Papers

At Devonshire Hall, University of Leeds, 3-5 January, 2001

Professor Michael Goulder (Birmingham): ‘My Servant Jehoiachin’ (Presidential Paper)

Professor John Sawyer (Lancaster): ‘The Prophet of Consolation: Isaiah in the History of Judaism’

Dr Mary Mills (London): ‘Moral Perspectives in Old Testament Narrative’

Dr Eric Christianson (Chester): ‘A Fistful of Shekels: The Problem of Violence in Judges’

Dr Walter Moberly (Durham): ‘Divinity, Deception and Death: The Story of Micaiah ben Imlah’

Professor Lester Grabbe (Hull): ‘The Hebrew Bible and the Social Sciences: Who is Kidding Whom?’

Professor W.G. Lambert (Birmingham): ‘Babylonian Monotheism’

Abstracts

Professor Michael Goulder (Birmingham): ‘Behold my Servant Jehoiachin’ (Presidential Address)

King Jehoiachin’s life resembles that implied of Isaiah’s Servant, so often a term for the king. He grew up as a crown prince in Jerusalem, ‘before Yahweh as a tender plant’. It was not he who broke the vassal-treaty: ‘he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth’. In 597 BCE he was arrested, sentenced and deported: ‘from oppression and judgment he was taken away’. He was almost certainly flogged: ‘he was wounded … by his stripes’. Jeremiah despised him: ‘he was despised and we esteemed him not’. He spent 37 years in a Babylonian prison: ‘cut off from the land of the living … [Nebuchadnezzar] appointed his grave with the wicked’. He was released in 561 by Amel-Marduk, and promoted over other kings: ‘my servant shall be exalted; kings shall shut their mouths because of him’. This news caused amazement in Jerusalem: ‘who has believed that which we have heard?’

Professor John Sawyer (Lancaster): ‘The Prophet of Consolation: Isaiah in the History of Judaism’

Isaiah has always been a favourite text for Jews as well as Christians. Already in Kings and Chronicles Isaiah is more prominent than any of the other Writing Prophets. The same applies to Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament, while in the rabbinic literature Isaiah is frequently compared to Moses and is uniquely the subject of a rich series of legends about his martyrdom. His reputation as the prophet who, more than any other, castigated his people for their stubbornness and disobedience, was familiar in Jewish tradition as well as in Christian polemic (where it had tragic consequences). But in Jewish literature, from Ben Sira on, Isaiah acts predominantly as the prophet of consolation. In the lectionary almost one third of the 54 weekly sabbath readings from the prophets are from Isaiah, including the seven ‘consolation readings’ from chapters 40-­66 read on the sabbaths following the Fast on the Ninth of Ab. Prayers to be said in a house of mourning conclude with three comforting passages from Isaiah too (66:13; 60:19; 25:8). His role in modern Zionism is another illustration where some of Isaiah’s prophecies of peace, security and a return to Zion were understood by people who had lived for centuries under persecution and in exile, to be on the point of fulfilment. The political implications of some Jewish religious radical interpretations (e.g. 41:15, 27; 52:1) need careful analysis, not only by historians, but also by biblical scholars aware of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the texts they handle.

Dr Mary Mills (London): ‘Moral Perspectives in Old Testament Narrative’

The purpose of this paper was to draw on Old Testament stories in order to examine the breadth of moral vision within this collection of texts. The foundational level of this enterprise is the recognition that ‘morality’ is a term with a wide range of meaning. It is not synonymous with an approach to ethical behaviour, which would list ‘Dos’ and ‘Don’ts’, and which would seek substantiation for such rules in a surface-level reading of Old Testament material. In this definition, morality is concerned with the order of relationships between cosmos, community and person. The paper fell into four stages. Stage 1 set the scene in terms of moral perspectives and of narrative structures. Stage 2 moved into the first case study, that of the topic of Insiders and Outsiders. This topic is one of the major themes to emerge from Old Testament narratives and can be divided into relations between minority group and host culture on the one hand and relations within family groups on the other. In this paper it was the first of these parts which was explored, with reference to the stories of Daniel, Esther and Joseph. Stage 3 took up the second case study, that of the use of place and space to impart a vision of moral order. This topic was explored in relation to the texts of Genesis 3-­11 and to the book of Job. Stage 4 rounded off the paper by drawing attention to one issue which arises from the case studies undertaken above. This is the centrality of the theme of boundary marking and boundary crossing to the construction of moral meaning within the texts.

Dr Eric Christianson (Chester): ‘A Fistful of Shekels: The Problem of Violence in Judges’

In the book of Judges, violence is a typical means by which Yahweh orchestrates justice. It becomes the end for the good (such as Jephthah’s daughter), the bad (such as enemy Sisera) and the ugly (such as the thoroughly unpleasant Abimelech). Just as Judges asks the question, ‘Who is going to lead Israel?’, it also implicitly questions the value of the means by which Israel shall be led. Likewise, the American Western film genre creates a dialogue about violence: who may use it and when. It is also about access to the land and its governance. These mutual concerns were explored in a developed comparison between the Ehud narrative (Judges 3:12-30) and Western films, particularly those of Clint Eastwood. The paper argued that Judges presents a stylised violence that functions to romanticize and entertain. Ehud becomes an idealistic focus through the allocation of rhetoric to his violent act as well as his establishment as a hero in the form of a witty, tough-talking monolith. The conclusion explored some of the hero-making processes of the Western film genre as well as the way that process has been recently questioned through film, and light was thereby shed on the ideological presentation of violence in the Ehud story.

