A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  Another Assyrian king whose fate may have left indirect traces in a famous Biblical tale is Esarhaddon, who came to the throne after defeating his regicide brothers, as described both in his own inscriptions and the Bible (2 Kings 19:37). In Frahm 2009: 39–41, I have argued that the episode of Esarhaddon’s rise to power shares a number of intriguing features with the story of Joseph (especially Genesis 37:1–11). First and foremost, both Esarhaddon and Joseph are younger sons who are, nonetheless, selected by their respective fathers, Sennacherib and Jacob, to play future roles of great consequence. Both are encouraged by a number of divine signs. The jealous elder brothers hate and seek to denounce them, but their fathers remain secretly attached to them. And both Esarhaddon and Joseph become eventually, each in his own way, rulers of Egypt. Whether these parallels suffice to establish that the “author” of the Joseph story really drew on the history of Esarhaddon will remain controversial, but the possibility should not be discounted, all the more so since Esarhaddon is also prominently featured in the Aramaic Ahiqar tale, which bears some similarities with the Joseph story as well (see Müller 1977–78).

  In one case, it was not an Assyrian king but a queen‐mother whose deeds – conveyed through legendary tradition – may have left traces in the Biblical record: it seems possible that the Biblical book of Jonah draws on the Semiramis legend, which, in turn, goes back to stories about Sammu‐ramat, the exceptionally influential late ninth century wife of Šamši‐Adad V and mother of Adad‐nirari III (see Weinfeld 1991; Frahm 2016). According to Greek tradition primarily known from the work of Ctesias – and probably deriving from Aramaic tales – Semiramis was the daughter of the fish‐bodied goddess Derceto (Atargatis) of Ashkelon and a Syrian youth. Abandoned by her mother, Semiramis was fed by doves before being adopted by local shepherds. After marrying the Assyrian officer Onnes and then, later, the Assyrian king Ninus, she lived in Nineveh and became the most powerful woman of all times. Upon her death, she was turned into a dove. Four noticeable features connect her legend with the story of Jonah: Jonah’s name means “dove”; he boards his ship in Jaffa, which is not far from Ashkelon (and belonged to the Ashkelonite state during the reign of Sennacherib); he spends time in the belly of a fish; and his journey ends in Nineveh. The story of Jonah almost seems like a Midrash on the Semiramis legend, even though the precise theological goals of this strange literary transformation remain elusive.

  There are other possible links between Biblical stories and events from Assyrian history. Dalley 2007, for example, has argued that the book of Esther draws on political and religious conflicts that took place in Mesopotamia during the Late Assyrian period. Yet while it is true that the Esther story includes Mesopotamian motifs (the names “Esther” and “Mordecai” derive from “Ištar” and “Marduk,” respectively), it remains uncertain whether its origins really date to the time of the Assyrian empire.

  Political Ideology and Law

  Other areas where scholars have sought to establish an Assyrian influence on the Bible are political ideology and law. Again, the degree of this influence has been much debated, without a full consensus in sight.

  Machinist (1983) and more recently Aster (2007) and van der Kooij (2012) (all with additional literature) have argued that especially in the book of Isaiah, but also elsewhere in the Bible, there is a pronounced awareness of Assyrian royal ideology, an ideology most elaborately articulated in Assyrian royal inscriptions. Machinist has highlighted several motifs from these inscriptions that are taken up in Isaiah, from cutting the cedars of Lebanon to burning down enemy cities and being in awe of the glory of Assyrian power. While it remains questionable that Biblical authors came across such – fairly general – motifs by closely reading royal panegyrics in cuneiform (see Weissert 2011: 307–9), the idea that they became aware of them in more indirect ways – especially through personal encounters with representatives of the Assyrian crown, either at home or abroad, for example when delivering tribute – is certainly plausible.

  A passage that shows particular awareness on the part of the Biblical authors of the self‐representation of Assyrian kings is Isa. 10:5–15, which pretends to quote the words of one of them (van der Kooij 2012: 13–18). Isaiah’s anonymous Assyrian ruler claims to have “removed the boundaries of the peoples and plundered their treasures” (Isa. 10:13), a statement that is in line with actual Assyrian ideology.

