Ancient Israel - Another World Out There

so as I start today one of the changes to maybe I said this before but in terms of background for how this classes worked I've taught it for a dozen years maybe two years ago I completely renovated it and this was when I moved to this history that I've been using this is the third year and it's when I decided to use this book by Carl van der toorn which is new to it it's only from 2007 I think anyway guys an amazing scholar really interesting guys now the president of the University of Amsterdam he went the administrative route finally so but he wrote this book which I thought was going to be some kind of research project on scribes and when I actually picked the thing up and read the introduction I saw him describing what he saw as an introduction to the Bible and he wanted to get you started by thinking about the people who wrote it and so yeah so I wanted that to be part of the class but what I had done before was I put all the history first kind of get you through a framework for it then there was a segment in the middle where we looked at this business of scribal culture and then at the end I had these other topics and kind of opened the whole class up to just to think about big issues some of which are it's not inspired by the Bible since that stuff is just interesting but what I change this time is I kept the books but I I've every class session that we're doing is new I'm everything I've prepared i've prepared just for you are you glad so in terms of the structure i decided to take the historical framework and make it stretch for the whole class and then to stick sections sort of lard them in you know like making a Greek pastry or something bits about scribal culture bits about just other stuff going on in ancient Israel so today was one of those days finally to say today is is the first of these topics where I just wanted to open it up a bit kind of pause in terms of moving forward in time you don't have to think where it is professor phlegm intend us to think about this in terms of time you can see that in biblical terms it's also related to Genesis but part of what I'm trying to do is just to get you to step back and think further about Israel as part of a larger world that includes writing cultures you know empires Kings from that have nothing to do with Israel directly and yet if you want to study ancient Israel if you want to study the Bible as one part of ancient Israel then you're badly handicapped if you aren't equipped to realize that it's part of this broader culture with all this other evidence so I called today's class something like another world and and my idea was there's another world out there that I want you to begin to see and in this case I'm after especially the world that produced this mass of written evidence the most common scholarly category for talking about the region is Mesopotamia so can I make this go away and try to you know so by the by I think I brought it along this is a dry erase marker at least so I'm told so thanks mark so in theory I can write the word Mesopotamia on this board and it won't stay here through every future class alright hey right is there an eraser I just have to do this look at that all right yeah that's worth the applause okay so just basics right so so I gave you a reading for today I did I hope you got to it it's the story of a character named a depe but the in order to give you a sense of what you're actually what you're looking at this is a literature that's actually from Babylonia the world of ancient Babylon in its kingdom which is Babylon is very close to modern Baghdad and so you know Saddam Hussein when he was the center of everybody's attention was really into laying claim to the heritage of the culture and the kingdom of Babylon and it worked because it was right there you know right by his capital so Babylon would be part of Mesopotamia which is the land of the two rivers which are and I can write all these things by my sole right though so the Tigris is the more northern one and the Euphrates is the more southern wind and they both come out of the mountains in Turkey and the Euphrates kind of drops down into Syria not that far from the Mediterranean Sea and then kind of flows all the way across to the Persian Gulf and and the Tigris is more to the east and so they form a kind of a pocket of lowlands that ended up being one of the first places of building a big cities and so you know this area around Babylon became the cultural center of or one of the great cultural centers of the ancient world and the writing system that was the norm was this cuneiform that I mentioned before so this is the framework for looking at this story the tale of a depe and so what I'll do is I'm going to start us with atif ah and I want you to I hope you've had a chance to look at it that you had this short assignment and we'll put it up on the screen in a second not yet Mari and and I have some questions for you get your thoughts on this and then I'm gonna pull out the Bible which I forgot to think of preparing in advance so I have it with me but this why Mari is gonna help me with this other projection let me read for you what I wrote down as the goal for today's class all right this is what I want to accomplish in the next hour to shift your sense of Israel and the Bible as unlike the peoples and cultures around them because of monotheism I'll read this again and to prepare you to see Israel as integrated into a larger culture that includes religion any distinct traits must be defined against this common ground any distinct traits must be defined against this common ground so I'll read it again to shift your sense of Israel and the Bible as unlike the peoples and cultures around them do you know what I mean by that I mean again I don't know what you individually all think but so far as ancient Israel mostly comes to people through the medium of the Bible or even of archaeology in a sort of popular sort of way then the first thing you think about ancient Israel's that it's not like its neighbor and I'm not trying to make you completely give up the sense and think of Israel is exactly the same but I do absolutely mean to get you to realize to what extent Israel is embedded in a larger culture and that larger culture is something that you probably have not known about coming into the class you might know more or less about Israel through the Bible but the the Bible is so concerned to make sure you understand