistanōn, and in the Syriac manuscripts, šallîṭīn, “rulers.”73 This verse in Sirach is modeled on Psalm 118, which in turn is likely modeled on 1 Samuel 2. In Ps 118:8, the phrase is lehoshibi ‛im nedibim. The Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate have “seated him.”74 Again, it is not the ‛amal but the dal and ‚ebyon poor who are raised (v 7) -- ptōchon and anupsōnpenēta in the Septuagint. They are raised up with the nedibim again. While the Greek has archontōn, the Syriac Psalter has the rabrăbin, a term also found in Barrakab.75

69 Robert R. Wilson, “Deuteronomy, Ethnicity, and Reform,” in Constituting the Community, ed. John T. Strong and Steven S. Tuell (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 109-112, 116. 70 Patrick W. Skehan and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Wisdom of Ben Sira (Anchor Bible 39; Garden City: Doubleday, 1987); Rudolf Smend, Die Weisheit des Jesus Sirach (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1906), 102. 71 Constantius Tischendorf, Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus (Lipsiae: Bernhard Tauchnitz, Jr., 1845). 72 Moshe Zvi Segal, The Book of Ben Sira (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1953), 67, in Hebrew. 73 Smend, Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, 102. 74 Robert D. Miller II, “From the Songs of Zion: A Literary Analysis of Psalms 113 and 137,” Bulletin of Biblical Studies 20 (2001): 42. 75 Paul de Lagarde, Hagiographa Chaldaice (Lipsiae: Teubneri, 1873).

110

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

While this Psalm (which in Judaism is the Egyptian Hallel) was once thought to preserve an old Passover ritual,76 it is nearly impossible to date such Psalms.77 Psalm 113 derives from the Song of Hannah and should thus be dated to the eighth-sixth centuries,78 rather than both derived from a “common stock of hymnic material.”79 This brings us, then, to the Song of Hannah, particularly to 1 Sam 2:8: lehoshibi ‛im nedibim wekisse‚ kebod yan‛ileq. A few manuscripts have “seated me,” “seated him,” or “seated them.” The Targum Jonathan of the Song of Hannah is interesting. Here, they are seated not with the princes (as also in the Septuagint, Syriac, Arabic, and Old Latin) but with the ṣadiqin, the rabrabin of the world.80 The Song of Hannah is secondarily attached to its present context. Paul Hanson has described the song as a vision or creed of community, a community of the ‛amel.81 The most extensive linguistic analysis of the Song was produced by David Noel Freedman, supplemented slightly by Waltke and O’Connor. 82 In comparison with Psalm 113, 1 Samuel 2

76 Franz Delitzsch, Die Psalmen (Biblischer Commentar über das Alte Testament 4.1; Leipzig: Dörffling & Franke, 1867). 77 Hans-Joachim Kraus, Psalms 60-150 (Continental Commentary; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 367; McCarthy, “Compact and Kingship,” 85. 78 Peter C. Craigie, “Psalm 113,” Interpretation 39 (1985): 71; Samuel Terrien, The Psalms (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 765. 79 Erhard S. Gerstenberger, Psalms, Part 2, and Lamentations (Forms of Old Testament Literature; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 279. 80 Eveline van Staalduine-Sulman, The Targum of Samuel (Studies in the Aramaic Interpretation of Scripture 1; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002). Cf. Natalio Fernández Marcos and José Ramon Busto Saiz, El Texto Antiqueno de la Biblia Griega (Madrid: Instituto de Filología, 1989); Johannes Belsheim, Palimpsestus Vindobonensis (Christianiae: P. T. Mallingi, 1885); Walton, Biblia Sacra Polyglotta. 81 Hanson, People Called, 66-68. See Chapter 9, below, on the “creed” genre. 82 David Noel Freedman, “Psalm 113 and the Song of Hannah,” in Pottery, Poetry, & Prophecy (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1980), 243-61;

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

111

names God as “Yahweh” (rather than Psalm 113’s tsur) or by participial titles, and has several archaic verbal forms with final –y suffix.83 Based on this, Freedman dates the Song early, to the 12th century,84 although this seems slim evidence. More recent studies have outlined Isaianic influence in the Song and moved its dating to the late exilic period at the earliest.85 melakim rabbim Hebrew cognates of the rabrăbin are common, as is the particular expression “great/many kings,” mālkin rabrăbin > melakim rabbim. Many of its occurrences, however, have no semantic similarity to Barrakab. Then there are places where the meaning is that of Barrakab – the great ones among whom the writer has been lifted – but the expression is melakim gedolim (“great kings”) or ‛ammim rabbim (‘great peoples”). In Psalm 136:7, God is praised for having struck down the melakim gedolim.86 But here the Aramaic does have mālkin rabrăbin, as in Barrakab.87 The call-and-response form in Psalm 136 – a refrain found in Ps 118:1-4; 1 Chron 16:34; 2 Chron 5:13 -- is liturgical,88 and many have tied it (the Jewish Great Hallel) to Passover.89 Gerstenberger Bruce K. Waltke and Michael P. O’Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990). 83 Freedman, “Psalm 113 and the Song,” 243 n.1, 261; Waltke and O’Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew, 619 n.28. 84 Freedman, “Psalm 113 and the Song,” 261. 85 Bernard Gosse, “Le salut et le messie en 1 Sam 2,1-10, et Yahvé juge, à l’œuvre sur la terre et dans l’histoire, dans la tradition des cantiques et du Psautier,” Biblische Notizen 111 (2002) : 18-19, 21; Phil J. Botha, “Freedom to Roam in a Wide Open Space: Psalm 31 Read in Conjunction with the History of David in the Books of Samuel and the Psalms,” paper presented at the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010. 86 One should not emend to goyyim gedolim as does Kraus, Psalms 60150, 499. In v 18, they are melakim ’addirim. 87 De Lagarde, Hagiographa Chaldaice. The Septuagint has basileis megalous. 88 Kraus, Psalms 60-150, 497; Sigmund Mowinckel, The Psalms in Israel’s Worship (Nashville: Abingdon, 1962), 5, 85. 89 Kraus, Psalms 60-150, 497; Delitzsch, Psalmen, 651 n.1.

112

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

resists assigning it to a particular feast.90 Most scholars would place it in the postexilic period.91 Even closer to the use of the expression in Barrakab is Micah 5:7 (Heb 5:6), where the remnant will be victorious in the midst of “many peoples,”‛ammim rabbim.92 Although there is general agreement that vv 6-8 are exilic or postexilic,93 the text “suggests more than exile of some survivors to the territory of a conquering nation. … The expression ‘many peoples’ throughout the Book of Visions seems to be almost universal in its referent.”94 Note also God’s prevailing “hand” in the following verse (see above). An occurance of the exact phrase melakim rabbim is found in Jeremiah 50:41 (LXX 27:41). The full expression is goy gadol and melakim rabbim, “great nation and many kings.” 50:41-43 is a variant of 6:22-24, with the target of God’s vengeance switched from Jerusalem to Babylon, although the variant in chapter 6 lacks this phrase.95 In proximity is 51:10, where God has proclaimed “our righteousness,” ṣideqotenu, like Barrakab proclaiming his own.96 One Gerstenberger, Psalms. Terrien, Psalms, 863; Schmidt, Alttestamentlicher Glaube, 14; Erik Haglund, Historical Motifs in the Psalms (Coniectanea Biblica Old Testament Series 23; Uppsala: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1984), 115; F. N. Jasper, “Early Israelite Traditions and the Psalter,” Vetus Testamentum 17 (1967): 59; Dirk J. Human, “Psalm 136,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 61 (2005): 1223. 92 Similar terms are often associated with the Völkerwallfahrt or eschatological pilgrimage of the nations to God (Jer 27:7-8); William L. Moran, “A Kingdom of Priests,” in Bible in Current Catholic Thought, ed. John L. McKenzie (New York: Herder, 1962), 15-16. 93 Albertz, Israel in Exile, 215. 94 Francis I. Andersen and David Noel Freedman, Micah (Anchor Bible; Garden City: Doubleday, 2000), 485. 95 Robert P. Carroll, Jeremiah (Old Testament Library; London: SCM Press, 1986), 833; William L. Holladay, Jeremiah 2 (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 404-405. 96 Asher Goldenberg, Explorations in Passages of the Latter Prophets 2: Book of Jeremiah (Tel Aviv: New Methodological Approach to Exegetical Problems in Languages and Textology of the Bible, n.d.), 223, in Hebrew. The Vulgate has iustitias; Michael Hetzenauer, Biblia Sacra Vulgatae Editionis (Ratisbone: Friderici Pustel, 1914). It is not correct to translate as “our good deeds,” as does Ahuva Ho, Ṣedeq and Ṣedaqah in the Hebrew Bible 90 91

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

113

should also note the extensive use of ‛ebed language in Jer 46:27-28 and 30:10. A variant of 50:41 is found in 27:7, although here the expression is goyyim rabbim and melakim gedolim.97 It would appear the terms are used interchangeably, a conclusion reinforced by the use of identical terms in the Versions.98 Jeremiah is also closely related to the Deuteronomic / Deuteronomistic schools of thought, as scholars have long known.99 Clement of Alexandria and St. Jerome suggested that Jeremiah was the son of the high priest Hilkiah.100 Some scholars pos(American University Studies in Theology and Religion 78; New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 119. On the other hand, we need not reject “righteousness” on the grounds that Israel is not celebrating their own righteous deeds (as per Jack R. Lundbom, Jeremiah 37-52 [Anchor Bible 21C; Garden City: Doubleday, 2004], 442); true, they are not celebrating their own righteousness, but they are celebrating God’s verdict of “righteous” pronounced upon them. 97 The Septuagint lacks verse 7; see discussion in Carroll, Jeremiah, 526; Holladay, Jeremiah, 112, 121; and Emmanuel Tov, “Exegetical Notes on the Hebrew Vorlage of the LXX of Jeremiah 27,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 9 (1979): 84-85. Carroll, Holladay, and Tov argue for the shorter, Septuagint text, while Jack R. Lundbom argues the verse is original and was lost by homoeoarcton, an error common with the Septuagint tradents; Lundbom, “Haplography and the Hebrew Vorlage of LXX Jeremiah,” Hebrew Studies 46 (2005): 313; Lundbom, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible 21B; Garden City: Doubleday, 2004), 2.315. 98 E.g., Hetzenauer, Biblia Sacra Vulgatae. 99 Ralph W. Klein, Israel in Exile (Overtures to Biblical Theology 6; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 56; Albertz, Israel in Exile, 302-344; A. F. Puukko, “Jeremias Stellung zum Deuteronomium,” in Alttestamentliche Studien Rudolf Kittel (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1913), 126-29, 131. A century ago, A. F. Puukko listed the following parallels: Deut 4:19 = Jer 7:18, Deut 4:20 = Jer 11:4, Deut 4:27 = Jer 9:15, Deut 4:29 = Jer 29:13, Deut 6:6 = Jer 31:33, Deut 10:16 = Jer 4:4, Deut 13:2 = Jer 14:13, Deut 14:1 = Jer 16:6, Deut 17:3 = Jer 8:2, Deut 24:1 = Jer 3:1, Deut 24:16 = Jer 31:29, Deut 27:26 = Jer 11:3, 5, Deut 28:15 = Jer 19:9, Deut 28:26 = Jer 3:1, Deut 28:37 = Jer 25:9, Deut 28:39 = Jer 12:13, Deut 28:48 = Jer 5:15, Deut 28:49 = Jer 5:15, Deut 28:53 = Jer 19:9, Deut 29:22 = Jer 18:16, Deut 29:24-26 = Jer 22:8-9, Deut 30:3 = Jer 29:13-14, Deut 32:22 = Jer 15:14. 100 Puukko, “Jeremias Stellung,” 129.

114

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

tulate a Deuteronomistic redaction of Jeremiah (e.g., in Jeremiah 7, 11-12, 16-18). Yet, there are some distinct differences in Jeremiah and Deuteronomy’s choice of pronouns, particles, and divine names.101 These are often explained by viewing Jeremiah’s Deuteronomists as “an advance over” the Deuteronomists of the Former Prophets.102 But it is just as possible to see “a far more organic, dialogical connection” whereby Jeremiah (the book as a whole) draws extensively on Deuteronomic language.103 Either way, there is a connection between the composers of the book of Jeremiah and the work of the same group responsible for D and DtrH.104 ṣadiq Having linked rabrăbin to ṣadiq (in Jeremiah), we return to Deuteronomy. Deut 6:20-25 contains God’s “mighty hand” in v 21 and ṣedaqah in v 25. While there is little problem with the translation of the “mighty hand,”105 all of the Targums replace ṣedeqah with zkw(t), “merit,”106 and the Christian Palestinian Aramaic version makes it “his [i.e., God’s] ṣedeqa.”107 The Septuagint’s elemēosunē means “charity” or “compassion,” which some have attempted to justify by Noted as early as Puukko, “Jeremias Stellung,” 132. Klein, Israel in Exile, 65. 103 Mark Leuchter, Josiah’s Reform and Jeremiah’s Scroll (Hebrew Bible Monographs 6; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 10, 169. This is much more likely if Lundbom is correct that the divergence between the Masoretic Jeremiah and the Septuagint Jeremiah dates to the early 6 thcentury and represents a Seraiah-text that emerged in Babylon and a Baruch-text that emerged in Egypt; for evidence see Jack R. Lundbom, “Baruch, Seraiah, and Expanded Colophons in the Book of Jeremiah,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36 (1986): 99-101, 108. 104 Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 271-72, 286-76, 291-92. 105 The Septuagint has “strong hand,” cheiri krataia. 106 Ernest G. Clarke, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Deuteronomy (Aramaic Bible 5B; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1998). 107 Moshe Goshen-Gottstein, The Bible in the Syropalestinian Version (Publications of the Hebrew University Bible Project Monograph Series 4; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1973), vol. 1. The Sahidic Coptic has replaced the word entirely with “as the Lord has ordered us”; Rodolphe Kasser, ed., Papyrus Bodmer XVIII (Geneva: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1962). 101 102

