My Take on Ecclesiastes

 About Solomon and Ecclesiastes... Here's my take:

The speaker in this book tags himself with the title Qoheleth, a participial form based on the root q-h-l (= to gather, assemble).  The English title Ecclesiastes comes from the Greek Septuagint, where it is derived from ekklesia and means "the one calling an assembly."  The exact nuance of the word is difficult to capture in English, and some of the various attempts are worth reiterating, including the transliteration qoheleth  without any attempt to translate it:  "preacher" (KJV, NASB, RSV, ESV), "teacher" (NIV), "leader of the assembly" (NIVmg), "speaker" (NEB), "qoheleth" (NAB), "philosopher," "president" or "spokesman." It is also worth noting that in the Hebrew text (cf. 12:8) the title Qoheleth appears with the definite article, indicating that it is not a proper name. 

But just who is Qoheleth, and when did he write?  Unquestionably, the author patterns himself after Solomon, the son of David (1:1), the king of Israel (1:12), even though the name Solomon does not appear in the book. This first person claim to have "grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled in Jerusalem before" (1:16) leaves little doubt that the author intends an identity with the one who asked God for wisdom (2 Chr. 1:7-12) and was heralded as "greater in wisdom than all the kings of the earth" (2 Chr. 9:22-23; cf. 1 Kg. 4:29-34).  All are agreed upon this point. However, there are some mitigating factors. In the first place, the opening of the book is offered in the third person (1:1-2) as are a few later interludes (7:27; 12:8), though most of the rest of the book is in the first person. Does this mean one writer is presenting the wisdom of another, or is the writer adopting the third person to stand outside him/herself temporarily? The Massoretic text offers the rather intriguing possibility, based on an alternative word division, that a woman is the writer by dividing the consonantal text of 7:27 as 'amerah qoheleth (= says Qoheleth [feminine]). The feminine construction would exclude Solomon, of course.  Most scholars reject the Masoretic division and divide the words as 'amar ha-qoheleth(= says Qoheleth [masculine]), the same as in 12:8.

Those who argue for Solomon as the author generally also suggest that the book was composed near the end of his life after he had built a large harem of non-Israelite wives who turned his heart away from Yahweh (1 Kg. 11:1-13), hence, the darkly pessimistic tone of the work.  Most scholars, however, judge it is more likely that the writer is not Solomon (why else avoid his name when obviously patterning a work after him?) but intends to faithfully present the wisdom of Solomon. The author expresses the wisdom for which Solomon was famous by rehearsing the projects of Solomon's life.  In any case, the pessimism in the book is not its final word, but rather its penultimate word. At least one strand of Jewish tradition held that the book was composed by the company of Hezekiah, probably with the understanding that this group edited a Solomonic text, though other Jewish traditions cite Solomon as the author.  Since the time of Luther most scholars, conservative or otherwise, have held that the book, while written as an idealistic representation of Solomon, was put in final form by someone later.

Though some have taken this approach, I would hesitate to say that we should discount the wisdom in the book, even if it be granted that Solomon wrote it in his declining years. This is not something like the words of Satan, which appear from time to time and are to be understood as the voice of evil. Rather, the book, in my view, should be taken as Holy Scripture, but from the viewpoint of exploring life "under the sun," which ends up being empty. This, of course, is the critical phrase--life "under the sun." By this phrase, I think the author intends to explore observable life, bracketing out, as least provisionally, whatever is not observable (and this includes God). 

Further, I think Qoheleth contains an implicit narrative line. The author is "going somewhere" with his thoughts. The book recounts a grand experiment in existential reflection. Thus, any attempt to reach final conclusions about the book's meaning apart from consideration of the whole is bound to fall short. To be sure, the book has many proverbial sayings that stand on their own, but between the prologue (1:1-11) and the epilogue (12:9-14), the main body of the book evidences a coherence that is hardly haphazard. 

On the surface, Qoheleth sounds like an unmitigated pessimist. His opening cry, repeated periodically, sounds like an accusation:  "Utter futility-everything is meaningless!" But there is more to Qoheleth than skepticism. He intends to bring his readers to the conclusion that the only thing giving meaning to life is the presence and recognition of God. However, though this is his conclusion, he does not start here.  He will only arrive by a circuitous route--over ten chapters! On the way, he puts himself and his readers in the sandals of what in the modern world we would call a humanist. He intends to lead them in a systematic search for the meaning of life by following the path that most men and women follow.

He begins as a secularist--a man who is preoccupied with the observable world and its culture. It is not that he denies God (philosophical atheism was not really an option in the ancient world) so much as he ignores him in the existential search. He begins much like a modern person concerned with financial security, personal happiness, leisure, social status and pleasure. Systematically, he moves from lifestyle to lifestyle--from the ancient counterpart to our modern stereotype of the beer-swilling "good ole boy" who is obsessed with television sports to the young executive who is a pragmatic intellectual driven to succeed to the artistic idealist who dabbles with reality while trying to find meaning in aesthetics. Qoheleth invites his readers to follow his quest.

At the outset, Qoheleth adopts a provisional self in the mode of Solomon, king of Israel. The author's provisional self was surely carefully chosen, for Solomon had both the time and the means to conduct such an exploration, and in fact, there is abundant evidence that he closely followed this very path (cf. 1 Kg. 4:20-34; 5:13-18; 7:1-12; 9:17-19, 24, 26-28; 10:1--11:8). Solomon had a much wider range of opportunity than most folks enjoy. He was rich beyond the dreams of avarice, intellectually brilliant, and had both the leisure and power to pursue whatever he wanted. He faced no serious political threats, and the affairs of state set up by his father were stable and required a minimum of effort. In short, he had both the time and resources to do whatever he wanted, and before Qoheleth is done, the author will guide his readers in exploring intellectualism, philosophy, decadence, sensual pleasure, aesthetics, politics, and entrepreneurial business. Qoheleth is an ancient version of the modern phenomenologist who is able to bracket the parts of life that he does not want to consider while he concentrates on isolated segments. In modern terms, he climbs to the heights of Ernest Hemingway's brilliance, Marilyn Monroe's sensuality, and Howard Hughes' wealth and creative genius--a man living in the (supposedly) best of all possible worlds with brains, beauty and money. To be sure, Qoheleth does not conclude by saying this is how life should be lived. In fact, he warns the reader at the outset that there will be profound disappointment. He drives relentlessly to his final conclusion that life ought to be lived in the fear of God. Anything less will be a climax of despair. Still, the reader only reaches this last point when desperate for an answer. Qoheleth's resolve is to see how far a person might get in life without the fundamental framework of deep reverence for God.

Qoheleth's approach raises complications, of course.  There will be tensions between Qoheleth's deepest self and his provisional self.  Still, all this is part of the game, and in many ways, his experiment is very much like a game except that the stakes are the highest possible.

