La disparition du dieu dans la Bible et les mythologie hittites: Essai anthropologique by Hélène Nutkowicz and Michel Mazoyer (review)

The Kubaba Association is an affiliation of Parisian scholars committed to publishing "populist surveys for public universities interested in investigating the connections between ancient and modern civilizations." The association takes its name from an ancient Near Eastern goddess of magic and fertility; its mission is to publish educational material focused on interdisciplinary rapprochements between "separate cultures, languages and beliefs" (cited from the vision statement at http://kubaba.univ-paris1.fr/).

Overall, this is a good, serviceable introduction to a very important notion in ancient Near Eastern religious thought. These are separate survey articles nominally juxtaposed. The first is an introduction to and translation of the Hittite Telipinu myth by Mazoyer (the president of Kubaba and author of "Le mythe de Telipinu et les rituels du Kizzuwatna," in La Cilicie: Espaces et pouvoirs locaux [ed. É. Jean et al.; Varia Anatolica 13; Paris: De Boccard, 2001] 115-22—an essay enthusiastically received by Jared L. Miller in his Studies in the Origins, Development, and Interpretation of the Kizzuwatna Rituals [Studien zu den Boğazköy-Texten 46; Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004] 456). The second is an essay on the "disappearing deity" motif by Nutkowicz, to which she appends a substantive note on the deus absconditus notion in ancient Egypt, focusing on the "absence-renewal" hieroglyph of the kpr scarab ("dung-beetle").

Working from an amalgated text, M.'s essay on the "Disappearance of Telipinu" (CTH 324 [Catalogue des textes hittites] [Paris: Klincksieck, 1971]; Gary Beckman prefers to call it the "Wrath of Telipinu" in The Context of Scripture [ed. William W. Hallo; 3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 1997–2002] 1:151-55) shows how this myth helped Anatolians address some rather difficult socioeconomic questions. For example: What causes famine, pestilence, and death if not the disappearance of the deity responsible for keeping them away? What triggers the god's decision to leave his/her post? Is it anger, and if so, can this anger be measured (i.e., where "minor irritation" < "full-blown wrath")? Where does the deity go when he/she disappears? What ritual(s) help facilitate his/her return? Walking the reader through these questions, M. shows how "the theme of the disappearing god is a key element of Hittite religion. It furnishes an explanation for the organization of the pantheon and a 'philosophical' explanation for the order of the world. . . . An agrarian deity at the beginning, Telipinu returns" from his sabbatical "endowed with a new function: creator god," thereby ushering in the "dawn" of a new era "founded on fecundity, prosperity, and peace" (p. 40).

Nutkowicz's essay, on the other hand, lists the primary verbs in Tanak signifying various degrees and types of divine absentia: ("to hide," Gen 3:10), ("to conceal," Exod 2:2), ("to conceal," Job 6:10), ("to hide," Isa 2:10), ("to shut," 1 Sam 12:3), ("to hide," Ps 10:11), the last of which sometimes occurs with , ("face[s]") to describe the deus absconditus. In addition, she lists other verbs referencing what writers imagine to be divine "sleep" (, Ps 44:24; 1 Kgs 18:27), "forgetfulness" (, Ps 10:11), "abandonment" (, Lam 5:20; Isa 54:7; , Ps 27:9), "rejection" (, Isa 41:9), "silence" (, Isa 1:15; N.B. , "to be deaf," does not appear in this verse, contra the reference on p. 94), even "detestation" (, Ps 89:39). After this she rather conservatively concludes that the Hebrew deity "is never truly absent, but can hide his face from humanity, taking as long as he wants to decide whether to turn away or return. His covenant is never called into question" because it is "the consequence of divine choice and the revealed word. God does not abandon men, but returns them to himself in freedom. Thus he appears to the individual, haunted by the divine absence, to start his/her search, but...