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

115

convoluted theological argument.108 Nevertheless, the meaning of “our righteousness” also fits (the Vulgate makes it God’s righteousness), in the sense that the Israelite receives Yahweh’s judgment of “righteous” for his fulfillment of the covenant obligation, just as Barrakab received Tiglath-pileser’s similar verdict.109 The date of this pericope of Deuteronomy is debated. Cortese assigns it to his pre-Dtr1 phase, early in the preexilic period.110 Peckham assigns it to the same stratum as Deuteronomy 26 and Judges 10.111 Some maintain that, in comparison with the other “Kinderfrage” texts -- where “your child will ask you” (Exod 13:1415; Josh 4:6-7, 21-23) -- the setting is most artificial here in Deuteronomy 6 in that the question is not about the meaning of any specific ritual but about the Law as a whole, and that this suggests that Deuteronomy 6 is the latest of the Kinderfrage texts.112 But there is no reason to believe that the Kinderfrage texts have to be in sequence, especially since there are significant differences among them. The context is not that broad in Deuteronomy 6, if the question relates most specifically to the tefillin and mezuzah. The passage has long been dated to the early exilic period,113 and forms a part of Timo Veijola’s late “Covenant Theology Redaction,”114 but this dating is by no means certain. Eduard König, Das Deuteronomium (Kommentar zum Alten Testament; Leipzig: A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung Werner Scholl, 1917), 101, held that the state of human cooperation with the covenant can either close off or accept the compassion of God. 109 26; Braulik, “Development of the Doctrine,” 155; Peter T. Vogt, Deuteronomic Theology and the Significance of Torah (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 102; following Carl Steuernagel, Das Deuteronomium (Handkommentar zum Alten Testament 1.3.1; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1898), 26. 110 Cortese, Deuteronomistic Work, 36. 111 Peckham, Composition of the Deuteronomistic, 73. 112 Davies, “KD in Exodus,” 415. 113 Willy Staerk, Das Deuteronomium (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1894), 88; Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 58. 114 Timo Veijola, “Bundestheologische Redaktion im Deuteronomium,” in Deuteronomium und seine Querbeziehungen, ed. Timo 108

116

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

qeṣot-ha’areṣ The ‛ebed language of Jeremiah is most associated with Second Isaiah. The genesis of the ‛ebed Yahweh idea comes in Second Isaiah,115 and the image is most fully developed here, as well.116 Second Isaiah also contains the nearest linguistic parallel to Barrakab’s “quarters of the earth,” rib‛ay ‚arqā‚ < kibrāt erbettiti, the Hebrew qeṣotha‚areṣ in 40:28 and 41:5, 9. The phrase occurs elsewhere only in Job (see below).117 In fact, the Hebrew is nearer to the Akkadian than Barrakab is, with the meaning “edges” rather than “quarters.”118 The closest parallel is Isa 40:28, which describes God as the “creator” (not quite “lord”) of the edges of the qeṣot-ha‚areṣ. The Targum has “foundations”; the Septuagint and Vulgate, “ends.”119 The textual unit here is Isa 40:21-31, which is in the style of an individual lament.120 It belongs with the Deutero-Isaianic material, which it does not pre- or post-date.121 And, like Barrakab, the “vassal” of the “Lord of the Edges of the Earth” is his ‛ebed (Isa 41:8-9; 42:19; 43:10; 44:1-2, 21, 26; 45:4; 48:20; 49:3).122 Veijola (Schriften der Finnischen exegetischen Gesellschaft 62; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 243-44, 257. 115 Walther Zimmerli and Joachim Jeremias, The Servant of God (rev. ed.; Studies in Biblical Theology 20; London: SCM Press, 1965), 19. 116 Zimmerli and Jeremias, Servant of God, 25; David Noel Freedman, “The Slave of Yahweh,” Western Watch (1959.1), 19. This article is reprinted in vol. 1, pp. 53-71 in Divine Commitment and Human Obligation, ed. John R. Huddlestun (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 117 There are many places where qeṣot is used and the “earth” is understood (Pss 72:8; 75:9; etc.), but the exact phrase is not found there. 118 John Geyer, “Ktsvt h‚rts: Hellenistic?” Vetus Testamentum 20 (1970): 89-90. 119 Bruce Chilton, The Isaiah Targum (Aramaic Bible 11; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1987); Hetzenauer, Biblia Sacra Vulgatae. 120 Roy F. Melugin, The Formation of Isaiah 40-55 (Beiträge zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 141; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1976), 36. Geyer believes qeṣot-ha’areṣ belongs to liturgical material; “Ktsvt h‚rts,” 88. 121 Melugin, Formation of Isaiah, 36. On later strata of II Isaiah, see Albertz, Israel in Exile, 393-424, 427-34. 122 Not only is Second Isaiah Exilic, but it, too, may be connected to the Deuteronomistic School; Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 272; Shalom

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

117

The remaining qeṣot-ha‚areṣ occurrence is in Job 28:24, the wisdom hymn, where it marks the end of a structural unit.123 The Aramaic and Vulgate have “ends,” although the Septuagint manuscripts merely have “all the earth.”124 Everywhere else, Job uses the phrase “wings of the earth,” kenape ha‚areṣ, and this might be owing to the independence of the wisdom hymn from the rest of the book of Job.125 Yet Michael Dick has shown that God’s speeches in Job, especially the first speech in 38:1-39:30, may draw on NeoAssyrian royal hunt accounts, where the king as dispenser of order is master of beasts.126 The point is to show that Yahweh is the lord of mishpat, which Dick believes here equals the Akkadian šutēšuru, world order,127 and ṣadiq (Job 40:8). God asks Job if he would condemn God “that you might be righteous?”128 Job’s concern throughout the book has been to defend his ṣadiq fidelity (2:3, 9; 4:17; 9:1, 15, 20; 10:15; 15:14; 34:5), like Barrakab.129 In addition, M. Paul, “Deuteronom(ist)ic Influences on Deutero-Isaiah,” in Mishneh Todah, ed. N. S. Fox, D. A. Glatt-Gilad, and M. J. Williams (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2009), 219-28. Moreover, many scholars have located Second Isaiah’s composition in Neo-Babylonian Judah, alongside Noth’s Deuteronomists, rather than in Babylon. Middlemas, Troubles, 20, 173. 123 Asher Goldenberg, Exposition to Restore the Songs of Job (Tel Aviv: Printed Word Press, n.d.), 31, in Hebrew. 124 Hetzenauer, Biblia Sacra Vulgatae; Tischendorff, Codex Ephraemi Syri Rescriptus. 125 James L. Crenshaw, “Job, Book of,” Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City: Doubleday, 1992), 3.838-67. 126 Michael B. Dick, “The Neo-Assyrian Royal Lion Hunt and Yahweh’s Answer to Job,” Journal of Biblical Literature 125 (2006): 243-70. 127 Dick, “Neo-Assyrian Royal Lion,” 266-67. 128 This is also the reading of Symmachus, although the Septuagint has “in order that you might display righteousness”; Roger Daniel, In Sacra Biblia Graeca ex Versione LXX Interpretum Scholia; Simul et Interpretum Caeteronum Lectiones Variantes (London: John Martin and James Allestrue, 1653), 58 129 On this, see the range of scholars from Bernhard Duhm, Buch Hiob (Kurzer Hand-commentar zum Alten Testament 16; Freiburg: J. C. B. Mohr, 1897); Heinrich Ewald, Buch Ijob (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1854); to Hans Heinrich Schmid, Gerechtigkeit als Weltordnung (Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie 40; Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1968),

118

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Job’s debate with God has much in common with Moses’ in Exodus 33, both of which are concerned with God’s simultaneous justice and mercy.130 While the book of Job is notoriously difficult to date, considering the presence of Aramaic loanwords (saher, ‛arod, gerem, etc.) but not Persian loanwords, and the consistent depiction of kings as “those who march one off into exile” (12:16-21; 15:28; 18:14), I tentatively locate Job between 500 and 450 BC, the exilic and early post-exilic periods.131

SUMMARY AND ADDENDUM A glance back over this material shows that while one relevant text, the Song of Hannah, may be early (assuming Exodus 33 is not from the Yahwist),132 and a few must be Persian-period or later (Psalm 136, Zechariah 4, and Sirach), the majority are exilic texts: Deuteronomy 6, 26, Judges 10, Jeremiah, Deutero-Isaiah, Psalm 113, Micah, and Job. This may seem a quandary, how NeoAssyrian motifs appear in Neo-Babylonian period texts. The following two chapters will unpack this process. In so doing, it will be necessary to go beyond these texts to the shared symbolic world that they participate in and draw upon.133 The literary patterns in the texts presented in this chapter are related to and constituted by their relations to other texts.134

160-61; and Yaacov Yaeger, Commentary on the Book of Job (Jerusalem: S. Zaq Ushoth, 1984), 62, in Hebrew. 130 Freedman, “God Compassionate,” 9. 131 Mark W. Hamilton, “In the Shadow of Leviathan: Kingship in the Book of Job,” Restoration Quarterly 45 (2003): 38-39. 132 I am not inclined to accept Van Seters’s (Prologue to History [Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1992]) dating of the Yahwist to the Exile. For refutation of Van Seters, see Kratz, Composition of the Narrative, 248-318; and Richard M. Wright, Linguistic Evidence for the Pre-Exilic Date of the Yahwist Source (Library of Hebrew Bible / Old Testament Studies 419; London: T & T Clark, 2005). 133 See Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” p. 448 n.49 on the “meaninglessness” of insistence on fixed formulaic language. 134 Middleton, Liberating Image, 62.

THE ISRAELITE COUNTERPARTS

119

With that in mind, I will venture into one more thematic area now after having investigated terminology. Perhaps the Deuteronomists’ threat of exile as the supreme punishment for disobedience to the covenant (Deut 4:26-27; 28:15-46; 29:24-26; 31:16-17, 20) reflects the well-known Assyrian threat of deportation.135 The Assyrian kings advertised this threat in art, such as the Nimrud Palace of Tiglath-pileser III (Fig. 5),136 and in inscriptions.137 And the people of Judah had ample experience of it from the exile of their neighbors, especially the fall of the northern kingdom and the substantial exile of Judeans after the 701 invasion of Sennacherib.138 Figure 5. Stone panel from central palace of Tiglath-Pilesar III. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Used by permission

Gerhard von Rad, “Es ist noch eine Ruhe vorhanden dem Volke Gottes,” (1933) in Gesammelte Studien zum Alten Testament (Theologische Bücherei 8; Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1958), 102. 136 Auerbach, “Emphasis and Eloquence,” 81-82. 137 Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 87; Fales, Guerre et Paix. 138 Oded, “Phoenician Cities and the Assyrian Empire,” 43; Nadav Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 230; Stephen Stohlmann, “The Judaean Exile After 701 B.C.E.” in Scripture in Context II, ed. William W. Hallo, James C. Moyer, and Leo G. Perdue (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1982), 152, 165. There is, therefore, no reason to consider all allusions to the threat of exile to be post facto echoes of the Babylonian exile; Nelson, “Response,” 7. 135

6 A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER Now that we have established parallels between the Barrakab inscriptions’ language and the narrative world in which it is deployed on the one hand and the biblical text on the other, the reason for these parallels remains to be explained.1 This involves many questions. Is this a matter of deliberate copying of language on the part of the biblical writers, a use of similar au courant vocabulary, a shared mentality or ideological environment in which both the biblical writers and Barrakab’s lived, or only a superficial resemblance? In addition, when did all this happen? This chapter will treat the question of the temporal context for the “transmission” of the constellation of tropes and their literary context. The nature and mechanics of that transfer will be treated in Chapter 7. The dating question alone is complex. While the date of the Barrakab inscription is clear, that dating of the related biblical material is debatable, as was shown in Chapter 5. We must examine, therefore, the history of Assyrian-Israelite interaction that may have allowed the “transfer” before defining what that transfer was. In presenting this history, I have tried to be critical, heeding the warning issued by Liverani: “Laziness is common among historians. When they find a continuous account of events for a certain period in an ‘ancient’ source, one that is not necessarily contemporaneous with the events, they readily adopt it. They limit their work to paraphrasing the source or, if needed, to rationalisation.”2

Thus, David Carr writes, “It is quite unclear how such influence would have taken place”; Writing on the Tablets of the Heart (Oxford: University Press, 2005), 61. 2 Liverani, Myth and Politics, 28. 1

121

122

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Looking for a scenario in which vocabulary, forms, or ideologies from the Neo-Assyrian Empire could have found their way into Israelite literature, we need not begin with Israel’s first encounter with Assyria, as that encounter was a hostile military confrontation.3 In 853, an economic coalition of twelve western states, including Ahab’s Israel, encountered Shalmaneser III at Qarqar, as recorded on the Kurkh Monolith.4 Although the issues are complex, this was a hostile encounter in which Assyria was, at least, not decisively victorious. It would not have been an occasion for ideological adaptation.5 The first evidence of actual diplomatic contact with Assyria comes from a decade later, in the famous black obelisk of Shalmaneser (Fig. 6), dated to 841. Israel’s king Jehu brings tribute and bows in obeisance to Shalmaneser.6 Na’aman has interpreted 3 There are earlier possibilities of contact. Šamši-Adad claimed to have set up steles on the Mediterranean shore, and the presence of Assyrian merchant colonies in Cappadocia this early gives more credence to such claims (H. W. F. Saggs, The Might That Was Assyria [London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1984], 36), but the likelihood is slim. 4 Olmstead, “Shalmaneser III,” 366. The monument must be used with caution, as it contains many scribal errors, omissions, and insertions; see Chapter 3. The suggestion of Na’aman that 1 Kgs 22:2-37 also refers to this battle is quite radical; Nadav Na’aman, “Was Ahab killed by an Assyrian arrow in the battle of Qarqar?” Ugarit Forschungen 37 (2005): 461, 467, 470. 5 For fuller discussion, see A. Kirk Grayson, “Shalmaneser III and the Levantine States,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 5 (2004): art. 4; Nadav Na’aman, “Notes on the Monolith Inscription of Shalmaneser III from Kurkh,” Tel Aviv 3 (1976): 97-102; Moshe Elat, “The Campaigns of Shalmaneser III against Aram and Israel,” Israel Exploration Journal 25 (1975): 25-35; Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 157-63; Hafþórsson, Passing Power, 82-90, 123-29; Oded, “Phoenician Cities and the Assyrian Empire,” 40-41. The first mention of Israel by Shalmaneser is as “Israel”; thereafter it is as “Bit Omri,” an Aramean-style name from the “House of Omri”; Mordechai Cogan, Historical Texts from Assyria and Babylonia (Biblical Encyclopaedia Library 19; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2003, in Hebrew), 13, 18. 6 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 185-91. “Obeisance,” but not humiliation; Jehu, like Sua, is placed in a privileged position on the stela as the Assyrian king’s favorite; Christoph Uehlinger, “Valuable Testimony in its Own Right,” in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, ed. H. G. M.

