refuted in scholarship (107). The latter example is consistent with Schaper’s claim that a new co... more refuted in scholarship (107). The latter example is consistent with Schaper’s claim that a new conception of the self emerged together with monotheism (176). To my mind, both proposals read later developments back onto the biblical text. The same is also true when Schaper insists that the “word” ensures that anyone anywhere could experience the divine in contrast to the restriction of images to the priesthood (135). It felt rather more like the polemics of seventeenthand eighteenth-century CE Europe than sixthand fifth-century BCE Israel.
Although the three laws on illicit sexual intercourse in Deut 22:23-29 are often treated as a set... more Although the three laws on illicit sexual intercourse in Deut 22:23-29 are often treated as a set, close examination indicates that the assault of an engaged woman in a field (vv. 25-27) represents the literary core to which verses 23-24 and 28-29 were appended. The isolation of 22:25-27 from its secondary frame enables its independent legal reasoning to emerge. The scribe presents an unusual scenario by ancient Near Eastern legal standards, in that the assault of the victim transpires without witnesses. Curiously, the solution favors the woman by comparing the assault to a homicide and then positing a hypothetical situation whereby the victim is imagined to have shouted for help. I propose that the closest parallel for this display of legal reasoning is found not in another cuneiform law collection but rather in the "Nippur Homicide Trial, " a Mesopotamian "model case" that was utilized in second-millennium scribal education. Not only does this model case shed fresh light on the legal reasoning that undergirds Deut 22:25-27, but its genre also provides a new lens through which to reconsider the origins of a wider set of women and family laws in Deuteronomy.
WRITING, REWRITING, AND OVERWRITING IN THE BOOKS OF DEUTERONOMY AND THE FORMER PROPHETS ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF CYNTHIA EDENBURG, 2019
A striking set of parallels between Deut 25:5-10 and wills from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar ... more A striking set of parallels between Deut 25:5-10 and wills from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar suggest that the biblical legal text may have its roots in a comparable Israelite will.
Antoine Cavigneaux’s (2014) recent edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa allows for a fresh... more Antoine Cavigneaux’s (2014) recent edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa allows for a fresh assessment of the myth in all of its available versions. Close examination of the Tell Haddad version and the Amarna Tablet in particular reveals that the two display different sets of logic and foci, with only the latter concerned especially with Adapa and his fate. This distinction is reflective not merely of fluidity in copying but instead appears to indicate evidence of revision in the course of transmission.
When we encounter a text, whether ancient or modern, we typically start at the beginning and work... more When we encounter a text, whether ancient or modern, we typically start at the beginning and work our way toward the end. In Tracking the Master Scribe, Sara J. Milstein demonstrates that for biblical and Mesopotamian literature, this habit can yield misleading results.
In the ancient Near East, "master scribes"—those who had the authority to produce and revise literature—regularly modified their texts in the course of transmission. One of the most effective techniques for change was to add something to the front—what Milstein calls "revision through introduction." This method allowed scribes to preserve their received material while simultaneously recasting it. As a result, numerous biblical and Mesopotamian texts manifest multiple and even competing viewpoints. Due to the primary position of these additions, such reworked texts are often read solely through the lens of their final contributions. This is true not only for biblical and cuneiform texts in their final forms, but also for Mesopotamian texts that are known from multiple versions: first impressions carry weight.
Rather than "nail down every piece of the puzzle," Tracking the Master Scribe demonstrates what is to be gained when engaging questions of textual transmission with attention to how scribes actually worked. Working from the two earliest corpora that allow us to track large-scale change, the book provides broad overviews of evidence available for revision through introduction, as well as a set of detailed case studies that offer fresh insight into well-known biblical and Mesopotamian literary texts. The result is the first comprehensive and comparative profile of this key scribal method: one that was not only ubiquitous in the ancient Near East but also epitomizes the attitudes of the master scribes toward the literature that they produced.
The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, perhaps the most famous of Mesopotamian literature, has been conside... more The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, perhaps the most famous of Mesopotamian literature, has been considered the artistry of one author inspired by Sumerian tales. Specialists have assumed that all the earliest evidence (ca. 1800-1700 BCE) reflects this creative unity. Deep contrasts in characterization and narrative logic, however, distinguish the central adventure to defeat the monster Huwawa from what precedes and follows it. The Huwawa narrative stands on its own, so that the epic must have been composed from this prior Akkadian composition. Recognition of the tale embedded in the epic allows each block of material to be understood on its own terms. Such literary-historical investigation from contemporary texts is new to Assyriology and may produce important results when applied to other Mesopotamian writing.
refuted in scholarship (107). The latter example is consistent with Schaper’s claim that a new co... more refuted in scholarship (107). The latter example is consistent with Schaper’s claim that a new conception of the self emerged together with monotheism (176). To my mind, both proposals read later developments back onto the biblical text. The same is also true when Schaper insists that the “word” ensures that anyone anywhere could experience the divine in contrast to the restriction of images to the priesthood (135). It felt rather more like the polemics of seventeenthand eighteenth-century CE Europe than sixthand fifth-century BCE Israel.
Although the three laws on illicit sexual intercourse in Deut 22:23-29 are often treated as a set... more Although the three laws on illicit sexual intercourse in Deut 22:23-29 are often treated as a set, close examination indicates that the assault of an engaged woman in a field (vv. 25-27) represents the literary core to which verses 23-24 and 28-29 were appended. The isolation of 22:25-27 from its secondary frame enables its independent legal reasoning to emerge. The scribe presents an unusual scenario by ancient Near Eastern legal standards, in that the assault of the victim transpires without witnesses. Curiously, the solution favors the woman by comparing the assault to a homicide and then positing a hypothetical situation whereby the victim is imagined to have shouted for help. I propose that the closest parallel for this display of legal reasoning is found not in another cuneiform law collection but rather in the "Nippur Homicide Trial, " a Mesopotamian "model case" that was utilized in second-millennium scribal education. Not only does this model case shed fresh light on the legal reasoning that undergirds Deut 22:25-27, but its genre also provides a new lens through which to reconsider the origins of a wider set of women and family laws in Deuteronomy.
