Genre identifications in the ZIBBC (Part 2)

The discussions of genres in the book of Daniel by Ernest Lucas in NIBBC are fresh, dynamic, and sufficiently poised to be found acceptable by readers who bring very different assumptions to the biblical text.

According to Lucas, the book of Daniel contains tales of courtiers and vision reports which, in order to be more fully understood, require comparison with ancient Near Eastern analogues. With respect to the first, Lucas notes (4: 523):

Recognition that the stories in Daniel are part of this widely-known form of literature [of the genre he has in mind, Lucas cites the stories of Sinuhe and Wenamun from Egyptian literature, the story of Ahiqar from Aramaic literature, and the stories of Esther and Joseph from biblical literature] suggests some general considerations to be borne in mind when interpreting them. . . . First, they were written for entertainment . . . they are to be treated as stories rather than as straightforward journalistic reports. They may use comedy . . . and other literary devices. The stereotyping of some characters gives the stories a cartoon-like nature . . . [M]any of the stories . . . edify the readers as well as entertain them. Imaginative storytelling is an effective teaching method. The stories in Daniel are certainly intended to convey theological and moral truths.

The stories of Joseph, Daniel, and Esther as examples of imaginative storytelling which entertain and teach at the same time? That is what Lucas suggests, and that of course is exactly what they are. It is also exactly what they have been, for more than two millennia, within Judaism and within Christianity and within the larger culture, all the way down to Thomas Mann’s famous novel.

But a defensive posture typical of a faithless attitude with respect to the range of vessels in which truth can be conveyed has been responsible for a failure to admit as much among the vast majority of Bible readers – until recently. In our day, a paradigm shift is underway on precisely this score.

With respect to the vision reports in the book of Daniel, Lucas has much to say, and he says it extremely well. Here is an example of what I mean: it will blow the socks off many a reader, in the best sense of that expression: (4: 568)

The long, enigmatically expressed survey of history in Daniel 11 has no analogy elsewhere in the Old Testament. There is, however, some similarity between Daniel 8:23-25; 11:3-45 and a group of texts known as the Akkadian Prophecies . . . (The Marduk Prophecy, the Shulgi Prophecy, the Dynastic Prophecy, the Uruk Prophecy, and Text A) . . . All five texts are presented as prophecies that take the form of concise surveys of a series of rulers’ reigns. The rulers are not named, but referred to as a “king/prince” or as “king of X.” In most case plausible correlations can be made between the rulers and events alluded to in the texts and historical rulers and events.

These texts have been recognized as a form of propagandist interpretation of history composed during the reign of the last king mentioned . . . There are significant points of similarity between Daniel 11 and these prophecies, such as the concise listing of the events of kings’ reigns, the use of enigmatic phraseology, and the phrase “(after him) a king shall arise,” It is possible, then, that Daniel uses a recognized literary form but adapts it for his own use. In particular, it is not used to legitimate the last king mentioned but to declare his inevitable demise. More generally, it is used to express the sovereignty of the God of Israel over history.

What is particularly adroit about the above exposition is that it gently leads the reader to consider the possibility that “Daniel” is not, sic et simpliciter, a Jewish member of a string of Oriental courts beginning with Nebuchadnezzar, but also, the voice of an author who is a contemporary of the last king mentioned in Daniel 11. That is of course exactly what Daniel is in the book of Daniel.

Once again, however, a defensive posture typical of a faithless attitude with respect to the range of vessels in which truth can be conveyed has been responsible for a failure to admit as much among the vast majority of Bible readers – until recently.

But the times they are a-changing. It is just as well to add that the more things change, the more they stay the same. That is, the truth-carrying capacity of the book of Daniel is not diminished should Lucas be on the right track – and I think he is – in the identification of the ancient genres the book of Daniel instantiates and reworks at one and the same time. On the contrary, we are opened to that truth-carrying capacity in new and forceful ways.

Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary 
A Review Series

Reading Genesis as if Moses wrote it in the Late Bronze Age
The ZIBBC: An Overview
Genre Identifications in the ZIBBC Part One
Genre Identifications in the ZIBBC Part Two
Genre Identifications in the ZIBBC Part Three
Genre Identifications in the ZIBBC Part Four

Bibliography

John H. Walton, general editor. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. 5 vols. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009.

Comments

[Dannii]

So a believer would not have to feel threatened by late datings of Daniel as they do not deny the possibility of true precognitive prophecy, as instead it was never intended to be read that way, but rather as a Biblical take on the pagan prophecies?

[JohnFH]

That's right, Dannii, but I would formulate matters somewhat differently.