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

123

the unique reference to Jehu, who was not of the House of Omri, as mār Ḥumri, to be intentional on the part of Shalmaneser. Jehu had overthrown an anti-Assyrian dynasty and Shalmaneser, who readily identified usurpers as such when he wanted to (e.g., Hazael of Damascus), wanted to legitimize Jehu.7

Figure 6. Black obelisk of Shalmaneser, detail. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Used by permission.

Michael Astour argued that Shalmaneser was physically in Israel when this tribute was presented. Assuming Astour’s synchronization of the Israelite reigns and Assyrian dates is correct, then

Williamson (Proceedings of the British Academy 143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 205, 209. Jehu represents the western limit of Shalmaneser’s domain, juxtaposed with the ruler of Gilzanu at the easternmost edge; Ingrid Hjelm, “The Assyrian Evidence,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 23 (2009): 15. 7 Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 14.

124

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

841 was also the year of Jehu’s coup.8 Assuming that “the Assyrian army could not have passed from Hauran to the southern Phoenician coast otherwise than through Gilead and the Valley of Jezreel,”9 Astour then concluded that Mount Ba’al-ra’si, where Shalmaneser claims to have erected a stele, was Mount Carmel.10 Astour further concluded that Jehu’s coup was a pro-Assyrian exercise, following on Shalmaneser’s sack of Beth-Arbel (Hos 10:14) and paralleling such coups in favor of Shalmaneser in Giammu and Hatti.11 The particulars of this reconstruction are speculative, but it is correct that “Jehu’s submission to Assyria proved to be a longlasting shift of orientation, the beginning of a policy of collaboration with Assyria and hostility to Aram which was maintained, for better or worse, by all kings of Jehu’s dynasty.”12 After the reign of Shalmaneser, however, there was a lapse in Assyrian influence in the west. Between 836 and 811, the absence of Assyrian armies in the Levant enabled the Arameans to dominate the region.13 Aramean hegemony from Damascus was unlike the earlier Assyrian incursions; it was considerably more effective and brutal (2 Kgs 10:32-33; 12:17-18; Amos 1:3-5). 8 Michael C. Astour, “The First Assyrian Invasion of Israel,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 91 (1971): 383. For support of Astour’s synchronization, see Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 193, 319. 9 Astour, “First Assyrian Invasion,” 384; Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 192; Hafþórsson, Passing Power, 95. 10 Astour, “First Assyrian Invasion,” 384. The identification had been raised several times earlier, including by Olmstead, “Shalmaneser III,” 372; cf. Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 192 n. 396. Younger places it slightly further north at Rosh HaNikra; “Neo-Assyrian and Israelite History,” in Understanding the History of Ancient Israel, ed. H. G. M. Williamson (Proceedings of the British Academy 143; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 267. It is identical in name, but not location, with Theuprosopon mentioned by Strabo (16.2, 15), south of Tripolis. 11 Astour, “First Assyrian Invasion,” 386, 388. 12 Astour, “First Assyrian Invasion,” 388. 13 Jeffrey K. Kuan, “Samsi-Ilu and the Realpolitik of Israel and AramDamascus in the 8th Century B.C.E.,” in The Land That I Will Show You, ed. M. P. Graham and A. Dearman (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 343; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 135.

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

125

The reign of Adad-nirari III in Assyria (810-783) provided some relief, in the Israelite view, from this Aramean assault. Jehoahaz (814-798) was rescued from the Aramean tyranny by a “savior” (2 Kgs 13:5), whom most scholars have identified as Adad-nirari, who received tribute from Israel in 805.14 Assyrian vassals’ pleas for imperial intervention were common.15 The Israelite king Joash (798-783) also presented tribute to Adad-nirari, as recorded in the Tell Rimah Stele.16 As outlined in Chapter Three above, the death of Adad-nirari in 783 brought another gap in Assyrian influence, because of both internal unrest and preoccupation with Urartu, which lasted until 745.17 Aramean power recovered, and Israel was badgered by a southern Aramean coalition of Damascus, Hamath, Byblos, Arvad, and Beth Rehob.18 Kuan has pointed out that this hegemony was contested, in that the powerful Assyrian governor Šamši-ilu, turtānu (viceroy) from before 783 to 751, had jurisdiction over Palestine and fought Aram-Damascus in 773-72.19

Susan Ackerman, “Assyria in the Bible,” in Assyrian Reliefs from the Palace of Ashurnasirpal II, ed. Ada Cohen and Steven E. Kangas (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2010), 128-29; Astour, “First Assyrian Invasion,” 388; ARAB 1.734-35, 739-40. 15 E.g., the plea of Nadi-Marduk of Sealand to the queen mother; Waterman, Royal Correspondence, 136-37 #917; Robert Francis Harper, Assyrian and Babylonian Letters (Chicago: University Press, 1902), 9.917; Dion, “Ahaz and Other,” 134-37. 16 Ackerman, “Assyria,” 128. The stela cannot refer to Jehoahaz; Hjelm, “Assyrian Evidence,” 15; Stephanie Page [Dalley], “A Stela of Adad-Nirari III and Nergal-Ereš from Tell Al Rimah,” Iraq 30 (1968): 141-42, 148-49; Hafþórsson, Passing Power, 115-17. Adad-nirari introduces a new name for Israel, “Samaria.” 17 Kuan, “Samsi-Ilu and the Realpolitik,” 136; Hayim Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 8 (1961): 240; Na’aman, “Forced Participation in Alliances,” 88. 18 Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” 243-45. 19 Kuan, “Samsi-Ilu and the Realpolitik,” 137-40; A. Kirk Grayson, “Studies in Neo-Assyrian History II,” in Corolla Torontonensis, ed. Emmet Robbins and Stella Sandahl (Toronto: TSAR, 1994), 75. 14

126

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Only on Šamši-ilu’s death in 751 was Aramean ascendancy restored (Isa 8:23).20 But Israel was left with a positive view of Assyria, which would continue a century, into the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (Hos 12:2 – Eng 12:1; 14:4 – Eng 14:3; there is no need to depend on 2 Kgs 13:5).21 Not only did Israel see Assyria as better than Aram-Damascus, but the Assyrians also found it in their interest to have Israel more powerful than Aram-Damascus. That is why Israel did not realize Assyria was dangerous until much later. We may therefore easily postulate Barrakab-like sentiments in Israel for the entire dynasty of Jehu.22 In either 841-836 or 810-751, Israel could have directly received language, forms, and ideology from the broader Neo-Assyrian Empire, and integrated them into either its secular or theological vocabulary. The rise of Tiglath-pileser in autumn of 745 brought a new phase to Assyrian imperialism.23 We ought first to eliminate a supposed source of Assyrian-Judahite contact from this period. A half century ago, it was proposed that an “Azzariyaw” or “Azriyau” of “Yaudi” from Tiglath-pileser’s fragmentary annals of 738 was Uzziah, but it is impossible that this is Uzziah or any other king of Judah.24 The supposed parallel name in text K6205 comes from the reign of Sennacherib, not Tiglath-pileser.25 The former text makes Tiglath-pileser’s main enemy this Azriyau, in the region of Hamath (near Sam’al and nowhere near Judah).26 Hamath itself is unnamed, yet it pays tribute in late 738, so Azriyau is evidently the ruler of Hamath. In fact, Judah was well within Assyrian hegemony by this

Kuan, “Samsi-Ilu and the Realpolitik,” 145. Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” 249-50. Tadmor dates these passages early because there are no references to the events of 733 or to AramDamascus. Stephanie Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā, and the Foreign Policy of the Late Assyrian Kings,” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 12 (1998): 88. 22 For other evidence, see Uehlinger, “Valuable Testimony,” 210. 23 Parpola, “Assyria’s Expansion,” 100. 24 Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” 254-55. 25 William Shea, “Menahem and Tiglath-Pileser III,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 37 (1978): 47. 26 Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” 266. 20 21

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

127

time already, as signaled by Ahaz’s petition to Tiglath-pileser in 2 Kgs 16:7-9.27 King Menahem of Israel paid tribute to Tiglath-pileser (2 Kgs 15:18-20). The date of this tribute payment is debated, and Menahem may have paid tribute twice.28 The question revolves around nearly duplicate lists of western tribute payments in Tiglathpileser’s annals and a tribute list found on a stele in Iran published in 1972.29 “Academic throat-cutting still continues on such trivial details as the exact date of the payment of tribute by Menahem of Israel,”30 but this detail need not concern the present study. It is sufficient to say that between 740 and 738 Israel remained an Assyrian vassal.31 The amount of Menahem’s tribute is identical with what the kings of Tabal and Tyre paid for Assyrian support when they usurped their thrones.32 The Israelite king Pekah reversed the policy of subservience and rebelled against Assyria. In the so-called Syro-Ephraimite War of 735, Rezin of Damascus, Pekah of Israel, Hiram of Tyre, Gaza, and Ashkelon allied against the Assyrian king.33 Roger Tomes has argued that the listing of these states together only shows that they were all attacked by Assyria at roughly the same time, not that they were a rebel alliance.34 He maintains that if Tiglath-pileser had defeated an actual coalition of enemies, he would have said so, as he Saggs, Might That Was Assyria, 85. Nadav Na’aman, “Historical and Chronological Notes on the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the Eighth Century B.C.,” Vetus Testamentum 36 (1986): 81-82; Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 274-76. 29 Annals 13*.10 and Stele IIIA.5, respectively, in Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 68-69, 106-107; Shea, “Menahem and Tiglath-Pileser,” 44, 47-49; Tadmor, “Azriyau of Yaudi,” 252, 265. 30 Saggs, Might That Was Assyria, 88. 31 Peter Dubovský, Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies (Biblica et Orientalia 49; Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 2006), 220. 32 Tammi Schneider, “Israel’s Relationship with Judah through Assyria’s Eyes,” Expedition 44 (2002): 12. 33 ND 4301+4305; ND 400; Eponym List of 734; Stuart A. Irvine, Isaiah, Ahaz, and the Syro-Ephraimitic Crisis (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 123; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990), 23-72, 298. 34 Roger Tomes, “The Reasons for the Syro-Ephraimite War,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 59 (1993): 64. 27 28

128

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

does in his Annals 1.125 and as Sargon II does.35 This is an argument from silence, and there seems no reason to question the traditional assumption that this was a coalition of parties who hoped to force Judah, as well (Isaiah 7-8:10).36 Judah’s king Ahaz is recorded as paying tribute faithfully to Assyria in 734 or 733.37 Stephanie Dalley has suggested another connection between Ahaz and Assyria. She proposes that Ahaz’s sister was Atalyā, the consort of Sargon II.38 The tomb of one Atalyā, presumably a royal consort, was discovered at Nimrud, and the name may well be Hebrew.39 Also in the tomb was another woman, Yabá. This name is West Semitic (though it is perhaps not Hebrew), but Dalley proposes that their joint burial suggests their kinship.40 She also believes a circlet found with Yabá resembles an early phylactery.41 Yabá would be the consort of Tiglath-pileser III, and this explains Ahaz referring to himself as the “son” of Tiglath-pileser in his appeal of 2 Kgs 16:7, while Atalyā’s being Sennacherib’s mother explains his leniency to Hezekiah in 701.42 While it is true that it was customary for vassal kings to send daughters along with tribute to Assyria, there are so many remote possibilities in this reconstruction that it is not useful to consider it a means of ideological transfer. Moreover, no vassal would have dared to use the term “son,” so we may attribute its use here to the Israelite chronicler.43 ARAB 2.55; 2.8; and 2.30; Tomes, “Reasons for the SyroEphraimite,” 65-66. 36 Fales, L’Impero Assiro, 6. 37 ARAB 1.801; Summary inscription 7.rev.11’ in Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 277; Dion, “Ahaz and Other,” 134. 38 Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā,” 90. 39 Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā,” 84. 40 Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā,” 95-96. 41 Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā,” 95. 42 Dalley, “Yabá, Atalyā, 97. In spite of King Warikas of Adana calling the Assyrian king his “father,” Dion believes “son” was coined by a later biblical author hostile to Ahaz; “Ahaz and Other,” 137, 141. 43 Hayim Tadmor, “Ahaz and Tiglath-Pileser in the Book of Kings” (1979), repr. in “With My Many Chariots I have Gone Up the Heights of the Mountains,” ed. Mordechai Cogan (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2011), 818. 35

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

129

Tiglath-pileser’s response to Ahaz’s request for help was to annex the Galilean and Transjordanian parts of Israel (2 Kgs 15:29) and to place Hoshea on the Israelite throne in place of Pekah.44 A large Assyrian residence was built in Megiddo.45 Hoshea soon after, in 731, appeared before Tiglath-pileser in southern Babylon bearing tribute.46 The remainder of Israel’s fate at the hands of Tiglathpileser’s successors has been thoroughly discussed in the scholarly literature.47 The fall of the northern kingdom is not relevant to this chapter, as it marks the end of Assyrian ideological influence in Israel, not an opportunity for its diffusion. In general, moreover, more weight should be given to possible connections between Assyria and Judah than between Assyria and Israel.48 While it is probable that literature of the northern kingdom, both oral and written, did find its way into Judah after the fall of Samaria, it is more difficult to postulate a mechanism for this. There was ample time between 841-836, 810-751, 740-735, and under Hoshea for Assyrian propaganda to find its way into Israelite thought patterns and literature, but in light of the discussion in Chapter 5 above, the probability is greater of transference to Judah, whose cordial contact with Assyria goes back at least to Ahaz in 735. 2 Chron 28:20-21 does describe an attack on Judah by Tiglathpileser, but there is no Assyrian corroboration. Nevertheless, a thorough analysis of the archaeological record of south-western 44 ND 4301+4305, r. 9-11; ARAB 2.816; Summary inscriptions 4.5’6’, 15’-19’; 9.3, r.9-10 and Annals 18.3’-7’; 24.3’-11’ in Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 80-81, 139, 141, 187, 189, 277, 282; Saggs, Might That Was Assyria, 89; Hayim Tadmor, “Tiglath-pileser III in Eretz Israel,” Shnaton 10 (1986-89): 179-87. 45 Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 202. 46 ND 4301+4305, line 11; Summary inscriptions 4.18’; 9.r.11 in Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 189, 277-78; Na’aman, “Historical and Chronological Notes,” 71-72. 47 See Norma Franklin, “The Room V Reliefs at Dur-Sharrukin and Sargon II’s Western Campaigns,” Tel Aviv 21 (1994): 255-75; Na’aman, Ancient Israel and its Neighbors, 203. 48 It is interesting that the Assyrians saw no connection between Israel and Judah; Schneider, “Israel’s Relationship with Judah,” 14.

