Ancient Hebrew Poetry

Poorly Formulated Questions: The Bane of Research

In the preceding post, I noted an overlap between the religion of Israel and that of Mesopotamia: God/the gods wish humanity well, with caveats. To be sure, the overlap is not particularly obvious in Atrahasis, in which Enki and Mami, the birth-goddess and Queen of the gods, are the only decent gods on display. I also suggested that the overlap gives rise, among the unprepared, to inopportune questions (the following are made-up examples designed to illustrate typical errors):

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.