50. Haupt (“Der Name Jahwe”), Albright (“The Name of Yahweh”), and Driver (“The Original Form of the Name of ‘Yahweh’”) all argue for the causative (hif ‘il) imperfect (future) form of the verb, rendering the name of YHWH as “I will cause to be what I will cause to be.”
51. The deity ’El’s name is often translated in the Hebrew Bible as simply “God,” as the early compilers and editors of the Bible would have simply understood it as an abbreviation for ’Elohim, the generic Hebrew word for God (and plural “gods”). Gen. 35:7 reads, “[Jacob] built an altar and called the place ’El Beth-’El” which literally means “’El of Beth-’El,” with “Beth-’El” meaning “the house of ’El” or, more generically, “the house of God.” Thus, when the deity ’El’s name is given at the beginning of this place-name, it is likely referring to the deity ’El, giving us “’El (the deity) of Beth-’El” and distinguishing this particular deity from deities found elsewhere, as rendering the place-name as “God of the house of God” is redundant. The name only makes sense in a polytheistic context.
52. The Hebrew says, “’Elohim (God) has taken his place in the council of ’El.”
53. See LXX Gen. 14:18–20, 22; Num. 24:16; Deut. 32:8; 1 Esd. 9:46; Add. Esth. 16:16; Tob. 1:4, 13; and several times in the Psalms, most interestingly Ps. 82, particularly v. 1, which speaks about God taking his place in the council of ’El, and v. 6, where the speaker refers to other deities specifically as gods (“You are gods”)!
Chapter 3: Nineveh
1. For an excellent summary of Nineveh, see O’Brien, “Nineveh.”
2. My George Washington University colleague Eric Cline has written a brilliant new book entitled 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed, which offers an insightful look at the events leading to the end of the Bronze Age.
3. See Judg. 2:13; 10:6; 1 Sam. 7:3; 31:10; 1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13.
4. See 2 Kings 19:36–37, which records the death of Sennacherib at the hands of his own sons.
5. For more on the two palaces, visit the University of Pennsylvania’s ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus) Ashurbanipal Library Project, http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/asbp/index.html.
6. For the Lachish Relief Panels, in Room 10b of the British Museum, see http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/galleries/middle_east/room_10a_assyria_lion_hunts.aspx.
7. For the replica of the Lachish Relief Panels, see http://www.imj.org.il/imagine/collections/item.asp?itemNum=376868.
8. Cf. the Babylonian Chronicle for the years 615–609 BCE in the British Museum (BM 21901). See Jenkins, “Nabopolassar, Father of Nebuchadnezzar, Destroyed Nineveh,” for an excellent summary and photos of these items.
9. In fact, it is possible that the Hebrew word qaṭanni (), which literally means “my little (thing)” and which most Bibles translate as “my little finger,” may also be a veiled reference to Reḥoboam’s genitals.
10. The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III (ME 118885) was excavated by Sir Austen Henry Layard. It is presently located in Room 6 (Assyrian sculpture) of the British Museum.
11. On the Black Obelisk, the inscription misidentifies Jehu’ as a “Son of ‘Omri.” This is technically incorrect because Jehu’ was not a descendant of King ‘Omri, but rather a usurper who killed ‘Omri’s royal descendant, King Jehoram of Israel. It is likely that Assyria understood the “house of ‘Omri” as epithet for the kingdom of Israel, whose sixth king, ‘Omri, established the long-running ‘Omride dynasty, which ruled the Northern Kingdom for over four decades. Furthermore, McCarter and others argue that the inscription “Yaw” on the obelisk actually refers to a different king, Jehoram of Israel, but this doesn’t change the fact that the Black Obelisk is still the earliest depiction of any character from the Bible. See McCarter, “‘Yaw, Son of ‘Omri.’”
12. Translation of lines 25–41 from Younger, “Nimrud Prisms D & E” (2.118D). Cf. Gadd, “Inscribed Prisms of Sargon II from Nimrud.”
13. Watch it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0wvGiAH9g.
14. In order to prevent the Hebrew words for (as my two-year-olds say) “pee” and “poop” from appearing in the Bible, the later Masoretes created a qere-ketiv, which is Hebrew for “that which is read (qere) vs. that which is written (ketiv),” next to each of the words, suggesting that the word “filth” be read in place of “dung” and that the rather creative words “waters (at) their feet” be read in place of “urine.”
15. ANET 288. For resources concerning the Assyrian campaigns into Judah, see Younger, “Assyrian Involvement in the Southern Levant.”
16. Cf. 2 Kings 15:19–20 (Menaḥem of Israel), 2 Kings 16:7–18 and its parallel in 2 Chron. 28:21 (’Aḥaz), 2 Kings 17:3 (Hoshea‘), 2 Kings 23:33–35 (Jeho’aḥaz), and this payment of Ḥezekiah to Sennacherib mentioned in 2 Kings 18:13–16.