Israel either as unlike everybody else or at least as supposed to be unlike them right but whenever Israel is like everybody else that's a bad sign religiously right that means they're worshipping idols and getting in big trouble with their God so so you think well anytime they're doing something bad it's a kind of accident they've sort of slipped they're essentially unlike but they've had a little too much you know they've gotten to the wrong parties or something you know they too much contact with the natives but for this class I want you to try on another way of thinking about the culture of Israel to get you to think of of Israel as as I put it in the rest of the statement as integrated into a larger culture including religion that even religiously the framework for Israel's religion is built from the same stuff as the larger culture so the rest of my statement again to shift your sense of Israel in the Bible as unlike the peoples and cultures around them because of monotheism and to prepare you to see Israel as integrated into a larger culture that includes religion any distinct traits and there are distinct traits must be defined against this common ground all right so this is the goal of the day and in order to think about that I'm starting with a specific case and a specific case is a story about this odd guy who gets invited up to heaven if you read the story okay so yeah yeah to shift your sense of Israel and the Bible as unlike the peoples and cultures around them because of monotheism and that that's the biblical sort of sense and to prepare you to see Israel as integrated into a larger culture that includes religion any distinct traits must be defined against this common ground okay yeah thanks so I think I've mentioned this guy I'm gonna lose hang on just one second too late sorry is it irreversible you remember this you have like 10 seconds to get it Alomar 'no i think i mentioned this this is when I told you about Martin Marietta and I said that I said that there's no reference to Israel or any of the peoples of Israel from this place called el-amarna which was that you can just leave it it which is the capital of Akhenaten we had remember we had this conversation so interesting thing about el-amarna which was the capital of Egypt was that considering that they had nothing to do with the KT and this is they speak Egyptian it's like they had their own language and besides they invented hieroglyphs which are much nicer looking than cuneiform anyway why should they need cuneiform and yet they participated in this international language international writing system in order to write letters back and forth to both important Kings that a great distance like the king of Babylon and also just their own vassals who were in their own Empire in what's now sort of Israel Lebanon Syria Jordan a bit and so the thing about having accepting junuh form and Akkadian as a language for writing this diplomatic correspondence they had got some people around who knew this language and amazingly at the archive in Egypt they found this small little cluster of texts that were clearly part of the scribal education written in very good babylonian these are these are people who really knew their language and of these probably the most interesting is the one that I gave you to read and interesting thing about this story is it's known from two different time periods it's known later as well from the time of the Assyrian Empire it's about like the Bible time but those texts are very very badly broken up and so most of the story is known from one tablet that was found at el-amarna and that was broken at the top so if you picture the way they would write so if this might one sheet of notes was a clay tablet and they would write left to right like me all the way down to the end but of course being a clay tablet and not a few paper wouldn't work very well for paper then it's about you know an inch or two thick so they would just keep writing like right around the edge they cut down to here and then down the back except for if you think about it by turning it that way you know starting up here and then just you know writing around the edge and writing down the back it's upside down right so if you read it instead we turn the page this way but they're turning it this way and the reason this matters it can be really practical is that these tablets while they preserved marvelously they don't rot you know you can have 2,000 3,000 4,000 year old texts that are preserved in this clay but the problem is that you don't always well they do get crushed or broken and when they break you don't always find all the pieces and so in this case they found most of that tablet but the top I don't know maybe six eight limes is gone and what that means practically if you're writing this way is that if you're missing the six eight for the first six eight lines of the text what else are you missing the last that's it the last right so you know you've got the concept right so this is peculiar and that you then know the whole middle of the story but you don't know how it started and you don't know how it ended which is especially frustrating if maybe you found this if you were reading it and you think like what were they expecting us to get out of this so now right so we're working from really fragment B I'm making sure I've got this right so everything that's over here on the left is from the later version it's probably six seven hundred years later and a very interesting question is if they change the story so just because it looks like it's got to do with the beginning of the same story we don't know if this one tablet that 700 years old or started exactly this way so what I want to focus on is this one that starts over here so of course the tough thing about that version is that we we start off right in the middle of this conversation of some kind he made ready to speak saying to the south wind Oh south wind something Oh south wind something I will fracture your wing so that whenever else he was gonna say that seems to been the important part right because it then says as soon as he said it the south winds wing was fractured the south wind not having blown for seven days toward the land on ooh who's like the chief god of everything calls his career elaborate and then asked you know what's going on where's the south wind so you could say well how do you know who's talking how do you know what happened before what's you like what's he