  Isaiah is critical of the Assyrian ambition to “gather all the earth” (Isa. 10:14), for world domination, in his view, belonged exclusively to the Biblical god. Isa. 6:3 states: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” From a modern historical perspective, however, it was quite possibly the experience of Assyrian domination that inspired “theologians” in Judah such as Isaiah to envision a god who was ruling the whole earth (Hom 2012).

  The same kind of political‐theological transfer – or “Umbuchung,” to use the economic term introduced by Assmann (2002: 49–52) to describe this phenomenon – seems to characterize the adoption and adaptation by Biblical authors of certain legal traditions related to Assyria. It must be admitted, though, that the assessment of parallels between the legal corpora of Mesopotamia and the Bible is again fraught with methodological difficulties (see Malul 1990) and that the three cases presented in the following are viewed quite differently in modern scholarship. The relevant literature is vast and can be discussed here only selectively.

  Several scholars, most recently and systematically D. Wright (2009), have observed that there are conspicuous similarities between certain sections of the Hammurapi Law Code (CH), which was originally promulgated in the 18th century BCE, and the Biblical law collection known as the Covenant Code (Ex. 20:19–23:33). Particularly impressive are the parallels of a number of laws pertaining to a goring ox in §250–2 of the CH and the legal prescriptions in Ex. 21:28–32. There are, moreover, structural parallels in the overall arrangements of the laws in the two texts (Wright 2009: 9). Wright argues that the Covenant Code is a polemical rewriting of the CH, aimed at revealing that only God, and not a human king, could be a legitimate lawgiver (2009: 287–93). Since it is now acknowledged by most Biblical scholars that the Covenant Code precedes the so‐called Deuteronomic Code (Deut. 12–26), Wright dates the creation of the Covenant Code to the years between 740 and 640 BCE. Pointing out that the CH, despite its great age, was studied by Neo‐Assyrian scribes in various Assyrian cities, Wright argues that the author of the Covenant Code had immediate access to written versions of it.

  Even though Wright may occasionally over‐emphasize the parallels between the CH and the Covenant Code (see the critique by Polak 2010), there are, undeniably, conspicuous similarities between the two texts. A Mesopotamian background for parts of the Covenant Code is therefore likely, but whether the “borrowing” that apparently occurred was really as unmediated as assumed by Wright remains somewhat questionable (see the discussion in Wells 2015). A particularly vexing problem is the dearth of evidence for attempts on the part of the Assyrian elites to disseminate their cuneiform scholarly tradition, which included studying the CH, in the West (see Morrow 2005).

  The problem of establishing a plausible channel of transmission also applies to suggestions that a number of legal provisions in the book of Deuteronomy are based on the so‐called “Tablet A” of the Middle Assyrian Laws (MAL), which deals with marriage and family law. E. Otto (1999: 203–17 and passim) has shown that the two law collections share a number of similar legal propositions (e.g., MAL A §12–16 and Deut. 22:22–9) and has argued that the authors of the earliest version of the Deuteronomic Code used MAL A as a model to weaken the emphasis the Covenant Code put on private initiative in criminal law. This is not entirely impossible – even though written in the late second millennium, the most important manuscript of the MAL was found in Ashur in a Neo‐Assyrian context, and a duplicate was unearthed in Assurbanipal’s library at Nineveh. There is, hence, no doubt that the MAL continued to be studied in Late Assy
rian times. One wonders, nonetheless, whether it is likely that an Israelite or Judahite would have had access to the text.

