Papers

Professor John Rogerson (Sheffield): Arthur Samuel Peake and the Beginnings of the Society for Old Testament Study

Professor Lyn Bechtel (Cwm Penmachno): Is There a Feminist-Like Theology in the Book of Genesis?

Dr James McKeown (Belfast): Genesis among the Exiles

Dr Duncan Burns (Flayosc): Putting the Cult of Ugarit on the Map: Incorporating Archaeological Data into the Study of the Ugaritic Texts

Professor Tryggve Mettinger (Lund): The Eden Narrative: Literary and Religio-historical Observations

Professor E.C. John (Bangalore): Reading the Old Testament from a Dalit Perspective

Dr Ian Young (Sydney): ‘Late’ Language, Loanwords and Linguistic Dating of Biblical Books

Professor Mario Liverani (Rome): The Chronology of the Biblical Fairy-Tale

Professor Carmel McCarthy (Dublin): ‘The Word is Very Near to You’: Reflection on BHQ Deuteronomy

Dr James Linville (Lethbridge): Landscaping the Heavenly Temple in Amos

Abstracts

Professor John Rogerson (Sheffield): Arthur Samuel Peake and the Beginnings of the Society for Old Testament Study

A.S. Peake was a founder member of the Society and between 1919 and his death in 1929 played a major part in establishing it as a recognizable force in the field of Old Testament Studies. Based largely upon unpublished correspondence between Peake and the Society’s first secretary, T.H. Robinson, the paper outlined Peake’s importance to Robinson as a mentor and advisor, as well as his crucial role in the following areas: the editing and publication of The People and the Book, the rapprochement with German scholarship after the First World War and the Society’s support for the Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, and the question of the Society’s involvement with the University Extension Movement. For all of this time Peake was suffering from a hydatid cyst on his liver which caused anaemia and tiredness. His devotion to the Society’s affairs was therefore all the more remarkable. After Peake’s death Robinson wrote ‘to describe his connection with the Society would almost be to write its history’.

Professor Lyn Bechtel (Cwm Penmachno): Is There a Feminist-Like Theology in the Book of Genesis?

There has been a call among feminists of the Hebrew Bible for a ‘feminist biblical theology’, a theology of resistance and advocacy, which is grounded in the assumptions of group-orientation. Since the definition of biblical feminism has changed, the paper began by outlining the characteristics of a feminist biblical theology. The Hebrew Bible has conventionally been read as if ancient Israel has only one uniform, non-conflictual Yahwist theology, namely deuteronomic theology. However, the paper contended that there are two conflicting Yahwist theologies: what can be called genesis theology (found in Genesis, Ruth, Job, and Ecclesiastes) and deuteronomic theology (found in the rest of the books). The genesis theology may be seen as a Yahwist theology of resistance that forms the foundation of a mature understanding of how life and the divine function, that encourages people to question and think critically, that lacks a propensity for dualistic thinking, and that critiques and challenges many of the assumptions of deuteronomic theology. However, if genesis theology is a theology of resistance that confronts the doctrine of deuteronomic theology, then the characteristics of deuteronomic theology that are being contested need to be understood. Finally, the paper interpreted the Genesis 1–3 myths and proposed that this theology qualifies as a feminist-like biblical theology.

Dr James McKeown (Belfast): Genesis among the Exiles

Most scholars agree that it is highly probable that the book of Ezekiel is aware of and alludes to the blessing of Judah by Jacob in Genesis 49:8-12. The main allusion is in Ezekiel 19 where the themes of the Genesis passage are revisited with a high degree of shared vocabulary. Another alleged allusion to Genesis is found in Ezekiel 21:27 (Heb 32) which looks forward to one who will come after the demise of Zedekiah. This is possibly an allusion to the promise of one who would come, to whom would be the obedience of the nations, in Genesis 49:10. Obviously the blessing in Genesis is intended as a message of hope with its focus on the dominance and authority of the tribe of Judah, but in Ezekiel it is clearly part of an oracle of judgment. Thus the one to come (Genesis 49:10) is, according to Ezekiel, none other than Nebuchadnezzar. The future envisaged in the Judah blessing is one of a dominant Judah holding the enemy by the throat (or neck). For Ezekiel to give this tradition a messianic application would suggest the continued supremacy of Judah and future kings of the same calibre as those who had already gone into exile. Ezekiel, however, seems to have envisaged the end of this kind of kingship. He disapproved of the Judean monarchs and he believed that the sceptre was now about to depart from Judah and would be wielded by Nebuchadnezzar, whom he describes as ‘King of Kings’ (26:7). Although some passages in the book of Ezekiel mention a future Davidic ruler, he is not described in triumphalistic terms. He is described as one who would not promote the interests of Judah but would unite all Israel in a way that would blur the distinction between Judah and Ephraim.