represent we'll come back maybe you guys have an idea but the story itself is broken but not a lot you know it might be no more than ten lines so a little bit at the top broken maybe only six or seven lines and the way that we know a little bit more about it is that Mesopotamian storytellers like to repeat things when you know so they've set a scene and they say okay now make sure you give orders for so-and-so to save this and then they come back around and they say it and they say it the same way they got the orders so it turns out as time goes by that so this guy he gets his answer right the guy working for the chief god Anu says look a depe son-of-a a-- has fractured the south winds link did you get who a is somebody said it anybody will take a risk yeah go ahead at least in literal terms it almost seems like it yeah I mean at least now of course then you could say does it have to be literal father or can if you sort of our devoted servant can you be called a son but yeah it's defined as a really close relationship but you did everybody get that a is that God so does that mean odd odd opposite God because he is it son of a oh definitely not right that's oh say that again there so think is comparing Hercules and Zeus yeah I mean that would be a scenario where you could actually have a literal son so that I mean that would be a question of whether you're supposed to imagine this sort of human mother divine father which isn't so often the scheme here it could be that it's more it could be that it's not literal in that same way but I it's a good comparison I wouldn't automatically rule it out but at least what you have for sure is something again thinking of Hercules he may not be big and strong but he is somehow specially endowed and that is related to him being called son of this God a ax and a ax maybe not like Zeus has some kind of special relationship with aa depe and we're going to come back to that relationship in a minute because I mean so on who says I just I don't know I can't bear this translation heaven help us I can't picture on a on his hang heaven help it yeah Italy says help or like what and he gets up and he says bring him here of course so then the question is where is Anu well it turns out on who's in heaven which is not a place that humans go normally so this human a depe is hauled up to court in heaven but after you get the orders this got a ax and he's already been called son of a ax says who knows the ways of heaven we better it because that's what he's going to give him advice about sort of has him dressed like he's in mourning which for them would mean you know you tear your garments you don't wash you because out of respect for the dead you don't take care of yourself something like that and then he says you know you're gonna go up to heaven draw near to on his door these two figures it's like gate keeper God's will be there standing at the door when they see you they will ask you well why are you dressed in mourning mourning weeds is the interesting translator Benjamin Foster so he says these two gods disappeared from our land and they they'll say well who are the two gods and he'll say well they're Tom moves and gives you doubt what I think that's pretty funny cuz that's who they are right the two gods were talking to him do you follow this those are the ones he's mourning so they go well we don't feel dead so like why are you treating us like we're dead and so but all of this is just instructions right a is saying let's do this it'll work don't get it so they'll look at each other and laugh and then they'll go tell the Big Cheese God you know I know look I don't know he's funny at least you might want to talk to him so AAA gives him all these instructions and then he also though adds this up here very important when you come before onnu if they proffer you food of death do not eat if they proffer you water of death do not drink and literally what the story says is they will offer you the fruit of death don't eat it they will offer you the water of death don't drink it they will offer you a garment go ahead put it on they will offer you oil go ahead anoint yourself that's literally what it says and then the translator wanted to make it seem like well maybe and then he says don't neglect the instructions I give you hold faster the words that I've spoken and that's a as contribution that's actually all he says for the whole the whole text but it's pretty important because you have to decide what you think of this guy this god yeah so then he goes and so right he goes up to heaven he draws near he does the Thomas Gizzi the joke they seem to go along they look at each other and laugh so then it gets down to a new asking him okay why did you fracture the wing of the south winds so this is where we finally get the the answer to the beginning we have more information about the beginning of the story from this than we do from the broken beginning I was fishing in the depths of the sea for my Master's temple at sea it was like a mirror then the south wind blew up on me and capsized me I spent the rest of the day in my lords house good question even what that's supposed to read in my fury I cursed the wind and so then they I Tommy was and gives me this a look I mean we like him so give him a break I guess saying a favorable word about him to on who on his heart grew calm and then he says why did a a disclosed to a human being something bad of heaven and earth so whatever all that's supposed to mean he says okay what shall we do for him bring him food of life let him eat they brought him food of life he did not eat why wouldn't you pay they brought him water of life he did not drink they brought him a garment he put it on they brought him oil he anointed himself no problem with garment and the oil and then honest tears and laughs at him ah depe why didn't you eat or drink won't you live what I shoot something crazy you know and then it appears that he's gonna say my lord AI told me don't eat don't drink and then the last may be unclear line is take him and return him to the earth if that's the last we have and then it would have just a few lines at the end any question about the story and it's thought it would be worth kind of walking you through basic plot okay what I want to know first thing so you get what out up it does out of it does one thing in this story which is what somebody said raise your hand or say it out loud to either one yeah go ahead he curses the Southwind like so yes