So, this is how I take the book, and indeed, the book is one of my favorites!

Incarceration in Ancient Israel

Were there prisons in ancient Israel? Some scholars deny that the practice of incarceration ever occurred in the Hebrew scriptures.

 While it is true that the various Mosaic law codes - the Ten Commandments, the Book of the Covenant, the Holiness Code, and the various collected laws of the priestly code - have little or nothing to say about long-term incarceration as a punishment for crime, there are scriptural precedents for the judicial practice of imprisonment.

It is interesting to note the progression of the judicial practice of imprisonment from the pre-history of national Israel through the monarchial period down to the post-exilic period.

Detainment until Execution of Judgment

11 The Israelite woman's son blasphemed the Name in a curse. And they brought him to Moses-now his mother's name was Shelomith, daughter of Dibri, of the tribe of Dan- 12 and they put him in custody, until the decision of the Lord should be made clear to them.
Lev. 24:11-12 32

32 When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks on the sabbath day. 33 Those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses, Aaron, and to the whole congregation. 34 They put him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him.
Num. 15:32-34

In both of these cases, incarceration seems to be short-term until a decision on judgment is reached.

Incarceration as a King's Prerogative

26 The king of Israel then ordered, "Take Micaiah, and return him to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the king's son, 27 and say, 'Thus says the king: Put this fellow in prison, and feed him on reduced rations of bread and water until I come in peace.'"
I Kings 22:26-27

10 Then Asa was angry with the seer, and put him in the stocks, in prison, for he was in a rage with him because of this. And Asa inflicted cruelties on some of the people at the same time.
II Chron. 16:10

15 The officials were enraged at Jeremiah, and they beat him and imprisoned him in the house of the secretary Jonathan, for it had been made a prison. 16 Thus Jeremiah was put in the cistern house, in the cells, and remained there many days.
Jer. 37:15-16

4 Then the officials said to the king, "This man ought to be put to death, because he is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, and all the people, by speaking such words to them. For this man is not seeking the welfare of this people, but their harm." 5 King Zedekiah said, "Here he is; he is in your hands; for the king is powerless against you." 6 So they took Jeremiah and threw him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king's son, which was in the court of the guard, letting Jeremiah down by ropes. Now there was no water in the cistern, but only mud, and Jeremiah sank in the mud.
Jer. 38:4-6

In the period of the monarchy - the united and divided kingdoms (1050-586 BCE) - the power to imprison seems to fall to the monarchs as the chief judicial agent in the nation.

Incarceration as Power of the Courts

25 "And you, Ezra, according to the God-given wisdom you possess, appoint magistrates and judges who may judge all the people in the province Beyond the River who know the laws of your God; and you shall teach those who do not know them. 26 All who will not obey the law of your God and the law of the king, let judgment be strictly executed on them, whether for death or for banishment or for confiscation of their goods or for imprisonment."
Ezra 7:25-26

In the aftermath of the exile and return, the administration of justice seems to fall to an independent judiciary that had the power to (1) impose the death penalty, (2) banish from the nation, (3) confiscate property, and/or (4) imprison the perpetrator.

See the article on "Imprisonment" at the Jewish Virtual Library for a more detailed study of this issue.

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 It is perhaps best to understand the progression of Hebrew notions of punishment and imprisonment against the backdrop of the rise of Israel as a nation state with the attendant rationalization and bureaucratization of laws and institutions that necessarily followed this advance. The more primitive policies reflect tribal organizations - extended families led by a patriarch - only loosely tied together in a confederation by common devotion to YHWH. Only with the rise and maturing of the centralized state was full police power granted to governmental institutions.

 As a parting thought, a few questions remain. Even though imprisonment appears to be part of the judicial process of ancient Israel, did this practice ever reach the proportion and extremes of modern long-term prison penalties? Were the motives for incarceration the same as the modern motives of deterrence and rehabilitation?

REFLECTIONS ON ASCENSION DAY

May 21st this year will be Ascension Day in the Christian calendar, when Christians throughout the world celebrate and remember the ascension of Christ and his promise to come again. One of the great Old Testament poems about ascension is Psalm 68. This Psalm as a whole celebrates the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem in the time of David and the eventual construction of Solomon's temple. In particular, it heralds the journey of the ark after its construction at Mt. Sinai though the wilderness sojourn (68:7-10). The psalm may well have been composed in honor of the procession of the Ark of the Covenant from the house of Obed-Edom to the City of David (1 Chr. 13, 15 and 16). It opens with the echo of the desert shout when the ark led the way for Israel (Ps. 68:1; Nu. 10:35). It climaxes with the ascent of the mountain in Judah that God chose as his permanent resting place (Ps. 68:16). Thus, when God "ascended on high," that is, when his throne on the ark was taken to Jerusalem and established in honor, he led in his train the captives of his victory over the Canaanites, sharing the bounty of victory with the community of Israel (cf. 1 Sa. 30:16-31; 2 Sa. 6:17-19). The ark was a sort of movable Mt. Sinai, containing the 10 commandments which were given on Sinai, and in the trek from the wilderness to the land of Canaan and the eventual establishment of the sanctuary on Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, the ark finally was established in its proper resting place in Solomon's temple, which is why in 68:17 it says, "Sinai is now in the sanctuary." This procession of Yahweh enthroned upon the ark and now brought into the Most Holy Place of the temple is then described by the metaphor of an ancient "triumph," when a conquering king leads the victory procession through the capital. In his train are the captives of his enemies who have been subdued and now offer him gifts (68:18). These captive enemies include those rebels who have fought against him. Those who give gifts to the conquering king include not only those nearby kings who were his allies, but also the rebels who fought against him. The final line in 68:18, "...Yahweh God there to dwell," simply affirms that in his victory, God has established his dwelling place in the Holiest of Holies in Solomon's temple on Mt. Zion, which later is accentuated by 68:24. The idea of outsiders showering gifts upon the conquering king is again reiterated in 68:29 and 68:31.

In the New Testament, St. Paul sees something in this passage beyond the ancient entry of the ark into Solomon's temple and views it as anticipating the victory of Christ (Eph. 4), where he shares the gifts he receives from his tributaries with the church. For Paul, this event in the history of Israel was typological of a far greater ascension, the ascension of the resurrected Son of God into the heavens, in which he destroyed the spiritual enemies of his people (cf. Ep. 1:19b-21). Paul consistently saw events within the history of Israel as earthly fore-shadowings or analogies of spiritual realities in the church (cf. Ro. 4:3, 22-25; 9:24-29; 1 Co. 10:1-11; 2 Co. 3:7-18; Ga. 4:21-31). His treatment of Psalm 68 is typical of such exegesis. Paul shows that in Christ's resurrection and ascension, he not only was victorious over the opposing spiritual entities in the heavenlies (cf. 1:20-21; 3:10; 6:12), but he also shared the bounty of his victory with the members of his church. This bounty consisted of his grace-gifts to the church. Hence, the fuller meaning of the "ascension" in Psalm 68:18 refers, not merely to the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem, but to the enthronement of the risen Christ in the heavenlies (4:9a).

