Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Stephen Knapp <sknapp AT megsinet.net>]

Jonathan D. Safren wrote:
> 
> I don't have the sources in front of me so I can't be sure. But wasn't a
> copy of sar tamhari (Lord of Battle) found at Tell El Amarna in Egypt,
> same period as the 14th century Gilgamesh find at Megiddo, and the
> period of Ehyptian hegemony over Syro-Palestine?
> BTW, the El Amarna Tablets are written in Akkadian and not in Egyptian.
> Akkadian was the lingua franca of the period and not Egyptian. If the
> Akkadian language was known and used in Egypt and Canaan during this
> period, then so was Akkadian literature.
> So scribes in pre-Israelite Canaan (and Egypt) would have known about
> Esagila and the Apsu.

Again, Jonathan, you are blurring the very real distinctions between 2nd
millenium Old Babylonian culture, Assyrian culture, and 1st millenium
Neo-Babylonian culture.  You are also presuming that knowledge of the
lingua franca brought with it a fairly high level of Mesopotamian
cultural influence for the entire region of Palestine.  The
archaeological record does not seem to bear this out, except via the
North West Semitic connections.  But the Biblical writers who make use
of the Mesopotamian religious imagery apparently presume a fairly
widespread appreciation of the Assyrian and Babylonian worldviews.  I
can see how that might work for Assyria during the Iron II period, but
not for Babylon at least as far as the domain of Judah is concerned.  

When I recognize that Judah sought to keep a political distance from
Assyria, I am inclined to imagine a certain amount of resistance to
cultural influence even from that quarter.  So I would be willing to
concede that the J material could have been created in reaction to
Assyrian cosmology.  And if we unhook the Babel incident from J, then I
am less inclined to date J as late as I do.  But I don't think the case
for a culturally threatening Neo-Babylonian influence on Judah in the
pre-exilic period can be made, except for the very latest stages of
Judahite monarchy.


> Actually, Stephen, the argument between us boils down to this. You want
> to see late authorship and influences, and I want to see early
> authorhsip and influences. So each of us is marshaling the arguments
> necessary to support his pet theory.

Not quite.  I WANT to see the story as very early.  Much in my faith
tradition has oriented me that way, and I would like to keep it all
together.  But I am constrained by my perceptions of a thousand and one
other details to see it differently.  What is intriguing to me is that I
CAN see it differently without sacrificing my faith.  That frees me to
do what I have come to feel is most intellectually and spiritually
honest.
  As for pet theory, I am afraid I am a bit too eclectic to have such a
thing in clear view.  I have questions for both sides of the debate.  As
I intimated above, I am not yet settled on the dating of J.  I am merely
trying to make sense of a wideranging body of data, and have come to
recognize that things are not always as they have seemed to be to past
interpreters.  I still have far more questions than answers.


> The same controversy is going on in
> the wider academci world.
> The real question is why each of us wishes to see the Israelite
> traditions in the way he does?
> Le'elohim pitronim!

Cen.  Hakol beseder, khaver sheli.
Lehitra'ot.

-- 
Stephen A. Knapp, sknapp AT megsinet.net
PhD candidate, Old Testament Biblical Studies
Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago
Part time faculty: Department of Theology
Valparaiso University (Indiana)