he has to go up and talk and stuff like that but if there's one thing out of it does that defines him one thing he does if he breaks the wing of the south wind so what do you learn from that what do you learn about a depe and who he is from that one thing he does yeah okay like I don't know anybody who could get away with that right yeah and I mean it appears at least well so that's a good question he said so he said I mean it suggests he's got power that a normal human being doesn't have and it suggests an abnormal relationship to a ax which is of course good question with abnormal memes exactly but it's a good line of thought to wonder what that suggests about a ax anything else what what what can you add to this or a different angle on it what do you learn about ah depe what do you know about other but go ahead so that's kind of interesting you said two different things both of which could be true one is that he's a rebel so at least he gets in trouble with the gods he's not afraid or at least he's so rash he comes out that way but he's he does come across as rash right he's just angry and he does it go ahead impatient seems like he can be like closer level okay now which is good but one caution is there any evidence in this story for what gods are like right so humans can be impatient and lash out how about gods they are they patient and they never get mad and yeah yeah I mean I knew it seems like he lashes out pretty well right away yeah so so go ahead so that's interesting he's very obedient in the back did you yeah no okay yeah that it's like a a threat yeah so that's interesting if you put it together with a statement about power that we started with he's got a power that is a threat to the gods okay couple more yeah go ahead so I have a question I'm either for you or anybody um do you think that when he cursed the wind he actually expected it to stop cuz that's kind of a good question about you I mean did you think maybe he did expect it or I'm not saying yeah so I mean this is a good question I hadn't thought about it in that way but because I a little bit I'd react the way a bunch of you did you know I he seems so he seems just to be mad like he just says it almost not anticipating what will happen but like you I like your idea that it's a fair question whether maybe he realizes he's got more power yeah go ahead it's funny that you use the word intelligence because just now he said he has the power but not the intelligence that would go with good judgment cuz I was gonna ask is it do you think ah depe is smart and of course at some level when you read the description you might say well not very well yeah now so there's something to put in the pile right he seems easily manipulated so of course then the question is who's manipulating him or is everyone so on the one hand you get this character who who is kind of a loose cannon or at least he he sure surprises the gods if not himself with his power cuz one thing you should figure is that that honor is simply not just angry but but shocked and there's the sense that he had he would never have guessed that it turns out to be some human who got away with this I mean for the wind to stop blowing this is part of the basic running of the machinery of the heavens for one literally and you know what keeps everything going in life and this is definitely the domain of the gods and this person gets away with just stopping it go ahead yeah right so so we could go ahead but well they know you over there yeah that wasn't for us right so so here's the thing this goes back to the observation about being easily manipulated so let me put out another question for you at some level on one hand a depe is it an extremely active player he throws a wrench into the God's affairs that comes across as totally unexpected that that the the basis for this entire story is the notion of something happening to the gods that they never planned on and how they react like what do they do and it turns out that there's this other power out there that they thought they had controlled that's human and of course if you realize well who is the audience for this story is it a bunch of the bunch of the gods well no right it's a bunch of people maybe a bunch of scribes to think of Carl Van der horns book and so one thing they're saying is there's the possibility of human power that the gods themselves might not even have imagined so so then if in a way a depe just represents this possibility of what humans could do that then the gods might have to deal with you're given two gods who kind of compete for their reactions you have a ax on one hand and remember out of has the son of ASO there is some special relationship there that you have to figure out and I clearly want something to happen right he gives odd up a careful instructions on what to do and a depe follows them right to the letter and then he gets up at the God then is on ooo who's equally at least upset by what happens in fact it's not clear from the story that either a ax or AA da new expected that a depe could do this so the way they respond is AF figures all right on if I come on my friend you know I've got instructions for you you're in over your head let me give you some you know a sense of how to handle this because you don't want to go up to on you and deal with an angry god who's in charge of the world so meanwhile on who on the other side starts off really angry doesn't know anything about uh Napa has no prior contact but when aa depe shows up he does the good thing and he actually forgives him and he appears at least to offer him the best thing you could get like food of life water of life but out up it turns it down because hey I told him not to hey don't take it so here's the question who's lying either God so you could you could try to weasel out of it by saying it depends on how you look at it and I'm making fun but it's a fair possibility but at the same time I say weasel out because at some literal level it looks like there's kite when I say who's lying in in effect a a-- has told him it is really the food of death it really is the water of death it'll kill you don't drink it and it's actually even remember if you say whose voice are you hearing at the beginning you're just hearing a s voice a a-- says it is the food of death it is the water of death if you look at the story it is he says you know bring him food of life let him eat but it's the narrator who actually even says they brought him the food of