Deuteronomy and the Book of the Covenant

A close reading of the Deuteronomic Code (Deuteronomy 12-26) shows this legal collection to be a commentary of sorts on the earlier collection of Hebrew laws, the Book of the Covenant (Exodus 21-23). Again and again, the Deuteronomic writer refers to and builds upon specific themes and principles raised in the earlier collection of laws.

While the Book of the Covenant seems to provide structure to a simple, semi-sedentary agricultural village society, the Deuteronomic code speaks to a more complex society and economy of city states, monarchical government, social class divisions, and external pressures from neighboring peoples.

At the same time, Deuteronomy builds on earlier traditions from the period of the conquest of Canaan and the tribal confederacy. We see this earlier influence most clearly in Deuteronomy's emphasis on the necessity of standardized ritual worship in a single sanctuary, the centrality of covenant and the renewal of the covenant, the negative regard for the institution of the monarchy, and the repeated appeal to the "holy war" tradition. 

These early themes are remolded – updated and expanded to changing social and economic realities – by Deuteronomy's new emphasis on an absolute centralization of the sanctuary (with the attendant destruction of all local shrines and the end of family-based worship), the "name theology" which moves away from the primitive notion of the sanctuary as God's dwelling place, the fleshing-out of the concept of the election of Israel, and updating of laws beyond property rights to social justice concerns (care for the widows, the orphaned, and the immigrant) – themes first found in Hebrew literature in the pages of the Deuteronomic code.

Refer to the linked document below to compare the relatively primitive legislation of the Book of the Covenant and the clear extension and updating of early principles in the Deuteronomic code.

Download The Book of the Covenant and Deuteronomic Code Parallels.

Law Collections of the Pentateuch

There are four distinct, self-contained collections of laws found in the Hebrew Pentateuch – the "books of Moses": Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Each of these collections is clearly delineated by (1) opening and closing formulae, (2) repetitive vocabulary – key words and phrases that are regularly used in introductory formulae, transitional passages, and points of particular emphasis – and (3) recurring themes – large overall literary motifs that tie the individual laws together into a cohesive whole.

These four legal collections are 

• The Decalogue (The Ten Commandments) – Exodus 20
• The Book of the Covenant – Exodus 21-23
• The Holiness Code – Leviticus 17-26
• The Deuteronomic Code – Deuteronomy 12-26

 In the Pentateuch, these law collections are nestled within lengthy narrative passages that tell the story of ancient Israel's exodus from Egypt, initial reception of the law at Mount Sinai, generational wandering in the desert, and impending entrance into Canaan. Along with these narratives are a smorgasbord of rules and regulations which are not a coherent whole, but rather a compilation of loosely connected laws. Since most of these laws reflect a priestly outlook focusing on Hebrew worship, sanctuaries, sacrifices, and Levitical oversight, this loose conglomeration is often referred to as the "Priestly Code." This name should not be taken to suggest that these laws have the same literary unity and cohesion as the Decalogue, the Book of the Covenant, the Holiness Code, and the Deuteronomic Code.

Each of the collected law books – the Decalogue, the Book of the Covenant, the Holiness Code, and the Deuteronomic Code – reveals clues as to the time and social setting of their collection. Each collection seems to codify – place in written form – laws that speak to a specific and changing historical setting. Clearly, these collections are often built around existing and, in some cases, much earlier individual laws. Equally true, there seems to be a progression among the law "books" with later collections building on earlier collections, revising more primitive laws to apply them to changing social and economic realities.

This trajectory – devotion to early law codes that are revisited and re-applied in future generations – is exactly the same trajectory we see in the later "oral" law and the centuries-long debates among the Jewish rabbis about when and where and how ancient Israel's laws are to be applied in later generations.

Deuteronomy and Ancient Near Eastern Treaties

Adopted from J. A. Thompson's The Significance of the Ancient Near Eastern Treaty Pattern.

In 1954, G. E. Mendenhall (1954) recognized that the treaty pattern and language of the ancient Near East (ANE) is often repeated in the Old Testament covenant passages. The Hittites as early as the second millennium BCE formulated the basic structure of suzerainty (or vassal) treaties. This basic structure was later revised by the Assyrians in the 750s BCE – the vassal treaties of Esarhaddon's succession (VTE).

The standard elements in these treaties were

•   the preamble, which gave the names and titles of the parties involved,
•  the historical prologue which outlined the events that led up to the treaty,
•  the stipulations, which were of two kinds—the general principles on which future relations were to be built, and the specific stipulations which arose out of these general principles,
•  the divine witnesses and guarantors of the treaty, and
•  the associated blessings and curses for treaty keeping and violation. 

Other elements appear in many of the ANE treaties such as

•   the requirement to deposit the treaty in the temple,
•    to read it periodically in a public assembly, and
•    to secure the continuity of the treaty by a suitable succession on the vassal's throne.

 There is also a good deal of evidence that a religious ceremony accompanied the ratification of a treaty. Quite commonly blood sacrifices were offered on such an occasion. The formal oath, of acceptance and the preparation, sealing, handing over and acceptance of the treaty document were also essential elements in the total proceedings.

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The book of Deuteronomy is organized around the ANE vassal treaty structure.

• Preamble: Deuteronomy 1:1-5
• Historical prologue: Deuteronomy 1:6-4:40
• Basic stipulation of allegiance: Deuteronomy 5-11
•  Covenantal clauses: Deuteronomy 12-26
• Invocation of witnesses: Deuteronomy 4:26; 30:19; 31:28
• Blessings and curses: Deuteronomy 28

 Deuteronomy "ends" with a covenant renewal ceremony described in Deuteronomy 29-30, where the assembled Israel "renews" the vows from Sinai.  This is followed by the succession of Joshua to Moses' leadership role of Yahweh's vassal people, Israel.

This covenant renewal ceremony is repeated at Shechem under the leadership of Joshua following the "conquest" of the Canaanites (Joshua 24) and again at Gilgal under the leadership of Samuel (I Samuel 14).

Later Jewish practice associated the giving and renewal of the covenant (specifically, the giving of Torah and Israel's renewed commitment to it) with the feast day of Shavuot (Pentecost).