Dr Walter Moberly (Durham): ‘Divinity, Deception and Death: The Story of Micaiah ben Imlah’

Conventional readings of 1 Kings 22:1-38 usually find Micaiah’s second vision, in which Yahweh commissions a lying spirit to deceive Ahab so that he falls at Ramoth-gilead, to be morally and religiously problematic. This fresh reading of the text suggests that the conventional reading may be a misreading. Five main elements emerge. First, Ahab is self-willed in wanting to capture Ramoth-gilead, and the 400 court prophets, aware of the king’s wishes, self-servingly tell him what he wants to hear. Secondly, although Micaiah’s initial mocking of Ahab provokes a possible greater responsiveness to Micaiah’s warning against going to Ramoth-gilead, Ahab still refuses to listen to Micaiah. Thirdly, Micaiah’s second vision is a renewed warning to Ahab; it functions in a way analogous to Nathan’s parable, an ironic recasting of the situation — the heavenly court is the counterpart to the earthly court — so that its reality may better be realized. Fourthly, Zedekiah’s abusive treatment of Micaiah and Ahab’s cowardly ruse in battle show how close Micaiah came to persuading Ahab. Finally, a heuristic key to the story is an understanding of prophecy as seeking repentance and validated by integrity as set out in the book of Jeremiah.

Professor Lester Grabbe (Hull): ‘The Hebrew Bible and the Social Sciences: Who is Kidding Whom?’

On the one hand this paper welcomed the use of the social sciences to leaven biblical study and open up new possibilities of exploration and understanding. On the other hand, he pointed out the dangers of uncritical use of social-scientific views and of calling sociological what were really theological judgements. He illustrated these observations by four extended examples, from Amos, Nehemiah, the supposed urban/rural opposition, and a review of one of his own books. He concluded with two summary points: (1) social-scientific models are simply theories to be tested against the biblical and other data, not conclusions to be imposed on the sources; and (2) biblical scholars are in the habit of making statements about the text based on theological or ideological bias and calling it sociological analysis.

Professor W.G. Lambert (Birmingham): ‘Babylonian Monotheism?’

Monotheism BC is a sensitive subject to many Old Testament scholars, and they can be satisfied that the claim of H.J. Breasted (and S. Freud) that the religion of the ‘heretical’ Pharaoh Akhenaton was monotheistic is not accepted at face value by most Egyptologists. But a similar claim has been made within Assyriology for Marduk, city god of Babylon. In 1902 Friedrich Delitzsch (son of Franz Delitzsch, the Old Testament commentator), in an important lecture, slipped in the assertion that enlightened Babylonians believed that all the major Babylonian gods were merely aspects of Marduk, and so anticipated biblical monotheism. A furious controversy resulted from this and other assertions, with no agreed conclusions. The basis for the assertion was a Late Babylonian tablet published by T.G. Pinches in the Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute for 1896, which indeed asserts that thirteen gods are to be identified as aspects of Marduk. The tablet has to be considered in the light of the development of Sumero-Babylonian religion generally. The gods were deified aspects of nature as seen and understood, but with human attributes. In Sumer each city was religiously independent, but a system embracing the whole country had been worked out: a hierarchy of gods generally accepted. Towards the end of the third millennium a top committee of gods appeared: An, Enlil and Enki, joined at times by the Mother Goddess. The other gods were worked into a clan system based on three generations, as in a normal human family, with divine servants of lower rank. This system was passed down to the second millennium, but, when Hammurabi made Babylon the political capital of the whole land, the city god of Babylon, Marduk, was promoted from obscurity to be a ‘great god’ (among other great gods). The political supremacy of Babylon continued long after Hammurabi and pressure no doubt built up to promote Marduk further in the pantheon, but only in the time of Nebuchadnezzar I (1126-1104 BC) were circumstances propitious and Marduk was officially declared ‘king of the gods’. This state continued into the first millennium, with the only change that Marduk’s son Nabu (Nebo) then rose to virtual equality with his father. Enlil, who wielded most power from the old committee, had in effect been demoted. The theologians had been equating similar gods for a long time in the Babylonian tradition, since the original city-state system started with a huge total of seemingly different gods. Marduk’s son Nabu, for example, had been equated at one time with Tutu, patron god of the small city Borsippa, close to Babylon, but later Marduk was equated with Tutu. Thus equating gods was an established custom for theologians, and the list published by Pinches is such a thing, but, by equating the major gods of the pantheon with Marduk, it was indeed asserting what can legitimately be called ‘monotheism’. The list is not now complete, but not much is missing, and one must conclude that demons were presumably not included in such listings, nor goddesses, since Marduk was the prime demon chaser, and had a wife Zarpanitum. However, medieval Christianity acknowledged a triune god, angels and the devil, but ‘monotheistic’ is applied to it, so it cannot be withheld from the Late Babylonian list. Confirmation comes from a long hymn of praise to Marduk of which two small fragments were previously known, but recently a large piece has been discovered, and the major male members of the pantheon are called ‘names’ of Marduk, and their attributes have become his. This is clearly an inner-Babylonian development, neither influencing nor influenced by the religion of Israel.