There is plenty of true precognitive prophecy as you call it in the Bible. It is easiest to be sure of that when said prophecy was not fulfilled in a timely fashion. Examples: Micah 3:12 (cf. Jer 26:16-19); Ezek 26:7-11 (cf. with history and Ezek 29:17-20). These examples show that God is always sovereign. Prophecies are by definition conditional, with the conditions known only to God except insofar as he chooses to reveal them.

In the case of Daniel 11, if Lucas is right (and I think he is), not prophecy alone but historical retrospective combined with a concluding prediction is the genre adopted, such that all of history may be conceived as under God's providence.

In our day, utopian and dystopian literature make use of equivalent tropes. But the posited perspective point is usually located in the future rather than in the past.

So Daniel 11 is not a take on pagan prophecies, but makes use of an ancient literary genre in which a historical retrospect was cast as prophecy in order to make the point that a sequence of events occurred as predetermined by the divine will.

Our problem lies in the fact that there is a history of interpretation that did not make this genre identification. But that is not as serious a problem as some people make it out to be. The lack of identification of the text's true genre did not close off the possibility of readers understanding the truths the narrative seeks to convey.

Paradoxically, in fact, once the text's true genre is identified, the door is open to dismiss the truth the text seeks to convey. But that is always the case, I submit. For example, I have no problems in pointing out that the Parable of the Lost Sheep is not an account of a one-time event involving 1 + 99 sheep. The account describes something that a herder of sheep would never do. All good, but that does not change the fact that the parable is a completely accurate depiction of what God does with us. I hope the kind of distinction I am making is clear.

And if the line of thought Lucas presents is too much for you to handle, drop it and get on with seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God.

On my understanding of eschatology, we are not going to be evaluated in terms of our ability to make accurate genre identifications, a piddly matter in the larger scheme of things, but on the quality of the fruits we bear in response to God's benevolence we have experienced.

[Looney]

There are some things which puzzle me here. It seems that the comparison of old testament books to other ancient near east literature is an old hobby. My 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica set list a Zimmern (1891) as a start of comparisons and highlights Ishtar and Marduk as the origin of Esther and Mordecai. From what I can tell, this was a mainstream method a century ago.

Walton seems a bit different in tone, but I am wondering to what degree this is the same or different than what was done a century ago. Perhaps it is that literature majors are taking the lead, but then there is more material that is easier to access ...

Today, anyone can go down to Borders and fetch a translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh and compare and contrast it with Genesis. (Certainly I would want much more of this with other literature.) The things which jumped out at me are quite different from the sorts of things that Walton highlighted in "Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament". Is this new work making it easier for us dilettantes to get to the unfiltered raw data? The hermeneutic of suspicion can be applied to so many things!

[Alan Lenzi]

Looney, Comparison started as soon as the first tablets were deciphered. Zimmern and others around the turn of the 20th Century were rather free wheeling in their method. Everything in the Bible, they seemed to claim, came from Mesopotamia. Their "school" of thought is called Pan-Babylonianism, and it reached its zenith with Delitzsch’s "Babel und Bibel" lectures. Unfortunately, the excesses of this school led to the rejection of not only Pan-Babylonian methodology but the entire comparative enterprise (in large part) by a majority of scholars. And there developed a rather sharp divide between the fields of Mesopotamian Studies and Biblical Studies that still prevails in some circles---if not theoretically anymore, then practically. But things are changing. Comparative method is more sophisticated nowadays. But theological bias, in my opinion, clouds the air among a great many comparativists, including Walton.

If you want the primary documents, follow the footnotes in the book. Once you find the documents, you can compare for yourself. A lot of good scholars worked on the Zondervan volume. But from what John is reporting, it sounds like the contributions are a rather mixed bag. But I haven't seen the volumes myself.

[JohnFH]

Looney,

There is an urgent need to provide wider publics with the texts of the ancient Near East, not only in translation, but also, in normalized Akkadian, Sumerian, Egyptian, etc., together with detailed commentary based on the original languages in conjunction with comparative/contrastive analysis with normalized Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek from biblical literature and classical literature. The translations you can buy at Borders, both of Gilgamesh and the Bible, go only so far. There is an ocean of data beneath the surface of those translations which is intensely interesting.

If this were done, and the whole presented in such a way that even those who have no first hand familiarity with the languages can follow the arguments, the discussion would no longer be as subjective and impressionistic as it often is now, based on sometimes rather free translations.

Alan,

It certainly is the case that some parts of NIBBC are better than others. But if you don't mind me making the plug for the series you are working on, there is a great need for a presentation of the relevant texts with adequate introductions, commentary, and comparative analysis, presentation that is readable by biblical scholars and other non-specialists in Assyriology, Egyptology, etc. Realistically, then and only then will the average anthropologist, professor of comparative literature, student of the Bible, etc. be in a position to adjudicate, if ever so tentatively, between competing contrastive/comparative analyses.