ANCIENT MEMORY DEVICES

So, here’s a question for you… How did the ancients in an oral society preserve in memory biblical passages? You likely have heard that much of ancient Israel was an oral society, and this claim seems to have been true. This did not mean, of course, that no one could read or write, since human writing had been invented about 3200 BC (the demarcation between the prehistoric and historic periods). Still, in the first number of centuries after the development of cuneiform in Mesopotamia and hieroglyphics in Egypt, reading and writing was largely under the provenance of specialists, such as, scribes in the service of the local king (who himself may not have been able to read or write). Royal monuments, such as stela, were not so much for public consumption as they were for marking out status, the mysterious marks on the stone an evidence of the power and mystery of the king and his attendants. Widespread literacy in Israel seems to have occurred in about the 8^th century BC, when the writing prophets began recording their sermons and collections of previous writings were made (Pro. 25:1). The oracles of prior prophets, such as Elijah, Elisha and Micaiah, are either significantly abbreviated or unavailable altogether. It was not until the time of Hezekiah (again, in the 8^th century) that a document was actually copied multiple times and sent to outlying towns with a royal communication (2 Chr. 30:1). To be sure, there are a handful of earlier examples (e.g., Jg. 8:14), but these are more the exception than the norm. Indeed, when a Torah scroll was discovered in the temple during Josiah’s reign, it was read first by the royal secretary (2 Kg. 22:8, 10), presumably because reading and writing was part of his skill base.

            So, back to the basic question—how did the ancients preserve in memory biblical passages? Hardly anyone had private copies of the Hebrew scrolls, so the modern practice of having “quiet time” with the Scriptures has no exact parallel in the ancient world. Further, even for those who could read, the ancient texts did not yet have many of the things to which we are accustomed. In the first place, Hebrew was a consonantal text without vowels, so it was up to the reader to decipher what individual words meant. Most Hebrew words have a trilateral root (i.e., three consonants), but consider for a moment how you might define a similar root in English, the trilateral consonants BRD. Does this mean “bride”, “broad”, “bird”, “bread”, “breed” or “bored”, to name only a few possibilities. Context, of course, loomed large, but occasionally a trilateral root might make sense in more than one way. Here is where the oral tradition of pronunciation begins to develop. Well before the time of Jesus, the synagogue readings of these ancient consonantal texts had achieved a standardized tradition for vocalization, and it was this standardized tradition that eventually gave way to what we now know as vowel-pointing developed by Jews in the Middle Ages, those little dots and dashes beneath, above and within the Hebrew consonants. To make matters more difficult, there were no verse or chapter numbers in the ancient text, no paragraphing, and in many texts, there was not even spaces between the words, which introduces yet another complexity. How would you read in English the sentence, “GODISNOWHERE”? God is nowhere? God is now here? Further, there were no commas, periods, questions marks, and so forth. (To be sure, Hebrew has an interrogative marker that indicates a sentence should be read as a question, but it wasn’t always used.) Such conveniences would only come many centuries later. The average Israelite who owned a farm in, say, one of the northern clans was dependent for his knowledge of the law upon his three-annual visits to the central shrine during the festivals of Passover, Weeks, and Succoth, when the Torah texts would be read publicly, not to mention any other parts of Scripture. His knowledge of these readings was entirely memory dependent!

            There were, however, at least some literary devices that lent themselves to memory aid, and they are resident in many Old Testament texts. The most important and familiar is poetry. Poetry is easier to remember than prose, if for no other reason, than it has rhythm, rhyme, meter, and so forth. Hebrew poetry had all these features plus a feature that scholars call parallelism, the rhyming of ideas, not merely sounds. The most widely-used form of parallelism is the bi-colon in which the idea in the first line is mirrored in the second line. Take, for example, these poetic lines from Isaiah 1:4a (NIV):

            Ah, sinful nation,

                        A people loaded with guilt

            A brood of evil-doers,

                        Children given to corruption.

One can easily see how the idea in the second line mirrors the idea in the first line, while the idea in the fourth line mirrors the idea in the third line. The words “nation” and “people” match each other, while “sinful” and “guilt” also match. The words “brood” and “children” match as do the words “evil-doers” and “corruption”. These sorts of things were incredibly helpful as a memory aid, and it is to the point that around a fifth of the Old Testament is written in poetry.

            A whole variety of such devices were used, far beyond the scope of this short essay, but allow me to remark upon two, one used in Hebrew poetry (acrostic) and the other used in both Hebrew poetry and prose (chiasmus). Acrostics, which not only are known in ancient Hebrew but also in Babylonian poetry, is a poem in which successive lines begin with the letters of the alphabet in order. One of these is actually so-marked in English Versions of the Bible, Psalm 119 (here, the poem is divided into 8 verse stanzas, and in each stanza the initial letter of each verse begins with the Hebrew alphabetic letters in order). However, Psalm 119 by no means stands alone. Several other psalms are also acrostics, such as, Psalm 9, 10, 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, and 145. Proverbs 31:10-31 is an acrostic as are the poems in Lamentations 1, 2, 3 and 4. Nahum 1:2-8 is an acrostic, and there is even one in the Apocrypha (Sirach 51:13-20), not to mention one in the Dead Sea Scrolls (4QPs^a and 4QPs^f). Remembering an acrostic is much easier when one knows that the first line begins with “A” (aleph). The second line, therefore, must begin with “B” (beth), and so forth.

            Chiasmus, another device, is a way of structuring a piece of writing so that the first line matches the last line, the second line matches the penultimate line, and so forth, eventually arriving at the middle of the composition. Chiasms can be short or long, depending upon the skill and intent of the author. There are literally dozens of them in Hebrew poetry, such as, Psalm 7:16 (for which I will give my own translation in the order of the Hebrew words so as to preserve the chiasmus):

     Returns his trouble upon his [own] head,

and upon his [own] pate violence descends.

Here, you can see that the symmetry is A₁, A₂ // A₂, A₁. The phrase “returns his trouble” at the beginning matches “violence descends” at the end. The line “upon his [own] head” matches “upon his [own] pate”. Often, this sort of structure is ignored by Bible translators, since it often makes for awkward English, as you can see in my translation above. However, for the ancient person dependent upon memory, such a device was helpful. In prose, there are some rather elaborate chiasms, sometimes involving whole books (e.g., Ruth, the Song). Here is one generally recognized chiasmus in the story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 17:1-25:

A Abram’s age (17:1a)

B The LORD appears to Abram (17:1b)

C God’s first speech (17:1c–2)

D Abram falls on his face (17:3)

       E God’s second speech (emphasizing “names/ kings/nations”) (17:4–8)

X God’s third/most important speech (emphasizing “the covenant”)

    (17:9–14)

      E’ God’s fourth speech (emphasizing “names/kings/ nations”) (17:15–16)

D’ Abraham falls on his face (17:17–18)

C’ God’s fifth speech (17:19–21)

B’ The LORD goes up from Abram (17:22–23)

       A’ Abraham’s age (17:24–25)

Here, you can easily see how the various elements match each other in the larger structure. Also important is to note that the middle of a chiastic structure is most emphasized. In English, we tend to emphasize the end of things, but a Hebrew chiasmus emphasizes the middle. If one can get through the first half of a chiastic structure, the second half will fall naturally into place because of the parallel ideas, and this, in turn, is an incredible memory aid.

