Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East (review)

Martti Nissinen and collaborators have prepared a thoughtful and practical collection of prophetic texts from the Ancient Near East. While most readers will probably look to such a book in order to gain comparative perspective on Hebrew prophecy, Nissinen emphasizes the importance of Assyrian, Babylonian, and other Near Eastern prophetic phenomena in their own right. The documents translated here are a thorough representation of material not included, or less well-represented, in other standard Near Eastern collections (short of the authoritative scholarly editions).

After a brief introduction, on which I will remark below, the collection includes all the Mari documents that are clearly prophetic, a selection of other Mari documents that pertain to prophecy, the Ešnunna oracles, the Nineveh oracles with a selection of other relevant Neo-Assyrian documents, a selection of cuneiform sources, all six available West Semitic sources, and the Report of Wenamon. The Akkadian documents are presented in transcription, and the West Semitic and Egyptian in transliteration, in a left-hand column, and an English translation in a right-hand column. References to the document number, the definitive scholarly transliteration and translation, and key scholarly discussions precede each text. When available, references to copies or photographs are also included. The editors have avoided adventurous translation choices, and difficult terms or constructions are footnoted with a concise explanation of the problem and references to the literature on it. Nissinen is responsible for the Akkadian documents that form most of the collection; Seow contributes the chapter on West Semitic sources, and Ritner the one on the Report of Wenamon. In addition to its obvious value for the study of prophecy, the collection contains several gems for scholars of ritual and cultural studies, such as Mari Letters 7, 8, 22, and 23, which feature a prophet "man-woman," two key omen texts with extensive references to deformities, disability, and illness, and a few Babylonian ritual texts. Supporting matter includes chronological tables of Egyptian, Syrian, and Mesopotamian kings from 1850–500 B.C.E., and maps of the locations mentioned in the Mari letters, and of the Assyrian Empire. In addition to its bibliography and index, the book contains a glossary of figures, locations, and key terms mentioned in the documents.

In keeping with the Society of Biblical Literature's Writings from the Ancient World series, the book makes the texts themselves accessible and avoids, in the introductions, excessive scholarly interpretation that might easily become dated. Introductions to each chapter describe the archaeological find, the approximate dates and locations of the documents, and the principles of selection employed by the editors. In addition, the introductions comment on the social location of prophecy as reflected in a particular set of documents and offer some comparisons to prophecy elsewhere in the Ancient Near East. For example, Nissinen's introduction to the Mari Letters points out that this collection does not have a single term for "prophecy" but rather a range of divinatory practices and performers. In particular, a neat distinction between dreams and prophecies cannot be maintained, argues Nissinen, although prophets sometimes report dreams. Nissinen nevertheless includes cases that are hard to categorize. He then places prophecy as one, and not the most important, of a variety of divinatory practices at Mari and further specifies its social function of support for the king and instructions for temple cults. This even-handed approach is typical of the chapter introductions: the major scholarly discussions are referenced, and the author clearly positions himself and offers his conclusions, but Nissinen and his colleagues do not use their own positions as a principle of editorial selection. For the reader who wants to delve more deeply into the scholarship, the appropriate references are at hand. Informative but unintrusive, the chapter introductions aid understanding of the documents and the book's own durability.

In his introduction to the collection, Nissinen discusses two major issues in the...