life they brought him the water flies in the back yeah yeah although of course then the interesting thing is that at least in the end on who seems okay with it and and the other gods and so absolutely I wanted you to notice this potential line of comparison but of course it's only a ax who doesn't want him to have it it's only a ax who tries to manipulate the situation and keep this from happening yeah go ahead right I mean when I said who lies again I mean the the suggestion that it's possible that it could depend on how you look at it fair game you know keep that out there but another possibility is that it's on who's lying I mean though the potential complication with that is that it even has the narrator say it's the food of life food of death so I personally am a little bit more inclined to think no it probably really is the food of life food of death because the narrator says it but you could yeah oh but he didn't actually expect him now that's an interesting angle yeah and thought of that right that he could change his mind because it does kind of portray him as changing his mind although I'm just thinking out loud to follow your interesting idea that you know of course the way it turns out is exactly the way a a planned right because at first on is angry he has to be calmed by talking to his - you know gatekeepers and the gatekeepers calm him because they like him because he told this funny joke about them being dead so if that's true then eya has anticipated it all the way to that point including that Anna will be successfully calmed yeah that's a good thing to take away and it's so the point is just that it made her realize that when you're in these other polytheistic worlds then the gods can be well what to us would be very human that they are just as likely to be impatient and rash except for they have a whole lot more power which makes them more dangerous yeah go ahead in the back yeah yeah that'd be a little bit like the suggestion that was up here you know what if it switched around now it's this great how many people want to say something out let me move us forward a little bit and we'll shift gears slightly so so a couple of things just to make sure you get right so for one auto-pay is human and yet he's got powers beyond normal human somehow it appears that what he does with that power all may surprise himself I like the question about whether or not that's the case it certainly seems to surprise the gods they don't see this coming and to some extent the story is how did the gods handle that and there's a there is a sort of rivalry between the power of a ax and the power of on who recognized that that there's a clear alignment to start aa depe belongs to a ax he's a opposed he's a a servant or as son he at one point he calls he says wherever that was he says you know am i master and remember exactly where that was but don't worry but they're both kind of elements going on but he's completely identified with a ax on who is completely foreign to him and yet at at least a I gives some instructions that take for granted that he's gonna have to come back so whether a ax is lying to him about the food water of death life but even if he's telling the truth he's saying you know if you something worse will happen to you if you if you actually consume this stuff whereas your only way your only path to safety is is to refuse that stuff go ahead and accept the the clothing and the oil and then you'll get back safely so a is trying to keep the status quo right he's trying to keep things the way they had been and he seems to succeed right so all of these things are going on it's not clear that a depe represents anybody other than himself did you have any sense this is I I'm every time I see a hand get go up I want to hear what you're thinking but got to keep moving a little so here's a new question what is the connection between a depe and all humanity so like are we supposed to imagine that this is something that could how does it affect everybody else does like if if out of had eaten the food of life and water of life what would that mean go ahead so the notion is he just there's just that it's assumed that he won't do it did he did it can't well I think that's probably fair and that there that the stories told from the perspective assuming that we know it's a good question but I mean it it would be fair to argue that it's assuming well this access to heaven is is not realistic for humans it's it's something that Otto Pike came close to achieving but it just wasn't gonna happen but of course you could argue that for Adam and Eve in the garden as well and say look we know what humans are like so yeah I mean this possibility is held out that they could have this great life in this garden but we all know where it's going to go there's two of you there whichever one wants to go first yeah and that's interesting and of course I don't know if you heard right that there's if you think about the interplay of freewill and fate that there seems to be a lot of freewill and yet there's this sense that you said at the beginning that that we all know what's going to happen in the end and of course that's how stories work especially when they're about you know what experience is like what being human is like because there's this not this assumption that we kind of do know what our actual life is like and so for all the freewill that might seem to be in play everybody's got this sense they know where it's going go ahead so yeah I want try to it's a good question to what extent I mean a little bit idea afraid that it by saying that it's both they're tied to agriculture in both cases the tie is stronger in the biblical side than it is on the other side to my eye it is I like your line of thought wondering about this element of knowledge versus life in a sense and and in this case a depe has the knowledge already and the knowledge is his basis for having the knowledge and power are connected and he it's his knowledge and his that gives him the power to break the wing of the wind it's as if his knowledge is greater than he even knows and in fact he seems amazingly stupid for someone who has such knowledge but again that's almost because for them knowledge isn't isn't wisdom or good judgment or anything like that it really is tied to power and and he has it go ahead yeah no I mean I your think your fault it's a it's a fair line of thought and I'm not trying to push a single interpretation honest seems to think it's