            In our contemporary world, we have a plethora of artificial memory aids, ranging from print to digital records, but these were simply absent in the ancient world. On the other hand, their memories were likely better than ours, since they depended upon them so heavily. Such conditions certainly give one pause when reading that Jesus “found the place where it was written” in the scroll of Isaiah (Luke 4:17; cf. Isaiah 61:1-2). In a large scroll with consonants only, no spacing between the words, no chapter or verse markers and no paragraphing—could you or I find such a passage in a text the size of Isaiah under such conditions?

The Face of God

As the covenant God, Yahweh is one who reveals himself to his people. This capacity of God to reveal himself is fundamental to the possibility of covenant. As Moses says, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way Yahweh our God is near us...?” (Dt. 4:7).

God takes the initiative to reveal himself early in the patriarchal narratives. He is not known because men and women seek him; he is known because he graciously condescends to them. At the same time, the pure essence of God is not immediately accessible to humans, and the divine self-revelation is always to some degree veiled, for as God explains to Moses, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see my face and live” (Ex. 33:20). Hence, the descriptions of God’s self-revelation are invariably anthropomorphic, which is to say, God is described in human terms, even though he is beyond humanness. Hence, God “walks in the garden” (Ge. 3:8) and “lifts his hand” in oath (Ex. 6:8). Furthermore, he expresses a wide range of human emotions. He “snorts” in anger (Ex. 15:8), for instance. The standard Hebrew expression for anger, ‘aph (= snorting, anger) is derived from the Hebrew word for nose, and the English translation, “My anger will be aroused” (NIV), may quite literally be rendered, “My nose will become hot” (cf. Ex. 22:24; 32:10-11, 22). Similarly, God “regrets” actions (Ge. 6:6a), experiences “jealousy” (Ex. 20:5), feels “heart-pain” (Ge. 6:6b), appreciates “goodness” (Ge. 1:31) and “hates” (Dt. 16:22) and “abhors” detestable things (Lv. 20:23). Such anthropomorphisms should probably be understood as poetic metaphors, particularly in light of the fact that God, in his pure essence, was considered to be invisible and transcendent. They express the fact that God is personal as opposed to impersonal; he is a divine Someone, not merely a divine Something. By speaking of God anthropomorphically, the Torah describes God as coming to humans on their level. At the same time, it must be remembered that such metaphors are limited and carry with them the inherent danger that God might come to be understood as made in the image of humans with their vices and failures—which was pretty much the way the rest of the ancient Near East understood the deities. Anthropomorphisms of God in the Torah are carefully balanced by the affirmations of God’s invisibility, his hiddenness and mystery, and the prohibition of carving any likeness to him.

The primary recurring anthropomorphism in the Old Testament is the panim (= face) of Yahweh. The English translation of panim with respect to the face of Yahweh is usually “presence”, and the reader of the English Bible may not be aware that this is most often the word for the “face of God”. The entire personality of Yahweh, his love as well as his anger, is concentrated in his face. The displeasure of God is expressed when his face is against someone (Ge. 3:8; 4:14, 16; Lv. 10:2; 22:3). The approval of God is expressed when his face is turned toward someone (Ge. 27:7; Nu. 6:25; Dt. 12:7, 18; 14:23, 26; 15:20, etc.).

In a special sense, the panim represents the presence of God without reservation. At Sinai, Yahweh instructed Moses to depart with the people for Canaan, but he said that he himself would not accompany them because of their stubbornness (Ex. 33:1-6). Moses, however, pleaded with God so that God promised to send his panim, that is, his “face”, with the Israelites (Ex. 33:12-17). Later, Moses could say that God brought the entire company out of Egypt by his panim (Dt. 4:37; cf. Is. 63:9). Because God was so powerfully present in the Tent of Meeting, the sacred bread, which was to be displayed at all times, was quite literally the “bread of the face”, or more familiarly, the “bread of the presence” (Ex. 25:30; 39:36). Similarly, the table upon which the sacred bread was placed was called the “table of the face” (Nu.4:7).

In a Christian sense, this “face of God” reaches its climax in the face of Jesus:

For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.  (2 Co. 4:6)

While on the mountain of God Moses was prevented from seeing God’s face, and indeed, the invisibility of God is upheld by the writers in the New Testament as they speak of God living in “unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see” (1 Ti. 6:16). Still, the promise for the future is that in the end believers shall see him “face to face” (1 Co. 13:12). “They shall look upon his face,” John says (Rv. 22:4). Roman Catholics and the Orthodox call this theosis, though the broader term is the “beatific vision”. However one describes it, this ancient anthropomorphism of God—the face of God—takes on special meaning, for as Fanny Crosby’s old hymn puts it:

                                                And I shall see him, face to face,

                                              And tell the story saved by grace;

                                                And I shall see him, face to face,

                                              And tell the story saved by grace.

THE MOVING SHADOW

No less than three accounts are provided by biblical authors regarding the unusual sign that God gave Hezekiah to assure him that his life would be extended. Isaiah had first announced to the king that his life was near its end, but when Hezekiah pleaded for a reprieve, Isaiah returned and told him that God had heard his prayer and would add another 15 years to his life. As a sign confirming this prediction, Yahweh invited Hezekiah to decide whether the shadow on the time-marker would move forward or backward, and Hezekiah chose backward. The details of the story are recounted both by Isaiah and the compiler of the Kings record (Isa. 38:1-8; 2 Kgs. 20:1-11), while the account in the Chroniclers’ History is very abbreviated (2 Chr. 32:24). That the accounts in Isaiah and 2 Kings are for the most part verbatim in the Hebrew text has convinced most scholars that one account is dependent on the other (Isaiah is likely the earlier one).

There are, however, some lingering questions about the incident. First, there is the nature of the time-instrument itself. The Masoretic Text of both Isaiah and 2 Kings describes it as a marker with “steps”, which suggests that the instrument was some sort of device that cast shadows on a wall as the sun moved through its daily course. The great Isaiah scroll recovered from the first cave at Qumran, however (1QIsa^a), describes it as “the upper dial of Ahaz”. This description presumes that the instrument was inherited by Hezekiah and might very well have been of Assyrian origin due to Ahaz’ fascination with Assyrian devices (cf. 2 Kg. 16:10-18). Either way, Hezekiah’s remark that he wanted the shadow to move backward, since it was too simple to have the shadow move forward, seems a bit strange. From a modern point of view, whether the shadow moved forward or backward seems sufficiently miraculous by all definitions!

