A Contrastive Approach to the Study of Ancient Texts

Parallelomania is the practice of overdoing supposed similarities between texts. Very loose and even non-existent parallels are dressed up as stringent parallels with the result that the sense of a particular text is mis-specified or over-specified on the basis of another. It really doesn’t matter if texts A and B derive from the same milieu (however defined) or from discrete milieu. The obsession with “parallels” overlooks the fact that wherever there are similarities, there are also differences. If a scholar notes similarities only between text A and text B, rite A and rite B, religion A and religion B, chances are, she is on a binge of parallelomania. Said scholar has a disease, but it is not incurable. It is treatable if the patient is willing to go through detox and remain within an accountability structure thereafter.

A contrastive approach to the study of texts is more productive than an approach that concentrates on supposed parallels. In the process of identifying contrasts, whatever similarities there are will stand out against a contrastive backdrop. Now we’re talking.

In ancient literature, it is not just Genesis 1-3 that describe a primeval state of affairs as far as God/the gods and humankind are concerned. How does thought on the same subject among Israel’s ANE neighbors compare?

It is difficult to generalize. It is best not to generalize, but go at things one or two texts at a time. The first text that comes to mind is Atrahasis. The story is known to us in four principal versions, the Old Babylonian, the Middle Babylonian, the Late Babylonian, and the Late Assyrian versions. A version of the story is also found in Tablet XI of the Gilgamesh epic. The story is also known from a fragmentary text discovered at Ugarit.

In the Atrahasis narrative, man is created for the purpose of doing the forced labor the lesser gods did not want to do on behalf of the greater gods. Enuma Elish contains a similar etiology of humanity. In Atrahasis, man is born to be a slave of the high gods, all but one or two of whom are less than indifferent to his fate. The myth is the opposite of the one that undergirds Western civilization, according to which man is born free, but everywhere in chains. The Western myth goes back in some ways to Genesis 1-3. Both Atrahasis and Gen 1-3, paradoxically, are more realistic than the modern metanarrative.

In Atrahasis, man is cursed from the start. He has no pristine origins. He attains existence as a byproduct of a murderous and bloody conflict among the gods. The remains of a rebel god are incorporated into his “DNA.” He is predestined from the start to be a canal-digger who must care for himself and the gods. Does all of this sound bloody crazy to you? If so, I suggest, you have yet to learn how to read “mythological” narrative.

In Atrahasis humanity is not thought of as crowned with glory and splendor, with all things under his feet, as in Psalm 8. Rather, man is a slave of the gods from day one. It is not the case that the gods bless humankind in Atrahasis. Nor do they regard the world and humankind as more than means to an end. God provides for man in Genesis (1:28-30; 9:1-3). In Atrahasis, man provides for the gods.

Creation as such and human beings as such are ends in themselves in Genesis. In Atrahasis and Enuma Elish, creation and human beings have their origin in acts of violence.

Humanity is semi-divine in Atrahasis. The first man is a composite of a slaughtered god’s blood, flesh, and spirit mixed with clay; the spit of the great gods is added thereto. This is a far cry from the sense in which humanity is like God in Genesis 1. The creation of man in Genesis 2 shares a detail or two with Atrahasis – creation from clay/soil; the ingredient of spirit/breath, but the differences between the two accounts are far more numerous and far more significant, and the shared details are not weighty enough to suggest a genetic relationship between the two accounts.

In Assyro-Babylonian literature in general, humanity is rarely imagined to be destined for a better place, within history or beyond death. If the Alpha of human existence was a tale of horror, what grounds were there for thinking that humanity’s Omega or end-destination would be positive? The contrast with the trend in Israelite and Jewish literature is stark.  It can be argued – and a great Assyriologist, J. J. Finkelstein, did – that the Assyro-Babylonian world-view is the realistic one, and the biblical one an example of wish projection.

To be sure, there are biblical texts that describe creation as an act of violence in which YHWH destroys his opponents. Furthermore, there are Assyro-Babylonian and other ANE texts which think of the gods as wishing humanity well, so long as individuals and nations behave themselves and do not willfully or inadvertently defy limits of various kinds. Despite the difference of emphasis with respect to Atrahasis, the assumption of divine benevolence, with caveats, is reasonably widespread in Assyro-Babylonian religion.  

In short, there is some overlap between the religion of Israel and that of Mesopotamia, on the topics of origins as on many other subjects. The overlap gives rise, among the unprepared, to inopportune questions. For example - warning: these are fake examples designed to illustrate common errors: (1) Do ANE divinities, insofar as they are benevolent, furnish a parallel to the God of Israel? (2) Who borrowed the idea of divine benevolence from whom?

To be continued.