130

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Judah has led Jeffrey Blakely and James Hardin to conclude that major destructions at Tell Beit Mirsim and Tel Halif ought to be dated to 734, perhaps to an unknown Assyrian campaign.49 When text K6205, earlier assigned to Tiglath-pileser, was linked in 1974 to text BM82 3-23, 131, several scholars assigned it to Sargon II (722-705). This is the so-called Azekah Inscription, and it mentions Hezekiah twice.50 Na’aman from the start argued instead that the Azekah Inscription belongs to Sennacherib: there are expressions that appear in the same order in Sennacherib’s annals, Sargon never recorded entering Judah, and it is likely that Sargon personally never went to Philistia, sending only his turtānu.51 While Na’aman was correct about the 712/711 expedition to Philistia that resulted in creating a new province that extended up to the border of Judah (Annals 227.14, 13 Pr. 109),52 this was the only one of Sargon’s four incursions to the region to be commanded by the turtānu rather than the king. The campaigns of 721/720, 716, and 713 were led by Sargon.53 Lawson Younger and Mordechai Cogan consider it possible that the Azekah Inscription refers to a Judean expedition of Sargon in 720 (Isa 10:27-32).54 The difficulty Blakely and Hardin, “Southwestern Judah,” 51. This is the lower destruction level at Tell Beit Mirsim; the upper destruction must be that of Sennacherib; Blakely and Hardin, “Southwestern Judah,” 38. 50 K. Lawson Younger, Jr., “Recent Study on Sargon II, King of Assyria,” in Mesopotamia and the Bible, ed. Mark W. Chavalas and K. Lawson Younger, Jr. (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 341; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 292. 51 BM 82.3-23.131. Nadav Na’aman, “Sennacherib’s ‘Letter to God’ on his Campaign to Judah,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 214 (1974): 29-30. The piece is currently joined to two other pieces and labelled KG205. 52 A. Fuchs, Die Inschriften Sargons II. aus Khorsabad (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), 132-34, 326; Emil Fohrer, Die Provinzeinteilung des Assyrischen Reiches (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1920), 63; Fales, L’Impero Assiro, 227. 53 Franklin, “Room V Reliefs,” 260. 54 Younger, “Recent Study on Sargon,” 293, 316; Younger, “Assyrian Involvement in the Southern Levant at the End of the Eighth Century B.C.E.,” in Jerusalem in Bible and Archaeology, ed. Andrew G. Vaughn and Ann E. Killebrew (Society of Biblical Literature Symposium Series 18; 49

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

131

with this reconstruction is the likelihood that Hezekiah did not become king until 715.55 Na’aman maintains that, “All the available evidence indicates that it describes an early stage of Sennacherib’s campaign.”56 Wall Relief 5L in Room V at Dur-Sharrukin places Sargon in Judeo-Philistine Gibbethon, which is to be identified with Tell Malot or Ras Abu Hamid,57 fighting Nubians in 721.58 Sargon records receiving tribute from Judah.59 Moreover, an inscription published over a century ago calls Sargon, “the subduer [mu-šak-niš] of Judah.”60 Nevertheless, nothing directly states that Judah revolted at this time, and “Judah’s relationship with the Assyrians generally remained amicable throughout the period of the fall of Samaria and the restructuring of the Northern Kingdom.”61 With Sennacherib (705-681), we are on surer ground. Of the many sources for his reign, the barrel-shaped Rassam Cylinder contains the canonical account of his third campaign, in 701, which included his famous invasion of Judah. The complex issues of this invasion, its timing, and its conclusion need not concern us.62 Par-

Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), 237-40, 242-43; Cogan, Historical Text, 73; cf. Blakely and Hardin, “Southwestern Judah,” 49. 55 Nadav Na’aman, “Hezekiah and the Kings of Assyria,” Tel Aviv 21 (1994): 235-41. 56 Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 1.111; Na’aman, “Hezekiah and the Kings,” 245; so also Stohlmann, “Judean Exile,” 157. 57 Robert D. Miller II, “A Gazeteer of Iron I Sites in the NorthCentral Highlands of Israel,” in Preliminary Excavation Reports and Other Archaeological Investigations, ed. Nancy Lapp (Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research 56; Boston: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1999), 173, 182. 58 Franklin, “Room V Reliefs,” 260. 59 Nimrud Letter 17.16, line 38. 60 COS 2.118 I.298-99; Hugo Winckler, Die Keilschriftetexte Sargons (Leipzig: Pfeiffer, 1889), 1.168 61 Ackerman, “Assyria,” 131. 62 For discussion, see Lester L. Grabbe, ed., Like a Bird in a Cage (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 363; European Seminar in Historical Methodology 4; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2003); Younger, “Assyrian Involvement,” 245-62; Antii Laato, “Assyrian

132

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

ticularly important is the list of tribute in the Rassam Cylinder – longer than that in the related Taylor Prism – which includes tribute from Hezekiah of Judah in lines 55-58.63 A safe conclusion is that Sennacherib, who did not annex Sidon or Ashkelon either, cared little about western expansion.64 Reducing Judah to a subservient Jerusalem sufficed.65 A sizable Assyrian garrison was established at Tell Jemmeh on the edge of Judah, thousands were exiled, important cities like Lachish, Beth-shemesh, and Tell Beit Mirsim had been destroyed, and it appears an Assyrian residence was established at Ramat Rahel, just outside Jerusalem, where the most elaborate examples of Assyrian palace ware found so far in Judah occur. 66 Judah was thus again a vassal, even more so than under Ahaz.67 One piece of interesting information comes from this episode in 2 Kings 18-2068 and Isaiah 36-39, which have the Assyrian “RabPropaganda and the Falsification of History in the Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib,” Vetus Testamentum 45 (1995): 198-226. 63 Doubts that Hezekiah is described here as bringing tribute or that this description is factual have been raised only rarely, as by William R. Gallagher, Sennacherib’s Campaign to Judah (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 18; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), passim. 64 Benedikt Otzen, “Israel and the Assyrians,” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 11 (1977/78): 106. 65 David Ussishkin, “Sennacherib’s Campaign to Philistia and Judah,” in Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. Yairah Amit, Ehud Ben Zvi, Israel Finkelstein, and Oded Lipschits (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 353. 66 Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 205, 209-210, 290. The Assyrian residence at Ramat Rahel may even date to the reign of Sargon; Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 291. 67 Although covering a range of periods, Dubovský catalogues Assyrian palace ware from Beersheba, Khirbet Hoga, Tel `Ira, Tel Haror, Tell el-Kheleifah, and Timnah, and Assyrian constructions at Tel Sera`, Gezer, and Ramat Rahel; Dubovský, Hezekiah, 276-79. A more guarded interpretation of this assemblage, noting its limitation to few forms and imitations, is Stefano Anastasio, Atlas of the Assyrian Pottery of the Iron Age (Subartu 24; Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 25. 68 2 Kgs 17:27 also exhibits Sargonid idioms; Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 98. A thorough discussion of the sources, rhetoric, and theology of this pericope is Paul Evans, The Invasion of Sennacherib (Vetus Tes-

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

133

Shaqeh,” turtānu, and “Rab-Saris” present at the siege of Jerusalem in 701. Isaiah only mentions the Rab-Shaqeh. The turtānu is the viceroy, and the Rab-Saris is the rab ša reši or field marshal.69 ANET, following Oppenheim, Luckenbill, and others, states that a Rab-Shaqeh was also present in a campaign against Tyre. This results from a mistaken reading of LÚ.GAL.SAG as rab šaqû, rather than the correct reading of rab ša reši.70 The “Rab-Saris” went to Tyre, as he would be expected to.71 Rab šaqû is LÚ.GAL.BI.LUL (LÚ.GAL-KAS.LUL), an Assyrian official who never went on any campaigns.72 Thus, scholars who were aware that he did not go to Tyre or elsewhere assumed the Bible had invented the presence of the Rab-Shaqeh at Jerusalem. But there is a better explanation: it is the Rab-Shaqeh who speaks in Hebrew in 2 Kings 18. The Rab šaqû had been brought to Jerusalem because he was a Hebrew-speaker. The presence of deportees from the northern kingdom (Dor Province 734, Gilead and Megiddo Provinces 733, Samaria Province 722) in the Assyrian court and military is well documented.73 Witness the presence of individuals with Hebrew names Aḥi-ia-u,74 soldiers Qu‚ya[u], Hilqiya[u], Giriyau, and Yasuri75 as another such tamentum Supplement 125; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2009). I make no claim of full historicity for 2 Kings 18-19; see Dubovský, Hezekiah, 238. 69 L. R. Siddall, “Re-examination of the Title ša reši,” in Gilgameš and the World of Assyria, ed. J. Azize and N. Weeks (Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 21; Louvain: Peeters Press, 2007), 225-40. 70 Tadmor, Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser, 171 n.16’. 71 Siddal, “Re-examination,” 225-26. 72 Fales, L’Impero Assiro, 301. 73 Stephanie Dalley, Legacy of Mesopotamia (Oxford: University Press, 1998), 62-63; Esther’s Revenge at Susa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 14; Tadmor, “Assyria and the West,” 42; Walter Mayer, “Gedanken zur Deportation im Alten Orient,” in Macht und Herrschaft, ed. Christian Sigrist (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 316; Munster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2004), 225-26. One of Dalley’s Samarians is challenged in Ran Zadok, “Neo-Assyrian Notes,” in Treasures on Camels’ Humps, ed. Mordechai Cogan and Dan’el Kahn (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008), 329. 74 ADD 176.4 from the early 8th century. 75 ND 2443 2.2, 6; 4.4; ND 2621 1.3’; 2.9’-10’; Tadmor, “Aramaization of Assyria,” 450-51; Gershon Galil, “Israelite Exiles in Media,” Vetus Testamentum 59 (2009): 71-79.

134

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

example.76 This bilingualism in Assyria will be important when mechanisms for transmission of Assyrian ideology to Israel are discussed at the end of this chapter. Judah continued as an Assyrian vassal. While there is no Assyrian confirmation of it, 2 Chronicles 33 has a unique account of King Manasseh being taken by the Assyrians to Babylon and subsequently restored to Jerusalem. Most have assumed that the story is spurious, based perhaps on Manasseh’s having visited Nineveh, for which Babylon was substituted at a time when it had superseded Nineveh as an imperial capital.77 Assyrian texts list Manasseh as a faithful vassal, both under Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, whom he accompanied on the campaign to Egypt in 648 (Prism C = ARAB 2.340 = ANET 294).78 Yet why would the Chronicler place this episode in Babylon when it was well known that Nineveh, not Babylon, was the Assyrian capital (Nahum; Jonah)? Can we assume that the Chronicler was so ignorant that he would not have said “Nineveh” if inventing the story? Rudolf Kittel and John Bright -and now Frederick Mario Fales and Anson Rainey -- concluded the Chronicler had authentic information, since Assurbanipal was in Babylon in 642-638 putting down a rebellion.79 Although possible, 76 Note also the sale of wheat in Nineveh, dated to 660, measured “ina GIŠ.BAR ša māt Iaudi,” “according to the weight of Judah” (ARU 325.2). 77 Saggs, Might That Was Assyria, 107. Esarhaddon mentions on Prism A summoning the kings of Hatti-land and those beyond the river, including Manasseh, to Nineveh to secure building materials for a new palace in 676 (ARAB 2.265-66 = ANET 291); Eduard Nielsen, “Political Conditions and Cultural Development in Israel and Judah during the Reign of Manasseh,” in Law, History, and Tradition (Copenhagen: G. E. C. Gads Forlag, 1983), 130. 78 Roy Gane, “The Role of Assyria in the Ancient Near East During the Reign of Manasseh,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 35 (1997): 2132. It is interesting that this text refers, for the first time, to Manasseh as “king” of Judah. 79Rudolf Kittel, Geschichte des Volkes Israel (5th ed.; Gotha : F.A. Perthes, 1922), 2.510; John Bright, History of Israel (London: SCM Press, 1964), 290; also Fales, L’Impero Assiro, 10; Anson F. Rainey, “Manasseh, King of Judah in the Whirlpool of the Seventh Century B.C.E.,” in Kinattūtu ša dārâti, ed. Anson F. Rainey (Tel Aviv Institute of Archaeology Oc-

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

135

we ought not to name this as a possible moment of transfer of ideology, since “it is difficult to see why [the Deuteronomists] should have omitted to add this even to their otherwise polemic description of Manasseh,” regardless of Manasseh’s rehabilitation at its end.80 It is safer, and just as important, to record Manasseh as continuing his loyal vassalage to Assyria, which continued until Assyria’s destruction.81 It is at this point in history that some have suggested Assyrian religion was imported to Judah.82 More than thirty years ago, Mordechai Cogan and John McKay effectively showed that this view is erroneous.83 Assyrian cult was rarely imposed on vassals (unlike conquered territories), and Ahaz and Manasseh’s idolatry was not Assyrian cult. Their conclusions were accepted by many: Moran, Lambert, Bickerman, Tadmor, Oded, Otzen, Greenberg, Mulder, Lemche, Na’aman, Weinfeld, et al.84 But then major objections were raised by Hermann Spiekermann’s 1980 dissertation,85 and Steven Holloway’s 1992 dissertation. These noted steles of Assyrian kings worshipping in vassal’s cities (such as one by Tiglath-pileser in Gaza),86 invocation of Assyrian gods in Esarhaddon’s treaty with the Medes, and Assyrian religious interference in Babylon and Gozan.87 Assyrian imperialism was total and must have demanded reverence for Assyricasional Publications 1; Tel Aviv: University Press, 1993), 160; and Middleton, Liberating Image, 200. Dalley accepts the historicity of the event, but believes it took place not in Babylon but Assyria; “Yabá, Atalyā,” 93, 97. 80 Nielsen, “Political Conditions,” 131. 81 Nelson, “Realpolitik in Judah,” 181. 82 Olmstead, “Assyrian Government of Dependencies,” 72. 83 Morton [Mordechai] Cogan, Imperialism and Religion (Society of Biblical Literature Monograph Series 2.26; Missoula: Scholars Press, 1974); John McKay, Religion in Judah under the Assyrians (Studies in Biblical Theology n.s. 26; London: SCM Press, 1973), esp. pp. 60-73. 84 E.g., Otzen, “Israel and the Assyrians,” 107. 85 Hermann Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur in der Sargonidenzeit (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 129; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982). 86 Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur, 325-30. 87 Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur.