So how did the shadow move? We can immediately dismiss the legendary story that scientists at the Goodard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, using a sophisticated computer program, discovered a missing 40 minutes in the astronomical record. The scientists at Goddard have repeatedly disclaimed this story outright, but nonetheless, it has been floating around for decades in one form or another. A version of it was first published as far back as 1936 by Harry Rimmer, who in turn cited an otherwise unknown 1890s source. It was picked up by a gullible Harold Hill and repeated in a new and improved version in his 1974 book, How to Live Like a King’s Kid. Now, with the advent of the internet, it is still making the rounds, albeit in an updated fashion (see the debunking at www.snopes.com/religion/lostday.asp). A much more plausible explanation is that the moving shadow was related to a total solar eclipse (a total solar eclipse is when the moon completely blocks the sun, creating a short period of darkness). We know, for instance, that just such an eclipse occurred in 702 BC, the 16^th year before Hezekiah would eventually die (you can find it online at NASA’s Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses), and unlike the story by Harold Hill, this one is not bogus.

Solar eclipses can create strange visual phenomena. If a “steps” device in Hezekiah’s court was shrouded in darkness for a short period and then restored to daylight, the shadow might very well have seemed to go backward. A solar eclipse seems a more likely explanation than some disruption of the planet’s daily revolution. Such total solar eclipses are rare (the last one in America extending coast-to-coast was in 1918, but Hawaii had one in 1991 and some of the western states saw one in 1979). Indeed, should you be interested, you’ll be able to see another on August 21, 2017, and it will be from coast to coast, its path of totality extending from Lincoln City, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina, passing through Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. Darkness will last longest at Carbondale, Illinois (a few seconds beyond 2.5 minutes).

At the end of the day (to use a rather loaded metaphor in the present context), I suppose the real question concerns the legitimacy of biblical prophecy more than celestial disruption. The moving shadow was a predicted sign to Hezekiah, and Isaiah was to be regarded as a true prophet. If you can believe in a God who knows the future, then it was not hard for him to inform Hezekiah that the steps of the shadow would move backward. Was this the result of a total solar eclipse? There is no way to know for certain, of course, but in my mind this is a satisfactory explanation.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (4 of 4)

Encoding the Covenant Law in the Bible (Part 4 of 4)

            The compilation of written law codes in the ancient Near East is well known. Several Hittite treaties have clauses requiring their periodic reading in public, and the same would be true of what Moses wrote (cf. 31:24). In the treaty between Suppiluliumas and Kurtiwaza, for instance, the code was to be read “at regular intervals.”[7] The precise extent of what Moses actually wrote is debated. It is unnecessary to suppose that he wrote the entirety of the Torah as we now have it (especially the account of his own death), but it is equally unnecessary to suppose that everything was recorded later from oral tradition, as some scholars have suggested (or was made up later and does not even date back to Moses). Linguistically, we have only sparse indications of the state of the Hebrew language at this early period, and whatever form Moses used, it may well have needed updating later. Indeed, the Hebrew text of Moses’ song contains more than a dozen hapax legomena as well as some complicated syntax which remain as challenges for any translator. However one wants to speculate on exactly what Moses wrote, the text clearly indicates that he wrote some form of the covenant law and delivered it to the priests and elders for safekeeping and periodic reading. There was to be a public reading every seven years during the Festival of Booths “at the place God would choose” (cf. 15:1ff.; 16:13-15).

There are even some passages describing Moses as writing, such as, Dt. 31:9, which refers to an unspecified section of law codes, Dt. 31:19, 22, (referring to chapter 32), and 31:24ff. (probably referring to the Decalogue). Such references suggest that portions were written out as smaller segments prior to the compilation of the whole. The rabbinical custom of referring to everything in the Pentateuch as the words of Moses, of course, was adopted by the writers of the New Testament, but this convenience of speech does not necessarily support the view that Moses personally penned the entire corpus. One can only speculate how long elements in Deuteronomy and other books in the Pentateuch may have been preserved as oral tradition before being codified. A generation later, Joshua is commanded to obey the “book of the law” (Jos. 1:7-8), a reference that seems to refer to the contents of Deuteronomy 5-26 or 5-30. Joshua is familiar with the law code that altars were not to be fashioned using an iron tool (Jos. 8:31; Dt. 27:5), and indeed, the whole ceremony in the Shechem Pass is based on the anticipation of this ceremony as described in Deuteronomy (Jos. 8:30-35; Dt. 27). Even later, Joshua is said to have drawn up decrees and laws which then were recorded in the “Book of the Law of God”, so apparently Joshua, also, had a hand in the composition of the Torah (cf. Jos. 24:25-26). Even later references also cite the “Book of the Law,” expressions that clearly seem to refer to at least portions of Deuteronomy (cf. 2 Kg. 14:6//2 Chr. 25:4; Dt. 24:16). Certainly some of the prophets knew of law codes that were preserved in Deuteronomy (cf. Hos. 5:10//Dt. 19:14; Am. 8:5 and Mic. 6:10ff.//Dt. 25:13ff.; Am. 4:4//Dt. 14:28; Hos. 4:4ff.//Dt. 17:12), but whether all these things were an oral memory or reference to a written code is unclear.

These, then, are some of the factors that must be considered when assessing the earliest written documents in the Bible. As Christians, we believe that God superintended this production, which is what we mean by the term inspiration. At the same time, these biblical texts bear the stamp of history so that it can be fairly said that this is the Word of God in the words of humans.

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[7] ANET (1969), p. 205.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (3 of 4)

Law Codes

            Along with literary writings, many of the political writings uncovered from the ancient world have proven relevant to our understanding of the Old Testament.  Among these, law codes in particular have provided links between the Bible and the ancient Near Eastern world.  Two of the more well-known examples are the Nuzi texts and the Code of Hammurabi which bear special relevance to the Patriarchal and Mosaic periods of Israelite history respectively.

            The Nuzi texts consist of about 20,000 clay tablets inscribed by a people called the Hurrians who lived in the Zagros mountains around the 15^th century BC.  The texts consist primarily of private and public legal documents which, while not particularly interesting to read, are very helpful for understanding the social customs of the period.  In many cases, the social conditions and customs described in the Nuzi tablets parallel those described in the Patriarchal period of the Old Testament (i.e., the period of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob).  For example, the laws of inheritance at Nuzi held that a double-portion of a father’s estate was to be given to the eldest son.  In addition, the eldest son held the right to sell his double-portion if he so chose (cf. Jacob and Esau, Gen. 25:29-34).  The laws of inheritance at Nuzi also indicate that if a man had no son to be his heir he could adopt an heir of his choice (cf. Abraham and Eliezer, Gen. 15:1-3) or produce an heir through his wife’s maidservant (cf. Abraham and Hagar, Gen:16:1-4). The Nuzi texts also contain regulations concerning the possession of household gods (Gen. 31:19) as well as the practice of conferring oral blessings on others (cf. the blessing of Isaac, Gen. 27:1-40; the blessing of Jacob, Gen. 49:1-28).  Parallels such as these have provoked a good deal of speculation and debate among scholars with regard to the historical setting of the Patriarchal narratives.