pretty funny when he when he turns them down and you know I I think that wherever you end up going on your own interpretation and in a way I suppose if you like that and I was making you write a paper about it or something which I'm not would be glad but it's a fun paper I've had them do it in another class but you'd have almost have to say well literally it probably is life but then there's this kind of secondary possible meaning so that there's an overlay it's sort of a second message that might be along the lines of what you'd argue go ahead yeah I mean this is another is so yeah so I'll add that to the pile in a sense of you know in terms of the life death thing is there some sort of sense of perception is it different for audit by himself than for a as a God and certainly I mean his a is fear is that he loses a loses i depositors and and certainly would be a loss for him hang on we're gonna keep going the next course you know I was gonna ask but I'm just gonna put it out there and not even get your responses because I want to move to the biblical story in fact is the question how do is the psyche all right everybody ready to lie down on your couch how does this story make you feel and the reason I ask this is that I want you to be in their head you know so you okay you're a Mesopotamian you're a Babylonian or you're an Egyptian who like really into Babylonian literature and so well I mean that's literally what the scribe was so but the one who wrote this is a Babylonian and so what what are you saying about what it's like to be human that you would tell a story like this and again I mean it would be very interesting to get your reactions I'm not going to take them but at least one thing I might put out there is if I go back to your observation it's beginning early about being manipulated it's not obviously a really positive view I mean a number of you have said well it seems like everybody knows how it's gonna come out already and it's not going to come out great so you know maybe those of you who are suggesting well it it could be really death even though he's giving up life a little bit and I'm teasing you I hope it's okay you can write me emails afterward and say please don't use me professor Fleming I don't but it's a little bit like if you've ever had a serious loss in the family and somebody comes and tells you well you know it really is good in the end because because you know I mean God's gonna look after them or you know they weren't really that nice to you anyway your life will be better now they're gone or God has some plan and you just don't know what it is it's really okay like a little bit has that feeling of trying to argue your way out of the obvious like here look I love us giving up eternal life or at least life instead of death and you try to tell him no no it's really it's okay it's really like if you'd eaten the life it looked like life but it really would have been death you wouldn't have wanted it anyway right so that a little bit that's partly what makes me suspicious so in the end like I guess I feel like this is story of getting cheated out of life and he they're allowed air to manipulate him or you know one of the other gods is lying to him but what for sure comes out in the end is that not even this one guy who's a as special servant he's the most powerful human you could imagine who's got powers beyond even what he knows so he gives mad at the wind because it swamps his boat and he and he curses it and it stops he kills it more or less that even this guy can't receive this life and so to me it's a I don't know it's a picture of human existence that has an edge to it go ahead yeah for sure I mean I think this is what I do absolutely think that so for sure I think that AI does not want to lose a de Paz service and you can say well then that's mean you know it's evil how can he do that he lies to him he sets him up but from a certain point of view I mean it's certainly from a his point of view he's not gonna punish out of power give him a bad life or anything like that he's gonna at least what appears to be the case is he's trying to just restore things to the way they were which was fine you know it was a nice arrangement where a depart for a seemed perfectly happy doing that yeah so I mean I think you're right that there's this possibility of breaking all this and absolutely going to be in heaven would be the end of it now the thing to keep in mind for the ancient world and this is actually true even for the Bible in ancient Israel which may be a shock people when they die don't go to heaven all right it's not what happens nobody does with extremely rare exceptions in fact and those exceptions aren't people who die they just skip dying and they go straight to heaven so in general when you die you go underground and you just stay there in this really boring place true for both the Bible in Israel and for the Babylonians and so when this guy goes up to be with the gods he's looking at life with the gods or at least that's that's the what it looks like so yeah but from a his point of view yeah he doesn't want that now other story Eden thanks yeah all right yeah say ok that's ok all right so we're gonna all right thank you all right okay story of the Garden of Eden I'm not going to take the time to run through the whole thing at least you know I hope you had a chance to look at it for some of you it might be a little bit familiar it's the sort of story that people have at least heard of even if they haven't read it but I guess right off my question well you know right so so it starts with this guy and he gets so God makes a human right that's how you start off and then and then he puts him in this garden and he gives him a pretty simple job he says serve it and what's the other word kill it or something know kill it and keep it yes so it's a supposed to the keep it is guarded he's supposed to like guard it from enemies in a sense and work it you could say so that's the physical care of the garden but he gives them this one instruction you can eat anything any tree of the garden but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil don't eat in the day you eat of it you will die now it turns out that there are two trees in the middle of this garden and for some strange reason he doesn't tell him not to eat the other one which is the Tree of Life he only tells them not to eat this one figuring that Intel eats this land he'll be too ignorant to eat the other one I