Submissions of Biblical Studies Carnival 31
There’s been a bit of confussion about the Biblical Studies Carnivals (BSC). At the moment, we’re still waiting for BSC 30 from Tyler Williams at Codex. At some point in the last two months or so Tyler asked both Doug Chaplin at MetaCatholic and me to host Carnival 31. After some confussing emails, it appears that I will indeed be hosting BSC 31, since Doug is now saying that I’m doing so.
All this to say, any submissions should be sent my way: jimgetz at gmail
Adapa Translation
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been trying to get a translation of “Adapa and the South Wind” together to use this summer. I finished a draft earlier today, and the translation is here (updated 6/30/08).
I’d love to hear people’s thoughts but keep a couple things in mind:
- This translation is for use with folks who have probably never read a Mesopotamian myth before.
- This translation is for undergrads in a general humanities seminar.
- This translation is the first reading in the class and will be later followed by “Inanna’s Descent” and The Gilgamesh Epic. Hence, the notes trying to help introduce deities to the students.
- I’m not an Assyriologist. I’m just a Northwest Semiticist with an inferiority complex.
Other than that, have at it.
Update (6/30/08): Thanks for all your suggestions folks. I’ve encorporated improvements into the recently updated translation.
Adapa is Breaking my Wings!
Amidst a flurry of writing I need to get done by month’s end, I’m pulling together materials for a class I’m teaching next month. The first week of the six-week summer session will be on small ancient Near East myths. After my earlier discussion of Adapa and the Hymn to Demeter, I’ve decided to throw both of these myths into the mix, as well as Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld. Each myth is from a different culture, but each will mutually inform the discussion of the other two (and, the Mesopotamian texts will hopefully whet students’ appetites for Gilgamesh the following week).
Yet, all is not well in Eridu! In looking at all the available translations of the myth I like Shlomo Izre’el’s translation in Adapa and the South Wind: Language Has the Power of Life and Death (Eisenbrauns, 2001). However, his presentation of the text is not very user friendly (and, of course, I’ve got some problems with even his excellent translation). So, I find myself preparing a new translation of the text in a format that I’ve found works best with my students — in all my spare time.
And people wonder why I don’t have more hobbies…
Problems with Divine Kingship at Ugarit
As I mentioned before, I’ve been working through Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, ed Nicole Brisch (available here). There are some serious implication for divine kingship at Ugarit posed by Irene Winter’s arguments in “Touched by the Gods: Visual Evidence for the Divine Status of Rulers in the Ancient Near East.”
Winter works through images of kings and gods from the entire history on Mesopotamia. Her basic proposition is that
even when not explicitly accorded divinity per se, rulers nevertheless could be represented verbally and visually as if they occupied a place in society that merited divine attributes, qualities, and status… (p. 75).
A fine example of such a visual representation is the depiction of Hammurapi on his law stele (image from here). While Hammurapi is not being depicted in the blatantly divine manner that we find in the victory stele of Naram-Sin, Winter argues that there are subtle indication that Hammurapi still is being accorded divine status. Note that Hammurapi is on eye level with Shamash. Indeed, he stands slightly taller than Shamash in this depiction. While scholars have tended to see here the aspects of the king’s subservience to the deity, Winter thinks that the stele actually portrays parity.
This called to mind the quite different depiction of divine relations with the king one finds at Ugarit. On the Baʿlu Stele (image found here) the deity is depicted as gigantic as opposed to the tiny human to the right. Conventional exegesis hold that this figure is in fact the king. The mighty god standing behind (literally) the earthly monarch.
This representation has been marshaled as proof of the divinity of the king at Ugarit; but in light of Winter’s argument, I find this interpretation unconvincing. Granting that the king is the most likely candidate for the figure, I don’t see divinity at play. Yes, the king rules by divine rite, but that does not indicate that he is, himself, divine. Using Winter’s methodology from this article, it would seem that the visual representation in now way implies that the king holds “divine attributes, qualities, and status.”
The king is to be feared and followed (least the wrath of Baʿlu be unleashed), but he’s still a mere mortal.
Divine Kingship and Gilgamesh
I’m working through Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, ed Nicole Brisch (available here). While my purpose for reading the conference volume relates to my dissertation, I found some interesting insights into Gilgamesh in Piotr Michalowski’s paper “The Mortal Kings of Ur: A Short Century of Divine Rule in Ancient Mesopotamia.”
Reflecting on the divine kinship of Shulgi, Michalowski holds that the claim to deity was in reaction to the death of his father, Ur-Nammu. Apparently, Ur-Nammu is one of only two kings to have died in battle in Mesopotamia’s three millennial history (the other being Sargon II of Assyria). Ur-Nammu’s death caused a crisis in Ur III that Michalowski believes precipitated the unification under the deity of Shulgi.
Michalowski notes that the first twenty odd years of Shulgi’s reign was spent consolidating the homeland before attempts at military expansion. He correlates this with the time that Shulgi first claims deity for himself. Further, this transition also tracts with a new scribal curriculum focusing on hymns to Shulgi and — guess who? — Sumerian tales of Gilgamesh (or to be pedantic: Bilgames).
While Gilgamesh was important as an ancestor and a bridge between the human and divine, he also served an even more important function: he dies. Michalowski states:
The unique symbolic status of Gilgamesh provided the answer as an ancestor who embodied the central paradox of divine kinship: the inevitable death of the king. (p. 37)
Hence, the myths of Gilgamesh helped to cement the new mythos necessary to keep Ur III together after the cosmic tragedy of Ur-Nammu’s inauspicious death.
What effect, if any, this has on how I teach Gilgamesh is immediately clear. However, those of us who teach Gilgamesh in an historical rather than literary context might find the paper quite useful.
Working on the dissertation…
more cat pictures
Bronze Age Humor
Shawn Flynn (formerly of Palimpsest) sent me a link to this video exploring the trials and tribulations surrounding the end of the neolithic period. Enjoy.
Finally, some REAL publishing advice…
Partick House has a cute little article over at Slate on How To Win the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. The article, while somewhat droll, does contain some useful tidbits for anyone who has looked at the caption winner and thought that their submission was funnier.
Israel’s National Bird is Treif!
Some how I missed this last week. According to Reuters, the Hoopoe (biblical דוכיפת) has been named the national bird of Israel. The bird isn’t kosher. The Hoopoe is explicitly labeled שקץ in Lev 11.19 (cf. Deut 14.18).
I guess this makes a certain degree of sense. If your national bird isn’t kosher, there’s less of a chance of folks eating it or of it becoming an endangered species.
A Little Knowledge in Large Numbers
I’m not sure why it is, but there seem to be more and more translations out there by folks with little or no formal training. Early, I posted on how A Little Knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, that is the Ancient Roots Translinear Bible (ARTB) by A. Frances Werner where she attempts to translate every Hebrew and Greek word the same in every context (with the help of her Strong’s Concordance.
Now, Charles Halton at Awilum tells of an even more depressing undertaking: the Wikki Bible Translation. Why use a translation published by acknowledged scholars in the field when you could trust the masses? As the homepage states:
If you know Greek or Hebrew, claim a chapter! Or if you don’t want to make that commitment yet, check somebody else’s work. If you don’t know Greek or Hebrew, we can still very much use your English skills in proof-reading and tweaking the text.
After all, why let no knowledge of a language stop you from editing the Bible?
I’m very saddened by this whole affair.
Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 