            Another ancient Near Eastern law code called the Code of Hammurabi was inscribed on a pillar by the great Babylonian king Hammurabi sometime around the 18^th century BC.  As with the Nuzi texts, there are various parallels between the Code of Hammurabi and the Old Testament.  The first and, perhaps, most striking of these is Hammurabi’s claim to have been given the code by Shamash (i.e. the sun-god) on a mountaintop (cf. Exodus 19:20).  The Code of Hammurabi also contains various structural similarities to the Law of Moses as contained in Exodus 20-23, although nothing resembling the Ten Commandments is found in either the Code of Hammurabi or any other ancient Near Eastern law code for that matter.  In both codes, the principle of Lex Talionis (i.e. “an eye for and eye, a tooth for a tooth”, cf. Ex. 21:24; Lv. 24:20; Dt. 19:21) provides the basic framework for the concept of justice and, in addition, many of the specific case laws are remarkably similar. These include punishments for striking one’s parents (cf. Exodus 21:15), assaulting a pregnant woman (Exodus 21:22), failing to restrain a goring ox (Exodus 21:28-32), theft (Exodus 22:1), and adultery (Exodus 22:16).  As with other ancient Near Eastern texts, the significance of these similarities is debated among scholars who arrive at different conclusions.

 

Summary

            While this brief introduction to ancient Near Eastern texts is far from exhaustive, it does provide a taste of what scholars are doing when comparing the Bible to other ancient Near Eastern texts.  The four texts dealt with above constitute only a small portion of what ancient Near Eastern literature has to offer the field of Biblical studies, but they are certainly among the most complete and relevant in the field.  Some other texts frequently addressed in relation to the Bible include: the Sumerian King List (describes ten rulers from before the flood with reigns lasting from 18,000-40,000 years), the Legend of Adapa (Mesopotamian legend mentioning the tree of life), the Amarna Letters (letters written from Palestine requesting Egypt’s aid against a group of people called the Hapiru—possibly Hebrews), the Baal Cycle of Myths (Canaanite mythology about the god Baal), the Ur-Nammu Law Code, the Lipit-Ishtar Law Code, the Hittite Law Code, and the Eshnunna Law Code.

            The relationship between these ancient Near Eastern texts and the text of the Bible have intrigued scholars for many years. One thing generally agreed upon is that of these ancient texts, the biblical texts were composed later than the Mesopotamian texts by even the earliest possible date for the exodus. Hence, one cannot argue that the Mesopotamians borrowed from the Bible. The inverse is possible, of course. The authors of the Bible may have borrowed ideas from the Mesopotamian texts, and in fact, most historical-critical scholars arrive at such a conclusion. Still, at least two other reasonable possibilities exist. One is that there was a common stock of ancient oral tradition that was older than and lay behind both the biblical and Mesopotamian materials. The other is that the Genesis accounts of the creation and flood may be apologetic material aimed at correcting the false cosmogonies of Mesopotamia. Either of these hypotheses would account for the linguistic links and literary parallels between the various texts.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (2 or 4)

Creation Texts

            One of the most important literary themes in the ancient Near East was cosmogony (i.e., the story of how things came into being).  Among the cosmogonies of the ancient Near East, the earliest and most enduring were produced by those cultures to whom we owe the invention of writing, Mesopotamia and Egypt. The Mesopotamian cosmogony, in particular, bears a number of resemblances to the creation account found in Genesis 1 and continues to be a subject of perennial interest to scholars and archaeologists.

            The Mesopotamian cosmogony, Enuma Elish or “when on high”, originated in ancient Babylonia probably sometime around 1800 BC.  The story tells how the world was created by the gods of fresh water and salt water, Apsu and Tiamat, and how through their union the other gods and goddesses were born.  Almost immediately, however, discord arose between the primordial gods and their descendants, and Apsu and Tiamat decided to kill off their offspring.  Upon discovering this, one of the lesser gods, Ea, killed Apsu, while another god, Marduk, was chosen to lead the others in war against Tiamat.  Marduk, the god of storm, eventually defeated Tiamat with weapons of thunder, lightening, and wind, and took his place as king among the gods.  Marduk then attended to the task of creation.  Out of one half of Tiamat’s body he made the earth, and out of the other half he made the heavens. Out of the blood of one of Tiamat’s appointees, Marduk appointed Ea to fashion human beings… “savage man I will create, and he shall be charged with the service of the gods, that they might be at ease!”4.  Finally, Marduk appointed different roles to the gods, set the cosmos in order, and celebrated with a divine banquet.

While the theological differences between Enuma Elish and the Biblical account of creation are obvious enough, there are nevertheless numerous parallels.  The larger part of these are purely linguistic in nature, but the most striking, and the one for which Enuma Elish is the most famous, concerns the order of creation.  In both accounts, the creation of the universe occurs in discrete phases, with the gods or God resting on the last.  Furthermore, the details of each specific phase of creation are identical: the first involving the creation of light; the second, the dome of the sky; the third, the creation of dry land, and so on. The strength of this parallel has led to an unending debate among scholars concerning the precise nature of the relationship between Enuma Elish and Genesis chapter 1. Scholarly opinion ranges from the view that there is no close relationship between the two5 to the view that the latter is directly dependant upon the former6.

 

Flood Texts

            Interestingly, more than 200 flood texts have survived from cultures around the world. The earliest flood texts come from Mesopotamia and Egypt and record the occurrence of a world-wide deluge parallel to the one spoken about in Genesis 6-9.  Of the two, the Mesopotamian account is again the one that bears the closest resemblance to the story in the Bible.

            The Mesopotamian flood story is actually only one part of a much larger literary work called the Epic of Gilgamesh.  The work was written somewhere in the vicinity of ancient Babylonia by no later than the end of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2000 BC).  In the epic, the story tells how the hero king and semi-divine being, Gilgamesh, overworks his subjects to such an extent that the gods endeavor to divert his attention by creating for him a companion, Enkidu, of equal strength and ambition. Quick to become friends, Gilgamesh and Enkidu embark on a series of successful heroic adventures.  Eventually, Enkidu dies prompting Gilgamesh to undertake the greatest and most challenging quest of all—the search for eternal life.  In his quest, Gilgamesh searches to the ends of the earth to find the legendary Utnapishtim, who alone among humans is said to have attained eternal life.  When Gilgamesh finally finds Utnapishtim, Utnapishtim recounts to Gilgamesh the story of the great flood and how he alone among humans survived and was granted the gift of eternal life by the gods.  As for Gilgamesh, however, Utnapishtim remarks that he can expect no such gift from the gods.  However, Utnapishtim does tell Gilgamesh of a secret plant hidden at the bottom of the sea which, if one eats it, can rejuvenate the life of one that has grown old.  Thereupon, Gilgamesh recovers this plant and attempts to return home with it, but is deceived by a serpent who eats it while he is bathing in a pool.  At long last, Gilgamesh despairs of his search for eternal life and endeavors to take joy in the work of his hands.