Essential Bibliography

Jacob J. Finkelstein, “The West, the Bible and the Ancient East: Apperceptions and Categorisations”, Man 9 (1974) 591-608 [classic example of the contrastive approach]; Benjamin R. Foster, “Atrahasis” in Before The Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature (3^rd ed., Bethesda: CDL Press, 2005) 227-280 [introduction; translation of all extant versions; extensive bibliography]; Wilfred G. Lambert, Alan R. Millard, and Miguel Civil, Atra-hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. With The Sumerian Flood Story by M. Civil. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; repr. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1999) [standard edition, in need of integration (see Foster’s bibliography)]; Kenton L. Sparks, “Atrahasis,” in Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible: A Guide to the Background Literature (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005) 313-314 [introduction; starter bibliography for biblical scholars]

Online Bibliography

James R. Battenfield, Atra-hasis: A Survey,” Grace Theological Journal 12 (1971) 3-22 (online here); Tikvah Frymer-Kensky, “The Atrahasis Epic and its Significance for Our Understanding of Genesis 1-9,” Biblical Archeologist 40 (1977) 147-55 (online here); Alan R. Millard, “New Babylonian ‘Genesis’ Story,” Tyndale Bulletin 18 (1967) 3-18 (online here)

Comments

[Bob MacDonald]

Cool story, John. Reminds me of a verse in Job - 7:1
Is it not the press-gang for a mortal on earth
like the days of a mercenary, his days?
like a slave, he gasps for a shadow
like a mercenary, he waits for work

[Angela Erisman]

Hi John,

Consider that both the comparative and contrastive methods misunderstand how cultures really work. Both of them assume the boundaries you get at with your petri dish analogy. There is far more permeability among cultures and far more options for articulating intercultural relations than either approach really allows for. Really intertextuality is what we're talking about here, and one won't really make progress without folks like Kristeva, Bakhtin, et. al.

Angie

[JohnFH]

Hi Angela,

Here's the rub. Appeal to the principle of intertextuality has become a chic way to engage in parallelomania. In the name of intertextuality, loose connections between ancient texts or between an ancient text and a modern text which, it is sometimes admitted, exist only in the mind of a contemporary reader, become the object of discourse. If the reader in question is a brilliant one (like Kristeva or Bhaktin), it is delightful and enlightening, a reading one can learn from. Otherwise, I'm not so sure.

The old-fashioned questions have their own interest. Granted that texts are porous to the influence of other texts by definition, it is usually not the case that a given Text B depends on and responds to given Text A, despite a number of shared themes, language, what have you.

Rather, both Text A and B are part of an enormous web of texts and other cultural artifacts in tension with each other and in usually indirect (highly mediated) relation to each other.

It would be my first guess that Atrahasis and Gen 1:1-2:4a are in a highly mediated relation only. But then, how DOES one describe the influence of the understanding of the divine/human relationship to which Atrahasis bears witness and the same relationship to which Genesis 1 bears witness?

It is difficult in my opinion not to assume that a dialogue of some kind is going on, though there is little or no evidence to suggest that in the author of Genesis 1's cultural curriculum, Atrahasis and/or Enuma Elish had a place. The dialogue is on a more diffuse level. Generally speaking, it is not tied to the specific wording or conceptualization of a particular text A, Atrahasis or some other.

I'm not sure that Kristeva or Bakhtin provide the tools to state but not overstate or understate the relationship between a text like Gen 1:1-2:4a and Atrahasis.

I understand intertextuality to mean (on one level) that all texts of a given corpus (the entire world; the ANE; the Bible; the Hebrew Bible; the Pentateuch) are part of complex web in which each thread, gossamer-like, is connected however circuituously to all the others.

To continue the analogy, strands of the web often pull in opposite directions. Gaps widen at points on the web; at other points, a dynamic draws threads into a tighter pattern.

To continue the analogy further, where does the web start? It clearly has the ability to self-repair over time, so even as it is being pulled apart from one direction, it is being repaired from another.

I don't know how a spider spins its web. It's worth looking into.

[Angela Erisman]

Hi John,

I think the key thing that separates a good discussion of intertextuality from a poor/inadequate one is sophisticated and sensitive thinking about and weighing of options for the nature of the relationship. They are many and complex, as your web analogy rightly suggests, and it is often difficult to say for sure, as your reflections on Atrahasis and Gen 1 suggest. I'm working on such things daily and am constantly both confounded and motivated by how difficult it is.

I think understating or overstating the relationship between two texts is not a matter of the tools, but how you use them. You can use a hammer to beautifully pound a nail flush with a board. You can also use it to leave a nasty mark in the board. Still a hammer.

Of course, the more tools you have in your kit (the more options for thinking about intertextuality), the more you've got at your disposal for doing the job right. Compare and contrast are only two tools, and they're useful, but they're also pretty crude ones without the fuller toolkit that people like Kristeva and Bakhtin (and many, many others, both theoretically and in biblical studies...Fishbane, Aaron, Sommer, etc. come to mind) have to offer.

[JohnFH]

Thanks, Angela. You are very articulate about these things, and I look forward to reading your dissertation. Here's hoping you will write for us at length on these very questions, and others still.

[Angela Erisman]

My dissertation is available through UMI, and I'm presenting a key bit of it at SBL this year. An expanded version of it will be in print hopefully sooner rather than later.

[JohnFH]

That would be:

Experimenting with genre: Uses of itinerary in Israelite and ancient Near Eastern historical narratives, by Roskop, Angela Rae Ph.D., Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (Ohio), 2008, 277 pages; AAT 3323568

Very interesting.