136

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

an gods.88 The apostasy of Israel was the importation of Assyrian religion:89 Manasseh “built Assyrian altars for astral deities in the temple court.”90 Now, McKay and Cogan had always accepted the “voluntary adoption by Judah’s ruling class of the prevailing Assyro-Aramean culture,”91 but there is simply no evidence for imposition. Occasionally, conquered gods were captured and held hostage for a vassal’s good behavior, but this was not cultic imposition.92 Spieckermann and Holloway paid little attention to the fundamental distinction between vassals and conquered provinces.93 Even in the provinces, there were Assyrian garrisons (e.g., Tell Jemmeh, Khirbet Hoga, Tel Sera, Tell el-Farah South), but no evidence of temples has surfaced.94 Spieckermann and Holloway did not consider the uniqueness of Gaza as an Assyrian emporium.95 Moreover, the message in Gaza is only that the Assyrian god may also be

Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur, 344-62. Spieckermann, Juda unter Assur, 229-307. 90 Nielsen, “Political Conditions,” 133. 91 Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 113; McKay, Religion in Judah, 68. So, too, Daniel R. Miller, “The Shadow of the Overlord,” in From Babel to Babylon, ed. Joyce Rilett Wood, John E. Harvey, and Mark Leuchter (Library of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies 455; New York: T & T Clark, 2006), 165. 92 Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 37; Oppenheim, “Neo-Assyrian,” 125. 93 Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 47; Mordechai Cogan, “Judah under Assyrian Hegemony,” Journal of Biblical Literature 112 (1993): 404, 412; Sinopoli, “Archaeology of Empires,” 169-70; Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation”; Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 252. There were also different treatments accorded different vassals; Berlejung, “Assyrians.” 94 Bustenay Oded, “Observations on Methods of Assyrian Rule in Transjordania after the Palestinian Campaign of Tiglath-Pileser III,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3 (1970): 192; Blakely and Hardin, “Southwestern Judah,” 44. 95 Cogan, “Judah under Assyrian Hegemony,” 407; Moshe Elat, “Economic Relations of the Neo-Assyrian Empire with Egypt,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 98 (1978): 26; Gitin, “Neo-Assyrian Empire and Its Western,” 84; Miller, “Shadow,” 161. 88 89

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

137

here worshipped, namely by the person of the Assyrian king.96 Spieckermann and Holloway failed to note that in the Esarhaddon Medean treaty, Assur is invoked as the seal of the treaty (line 397, par. 35), the threat if the treaty is broken, but his cult is not imposed.97 Manasseh’s cult “aberrations” are not Assyrian; there is a “fundamental distinction between the non-sacrificial cult as practiced in Mesopotamia and the bloody ritual operative in the West, along the Mediterranean coast.”98 Anthropologically, there is more evidence in empires for the core appropriating the vassals’ deities than there is for cultic imposition.99 More recently, Holloway – while still opposing a distinction between vassals and provinces100 - has admitted that much of the earlier evidence does “not by any stretch of the imagination constitute evidence for a policy of religious imperialism,”101 and cautioned against implying too much from ideologically based Assyrian documents.102 But even aside from supposed cultic imposition, Judah was within the Assyrian vassal system from the time of Ahaz until the fall of Nineveh.103 A Levinson has argued, “that ancient Israel inherits a broad selection of literary genres and topoi from the Near East – the legal collection, narratives, historiographies, cultic instructions, genealogies, proverbial wisdom, theodicies, poetry – is Walter Mayer, Politik und Kriegskunst der Assyrer (Abhandlungen zur Literatur Altsyrien-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens 9; Neukirchen: Ugarit Verlag, 1995), 481; Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 295-96. 97 Cogan, “Judah under Assyrian Hegemony,” 409; Postgate, “Land of Assur,” 255. 98 Cogan, “Judah under Assyrian Hegemony,” 409 n.27. 99 Sinopoli, “Archaeology of Empires,” 168. 100 Holloway, Assur is King, 198. 101 Holloway, Assur is King, 213, also 200. 102 Holloway, Assur is King, 58. 103Dubovský, Hezekiah, 220; Fales, L’Impero Assiro, 15; Na’aman, Ancient Israel and Its Neighbors, 369; Nelson, “Realpolitik in Judah,” 181-82. Or at least until Assyria lost effective control of the Palestinian provinces around 640; Cogan, Imperialism and Religion, 71; Ackerman, “Assyria,” 141. It is unlikely that Josiah attacked Pharaoh Necho in order prevent the Egyptian rescue of Nineveh in 609 and that this is reflected in 2 Kgs 23:29-30; Nelson, “Realpolitik in Judah,” 187. 96

138

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

widely recognized.”104 More specifically, “Judaean intellectuals of the seventh century BCE drew on and transformed important texts of neo-Assyrian royal ideology” throughout the time of their contact outlined above.105 Peter Machinist has shown that Isaiah “reveals specific, often intimate awareness of what the Assyrians did in the area over a number of periods.”106 In fact, the motifs and terminology borrowed by Isaiah show the “distinct possibility that Isaiah’s knowledge of Assyria was gained … from official Assyrian literature, especially of the court.”107 These motifs and terms could not have come from a later period. More recently, Mark Hamilton has given evidence that not only does Deuteronomy “reflect the political and intellectual (if that is the right word) currents of the Near East during the eight and seventh centuries BCE, [but that] some pericopes show direct literary dependence on Assyrian propaganda.”108 Na’aman argues that the Solomonic districts of 1 Kings 4 were drawn up based on the Assyrian provincial system of the late 8th century.109 Otto argues that Psalm 72 is based on Assurbanipal’s coronation hymn,110 and that the redaction of Deuteronomy Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics, 17; Eckart Otto, “Town and Rural Countryside in Ancient Israelite Law,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 57 (1993): 3-22. 105 Otto, “Political Theology,” 62. 106 Peter Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in First Isaiah,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983): 722; evidence is found in pp. 71927 and 734-36. Machinist’s insights have been confirmed and updated by Pinḥ as Artzi, “‘All the Nations and Many Peoples,’” in Treasures on Camels’ Humps, ed. Mordechai Cogan and Dan’el Kahn (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008), 41-53. 107 Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 728. 108 Hamilton, “Past as Destiny,” 232; also Hans Ulrich Steymans, Deuteronomium 28 und die Adê zur Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 145; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995). 109 Nadav Na’aman, “Solomon’s District List (1 Kings 4:7-19) and the Assyrian Provincial System in Palestine,” Ugarit Forschungen 33 (2001): 432. 110 Otto, Political Theology in Judah, 66-71. For a thorough analysis and affirmation of this claim, see Martin Arneth, „Sonne der Gerechtigkeit“: Studien zur Solarisierung der Jahwe-Religion im Lichte von Psalm 72 (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtsgeschichte 1; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2000), 71, 78, 83, 96, 98, 100, 104, 203. 104

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

139

12-26 (esp. 22) parallels the Neo-Assyrian redaction of MiddleAssyrian KAV I.111 Gertz maintains that administrative titles in Deuteronomy are derived from the Neo-Assyrian world.112 Nicholson argues that the prohibition against setting “a foreigner over you” as king in Deut 17:15 refers to Assyrian vassalage. 113 Nili Wazana argues that the prohibition on cutting down trees in war derives from Assyrian propaganda.114 To this may be added the parallels Otto, Levinson, and others highlight between Deuteronomic covenant language and Neo-Assyrian treaties, cited in Chapter 2. Some of these views have been severely criticized, but when full allowance is made for the justice of such criticisms, it must be admitted that there is still value in their possibility. “Judah’s scribal elite was familiar with Neo-Assyrian propaganda,”115 which makes transmission of the ideology and terminology found in the Barrakab inscription equally likely. This transmission can now safely be dated to the period between 745 and 609 (up to a century earlier if the northern kingdom is considered). But how did this transmission occur? Much of this issue will be taken up in Chapter 7 in the discussion of biblical composition. From the history of the Assyrian Empire, there are many options. On the one hand, we should not limit the vehicles for transmission to written ones, especially in an oral culture.116 Assyrian reliefs and

111 Eckart Otto, “Rechtsreformen im Deuteronomium XII-XXVI und im Mittelassyrischen Kodex der Tafel A,” in Congress Volume Paris, ed. John A. Emerton (Vetus Testamentum Supplement 61; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), 239-73. 112 Jan Christian Gertz, Die Gerichtsorganisation Israels im Deuteronomischen Gesetz (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 165; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1994), 83-84. 113 Ernest Nicholson, “Do Not Dare to Set a Foreigner Over You,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 118 (2006): 46-49. 114 Nili Wazana, “Are Trees of the Field Human?” in Treasures on Camels’ Humps, ed. Mordechai Cogan and Dan’el Kahn (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2008), 274-95, esp. 293. 115 Morrow, “‘To Set the Name,’” 375. 116 Middleton, Liberating Image, 124.

140

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

art could have been seen by Israelites.117 Speeches like that of RabShaqeh at Jerusalem could have been heard.118 But, “One ought not to minimize the contact with actual texts.”119 Unlike the Neo-Babylonians and Persians, the Assyrians erected steles all over the empire for people to gaze upon.120 Chapter 4 showed the importance of propaganda for the Assyrian Empire.121 The Assyrians erected steles in both Ashdod122 and Samaria,123 so presumably could have in Judah.124 While it is unlikely that many in Judah read Akkadian,125 monumental inscriptions were

Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 730. To this should be added the early 7th-century ivories found at Nineveh that were inscribed with Hebrew letters (ND 10150); Alan R. Millard, “Alphabetic Inscriptions on Ivories from Nineveh,” Iraq 24 (1962): 45-49. 119 Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 730. 120 Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, and Historiography,” 330-31. Rituals took place at some of the Assyrian rock carvings; Margaret Cool Root, “Go Tell It on the Mountain: Bisitun and the Naqsh-I Rustam,” paper presented at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, 2005. 121 Radner, “Assyrian View,” 53 n.43, reported that still-unpublished Neo-Assyrian texts were found in 1970 excavations of Choga Gavaneh, in the modern city of Islamabad in the Kermanshah province of Iran. However, the tablets are from the Old Babylonian period, despite early speculation (before they were baked and cleaned) that they were from the first millennium. The much earlier dating is confirmed by the stratigraphy of the site and other material discovered with them. Kaymar Abdi and Gary Beckman, “An Early Second-Millennium Cuneiform Archive from Choga Gavaneh, Western Iran” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 59 (2007): 39-91. 122 Hayim Tadmor, “Fragments of an assyrian Stele of Sargon II,” Atiqot 9/10 (1971): 194-97. 123 J. W. and G. M. Crowfoot, Samaria-Sebaste (London: Palestine Exploration Fund, 1957), 3.35, pl.4.2-3. 124 Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 731; Morrow, “‘To Set the Name,’” 375. 125 Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 732-33; Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact,” 53, but cf. 59. William Morrow maintains, “There are no plausible channels of transmission to bring these highly specialized cuneiform documents to Judah”; “Cuneiform Literacy,” 206. But Mor117 118

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

141

meant to be read, written in clear, easily readable signs, which were placed only in areas where they were not obscured by decorative elements.126 It is also possible that such steles were read aloud to the populace.127 Sargon II’s eighth campaign report is explicitly addressed to the people of the city of Aššur, and Esarhaddon’s Babylon B and G texts are similar in tone.128 That they may have been read aloud is suggested by phrases in literary texts like “Let the present generation hear this hymn and recite it to the later,”129 and the formulaic “say to PN” in court letters.130 Ambassadors (ṣīru; the word is loaned to Hebrew as tsir in Isa

Figure 7. Balawat gate of Shalmaneser, detail. ©Trustees of the British Museum. Used by permission.

row, too, notes that both biblical Hebrew and Aramaic appropriated a number of Akkadian expressions; “‘To Set the Name,’” 367. 126 Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact,” 55; Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 99. 127 Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, and Historiography,” 331-32; Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact,” 61; Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 112. 128 Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 113. 129 Tiglath-pileser I hymn cited in Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 114. 130 Machinist, “Assyrians on Assyria,” 99.