            As in Enuma Elish, the thematic differences between the Babylonian account of the flood and the Biblical account of the flood are readily apparent.  Nevertheless, some remarkable parallels exist.  For example, in Utnapishtim’s flood narrative, he tells of how, being warned by the gods that a flood was imminent, he built a ship and sealed it with pitch in order to survive (cf. Gen. 6:13-14).  In addition, just like Noah, Utnapishtim kept animals on the ship in order to preserve the various species (cf. Gen. 6:19-21).  Utnapishtim also sent birds out of his ship in order to ascertain whether or not the flood had stopped (cf. Gen. 8:6-12).  When at last the flood had ceased, the ship came to rest on a mountain where, upon exiting his ship, Utnapishtim offered sacrifices to the gods (cf. Gen. 8:20).  As in Enuma Elish, the relationship between the book of Genesis and the Epic of Gilgamesh continues to be a source of scholarly interest and debate.

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4 J. Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Princeton: Princeton University, 1958), p. 38.

5 K. Kitchen, The Bible in its World (Downers Grove, IL:  IVP, 1977), p. 26-27.

6 E. Speiser, Genesis [AB] (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 9-11.

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and the Earliest Biblical Writings (Part 1 of 4)

The Origin and Development of Writing

            The first indisputable examples of writing appear on clay tablets and were found at the site of Uruk in lower Mesopotamia.  These mark the transition from “prehistoric” to “historic” civilization and are roughly contemporaneous with the onset of the Early Bronze Age (i.e. 3200 BC).  The content of these early texts has proved for the most part to be undecipherable.  However, scholars are generally agreed that the Uruk texts constitute an early written form of the Sumerian language.  Shortly after the appearance of this cuneiform (i.e. “wedge-shaped”) writing in Mesopotamia, writing also appeared in Egypt in the form of hieroglyphics (i.e. “sacred-carvings”)1.  Mesopotamia and Egypt, therefore, are our earliest sources for the study of the written history of humankind.

            From this point of origin, writing went through several stages of historic development in the ancient Near East2.  This development is important to bear in mind since it is easy to fall into the misconception that ancient languages were written with letters, as in our western alphabet.  Sumerian and Egyptian, however, were not written with letters and did not have an alphabet.  In an alphabet, letters consist of symbols written to represent simple sounds, such as, the letters “a” or “b”.  In Sumerian and Egyptian, words were written with symbols representing either whole words, which are called logograms, or whole syllables, which are called syllabograms.  Thus, for example, a single symbol stands for the Sumerian word “dinger” (god), while another symbol stands for the syllable “nig” (which could be used to form any number of words).  This manner of writing is referred to as logo-syllabic writing and is the earliest system known to have been used in the world.  Of the two forms of logo-syllabary just mentioned, cuneiform became the dominant one used throughout the ancient Near East, while the use of hieroglyphics remained almost exclusively within the province of Egypt.

            From this brief introduction, it is easy to see how cumbersome such a system of writing could become.  While modern English writers are able to represent every word in their vocabulary with a 26 letter alphabet, the earliest logo-syllabaries of the Sumerians could contain up to 2000 different symbols, all with different meanings. To complicate matters more, the meanings of most of the symbols varied across time and space so that, eventually, signs could acquire up to five or six possible meanings all of which would have to be determined by the context of their usage.  Hence, literacy in the ancient world was a rare privilege enjoyed only by professional scribes and the elite, well-educated few.  After the conquest of the Sumerians by the Akkadians, logograms began to gradually disappear from regular usage except in a few idiomatic expressions, while written language came to be represented almost entirely in syllabograms. This manner of writing is referred to as syllabic writing and persisted throughout the latter part of the Early Bronze Age and all of the Middle Bronze Age (i.e. 2000-1550 BC).

            The earliest examples of consonantal writing begin to appear in Palestine sometime around the beginning of the Late Bronze Age (i.e. 1550 B.C.)3. Next to the invention of writing itself, this is easily the most significant historic development in the history of writing.  The transition to consonantal writing began with the insight that syllables (such as, for example, “nig”) could be broken down into a relatively small group of sounds called consonants (e.g., “n” and “g”) which could be rearranged in various ways to formulate words.  Thus, the Palestinian consonantary, as it is called, could now represent the full range of human language with only 22 symbols, each representing a consonant—an unimaginably efficient system of writing when compared to the 2000 symbols used in the logo-syllabary of the Sumerians! Archaeologists have uncovered numerous attempts at developing this consonantary in Palestine and Sinai in the Late Bronze Age, but the one that eventually caught on and was disseminated to the rest of the Mediterranean world was that of the coastal Phoenicians.  From this point on, literacy and writing grew in proportion to the facility with which it could be carried out.

            The last and most familiar development in ancient Near Eastern writing is the advent of the alphabet, which appeared sometime around 800 BC in Greece.  The Greek alphabet, named after its first two letters “alpha” and “beta”, incorporated all the advantages of the Palestinian consonantary, but it also included within its scope the representation of vowels. This innovation required that a few additional letters be used in the formulation of words, but also overcame a certain amount of ambiguity inherent in the consonantal system due to the absence of vowels. (For example, in a consonantal system of writing, the symbol “blck” could be interpreted as either “black” or “block”.) The Greek system was passed on to the Romans and preserved in Latin, which is the basis of modern western language.

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1 The long-standing debate about whether writing first developed in Mesopotamia or Egypt seems, at present, to be resolved in favor of the former on the basis of the clay tablets discovered at Uruk.  Fresh evidence, however, could easily open this debate again.

2  Traditionally, archaeologists and linguists only recognized three basic systems of writing.  The most recent analyses, however, suggest six systems, four of which are treated here (i.e. logo-syllabic, syllabic, consonantal, and alphabetic).  For a fuller treatment of these four systems as well as abugida and hangul, cf. Peter T. Daniels, “Writing and Writing Systems” Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Neat East, ed. E. Meyers (New York: Oxford University, 1997) 5.352-358.

3 Possibly the earliest example of consonantal writing in ancient Palestine is a fragmentary potsherd from Gezer dated to approximately 1650 BC.  The potsherd is inscribed with only three symbols, the interpretation of which is a matter of debate.