Dr Duncan Burns (Flayosc): Putting the Cult of Ugarit on the Map: Incorporating Archaeological Data into the Study of the Ugaritic Texts

This paper offered a broad-brush summary of a doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Sheffield in 2002. The paper identified a number of pervasive tendencies — recurring assumptions and methodological principles — that have contributed to a limited appreciation of the ‘religion’ (singular!) of Ugarit, and argued that a revised interpretative agenda and method could help in the formulation of a more satisfactory reconstruction of the ancient Ugaritic cult. Recognising that the unconditional preferring of textual evidence over archaeological data is the most significant of these pervasive tendencies, the paper advocated a way of incorporating textual and non-textual evidence. The reconnection of the Ugaritic texts with their find-site information raises the possibility of recovering ancient archiving techniques, and with it a way of identifying nuances in the physical distribution of the textual corpus. The creation of a database of Ugaritic cult terminology was explained and tentative findings offered. The provisional conclusion was that while a good deal of commonality existed between the texts discovered in the ‘House of the High Priest’ and the Royal Palace, the texts from the ‘House of the Hurrian Priest’ display a level of distinctiveness that hints at some kind of religious plurality. Further work is needed to flesh out this provisional finding.

Professor Tryggve Mettinger (Lund): The Eden Narrative: Literary and Religio-historical Observations

What is the theme of the Eden Narrative? In contrast to previous research, it was argued that a divine test of the first humans is the subject and that disobedience to the commandment and the ensuing consequences constitutes the theme of the Eden Narrative. This understanding is based on a narratological analysis and on a thematic discussion. Both special trees in Eden are important: the tree of knowledge as the test case and the tree of life as the potential reward. The genre is defined as myth, and a functionalist analysis is suggested as a worthwhile possibility. A traditio-historical analysis retrieves an ‘Adamic myth’ behind Ezekiel 28. The changes made by the Eden Poet serve to highlight his theme. Even this early Adamic myth contained wisdom and immortality. Israel shared with Mesopotamia (Adapa, Gilgamesh) the notion of wisdom and immortality as constituting divine prerogatives, marking out an ontological boundary between the divine and human spheres. Sound paradisiacal forestry requires a garden with two special trees, symbolizing the two divine prerogatives. Ideas of an original one-tree narrative do not make sense. The Eden Narrative dates from late, post-exilic times.

Professor E.C. John (Bangalore): Reading the Old Testament from a Dalit Perspective

The word ‘Dalit’ has become current in India in recent decades, standing for such British colonial period terms as ‘depressed classes’ or ‘scheduled castes’, the so-called ‘Untouchables’. Latin American scholars have drawn upon the theme of the poor in the Old Testament, but the special situation in India is that the Dalits are not only poor but also have the caste stigma of being regarded as untouchables. Strangely enough, even if they are converts to Christianity, as many of them are, the stigma does not disappear and discrimination is still practised. Much standard Old Testament interpretation is rejected by Dalit Christians because it is felt to be too partial in its understanding and oblivious to what the Old Testament says about the poor and the oppressed. A careful examination of the legal texts, the pre-exilic prophets, Psalms and Wisdom literature shows that the subject of the poor and oppressed is a major theme. Although the Exodus theme is often also brought to bear in such discussions, it is problematic in view of the aspects of ‘holy war’ and conquest. Most productive are texts which speak of all humans being in the image of God and of those who were not ‘my people’ now becoming such, as well as the language of the psalms of individual lament. A closer look at the context of the many references to the poor and the oppressed in the Old Testament, especially in the pre-exilic prophets, may prompt the careful reader to raise questions such as ‘How and why did some become poor in the first instance?’, ‘How are they being treated by the powerful and the rich?’, and ‘What roles are played by the kings and rulers, supposedly the guardians of justice, or what roles are they expected to play?’ The contexts of the texts in question show unequivocally that poverty is against the justice of God.

Dr Ian Young (Sydney): ‘Late’ Language, Loanwords and Linguistic Dating of Biblical Books

Scholars have commonly suggested that ‘Early Biblical Hebrew’ (EBH), as found, say, in the Pentateuch or Joshua–Kings, is pre-exilic Hebrew, while ‘Late Biblical Hebrew’ (LBH), as found in Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah and Chronicles, is post-exilic. However, virtually all the prominent features of LBH are also found in EBH, just to a lesser degree, and EBH texts regularly exhibit an accumulation of LBH features, just a lower number than the core LBH texts. If LBH features really are ‘late’, then all the biblical texts, whether EBH or LBH, are post-exilic. If, rather, it is the degree of accumulation of LBH features which distinguishes LBH from EBH, then various post-exilic texts ranging from Zechariah 1–8 to the Qumran Pesher Habakkuk are in EBH. The existence of most LBH features in the pre-exilic period indicates further that texts with an accumulation of LBH features could have been produced early. EBH and LBH are not successive chronological phases, but co-existing styles of Hebrew: conservative and non-conservative. The distribution of Persian loanwords does not prop up the old chronological model. People of Iranian origin were near neighbours of Judah in the pre-exilic period. Various post-exilic texts avoid using Persian words. Finally scholars have presupposed that Persian loanwords cannot be found in EBH texts, and likely occurrences are explained away. It is therefore simply a circular argument to then claim significance for the fact that no Persian words are found in EBH texts.