142

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

18:2), would have been exchanged between Judah (and Israel) and Assyria regularly (cf. Isa 7:37-39; 2 Kings 19-20).131 Assyrian vassalage typically involved the installation of a qepu and staff in the vassal capital, and often a bît kari (é.kar) trading emporium, as well.132 Vassal ambassadors were required to deliver annual tribute to Assyria.133 Coming to the Assyrian court, Judean ambassadors would have viewed the Balawat Gate (Fig. 7; see Chapter 4) or strolled through the “Stelenplatz” of Assur with its 140 steles on pedestals, naming the kings and officials of the Eponym Chronicle from 1380 to 630 B.C.134 It is possible that such Judean ambassadors were accompanied by scribe-translators who read Standard Babylonian Akkadian.135 Ordinary civil servants in the Assyrian imperial administration were literate in Akkadian,136 and the visits of tributebearing emissaries were coordinated and guided by the Assyrian government.137 Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image,” 730 n.65. Berlejung, “Assyrians”; Fales, Guerre et Paix. 133 Yamada, Construction of the Assyrian, 307, with evidence especially from Shalmaneser. Oppenheim, “Neo-Assyrian,” 114; Porter, Trees, Kings, and Politics, 88. 134 Julian Reade, “The Historical Status of the Assur Stelas,” in Assyria and Beyond, ed. Jean G. Dercksen (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 2004), 456-64. 135 Porter, “For the Astonishment,” 16; Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact,” 59; Porter, Trees, Kings, and Politics, 89. Barrakab is shown conversing with his scribe also; Von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 4 fig.60; John Gee, “Limhi in the Library,” Journal of Mormon Studies 1 (1992): 57. 136 Note ABL 151.5: “I have no scribe where the king has sent me!” which nevertheless the official was able to write, albeit in non-standard spelling; Simo Parpola, “The Man Without a Scribe and the Question of Literacy in the Assyrian Empire,” in Ana šadî Labnāni lū allik, ed. Beate Pongrantz-Leisten, Harmut Kühne, and Paolo Xella (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 247; Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 1997), 319-20. 137 Note SAA 1:76 obv. 6-14, rev. 1-7; ND 2762 obv. 9-13; SAA 5:194; William Morrow, “Tribute from Judah and the Transmission of Assyrian Propaganda,” in “My Spirit at Rest in the North Country” (Zechariah 6.8), ed. H. M. Niemann and M. Augustin (Beiträge zur Erforschung des Alten Testaments und des Antiken Judentums 57; Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2011), 187-91. 131 132

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

143

But these strategies for the transmission of language and ideology were not necessary. Aramaic was the diplomatic language for the entire empire, “one of the two main languages accompanying the arms and institutions of Assyria all over the Near East from the 8th century onward.”138 From the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (ca. 730) on, Aramaic replaced Akkadian as the lingua franca.139 Aramaic was used in Assyria proper -- where the tupšarru Aramaya or Aramaic Scribe, was used -- making it the most likely language for ambassadors of Judah in the imperial court.140 Fales presents thirty-seven bilingual Akkadian/Aramaic texts found at Nineveh, plus another one each from Kalhu, Qashtu, and Nabu-shimanni.141 Most famous is the Tell Fekherye inscription, a bilingual text of an Assyrian governor dating sometime in the ninth-eighth centuries.142 Moreover, the widespread use of Aramaic makes it much more likely that Assyrian ideology entered Israel and Judah themselves in that language.143 Examples of the geographic distribution of Aramaic documents in the late 8th century include the Bukan Stele from ancient Mannea in north-western Iran, with its Northwest Semitic paleography and lexicon,144 and the Adon Papyrus from

138 Frederick Mario Fales, “Evidence for West-East Contacts in the VIIIth Century B.C.,” in Continuity of Empires?, ed. Giovanni B. Lanfranchi, Michael Roaf, and Robert Rolliner (History of the Ancient Near East 5; Padua: Sargon Press, 2003), 143; Tadmor, “Aramaization of Assyria,” 451-52. Viz. ABL 872 and Saggs, Nimrud Letters #13; Mayer, “Gedanken zur Deportation,” 228-29. 139 Winter, “Royal Rhetoric,” 30. 140 Tadmor, “Aramaization of Assyria,” 452. 141 Frederick Mario Fales, Aramaic Epigraphs on Clay Tablets of the NeoAssyrian Period (Dipartimento di Studi Orientali Studi Semitici n.s. 2; Rome: Università degli Studi ‘La Sapienza,’ 1986), 129-224, 259, 268. 142 Ali Abou Assaf, Pierre Bordreuil, and Alan R. Miller, Statue de Tell Fekherye (Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations 7; Paris: A.D.P.F., 1982), 99-103. 143 Morrow, “Cuneiform Literacy,” 208. 144 Fales, “Evidence for West-East,” 140; Bernd Janowksi and Gernot Wilhelm, eds., Staatsverträge, Herrscherinschriften und andere Dokumente zur politischen Geschichte (Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments n.s. 2; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2005), 312-13.

144

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Egypt.145 The Assyrian occupation administration of Egypt left no cuneiform documents and must have operated in Aramaic.146 Fragmentary Aramaic inscriptions have been found in eighthcentury Israel.147 “Educated people almost anywhere in the empire were familiar with one or more of the written languages used by the Assyrians in addition to their native tongue and the local vernacular.”148 In summary, the Assyrians were intentional in their propaganda and wanted ideology to be absorbed by vassal states.149 One of the strongest proofs brings the discussion back to Sam’al. After his 671 campaign to Egypt, Esarhaddon set up three steles, two at TilBarsip, and one at Sam’al. They are identical except for subtle differences that were dictated by the specific audience.150 To Assyrianized Til-Barsip, Esarhaddon was presented as Assyrian in clothing and hair, his captives standing waist-high and naked.151 For Sam’al, however, still deep in its Neo-Hittite/Aramean culture (as shown in Chapter 2), the king wears ornate garments and a Phoenician crown, and the subject people are only knee-high and kept on leashes.152 KAI 64; Dirk Schwiderski, The Old and Imperial Aramaic Inscriptions (Fontes et Subsidia ad Bibliam Pertinentes 2; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), 2.1. There is even a one-line Aramaic inscription on a 7th-century Olympian Bowl from Greece; Schwiderski, Old and Imperial, 336. 146 Dalley, Esther’s Revenge, 96. 147 Beth-Saida text 2 = Schwiderski, Old and Imperial, 2.79; Deir `Allah texts 1-5, largely overshadowed in scholarship by the 9 th-century Balaam inscription, date to the 8th or 7th century = Schwiderski, Old and Imperial, 2.190; Tell es-Sa`idiyeh Ostracon 1 is 7th or early 6th century = Schwiderski, Old and Imperial, 358. 148 Porter, “Language, Audience, and Impact,” 52. 149 Radner, “Assyrian View,” 53, 59; Machinist, “Gott,” 427 n. 57. 150 Barbara N. Porter, “Assyrian Propaganda for the West,” in Essays on Syria in the Iron Age, ed. Guy Bunnens (Ancient Near Eastern Studies Supplement 7; Louvain: Peeters Press, 2000), 143, 145, 148; Porter, “For the Astonishment,” 10-13. 151 Porter, “Assyrian Propaganda for the West,” 151, 161, 170. 152 Porter, “Assyrian Propaganda for the West,” 154, 164, 167; Porter, “Public Relations and Political Survival,” 166. While the inscriptions of the Sam’al stele were written on the back, only a secondary use of the stele 145

A CONTEXT FOR THE TRANSFER

145

The vassals did learn the ideology; Barrakab is merely one of many offering clear evidence. In an early seventh century inscription from subject Ekron, the Philistine king and the god Baal were joined in a single dedication in “a calque of the Assyrian phrase indicating the duties incumbent upon Assyrian citizens.”153 “He did not hesitate to transfer them to the Aramaic texts which bear his name,”154 and this suggests that Israelite authors may have done the same. Moreover, Barrakab proves that what was outlined in Chapter 5 as the Israelite counterparts of Assyrian royal propaganda is what that propaganda looked like in vassal lands.155

rendered these unreadable; the probable original setting gave ready access to both sides; von Luschan, Ausgrabungen in Sendschirli, 1.12. 153 Seymour Gitin, “Neo-Assyrian and Egyptian Hegemony over Ekron in the Seventh Century BCE,” Eretz-Israel 27 (2003): 57*. If Fales and Grayson are correct that the mysterious Bar Gay’ah of KTK in the Sefire Inscription was not the Assyrian Šamši-ilu, then this text shows a local Aramean “fully conversant with the religion, and consequently the political-ideological foundations of the Assyrian state”; Fales, “Evidence for West-East,” 145; Grayson, “Studies,” 76-77. Otherwise, Bar Gay’ah may have been Šamši-ilu; Bedford, “Empire and Exploitation”; the idea goes back to Von Soden, Lemaire, and others. 154 Fales, “Evidence for West-East,” 145. 155 Lanfranchi, “Consensus to Empire,” 85.

7 THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION Chapter 4 showed how the constellation of tropes, terms, and notions of the Barrakab inscriptions situated in a narrative worldview are drawn from Neo-Assyrian propaganda. The Barrakab inscriptions are the best evidence available that Neo-Assyrian propaganda worked, that the vassals and provinces of the empire learned the ideology and accepted it. This constellation of terminology and ideological tropes can in some ways be considered a form-critical Gattung, not because it constitutes a “form” unto itself or is exactly what one would call a genre, but in the sense in which Klaus Koch and Rolf Knierim redefined the Gattung as an assemblage of “component types.”1 Chapter 6 described how this constellation could have found its way into Israelite thought. I am not suggesting a mere analogy between the language of Assyrian propaganda and these biblical passages; I am proposing a homologous approach that demands explanation of how these features may have been transmitted or borrowed.2 This means actual contact between speakers of different languages, or at least literary contact.3 The “transmission” takes K. Koch, Growth of the Biblical Tradition, 24; Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 454. 2 Bill T. Arnold, “Assyriology and Biblical Studies,” Bible and Interpretation (2005), http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Arnold_Assyriology_Biblical_Reass essment.htm. 3 Kevin J. Cathcart, “Loanwords in Biblical Hebrew and the Dating of Biblical Texts,” in Studia Semitica, ed. Philip S. Alexander, George J. Brooke, Andreas Christmann, John F. Healey, and Philip C. Sadgrove 1

147

148

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

various forms, ranging from quotation and paraphrased allusion that “the author relies on readers to recognize and, therefore, to respond to the new context, or, more vaguely, an echo of which he or she may be unconscious.”4 This chapter will explain the transmission process. There is considerable time in the ninth to seventh centuries for Israelite literati and intelligentsia to have adopted or absorbed this language and its attached meanings. But, as discussed in Chapter 5, the best parallels in the Hebrew Bible mostly date to the exilic period, the sixth century. There is thus a gap of a century, which this chapter will address. In one sense, “Form criticism is the scholarly method specifically designed to discover the conditions for linguistic transactions within ancient Near Eastern society.”5 Yet this chapter will involve forays into traditions history. As was shown in Chapter 4, the constellation of tropes could not have lingered in Babylon waiting to be taken on by Israelites when they arrived there after Nebuchadnezzar’s conquests. Assyrian propaganda for the West was scant in Babylon. This suggests that this “constellation” was a part of Israelite vocabulary, parlance, and thought at least from the fall of Nineveh to the fall of Jerusalem and probably from some time earlier and to some time later. Viewed from the 6th century, the Deuteronomists and other authors mentioned in Chapter 5 were drawing on a pool of language with its roots more than a hundred years old. Viewed from the 8th century, the metaphors and idioms borrowed from Assyrian

(Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 16; Oxford: University Press, 2005), 46-47. 4 Altick and Fenstermaker, Art of Literary Research, 110; Middleton, Liberating Image, 186. This question, moreover, is set within the wider eristic question of the relationship of the Old Testament to the ancient Near East in general. The Hebrew Bible describes Israel as distinct from the rest of the ancient Near East in no less than 430 places; Peter B. Machinist, “The Question of Distinctiveness in Ancient Israel,” in Ah, Assyria …, ed. Mordechai Cogan and Israel Eph cal (Scripta Hierosolymitana 33; Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1991), 203-204. 5 Dale Patrick, The Rhetoric of Revelation in the Hebrew Bible (Overtures to Biblical Theology 16; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 127

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION

149

propaganda survived by means of what biblical scholars normally call “oral tradition.”6 The term “oral tradition,” is loaded, however, and poorly understood. The form-critical method traditionally held that the written literature was dependent on oral tradition.7 Biblical scholars have therefore used studies in folklore and theory of oral tradition for many decades. Here we tread upon the issue of the acceptability and utility of ethnographic analogy. It is the mainstay of folklore study, of comparative linguistics, and of all anthropology. Study of oral tradition in societies around the world must be relevant to anything we wish to say about it for ancient Israel. “The comparative approach does not entail, a priori, any identification, full or partial, of the phenomena or developments which are being compared.8 But, “reconstructions cannot be achieved without the help of the comparative method.”9 Recent field studies in oral tradition and folklore have shown that many societies produced oral and written literature simultaneously.10 In Mycenaean Greece, oral and written literature coexisted, with writing disappearing during the Dark Age.11 When the two For proof that we should look to oral tradition rather than scribal tradition in this period, along with full discussion of the nature of such oral tradition, see Robert D. Miller II, Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel (Biblical Performance Criticism 4; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011). Similar views are held by Steven L. McKenzie, “A Response to Thomas Römer, The SoCalled Deuteronomistic History,” in “In Conversation with Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History,” ed. Raymond F. Person Jr. Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 9 (2009) article 17: 18. 7 Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 457. 8 Ignace J. Gelb, “Comparative Method in the Study of the Society and Economy of the Ancient Near East,” Rocznik Orientalistyczny 41 (1980): 32. 9 Gelb, “Comparative Method,” 35. 10 Rosalind Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Key Themes in Ancient History 2; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 89; Ruth Finnegan, Literacy & Orality (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 111-13, 159-61, 168. Carr notes this; Writing on the Tablets, 159-62. 11 Ione Mylonas Shear, Kingship in the Mycenean World and Its Reflections in the Oral Tradition (Prehistory Monographs 13; Philadelphia: INSTAP Academic Press, 2004), 86-87. 6