guess and then there's this kind of sidetrack where he ends up getting a wife but it turns out to be kind of important because as you start chapter three suddenly there's this snake and in certain religious traditions the snake is a devil or Satan or something like that but in the Bible as such it's not the devil it's not Satan it's the snake it's a talking snake and snakes are smart unlike a depe in fact the snake might remind you of somebody from the other story I don't know so the snake says well what's the story with the trees and you know they have this exchange where the woman slightly inaccurately quotes God but it all ending up being you know don't eat or even touch the tree in the middle of the garden you'll die and the snake says no you won't you won't die God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be open and you'll be like God knowing good and evil so in the end the snake convinced the woman it was a good idea and so she eats it and gives it to her husband and he eats it and then the next thing you know there's big trouble so basic story there any connection between this and Ana depe somebody already even said it reminded her oath of the Eden story in it if I guess if I'd say it is their connection look what exactly would it be how would you go about defining it so that it really works go ahead so that yeah I mean that this is sort of interesting comparing aids to the snake and it would be interesting because it's a funny comparison I mean at least in the it's a good question where that pulls you does it if the snake looks like an evil character in this does that make a yeah an evil character in the other bike by the analogy or course if a is really just somebody who's trying to make things come out the way he wants is that all the snakes trying to do who's the other possible commit come figure that you could compare to a ax yeah well in back if you actually I'm going to go for a sorry yeah I'm always going for the new person so this becomes a question now we haven't gotten into it but one of the things I had you read for today is James Barr and so if you cut from bar what was his argument about what the Eden story is mainly about immortality right so so what Barr was saying is that that Eden story is primarily not about Sinan turning the world or something like that it's about immortality you know and and how humans turned out not to become immortal and so with that in mind then he also puts out there this question of whether God is at least being less than truthful in having said you'll die and and that's absolutely right that it whether it's trickery whether it's deceit that you could argue that the parallel would line up just the way you've said that between ayah and God and the rationale being that God wants to keep the status quo that God has created Adam and Eve maybe for a perfectly good reason and give them and given them a nice situation and yet you know is in danger of seeing all of that changed go ahead so this is a good question I mean at one level the way I do the question is does do bull stories question what death really is and at a simple level I would turn that on its head and say everybody in the audience is for both of these stories knows exactly what death is and are accepting it as just that as real death and yeah I really like your observation and and I like the idea that in both stories the language of death is played with and there's a kind of ambiguity introduced into the question of you know what will you really die and what's the connection with the death we know and whatever is being talked about does it mean somebody's lying or is there another explanation I like we got going with a conversation about out of us so I like that line a lot yeah go ahead yeah that's it very interesting yeah yep so that's interesting I don't know if you could all hear but for all that in a way they play out similarly in terms of a God who wants to keep things the way they are there's the possibility of divine deceit or at least misleading and and yeah and and the result is kind of the same in the sense at least that humans end up where they are and and yet what drives the kind of bad result in the Mesopotamian example is that they were adipose almost too obedient you know to gullibly obedient and on the biblical example he's you know well he or she but together they they say no let's just do it and and yet Bowl stories while they seem to criss cross end up in a similar place for all that go ahead so that so you think that that when he says he'll die that God means he'll die on the same day or that the snake yeah die on the same day yeah I mean barbaric act certainly actually if you looked at that piece argues that the expectation it's like a legal judgment and it is the when you say that it's like an execution statement and that the expectation is that if you when it says if you eat it you'll die but yeah that you'll die immediately and you're right that it doesn't happen now the question is does that get them there's that get got off the hook or or how does that affect what you read the story we've got just a few minutes left and I want to get through a little bit of ground the question I was gonna end with for the biblical part was of course how does it feel to be in the Bible's world how does it feel to be in Eden's world in brought in both cases humans don't get the immortality they don't get the life I will ask this well no I may skip it but the coming back to what he said a minute ago the thing about the difference of course is the blame for what happens is human in the Bible story right so if you think what is the impact of being disobedient in the Bible story well whether it's it may not be immoral depending on how you read the story but for sure it's the humans who sort of make this decision that brings down this results on their head but of course you know that this plays in an interesting way like so if anything bad happens maybe it's because they were disobedient but of course on the other hand they do end up with this capacity for knowledge which audible already had it seems but that somehow humans get just from eating this fruit but one thing I would want you to think about when putting the Bible in ancient Israel in the context of this broader world and comparing their response to just really existential questions about life in existence you know if I tell you that I think that the Babylonian perspective in this story is I don't know is a little dark