  Our last case of an Assyrian “legal” text possibly influencing Biblical law is the most plausible one, since a credible historical scenario can be proposed for the presumed borrowing. Ever since their publication in 1958, scholars have been aware of a number of intriguing parallels between the so‐called Vassal Treaties of Esarhaddon (VTE), re‐edited most recently in SAA 2 (no. 6), and portions of the book of Deuteronomy, especially in chapters 13 and 28. The VTE tablets, now known from manuscripts found at Calah, Ashur, and Tell Tayinat on the Orontes, include a long list of loyalty oaths imposed by Esarhaddon in the spring of 672 BCE on his Assyrian subjects, his religious, military, and political officials, and various Assyrian vassals, with the goal of securing the succession of his son Assurbanipal to the Assyrian throne. Both the treaty clauses and the curses in the VTE have parallels in Deuteronomy (for recent discussions, see Steymans 1995 and Radner 2006; for a more skeptical view, Crouch 2014). Thus, VAT §10, with its stipulations concerning treachery coming from the mouth of various family members (brothers, sons, daughters) as well as “prophets, ecstatics, and inquirers of oracles,” is very similar to the provisions in Deut. 13:2–10, and the sequential cluster of curses in VTE §39–42 has pronounced correspondences in Deut. 28:26–35. But while the VTE requires loyalty to the Assyrian king, Deuteronomy stipulates that this loyalty is owed to God, a polemical “inversion” that establishes, as argued especially by Otto (1999), an entirely new form of religious allegiance.

  Many scholars believe that the historical background for the Biblical adaptation of the VTE is sketched out in 2 Kings 22–3, where we find a report about the discovery, in the eighteenth year of king Josiah, of a “book of the law” stipulating that the official cult should be centered in Jerusalem and devoted to Yahweh alone. Students of the Hebrew Bible have argued for a long time that the law book in question was an early version of Deuteronomy, which promotes a very similar religious program. This chronological anchoring of a “proto‐Deuteronomy” adds credibility to the idea that the book was partly modeled on the VTE, which were drafted a few decades before Josiah’s religious reform. The recent discovery of a new manuscript of the VTE in Tell Tayinat on the Orontes (Lauinger 2012) – where it was prominently displayed in a local temple – proves that at least some members of the political elites of the Levant were exposed to the text, making it more probable that a version of the VTE was also available in Jerusalem (Fales 2012). An interesting clause in the Tell Tayinat manuscript requires the local leaders “to guard the tablet like your god” (Lauinger 2012: 98–9, 112, §35). There is still no consensus on whether “proto‐Deuteronomy” was primarily aimed at subverting Assyrian royal ideology, as argued by Otto, or rather at replacing the earlier Covenant Code (thus Levinson and Stackert 2012), but most scholars now agree that the VTE had at least some influence on the text.

  More Immediate Assyrian Influences on Religion and Culture in Israel and Judah?

  While there can be little doubt that Assyria’s imperial expansion in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE shaped central ideas articulated in the Hebrew Bible in indirect ways, the question of a more immediate Assyrian influence on Israelite and Judahite religion and culture remains debated. For a long time, scholars took for granted that Assyria had pursued a policy of religious coercion, imposing on defeated nations, among other things, the cult of Assur. Some forty years ago, however, M. Cogan put this idea into question, arguing that there was little evidence for any kind of religious “proselytizing” on the part of the Assyrians (Cogan 1974). H. Spieckerman (1982) sought to refute Cogan’s arguments and resurrect the concept of an Assyrian religious imperialism, but Cogan (1993) defended his thesis and held on to it. Recent studies, especially Holloway 2002, have sought to provide more nuanced assessments of the evidence, while S. Parpola, in a series of ambitious publications (see below in this section), has tried to demonstrate that Assyrian religion had an enormous impact on central ideas articulated in the Bible, as well as in Neo‐Platonic and Kabbalistic texts.

  Without being able to go into detail, I believe the available sources support the skeptical approach taken by Cogan and several other scholars (see Frahm 2011: 280–3). As pointed out above in the section on “Terminology,” the Bible never mentions the god Assur. One could be inclined to attribute this silence to an act of suppression, prompted by a desire on the part of the Biblical authors not to become entangled in what they may have perceived as the dangerous fascination of this god; but since there is almost no evidence for a full‐fledged cult of Assur anywhere outside his home city, such a view is unlikely. That governors of newly conquered provinces were asked to send offerings to the Assur temple in Ashur (see Holloway 2002: 100–8) only confirms that the Assyrian state god was far away. To be sure, an emblem called the “weapon of Assur” (kakku ša Aššur), apparently some kind of military standard, was occasionally displayed in foreign cities, sometimes in local temples, but it was most likely used in the administration of loyalty oaths and not as the object of a regular cult (Holloway 2002: 160–77). Also, the description in 2 Kings 16 of certain modifications of Jerusalem’s cultic infrastructure during the reign of Ahaz does not mention any particularly “Assyrian” elements (Cogan 1974: 73–7).