Professor Mario Liverani (Rome): The Chronology of the Biblical Fairy-Tale

In the ongoing debate about the chronology of Ancient Israel, it seems to be taken for granted that the archaeological chronology can shift (from high to low) but the biblical chronology cannot. Consequently, the adoption of one or another solution brings about a change in the attribution of the material remains to one or another king. The entire biblical system of dates and synchronisms, however, presents many minor and major inconsistencies that are usually ‘corrected’ in order to restore a postulated original and consistent archetype. But the presence of numbers of clearly fairy-tale nature (especially the ‘seventh year’ plus the ‘forty years’ motif) shows that some of the individual numbers go back to literary sources devoid of chronological exactness. The entire system is an imperfect construct, based on sources of different nature and reliability, and our task should be to evaluate the possible sources, and not to better accommodate the extant numbers. In addition, the standard of the deuteronomistic scholars cannot have been much higher than that of the contemporary Babylonian scribes. An analysis of their habits in treating time distances in the Babylonian past, and in treating synchronisms between Assyria and Babylonia, shows that such standard was quite poor, for a number of reasons. It is suggested that the biblical attempt to build up a coherent and precise system goes back to a rather late (Hellenistic) date, when standards had become higher but original sources were no longer available. Consequently the suggestion is advanced, to make use of a ‘proto-historical’ procedure, based on archaeological chronology plus external synchronisms, before entering the biblical dates in the picture. It seems that it is possible to accommodate the entire sequence (including the assumed ‘United Kingdom’) after Sheshonq’s raid, and that a sound inner chronology can start for Israel not earlier than the late ninth century, and for Judah not earlier than the mid-eighth century, when the entire Mediterranean basin entered a properly ‘historical’ era.

Professor Carmel McCarthy (Dublin): ‘The Word is Very Near to You’: Reflection on BHQ Deuteronomy

In the thirty to forty years between the publication of Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia in 1967/77 and that of Biblia Hebraica Quinta Deuteronomy in 2007, three significant developments illustrate some of the major differences between the two editions with respect to the quality of textual sources and resources: (1) BHQ is based on entirely new colour photographs taken in Leningrad in 1990 by the Claremont Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center; (2) new and better editions of the versions have been published since BHS first appeared; (3) the final publication of all the textual discoveries from the Judaean Desert in both microfiche and textual editions. As well as a diplomatic presentation of the biblical text of the Leningrad manuscript, the Masorah magna and parva of M^L are also represented diplomatically, with obvious scribal errors indicated in the critical apparatus. With well over two thousand entries in the critical apparatus, only a tiny selection was chosen in this paper for illustrative purposes. One of the key new features of BHQ regarding text-critical cases in the apparatus is the featuring of all the relevant evidence for each case. In the four earlier Biblia Hebraica editions only variants were cited in the apparatus, thereby giving a visual impression that automatically screened out the fact that in many cases there were more witnesses in agreement with M than in disagreement. The final section of the paper focused on issues specific to Deuteronomy: (1) its formulaic nature, and the consequent propensity to assimilation and harmonization of passages; (2) the contribution of tefillin and mezuzot readings (included in the BHQ apparatus on a selective basis, particularly when they are alone among the witnesses in offering a Hebrew text as a variant); (3) the special format for presenting the Song of Moses (recognizing the impossibility of representing diplomatically the eccentric arrangement of M^L, the layout incorporated in BHQ follows the majority tradition for the copying of the Song of Moses in a seventy-line stichographic format, preceded and followed by a prose introduction and epilogue of six lines each, in accordance with the rubrics prescribed in the Masseket Soferim).

Dr James Linville (Lethbridge): Landscaping the Heavenly Temple in Amos

The poetic associations between the earthy and heavenly temples in Amos (with some references to other prophetic books) were explored to illustrate that in the poetic landscape the line between heaven and earth is often blurred or permeable. The prophetic character, as mediator between humanity and the divine, can enter the heavenly throne room, or have visions of the deity in an earthly temple. In Amos, apparent descriptions of the natural world often carry ritual or cosmic imagery, and this intensifies as the book continues. Some passages, such as Amos 9:1-2, implicate the prophetic character in the destruction of the cosmos through the commandment to assist in the destruction of the temple. It was argued that by poetically transferring the natural world to the heavenly sphere, the mythic transformations of the cosmos can be effected and a new creation be accomplished.

[index of past meetings]