WRITING, REWRITING, AND OVERWRITING IN THE BOOKS OF DEUTERONOMY AND THE FORMER PROPHETS ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF CYNTHIA EDENBURG, 2019
A striking set of parallels between Deut 25:5-10 and wills from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar ... more A striking set of parallels between Deut 25:5-10 and wills from the Late Bronze Age city of Emar suggest that the biblical legal text may have its roots in a comparable Israelite will.
Antoine Cavigneaux’s (2014) recent edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa allows for a fresh... more Antoine Cavigneaux’s (2014) recent edition of the Tell Haddad version of Adapa allows for a fresh assessment of the myth in all of its available versions. Close examination of the Tell Haddad version and the Amarna Tablet in particular reveals that the two display different sets of logic and foci, with only the latter concerned especially with Adapa and his fate. This distinction is reflective not merely of fluidity in copying but instead appears to indicate evidence of revision in the course of transmission.
When we encounter a text, whether ancient or modern, we typically start at the beginning and work... more When we encounter a text, whether ancient or modern, we typically start at the beginning and work our way toward the end. In Tracking the Master Scribe, Sara J. Milstein demonstrates that for biblical and Mesopotamian literature, this habit can yield misleading results.
In the ancient Near East, "master scribes"—those who had the authority to produce and revise literature—regularly modified their texts in the course of transmission. One of the most effective techniques for change was to add something to the front—what Milstein calls "revision through introduction." This method allowed scribes to preserve their received material while simultaneously recasting it. As a result, numerous biblical and Mesopotamian texts manifest multiple and even competing viewpoints. Due to the primary position of these additions, such reworked texts are often read solely through the lens of their final contributions. This is true not only for biblical and cuneiform texts in their final forms, but also for Mesopotamian texts that are known from multiple versions: first impressions carry weight.
Rather than "nail down every piece of the puzzle," Tracking the Master Scribe demonstrates what is to be gained when engaging questions of textual transmission with attention to how scribes actually worked. Working from the two earliest corpora that allow us to track large-scale change, the book provides broad overviews of evidence available for revision through introduction, as well as a set of detailed case studies that offer fresh insight into well-known biblical and Mesopotamian literary texts. The result is the first comprehensive and comparative profile of this key scribal method: one that was not only ubiquitous in the ancient Near East but also epitomizes the attitudes of the master scribes toward the literature that they produced.
The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, perhaps the most famous of Mesopotamian literature, has been conside... more The Akkadian Gilgamesh Epic, perhaps the most famous of Mesopotamian literature, has been considered the artistry of one author inspired by Sumerian tales. Specialists have assumed that all the earliest evidence (ca. 1800-1700 BCE) reflects this creative unity. Deep contrasts in characterization and narrative logic, however, distinguish the central adventure to defeat the monster Huwawa from what precedes and follows it. The Huwawa narrative stands on its own, so that the epic must have been composed from this prior Akkadian composition. Recognition of the tale embedded in the epic allows each block of material to be understood on its own terms. Such literary-historical investigation from contemporary texts is new to Assyriology and may produce important results when applied to other Mesopotamian writing.
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In the ancient Near East, "master scribes"—those who had the authority to produce and revise literature—regularly modified their texts in the course of transmission. One of the most effective techniques for change was to add something to the front—what Milstein calls "revision through introduction." This method allowed scribes to preserve their received material while simultaneously recasting it. As a result, numerous biblical and Mesopotamian texts manifest multiple and even competing viewpoints. Due to the primary position of these additions, such reworked texts are often read solely through the lens of their final contributions. This is true not only for biblical and cuneiform texts in their final forms, but also for Mesopotamian texts that are known from multiple versions: first impressions carry weight.
Rather than "nail down every piece of the puzzle," Tracking the Master Scribe demonstrates what is to be gained when engaging questions of textual transmission with attention to how scribes actually worked. Working from the two earliest corpora that allow us to track large-scale change, the book provides broad overviews of evidence available for revision through introduction, as well as a set of detailed case studies that offer fresh insight into well-known biblical and Mesopotamian literary texts. The result is the first comprehensive and comparative profile of this key scribal method: one that was not only ubiquitous in the ancient Near East but also epitomizes the attitudes of the master scribes toward the literature that they produced.
In the ancient Near East, "master scribes"—those who had the authority to produce and revise literature—regularly modified their texts in the course of transmission. One of the most effective techniques for change was to add something to the front—what Milstein calls "revision through introduction." This method allowed scribes to preserve their received material while simultaneously recasting it. As a result, numerous biblical and Mesopotamian texts manifest multiple and even competing viewpoints. Due to the primary position of these additions, such reworked texts are often read solely through the lens of their final contributions. This is true not only for biblical and cuneiform texts in their final forms, but also for Mesopotamian texts that are known from multiple versions: first impressions carry weight.
Rather than "nail down every piece of the puzzle," Tracking the Master Scribe demonstrates what is to be gained when engaging questions of textual transmission with attention to how scribes actually worked. Working from the two earliest corpora that allow us to track large-scale change, the book provides broad overviews of evidence available for revision through introduction, as well as a set of detailed case studies that offer fresh insight into well-known biblical and Mesopotamian literary texts. The result is the first comprehensive and comparative profile of this key scribal method: one that was not only ubiquitous in the ancient Near East but also epitomizes the attitudes of the master scribes toward the literature that they produced.