little jaded yeah the gods are out there with all their power but they're likely to be trying to manipulate you you certainly can't assume they're out for your own best interest and then I'd ask you when you get to the Bible this particular story of the Bible it's the Bible is a very complex collection of all sorts of writing and it doesn't have to reflect just one point of view but in this case would you say yeah I kind of kept the same feel it plays out differently a different scenario but it's also a little bit of not exactly depressing story but a dark story that is a kind of a dark view of life or some of you might say well no but I mean the people come out with knowledge they didn't have before you could look at the whole thing in the end God sort of lets them off the hook and says no no we'll make arrangements for the future but ask yourself so that if you start to develop a sense of how the people of the Bible the people of ancient Israel approached ancient their lives in the ancient world realized that they're struggling with a lot of the same issues and some of the same tools for thinking about those issues that people from Babylon would have had available and sometimes the perspective from the Bible can come out sounding quite different and sometimes it can come out sounding similar now the one other thing I wanted to do in the last couple of minutes of class is to take you to Van der toorn all right so I set out this bait this basic scheme I mean overall my goal for the class was to get you to start seeing how they are continuities between the world of Israel and the world of the wider Near East as it might be called so with that said I had started you off reading van der toorn and had you read this his first main chapter but what I wanted you to realize is that that his whole book is built on a kind of analogy between scribes writing in the Bible and scribes that he has evident much different sorts of evidence for from Mesopotamia from this world of cuneiform and etapa and Babylon and he wants you to see that just as scribes in Babylon were professionals were like engineers or lawyers that scribes who were writing Hebrew that would have been creating and revising and compiling the Bible would have been professionals in the same kind of way he has a short I took from van der turns chapter a short list of really major important things to get and I'm gonna run through them and then that'll be it okay number one he says the Bible does not have books this should ring a bell if you read through the stuff the Bible does not it is not a book all by itself it's a collection of books even literally but he's saying even the things that are books are not really books they're Scrolls if you if you looked at the older Hebrew words even for talking about these things they're scrolls scrolls are hard to consult at did you read this part like he said you have to unroll the humming like you can't just like open oh look at page this kid get this old thing out and it was probably stored someplace or you know not easily accessible you can't think in terms of books he said you don't buy books you don't sell books like this all later kind of interesting post-biblical conversation about books like when's the first book market way after the Bible so he wants to break you out of that stop thinking of the Bible as a book don't even think of Isaiah as a book or Exodus as a book second thing literacy if you starts literacy just means how many people can read and how well and he's saying ah wrong question it the only people who really know how to read in the world of ancient Israel are scribes again it's the lawyers and engineers people with an education and it's a small group with this particular education I don't know if it's 5% of the population some small amount but they're professionals ready for number three third point most what he calls cultural lore stories about identity about you know our past poetry ritual he said most of this was translated are transmitted orally like the basic culture for the world of the Bible in ancient Israel was oral and writing only had very particular purposes and so it could be writing letters or sometimes you know financial documents or things like that but where you find larger literary collections it's usually as a sort of aid to memory and he talked about proverbs or Book of Psalms or even the law you know large collections of law sort of tacked on together it would be assumed that this was also trans stuff that was transmitted orally but that when you'd write them down in these collections it was as a kind of aid to memory the fourth thing I've got just two more he said written text were often for oral performance so especially when you see stories or when you see poems like prayers you should imagine that these written text even as written text if somebody said oh somebody ought to read this it was written isn't it for something well it would it would be to be read out loud and he talks about how the Hebrew and same is true for Akkadian that the the words for to read meant to speak out loud like I'm doing now I would be reading it's not assumed you sit there like this and then finally he says the best comparison for the Bible as a whole is an archive not a book and that this is true even within what we treated specific individual books that there's an archival sort of character a kind of collection of lore and then he says and this is the I quote you can go find it it's in later part of the chapter that the Bible is the collective property of the scribal community the collective property of the scribal community and what he means by that it's sort of passed on and turned through this sort of professional community that's creating this thing and pass and transmitting it and for all of this he wants you to realize that the Bible is part of a scribal culture that is shared with the larger world and this whole thing we did with the Eden aa depe thing was getting a little glimpse in and not just everybody's world but especially the world of scribes these educated people and how they viewed the world and their own lives so think of Van der toorn in connection with this stuff we did today see you next time

Channel: New York University

Views: 7,794

Rating: 4.7241378 out of 5

Keywords: Daniel Fleming, Ancient Israel, New York University, NYU, Open Ed, Open Education, Roots, Bible

Id: fjRxDkcKNiA

Length: 70min 18sec (4218 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2011