  Still, both E. Otto (1999: 69–88) and B. Levine (2005) maintain that the god Assur, and the centralization of his cult in the city of Ashur, provided a model for Israelite monotheism and the centralization of Yahweh’s cult in Jerusalem. This suggestion cannot be dismissed out of hand, but it seems preferable to me to assume that, rather than the Assyrian god, it was the Assyrian king and the monocratic nature of his imperial rule that served as a model for these highly consequential innovations. It is also questionable, in my view, that the Marduk theology of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma eliš inspired Judahite scribes of the Late Assyrian period to develop new ideas regarding the concept of Yahweh’s divine kingship, as recently argued by Flynn (2013). Enūma eliš may well have influenced a number of Biblical authors, but it seems more likely that this happened later, during the time of the Babylonian exile and its aftermath.

  Over the past two decades, S. Parpola has made a number of far‐reaching claims with regard to the impact that certain esoteric aspects of Assyrian religion, through channels that are usually not specified, allegedly had on the Bible and on Jewish, Christian, and Neo‐Platonic thought (see especially Parpola 1993 and SAA 9: XIII–CVIII). In Parpola’s view, the Assyrian Assur theology inspired Biblical monotheism, the Assyrian king provided the model for the concept of the Messiah, the goddess Ištar was an early form of the Holy Spirit, divine constellations in Assyrian prophecies anticipated the idea of the Holy Trinity, and the Sefirotic Tree prominently featured in the Kabbalah of esoteric Judaism had its roots, quite literally, in Assyrian soil. Parpola’s reasoning is thought‐provoking and informed by deep learning, but the author fails to produce concrete evidence from the Neo‐Assyrian period proving that the aforementioned ideas really played a major role in Assyrian religious thought. For this reason, most scholars have dismissed Parpola’s claims (see, inter alia, Cooper 2000 and Frahm 2000), and only a few have defended them (e.g., Gruenwald 1997). To be sure, there are Jewish texts that were informed by esoteric traditions related to Mesopotamian scholarship and religion, for example, the Astronomical Book of Enoch, which draws on a cuneiform treatise, Enūma Anu Enlil XIV (see Drawnel 2007). But this recourse to Mesopotamian scholarly‐esoteric concepts and ideas occurred long after the downfall of the Assyrian empire. During the Assyrian period, Assyrian intellectual and spiritual traditions probably had little direct influence on Israelite and Judahite religion

  Conclusions

  As recently argued by Bagg (2013: 305–8), the Neo‐Assyrian state of the eighth and seventh centuries BCE was an “empire without mission,” apart from never‐ending conquest. It sought to achieve maximum profits through a policy based
on fairly minimal investments, both logistically and ideologically. Accordingly, no Assyrian king ever tried to impose the cult of Assyrian deities on conquered nations, including Israel and Judah. And yet, Assyria’s imperial expansion left pronounced traces in the Hebrew Bible, a book whose literary origins go back to the Neo‐Assyrian period.

  Several of the western campaigns the Assyrian armies undertook during the second half of the eighth century are described in considerable detail in 2 Kings and elsewhere, and the downfall of the Assyrian empire is featured prominently in the book of Nahum. The Bible criticizes the hubris of the Assyrian conquerors and uses Assyria as a foil to highlight the specific identity of Israel and Judah. This is in marked contrast to the far more “cosmopolitan” Aramaic literature featuring Assyrian kings, for example, the Ahiqar story or Papyrus Amherst 63, which fully endorse the imperial spirit of the age (Sanders, forthcoming). But the Bible also describes the Assyrian kings as tools of Yahweh, who punishes Israel and Judah for their social and religious failings by sending against them the conquering Assyrian troops. Somewhat paradoxically, Yahweh himself acquires features of the Assyrian king in this process, a political‐religious inversion that is particularly pronounced in the Biblical book of Deuteronomy. Some chapters of this book are modeled on Esarhaddon’s “Vassal Treaties” but command that the loyalty originally owed to the Assyrian king be shown instead to God.