17. Some speculate that Jonah may be the same Jonah, son of ’Amittai the prophet from Gath-Ḥefer (just north of Nazareth) mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 as prophesying during the reign of Israelite King Jeroboam II (r. 786–746 BCE), who reigned at a point of relative Assyrian weakness in Cana‘an.
18. The Hebrew term ṣaba’ () is the term for “army,” “war,” or some kind of military service. The Hebrew term here is ṣaba’ ha-shamayim (), meaning “army of the heavens.” Thus, the name YHWH Ṣaba’oth, which is usually rendered “LORD of hosts” (284 instances, e.g., 1 Sam. 15:2), is usually used in the context of YHWH or his people going to war or “YHWH the Warrior.” It may initially have been a designation distinguishing between different YHWH traditions in the same way that Ba‘al was known as Ba‘al Hadad (as we saw in Phoenicia), Ba‘al Ḥermon (Judg. 3:3), Ba‘al Gad (Josh. 13:5), etc. In this manner, we would interpret the name as “YHWH of Ṣaba’oth.” Inscriptions bearing the names “YHWH of Teman” and “YHWH of Samaria” support this early belief. See Mettinger, “Yahweh Zebaoth.”
19. The identity of the city of ’Elqosh () has yet to be determined by scholars.
Chapter 4: Babylon
1. Babylon 3D is available at http://www.kadingirra.com/.
2. John Francis Xavier O’Conor explains, “The name Babylon occurs in many different forms in the Babylonian inscriptions. Commonly it is written KA-dingir-RA = ‘the gate of god,’ Bab-ili, Bâbîlu; ka, being the Akkadian for ‘gate,’ and dingir, the ideogram for ‘god’” (Cuneiform Text of a Recently Discovered Cylinder, 13).
3. In Hebrew, the second letter of the alphabet, , or bet, can be pronounced either as a hard b or as a softer v.
4. Do not confuse an etiology, which is an explanation of how something came to be, with etymology, which is the study of the derivation of a word, how it developed from earlier into later forms. And of course, one should not confuse either of these with entomology, which is the study of bugs.
5. Enuma Elish, tablet 6, lines 60–90 (ANET 68–69) describes the construction of the Ésagila in Babylon.
6. According to 1 Kings 6:1: “In the four hundred eightieth year after the Israelites came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the LORD.” This means the exodus would have happened 480 years before the Temple was built (which would have taken place about 970 BCE), that is, around 1450 BCE, some three hundred years after the establishment of Hammurabi’s law code. But Exod. 1:11 states that the Hebrew slaves “built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh,” meaning Exod. 1 understands the exodus as having taken place later, around 1250 BCE, during the reign of the city’s namesake, Pharaoh Ramesses II “the Great” (r. 1279–1213 BCE). This internal discrepancy regarding the date of the exodus is what some biblical scholars refer to as the “early exodus” (ca. 1450 BCE) vs. the “late exodus” (ca. 1250 BCE) debate. Because there is absolutely no archaeological evidence to support any mass exodus of Hebrews from Egypt, many scholars and archaeologists today, based on the archaeological evidence coming out of Israel over the past few decades, arg
ue that those who became the Israelites were actually Semitic Cana‘anites who had always lived in Cana‘an, that the exodus narrative was based on tales of escaped slaves and military conquests that were reworked to form a foundation myth for ancient Israel, and that therefore there was no biblical exodus at all.
7. For more, see Wright, Inventing God’s Law.
8. Translation in Harper, Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon.
9. Harper, Code of Hammurabi King of Babylon.
10. You can do so at http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1276 or https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Code_of_Hammurabi_%28Harper_translation%29.
11. See Finkel and Seymour, Babylon, 52. There is also no contemporary Babylonian textual reference to the Hanging Gardens. A Babylonian priest named Berossus writing in Greek around 290 BCE is cited as mentioning them. Josephus claims to quote Berossus’s account, History of Ancient Times, in Against Apion 1:19 (1:141). But since Berossus’s account wasn’t written until almost 250 years after the Persians conquered Babylon and since we know his writings only from secondhand citations, the literary legends must suffice as testimony that the Hanging Gardens actually existed. We also know that Alexander the Great was so impressed with the city after he defeated the Persian Achaemenid Empire at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 BCE and conquered Babylon that he sought to make it the capital of his vast empire. See Wiener, “Hanging Gardens of Babylon . . . in Assyrian Nineveh.”