150

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

kinds of literature co-exist, not only do oral works get written down, but written tales become the source of oral productions, while other things are composed in writing precisely for oral consumption, as with the Arabic siyar (sing. sīra).12 The oral Icelandic Njál’s Saga borrows from the writings of St. Gregory the Great.13 Moreover, literary authors of written work in antiquity compose mentally and then aurally, by dictation, as late as the Patristic period.14 This means that the “passing down” of such ordered “gobbets,” then, is “transmission through the interaction or combination of the concurrent oral and written versions.”15 The tradition is made up of these intentionally crafted aides-mémoires.16 Assmann has identified Deuteronomy 6 as precisely such an aid to memory.17 Such memory aids are often ritual, a thought to which I will return in Chapter 9.18 Other such aids include word- and soundassociation such as are found in Numbers 13 and throughout Deuteronomy.19 Current folklore theory also confirms the insights of Antony Campbell, S.J.20 He views much of the biblical narrative as “neither the record of the oral telling of a story nor the skilled fashioning of a story as a work of literary art,”21 but as written outlines for oral 12 Dwight Fletcher Reynolds, Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes (Myth and Poetics 18; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 6; Finnegan, Literacy & Orality, 113-20; K. Koch, Growth of the Biblical Tradition, 81. Some of these siyar are quite lengthy narratives; Reynolds, Heroic Poets, 5, 7, 8. 13 Hermann Pálsson, Oral Tradition and Saga Writing (Studia Medievalia Septentrionalia 3; Vienna: Fassbender, 1999), 77. 14 Paul J. Griffiths, Religious Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 56-57; Shear, Kingship in the Mycenean, 94. 15 Finnegan, Literacy & Orality, 172; Shear, Kingship in the Mycenean, 94; Griffiths, Religious Reading, 55. 16 Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 8-9. 17 Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 16-21. 18 Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 105-107, 122-31. 19 Umberto Cassuto identified those in Numbers in 1951, without publishing it; see discussion and treatment of Deuteronomy in Alexander Rofé, Deuteronomy (New York: T & T Clark, 2002), 55-77. 20 Antony F. Campbell, “The Reported Story,” Semeia 46 (1989): 7785. 21 Campbell, “Reported Story,” 77, 80.

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION

151

elaboration (or for omission in performance).22 Campbell illustrates the likelihood of this from several biblical passages.23 This is exactly what has been observed with the Arabic siyar and deduced for ancient Greece.24 In linguistic theory, the Formalism of the 1960s and 70s has given way in recent decades to Functionalism.25 Functionalism holds that language is situated contextually, that its use is governed by socio-cultural context.26 So the “registers” of words – what word is used in any given situation – become fixed and loaded with meaning. This is most important for the “Barrakab constellation,” the tropes from Neo-Assyrian imperialism that are found in the biblical material, with recurrent syntagmatic patterns like yoshib ‛al kisse‚ and melakim rabbim.27 Such catch phrases are drawn from existing pools: Joseph Blenkinsopp’s “common memory bank” and William Hallo’s “traditional literary topoi.”28 Here, they come from semantic pools generated in Neo-Assyrian contexts over the 9th-7th centuries and are drawn from early in the Babylonian Exile. As with the Covenant Formula discussed in Chapter 1, the idioms are

22 Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 6-7. Campbell and O’Brien, Rethinking the Pentateuch, xiii-xiv, 6-7, 15-19. 23 Campbell, “Reported Story,” 79, 81. 24 Reynolds, Heroic Poets, 19; Thomas, Literacy and Orality, 91-92; Finnegan, Literacy & Orality, 169. 25 Christopher S. Butler, “Functional Approaches to Language Use,” in The Dynamics of Language Use, ed. Christopher S. Butler, María de los Ángeles Gómez-González, and Susana M. Duval-Suárez (Pragmatics and Beyond n.s. 140; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), 3. 26 Butler, “Functional Approaches,” 4. 27 Christopher Butler, “Formulaic Language,” in The Dynamics of Language Use, ed. Christopher S. Butler, María de los Ángeles GómezGonzález, and Susana M. Duval-Suárez (Pragmatics and Beyond n.s. 140; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), 233. 28 Joseph Blenkinsopp, Treasures Old and New (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 16; William W. Hallo, “The Context of Scripture,” in Proceedings of the Eleventh World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1994), vol. A, 9-10; also Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 449.

152

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

fairly fixed or “entrenched,” although one word in each may be changed, such as goyim rabbim and melakim gedolim.29 Moreover, most current linguists hold that the meanings of these terms are even more enduring. There are “stored meaning properties associated with the lexical form.”30 Vocal opposition to this view comes from the influential George Lakoff and his Conceptual Metaphor Theory.31 Lakoff and his followers maintain that such clichés quickly become linguistically dead, meaning their literal meaning disappears, and conceptually dead, meaning the link between their original meaning and any current relevance is gone.32 Yet Lakoff proved this only by calling nearly every linguistic combination a cliché or idiom.33 In such a situation, most of the phrases become empty, but if only true catch phrases were examined, Lakoff’s conclusions would not obtain. For this reason, Lakoff’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory has been largely discredited by Category Inclusion Theory and Spreading Activation Theory.34 In the latter, the “activation” between the metaphor and its “antece29 Butler, “Formulaic Language,” 234; Lászlo I. Komlósi and Elisabeth Knipf, “A Contrastive Analysis of Entrenchment and Collocational Force in Variable-sized Lexical Units,” in The Dynamics of Language Use, ed. Christopher S. Butler, María de los Ángeles Gómez-González, and Susana M. Duval-Suárez (Pragmatics and Beyond n.s. 140; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), 254-57; Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 447. Note also K. Koch, Growth of the Biblical Tradition, 35. 30 Komlósi and Knipf, “Contrastive Analysis,” 251. 31 Richard P. Honeck, A Proverb in Mind (London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997), 57. 32 George Lakoff, “The Death of Dead Metaphor,” Metaphor and Symbolic Activity 2 (1987): 143-47; Andrew Goatley, Language of Metaphors (London: Routledge, 1997); Alice Deignan, Metaphor and Corpus Lingui (Converging Evolution in Language and Community Research 6; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), 45; Honeck, Proverb in Mind, 47. This view is followed by Mendenhall, Our Misunderstood Bible (n.p.: BookSurge, 2006), viiiix, 34. 33 Honeck, Proverb in Mind, 58-60. 34 See, inter alia, Sam Glucksberg, Understanding Figurative Language (Oxford Psychological Series 36; Oxford: University Press, 2001); Mark H. Ashcraft, Human Memory in Cognition (2nd ed.; New York: Harper Collins, 1994).

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION

153

dent” target is in a continuous chain, “from pre-existing connections to and among related words in long-term memory.”35 “Words are entangled within networks of connections to other words as a result of prior language experience.”36 So the meanings stored in the terms are difficult to displace; new meanings are not easy to put into place.37 This means the meaning from the context of Neo-Assyrian vassalage, explained in detail in Chapter 4, is still attached to the constellation when it is used in writings of the exilic period. The “propaganda of submission” of Barrakab is thus the propaganda of submission to Yahweh, but not in any effort to turn the Assyrian propaganda on its head in a “revolt against Assyrian political power and ideology by way of covenant,”38 “a bid for political and cultural autonomy,”39 “an attempt at liberation from imperial rule.”40 The terms are too scattered for this. Such a turn would certainly be possible. A subject people can take on ideology from their overlords (as Ahaz no doubt did), but we can allow also for struggle over forms of appropriation between groups using ideology for their own ends (such as the Deuteronomistic History).41 And such counter-propaganda, exposing the faulty ideology of the hegemonic empire, is better exemplified by apocalyptic literature, by a competing total discourse like Daniel.42 And, as we have seen, there was no “imposiDouglas L. Nelson, Cathy L. McEvoy, and Lisa Pointer, “Spreading Activation or Spooky Action at a Distance?” Journal of Experimental Psychology 29 (2003): 42. 36 Nelson et al., “Spreading Activation,” 42. 37 Komlósi and Knipf, “Contrastive Analysis,” 257-63. 38 Gräbe, New Covenant, New Community, 36; so, too, Mark S. Smith, God in Translation (Forschungen zum Alten Testament 57; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008), 160. 39 Levinson, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” 342. 40 Levinson, “Canon Formula,” 30. The sentence is repeated in Levinson, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” 342. 41 Norman Fairclough, “Semiosis, Ideology, and Mediation,” in Mediating Ideology in Text and Image, ed. Inger Lassen, Jeanne Strunck, and Torben Vestergaard (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society, and Culture 18; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2006), 27, 30. 42 Gerstenberger, Theologies, 271; Anathea Portier-Young, “Toward a Theory of Early Jewish Apocalypses as Resistance Literature,” paper pre35

154

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

tion of Assyrian ideology” to revolt against. There was no religious imposition in Judah, no change of the weight and measurement system, no adoption of Assyrian script in Palestine, not even the kind of toponymic changes evident in Syria and Assyrian Egypt.43 But the terms bear the load of meaning we have seen since Chapter 2, and which will be elucidated further in Chapter 8. Furthermore, they reflect the broader beliefs of Israelite faith. Those terms were chosen out of the “semantic pool” of the western Assyrian world system periphery because they fit into the ongoing theology of covenant described in Chapter 1, and this is of great importance. For Yahweh to take the place of the Assyrian king in this constellation, for example, is not a conscious subversion of Assyrian propaganda,44 but a continuation of the transformation of ancient Near Eastern myths into the motif of God as King (see Chapter 10 below), a motif which became considerably stronger after 586 (e.g., Isa 52:7).45 Who were these tradents, drawing on this semantic pool? I have already assigned to the early period of the Exile the final form

sented at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, New Orleans, 2009. 43 Berlejung, “Assyrians.” 44 As insisted by Mason, Propaganda and Subversion, 75-88; Braulik, “Joy of the Feast,” 30; Morrow, “Cuneiform Literacy,” 204; and Otto, Political Theology in Judah, 65, 69, 71-75. Certainly, I would agree, however, that in Deuteronomy “it is Yahweh who is the ‘Great King’”; McConville, Grace in the End, 31. Parpola’s take on this is slightly different, with Yahweh taking the place of the Assyrian nation, rather than its king per se; “Assyria’s Expansion,” 105. 45 See the range of literature from Samuel H. Hooke, “The Myth and Ritual Pattern of the Ancient Near East,” (1933) repr. in Myth and Ritual Theory, ed. Robert A. Segal (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 91; to Reinhard G. Kratz, “Der Mythos von Königtum Gottes in Kanaan und Israel,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 100 (2003): 161; and C. Koch, Vertrag, 258. On the increase after 586, see Marie-Joseph Lagrange, “Regne de Dieu dans l’Ancien Testament,” Revue Biblique 5 (1908): 40, 43. On the absence of labelling of God as king in Deuteronomy, see McKenzie, Covenant, 35.

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION

155

of the Deuteronomic and Deuteronomistic material,46 Jeremiah,47 and (a bit later) Deutero-Isaiah.48 As Engnell, Hertzberg, and Nielsen insisted, we should not think of the individual Deuteronomistic

Römer, So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 43, 71; Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 270; Peckham, Composition of the Deuteronomistic, 73; Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics, 13; Cortese, Deuteronomistic Work, 55, 133. 47 Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 271-72, 286-76, 291-92. 48 Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 272. I am not prepared to say definitively where these tradents are. Most scholars would put them in Babylon; Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 299-300; Albertz, Israel in Exile, 45111, 282-86; Schniedewind, How the Bible Became, 147-64. Noth and others put them in Judah; Middlemas, Troubles, 20, 173; K. Koch, Growth of the Biblical Tradition, 85. While much of Judah was devastated by the NeoBabylonian invasions and considerably depopulated, the Benjamin region north of Jerusalem shows all signs of continuity; Middlemas, Troubles, 39, 42. Schniedewind’s vehement denial of continuity is largely “according to 2 Kings” (p. 142), “according to the biblical tradition” (p. 143), “according to the book of Kings” (p. 146); Schniedewind, How the Bible Became. Moreover, Ramat Rahel and the sites nearby also continue through the Babylonian period; Middlemas, Troubles, 42. It is simply not yet clear what the status of Judah was in the Neo-Babylonian empire or whether it was wholly impoverished (Stern, Na’aman, Stager, Vanderhooft) or partially prospered (Barstad, Graham, Blenkinsopp); Middlemas, Troubles, 54. But given the continuity in northern Judah and Benjamin and the presence at Tell en-Nasbeh (Mizpah) of a bronze circlet with a cuneiform inscription in Neo-Babylonian script, there must have been a scribal class who operated in the Mizpah administration and were capable of literary activity; David Vanderhooft and Wayne Horowitz, “Cuneiform Inscription from Tell en-Nasbeh,” Tel Aviv 29 (2002): 323. Middlemas and Niehr have shown that this class included Yahweh-worshippers; Middlemas, Troubles, 70, 169; Herbert Niehr, “Religio-Historical Aspects of the ‘Early Postexilic’ Period,” in The Crisis of Israelite Religion, ed. Bob Becking and Marjo C. A. Korpel (Oudtestamentische Studiën 42; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 229. For full discussion, see Middlemas, Troubles, and the essays in Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, ed. Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2003). Cf. David Vanderhooft, “New Evidence Pertaining to the Transition from Neo-Babylonian to Achaemenid Administration in Palestine,” in Yahwism After Exile, ed. Rainer Albertz and Bob Becking (Studies in Theology and Religion 5; Assen: Royal Van Gorcum, 2003), 219-35. 46

