[quote]storey420 wrote:
As you have presented quite a level of scholarly understanding and insight KingKai, I am very interested to hear your take on the idea (which I think comes back to the origin of this thread) that elements of the Bible were borrowed or copied (or at least based off of) older Sumerian/Babylonian/Akkadian mythology. Mind you Im not in the camp that says if thats true then the Bible is false but I was having the discussion the other day and someone said “almost all Bible scholars would agree in the similarities in the stories/parables” and I was wondering your take on that.[/quote]
Fair question. I think there are two points worth discussing at the forefront.
- “Borrowing” is an inappropriate and misleading term. Not your fault; it’s a commonly used term. It just assumes too many things that cannot be demonstrated. I’ll explain why.
There have been essentially three phases or movements in the history of contextual studies over the last two centuries. When archeologists first started becoming interested in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, their primary focus was on the relationship of these cultures’ vestiges to their portrayal in the biblical accounts. At this stage, the goal of background studies was essentially the confirmation of the veracity of the biblical accounts. Eventually, as scholars became more interested in the history of these other ancient civilizations for their own sake, the balance shifted, and scholars, seeing the often striking parallels between the thought world of the biblical authors and the Babylonians, Sumerians, etc., began to chalk up these similarities to the “borrowing” of the biblical authors from their neighbors.
In the past several decades, however, both conservative and more liberal scholars have moved toward “comparative studies,” comparing biblical and other ancient texts with an eye toward both similarities AND differences between the accounts. Questions of borrowing have, at least by conscientious scholars, been left by the wayside.
Why? Two reasons - (1) the sparsity of evidence and (2) the influence of cultural studies. First of all, we really only have a handful of parallel texts from the ancient world, and they cover a wide geographic area with large temporal gaps. As a really good example, let’s take ancient covenantal documents. As far as our examples of such documents from the ancient Near East, we have the book of Deuteronomy (we’ll leave it undated for the sake of argument), some Hittite treaties (1400-1200 B.C.), and some Assyrian treaties (800-600 B.C.). Now, scholars debating the dating of Deuteronomy have often compared Deuteronomy to the Hittite and Assyrian treaties, with some scholars arguing that Deuteronomy resembles the Assyrian treaties (thus dating it between 800 and 600 B.C.), and others espousing its closer similarities to the Hittite treaties (thus indicating a very early date for Deuteronomy of 1400-1200 B.C.). Without going into all the finer technical points, I’ll point out that there is a larger methodological question that is too frequently ignored - are these the only two examples of treaties that have EVER existed, or are they the only two types we currently possess knowledge of? That’s an important question, because the fact is that Deuteronomy doesn’t actually fit EITHER of the two treaty types very well. The problem is that, despite knowing that a multitude of different cultures existed in that ancient Near East, we have examples from only two of them of a particular genre, and those examples are separated by several hundred years. It is entirely possible (if not likely, since it is UNLIKELY that only the Hittites and the Assyrians employed such treaties) that Deuteronomy represents another exemplar of which we simply have no knowledge. Given the fact that we still know VERY little about the ancient Near East, this isn’t an argument from silence; this is an absolutely necessary caution. The evidence is simply too sparse, and what pieces we have are too often separated by centuries for us to be able to connect them to one another through “borrowing.”
Cultural studies has also promoted awareness of “cognitive environments.” When we are talking about cognitive environments, we are talking about shared thought worlds, shared concepts, images, etc. The fact is that Israel shared a lot of things in common with her neighbors. There is no denying that. Other ancient Near Eastern cultures had prophets, kings, and sages; they had systems of worship at the center of which reigned sacrifice; and they held similar archetypes in common. THat’s about ALL we can really say about the ancient Near East with any certainty, as we have no way of drawing actual lines of dependence from one concrete TEXT to another TEXT. We cannot say, “Genesis is dependent upon the epic of Gilgamesh;” we can only say that Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh both dipped in the well of a shared cognitive environment. Any statements beyond that would be mere conjecture.
That’s why “borrowing” is a misleading term. We can state with confidence that Dante borrowed from other classical texts, including the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, when he composed his Inferno ; we cannot make any such claims for the relationship between the biblical texts and other ancient Near Eastern texts. We just don’t have anywhere NEAR the necessary evidence.
- The primary assumption behind such accusations of borrowing is that the traditions contained in the biblical texts are derived from (and are thus “younger” than) Israel’s neighbors. There are two problems with this position, though.
First of all, aside from the most BASIC plot lines, Genesis 1-11 (this is the section where the majority of the similarities to other ANE texts are congregated) is still remarkably unparalleled in the ancient Near East. Yes, you’ll find a handful of things in common - a reference to humanity’s fundamental nature as clay or dust, the separation of the waters above from the waters below, etc. For the most part, these similarities can be explained as universally apparent, phenomenal descriptions common in ancient communities, especially those sharing the same cognitive environment - bodies decay (i.e., return to the ground) upon the death; the sky leaks water when it rains, so there MUST be a storehouse of water above us. In reality, the only really substantial similarities between Genesis 1-11 and other ancient Near Eastern accounts are in the flood narrative - humanity angers the god(s); the god(s) flood the world to eradicate humanity; only a handful of human beings remain through the use of a vessel.
That brings me to my second point. I am not going to delve into the possibility that ALL of these creation and flood accounts necessarily reflect traditional knowledge about the same events that only the Bible happens to have correct. Instead, I just want to question the assumption that, just because the biblical texts were composed later, they cannot actually reflect EARLIER traditions than the texts they supposedly “borrowed” from.
One of my former professors wrote an essay comparing the lifespans of the antediluvian rulers on the Sumerian kings list with the lifespans of the pre-flood figures in Genesis 5. Noting the Sumerian predilection for the number 60, he examined the possibility of using a sexagesimal system of base 60 instead of base 10 to calculate the ages. What he discovered was, when the years indicated in the biblical account were converted to a sexagesimal system, they equalled the exact same total number of years as the reigns of the antediluvian kings in the Sumerian kings list. HOWEVER, the math did not work both ways; you could not start from the Sumerian account and reach the number indicated by the biblical account. In short, if such a phenomenon is genuine and more than a coincidence, it suggests that the biblical text could actually preserve the older account.
This is just food for thought. My point is that examples like this raise important questions about the legitimacy of assuming that the fact that Genesis was written down later than many ancient Near Eastern texts necessarily implies that the traditions Genesis contains are derived from or later than the traditions contained in the non-biblical texts.
