The Bible in the Light of Cuneiform Literature: Scripture in Context III (review)

Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 130 Reviews THE BIBLE IN THE LIGHT OF CUNEIFORM LITERATURE: SCRIPTURE IN CONTEXT III. William W. Hallo, Bruce William Jones, and Gerald L. Mattingly, eds. Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies 8. pp. xii + 486. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1990. Cloth, $89.95. This volume is the third to be produced from the NEH seminars conducted by Professor Hallo in the area of comparative studies. The seminar was held during the summer of 1987. As in the previous volumes, Hallo offers an introductory article of broad scope. Although the participants in the course all have earned Ph.D.'s, they are not necessarily specialists in the field in which they are writing. Though their research has been guided skillfully, they lack their mentor's fluency with the textual material, cultures, and languages of the ancient world. Scholars will find three or four of the articles to be of enduring value. Some assume the reader to be a sophisticated specialist familiar with the original languages as well as the primary and secondary literature to which reference is made; others remind the reader of a plot as basic as that of the Gilgamesh Epic as though it might be unknown. Unfortunately, the book's price ($89.95) will prevent many from adding it to their personal libraries. Because the scope of this review will not allow for detailed critique of each article, a summary and a few comments on each will have to suffice. Hallo's article, "Compare and Contrast: The Contextual Approach to Biblical Literature," discusses scholars' inclinations to focus on either the similarities between the Bible and ancient Near Eastern Literature or the differences. As in the past, he defends a cross-cultural, synthetic approach, which he refers to as the Contextual Approach. Beginning with a lexical analysis of the various Akkadian words for "image," Edward M. Curtis ("Images in Mesopotamia and the Bible: A Comparative Study") summarizes the kinds of images which existed in the ancient Near East, how they were made and used, their importance in the cultus, and the practice of infusing life into them. This is compared to the Israelite understanding of idols. Curtis concludes that the Israelites were not ignorant of their neighbors' view. In "Devils, Demons, and Disease: Folklore in Ancient Near Eastern Rites of Atonement," Tom Nash presents as his thesis that "a close examination of Israelite and Mesopotamian atonement rituals reveals notable similarities in pattern and motif, the parallels suggesting a common source in oral tradition" (p. 58). While he brings much pertinent data to light, in the end the alleged similarities remain undemonstrated and unconvincing. Hebrew Studies 33 (1992) 131 Reviews Perhaps the most valuable, and certainly the lengthiest, contribution in the book is made by Marilyn Katz in "Problems of Sacrifice in Ancient Cultures." Her masterful study of the theory and practice of sacrifice in Mesopotamia, Israel, and Greece includes a detailed examination of scholarly opinion regarding the Hebrew kpr. She demonstrates fluency in the secondary literature and insight into ancient cultures. This article should become a standard for future studies in this area. Joseph Prentiss offers a comparative study of the sacrifice of Isaac, which is basically an examination of the evidence for the practice of human sacrifice in the Near East. He finds the data insufficient to reach firm conclusions . Leland Wilshire's article, "Jerusalem as the 'Servant City' in Isaiah 40-66," recounts the well-known examples of a god punishing his own city. This reviewer did not find the parallels drawn to the treatment of Jerusalem in Isaiah very convincing. Michael Orth accepts the identification of the book of Jonah with Menippean satire. The author concludes that the narrator of Jonah does not understand his own irony. John Brug's treatment of acrostics is very informative, examining the differences between sequence acrostics and message acrostics and how each of them is used in Akkadian, biblical, and Egyptian literatures. Gerald Mattingly ("The Pious Sufferer: Mesopotamia's Traditional Theodicy and Job's Counselors") studies the solutions to suffering experienced by pious individuals in major Mesopotamian texts. Although Job's skepticism makes him unique, like his Mesopotamian counterparts he was willing to challenge the theological system...