156

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Historian of Noth.49 Albertz argues the tradents came from the traditional elders, the priests, and temple prophets,50 but more recently has argued for at least two competing exilic Deuteronomistic schools.51 Given Deuteronomy’s limitations on the monarchy (Deut 16:18-18:22, esp. 17:15-17), perhaps royal scribes should not be included.52 We should not exclude merchants from this literary assembly, as Gelb has collected ethnographic data showing merchants “more literate than rulers and priests … also much more exact in reference to the location of cities, countries, and their produce.”53 Nevertheless, “Deuteronomy is a learned text, a literary composition that is the product of skilled scribes,”54 coming out of an official status but viewing themselves as an “anti-elite elite.”55 There is extensive evidence for literacy in the late preexilic period.56 There are three pieces of evidence for Israelite literacy in the exilic period: numerous administrative seals (e.g., LMLK seals), Knight, Recovering the Traditions, 334. A strained defense of a single Historian is presented by Serge Frolov, “Evil-Merodach and the Deuteronomist,” Biblica 88 (2007): 176, 186-88. 50 Albertz, Geschichte und Theologie, 275, 291-98. 51 Rainer Albertz, “Deuteronomistic History and the Heritage of the Prophets,” paper presented at the XXth Congress of the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament, Helsinki 2010. 52 Schniedewind, How the Bible Became, 113; Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, 68; Barrett, Disloyalty, 211, 215; David J. Reimer, “Old Testament Christology,” in King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East, ed. John Day (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement 270; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 272-73, 276-85, 292. 53 Gelb, “Comparative Method,” 34. 54 Levinson, Deuteronomy and the Hermeneutics, 18; Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomistic, 57-58. 55 Reinhard Kratz, “Rewriting Isaiah,” paper presented to the Oxford Old Testament Seminar, Oxford, 2006. There is no reason to believe they were writing for a small, private audience, as per Noll, “Deuteronomistic History,” 336. 56 Na’aman, Past that Shapes, 73; Claus Wilcke, Wer Las und Schrieb in Babylonien und Assyrien (Sitzungberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophische-historische Klasse 6; Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaft, 2000). For full discussion, see Miller, Oral Tradition. 49

THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CONSTELLATION

157

vulgar script, and writings by common soldiers and landlords (e.g., Lachish Letter 3).57 The occurrence of inscriptions increased dramatically from the mid-8th century.58 There is also substantial evidence for scribal schools in this period. The synchronic consistency of Hebrew palaeography, sophisticated, consistent, and meticulous morphology, consistent orthography, and the use of the complicated Egyptian hieratic numeral system all attest to “sophisticated knowledge of trained professionals.”59 Christopher Rollston’s thorough assessment of the data concludes there was “formal, standardized scribal education” that could only have been fostered by the state.60 Finally, the text of Deuteronomy (6:9; 24:1-4) and the Deuteronomistic History (Judg 18:4, 9) assume a literate society.61 I do not intend to enter the debate over whether these tradents were true historians. A thorough summary of this discussion and a constructive new view is found in Jens Kofoed’s Text and History.62 While Noth held that nearly everything in the Deuteronomistic History was derived from earlier sources, few would now agree.63 Nevertheless, most would agree that the Deuteronomist used some pre-existing written and oral sources.64 The tradents in question were true authors.65 The oral-and-written 57 Yairah Amit, History and Ideology (Biblical Seminar 60; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 26-27; Carr, Writing on the Tablets, 166. 58 E.g., Arad, Horvat cUza, Mesad Hashavyahu; Michael D. Coogan, “Literacy and the Formation of Biblical Literature,” in Realia Dei, ed. Prescott H. Williams, Jr., and Theodore Hiebert (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 47-48; Carr, Writing on the Tablets, 166. 59 Christopher A. Rollston, “Scribal Education in Ancient Israel,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 344 (2006): 53, 60-61, 66. 60 Rollson, “Scribal Education,” 67-68. 61 Coogan, “Literacy and the Foundation,” 52, 54. 62 Jens Bruun Kofoed, Text and History (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 216-47. 63 Nadav Na’aman, “Historical and Chronological Notes,” 87-88. 64 John Van Seters, “Myth, Legend, and History.” Excursus 1 (1988): 7; Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 3; Geoghegan, Time, Place, 150, 152. 65 Nadav Na’aman, “The Deuteronomist and Voluntary Servitude to Foreign Powers,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 65 (1995): 51-52; Van Seters, “Myth, Legend, and History,” 7; Van Seters, “Deuteronomist

158

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

model proposed above best explains how both the semantic pool and larger “gobbets” progressed from the late preexilic period into the time of the early Babylonian Exile when they were committed to text.66 In the exilic period, with Israel living under the extensively literate Neo-Babylonians, written text came to overshadow oral tradition, and our texts were committed to writing in their biblical form.67

– Historian or Redactor?” in Essays on Ancient Israel in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. Yairah Amit, Ehud Ben Zvi, Israel Finkelstein, and Oded Lipschits (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 372; Thomas, Literacy and Orality, 109; Campbell and O’Brien, Unfolding the Deuteronomistic, 4-5. 66 Carr, Writing on the Tablets, 168. 67 Heike Friis, “Eksilet og den Israelitiske Historieopfattselse,” Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 38 (1975): 11.

8 THE PROPAGANDA OF SUBMISSION TO YAHWEH Thus far, we have focused on sources. But all good source study is governed by a principle laid down by Rosamont Tuve in a study of the iconographic background of a poem of George Herbert: “Origins are relevant to criticism only if they illuminate meaning.”1 The meanings of the “Barrakab constellation” for the Hebrew Bible emerge from both the meaning of that language in its origin and in the ancient Near East of the biblical authors’ day, and from the “narrative world,” the literature itself into which the language was placed.2 That is, one source of meaning is the semantic pool of Neo-Assyrian propaganda, which has been extensively discussed in the preceding chapters. The other source is the biblical tradition itself. The terms outlined in Chapter 5 are not loanwords from Assyrian texts; they are part of the religious (and secular) vocabulary of Israel.3 There is no need to delineate what was at home in Israel before Assyrian contact and what was influenced by Assyrian propaganda, because for the tradents and authors discussed in Chapter 7, these terms carried dual connotations of the NeoAssyrian world and their own background. Moreover, when the terms are placed within the larger biblical narrative world in the exilic period, into a literary context, their meaning is even more tied to that narrative tradition, and this is how they would have engaged

Rosemond Tuve, A Reading of George Herbert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), cited in Altick and Fenstermaker, Art of Literary Research, 108. 2 Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 464, italics added. 3 Cf. Longman, Fictional Akkadian Autobiography, 36. 1

159

160

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

the reading audience.4 The terms in their contexts, then, will be the topic of this chapter.

ṢADIQ This root has been called the central point of Old Testament research.5 Omitting the detailed philological discussions that would be wearisome to repeat and of little use, I use the recent interpretations provided by contemporary scholars. To these I have added my own views. The forms of the root which concern us most are not the verb, which occurs mostly in a forensic sense,6 but the adjective ṣaddiq and two nominal forms, ṣedeq and ṣedaqah. While it was once customary to see ṣedaqah as the concrete examples of ṣedeq, since it was believed that feminine nouns were the practical cases of their masculine counterparts (e.g., se‚arah and se‚ar),7 it is probable that the two nouns are not essentially different.8 Many early treatments of ṣadiq examined the comparative Semitic linguistic data. At their worst, these sought to impose a unified meaning on the root based on an “original Canaanite idea.”9 Others simply list the meanings of the Semitic variants.10 More thorough was Franz Rosenthal.11 He found several meanings in the 4 This consistency of content further confirms the designation of these tropes as a Gattung; Knierim, “Old Testament Form Criticism,” 451. 5 Frank Crüsemann, “Jahwes Gerechtigkeit (ṣ ĕdāqā / ṣ ädäq) im Alten Testament,” Evangelische Theologie 36 (1976): 427. 6 Jerome P. Justesen, “On the Meaning of ṢĀDAQ,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 2 (1963): 54-55. 7 Bo Johnson, “Der Bedeutungsunterschied zwischen ṢÄDÄQ und ṢEDAQA,” Annual of the Swedish Theological Institute 11 (1978): 32-39; Crüsemann, “Jahwes Gerechtigkeit,” 431; Horst Dietrich Preuss, Old Testament Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1996), 2.167. 8 Krašovec, Justice, 252. 9 Scullion, “Righteousness,” 5.735; Rui de Menezes cites only one example, from Old Aramaic, suggesting this is the primal meaning; “Covenant, Law and Cult in Relation to Righteousness,” Indian Journal of Theology 26 (1977): 111. 10 Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 1002-1004. 11 Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 411-30.

THE PROPAGANDA OF SUBMISSION TO YAHWEH

161

ancient Near East that were comparable to biblical usage: A forensic, juridical meaning occurs in the Old South Arabic and Nabataean reflexive forms of ṢDQ.12 The meaning of “proper” (Lev 19:36), is found in Old South Arabic (the adjective ṣdqm) and Arabic.13 The sense of virtue before God (Gen 7:1) occurs in the Nerab inscription.14 And the meaning of “a grant” (Dan 4:24) is found in the Tema inscription.15 Nevertheless, it is now agreed that such a comparative method is not helpful and that semantic development in context is much more important.16 A few overall statements can be made about the root in the Hebrew Bible: there is a sense of “right[eous] relationship” (thus an aspect of covenant);17 and the adjective ṣaddiq is never used of things.18 But the meanings of the words, in fact, must be determined by context, and so must, for example, distinguish between God’s ṣadiq and people’s.19 Some contextual generalizations can be made about the words. In the Pentateuch, ṣedaqah occurs only in Genesis and Deuteronomy, and refers to proper conduct, the area for whose order-

Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 417. E.g., Quran 10:93; 17:80; Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 415-16. 14 Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 425. 15 Lines 11, 15; Rosenthal, “Sedaka,” 425, 427. 16 Helmer Ringgren, “Some Remarks on the Language of Religion,” Temenos 4 (1969): 108. 17 Kraus, “God’s Covenant,” 258; L’Hour, Morale de l’Alliance, 37; Menezes, “Covenant, Law and Cult,” 113; Gerhard von Rad, “Righteousness and Life in the Psalms” (1950) repr. in From Genesis to Chronicles (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 191; Henning Graf Reventlow, Eigenart des Jahweglaubens (1973; repr. Biblisch-Theologische Studien 66; NeukirchenVluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 2004), 33, 35; Pavel Keřkovský, “Biblical Language of Law,” Communio Viatorum 48 (2006): 21; Piet Schoonenberg, Covenant and Creation (South Bend: Notre Dame University, 1969), 24. 18 Paul Joüon, Grammaire de l’Hébreu Biblique (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1923), 388 n.2. 19 Bent Mogensen, “ṣedāqā in the Scandinavian and German Research Traditions,” in Productions of Time, ed. Knud Jeppesen and Benedikt Otzen (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1984), 69, 75; Childs, Biblical Theology, 487; Krašovec, Justice, 209. 12 13

162

COVENANT AND GRACE IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

ing berit is required (Genesis 15).20 The possession of such conduct, however, is the result of God’s ṣedaqah and not that of humans (Deut 9:4-6, 23-24).21 In Deut “6:25 and 24:13, ṣĕdāqâ denotes righteousness as ‘justifying grace’ which becomes effective in the observance of the deuteronomic law.”22 The word ṣaddiq has a forensic meaning in both Exodus (23:8) and Deuteronomy (27:25), considering the contexts which involve bribes and courts.23 But, more specifically, ṣadiq’s forensic sense is with regard to the requisite conciliatory sequence of events and not to intentionality of the parties involved in the wrongdoing.24 It does not refer to justice based on abstract legal norms, but “as protective and restorative actions that fulfil communal demands and repair the community by helping those who have had their rights taken from them by others.”25 Thus, Tamar’s seduction of her father-in-law Judah while posing as a prostitute is an act of ṣedaqah because it restores the community and fulfils the otherwise ignored communal demands (Gen 38:26). Job’s proof that he was ṣedeq is his care of the needy, of the ‘amel (Job 29:14-16). Humanity attains such ṣedaqah by emulating God (see Chapter 10).26 In Deuteronomy, the root is explicitly associated with the covenant (28:1-14) and the right to the land (4:1, 26; 5:30; also in Psalm 31:2).27 The word ṣedeq does not occur in the Deuteronomistic History, and ṣedaqah only eleven times. It is repeatedly connected with 20 Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1995), 1.83. 21 Mogensen, “ṣedāqā,” 77; Reventlow, Eigenart, 35-36. 22 Braulik, “Development of the Doctrine,” 151-52. 23 Hemchand Gossai, “Saddîq in Theological and Economic Perspectives,” Svensk Exegetisk Årsbok 53 (1988): 9. 24 Herman Bianchi, “Tsedeka-Modell als Alternative zum Konventionellen Strafrecht,” Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik 18 (1974): 89100. 25 Jason J. Ripley, “Covenantal Concepts of Justice and Righteousness, and Catholic-Protestant Reconciliation,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 38 (2001): 98; Keřkovský, “Biblical Language of Law,” 20. 26 Ripley, “Covenantal Concepts,” 100. 27 A. H. van der Wijden, Gerechtigkeit in den Psalmen (Nijmegen: Drukkerij Gebr. Janssen, 1952), 134.

THE PROPAGANDA OF SUBMISSION TO YAHWEH

163

the king, either as a royal attribute (gained from God) or an attitude one has with the king (1 Sam 24:17; 2 Sam 8:15; 19:27-29; 1 Kgs 8:22; 10:9).28 This royal connection is also found in psalms (40:211; 72; 85:14-15143:11-12).29 In fact, Childs sees ṣadiq’s royal attribute to be its primary meaning,30 and Schmid sees it as coming originally from Canaanite royal ideology (cf. Pss 45:6-8; 72:1-3, 7).31 It is directly related to notions of ṣedaqah being primarily God’s, as it is an aspect of his kingship.32 While this royal association is also attested in the 8th- and 7thcentury prophets (Isa 9:6-7; 16:5; 32:1), ṣedeq and ṣedaqah are regularly linked to mishpat (Isa 1:27; 5:7; etc.; Hos 2:19-22; 5:7, 24; Mic 6:5-8; Zeph 2:3; Jer 4:1; 9:23-24; 33:15). The same relationship obtains in Trito-Isaiah (Isa 56:1; 58:2-7). In Deutero-Isaiah, the word also denotes proper conduct or order (48:1),33 and in 45:19 it is paralleled with mesharim