12. Jehoiachin is also called Jeconiah and Coniah in the Bible.
13. Reverse side, lines 11–13. See also the “Cuneiform tablet with part of the Babylonian Chronicle (605–594 BC)” (item ME 21946) in the British Museum; Sigrist, Zadok, and Walker, Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets; Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicle; and Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles. Read the chronicle at Livius.org, http://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/abc–5-jerusalem-chronicle/.
14. Jer. 44:30: “Thus says the LORD, I am going to give Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies, those who seek his life, just as I gave King Zedekiah of Judah into the hand of King Nebuchadrezzar [sic] of Babylon, his enemy who sought his life.”
15. Second Kings 25:4–7 is paralleled in 2 Chron. 36:11–13. Note that Jer. 52:7–11 preserves an almost identical text. It is in the parallel between 2 Kings 24:18–25:21 and Jer. 52:7–11 that scholars have noted concrete evidence of redaction in the books of Kings (or in Jeremiah).
16. Babylon 28178, obverse ii 38–40; cf. ANET 308.
17. Babylon 28186, reverse ii 13–18; cf. ANET 308. For more, see Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, 149–53.
18. The destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in 70 CE was said coincidentally to also have taken place on the ninth day of the month of Av on the Jewish calendar.
19. Many thanks to University of Iowa Hillel Executive Director Gerald L. Sorokin for sharing this liturgical practice with me.
20. See Mark 15:34; Matt. 27:46.
21. For instance, Pss. 46–48 or Ps. 87.
22. To view the fragments of the Prayer of Nabonidus (4Q242), which reads a lot like Dan. 4:29–37, visit the IAA’s Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library, http://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/manuscript/4Q242-1?locale=en_US. To learn more, see Cross, “Fragments of the Prayer of Nabonidus.”
23. Note that the same editor who wrote the last chapter of 2 Kings was also likely the editor of the book of Jeremiah; he included nearly identical texts in each account, as the fates of Jeremiah and King Jehoiachin were closely tied together. For an explanation of this parallel, see Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book, 154. Note also that the Hebrew text of Jeremiah is one-sixth longer than the LXX version.
24. For more on the inviolability of Jerusalem, see Hayes, “The Tradition of Zion’s Inviolability.”
25. Cyrus Cylinder, lines 14–15. For the full translation, see Irving Finkel, The Cyrus Cylinder: The King of Persia’s Proclamation from Ancient Babylon.
26. The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli for short) is the larger and better known of the two Jewish Talmuds, the other being the Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalami for short).
Chapter 5: Megiddo
1. Loud, Megiddo Ivories.
2. To view one of the game boards, visit the Palestine collection at the Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago online, https:// oi.uchicago.edu/collections/highlights/highlights-collection-palestine.
3. To read about the battles that have taken place at Armageddon, see Cline, The Battles of Armageddon.
4. Levin, “Did Pharaoh Sheshonq Attack Jerusalem?”
5. It is worth pointing out, however, that when 2 Chron. 12:2–12 retells this episode, it adds in v. 4: “And he took [or captured] the fortified cities of Judah and came as far as Jerusalem.” Thus the Chronicler expands the record of Shoshenq’s campaign, perhaps to better reflect the documented reality that his campaign was not against Jerusalem, but only up until Jerusalem as part of a much larger campaign, and that Jerusalem paid off Shoshenq.
6. My colleague Eric Cline states: “The Megiddo Stele fragment is a small piece of stone that preserves the nomen and prenomen (the first two of three typical names in antiquity) of Shoshenq I. Broken off from a much larger monument, it comes from an unstratified context at Megiddo. Many earlier scholars have argued that its presence at Megiddo indicates that Shoshenq did indeed capture and occupy the city. Therefore, according to these scholars, it provides confirmation that Shoshenq’s topographical list inscribed back at Karnak in Egypt is indeed an accurate list of cities that he conquered during the campaign.” See Cline, “Review of The Campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I into Palestine,” 131.
Chapter 6: Athens
1. The Elgin Marbles are located in the Duveen Gallery (Room 18) of the British Museum in London. They are comprised of friezes from the Parthenon as well as objects from other buildings on the Acropolis, including the Erechtheion, the Propylaia, and the Temple of Athena Nike.
2. The seat of Persian provincial power in Yehud shifted from Beth’el to Miṣpah (likely modern Tel en-Naṣbeh) and finally to Jerusalem.
3. Cf. Gen. 1:5: “And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.” See also Gen. 1:8, 13, 19, 23, 31.
4. Antiochus IV came to power as the Seleucid king in 175 BCE. His first attack on Egypt (in which he marched past Jerusalem) came in 170, and his second attack on Egypt in 167. It was upon his return to Syria after this that he attacked Jerusalem (including the “desolating sacrilege” in the Jerusalem Temple; see Dan. 8:13), and his death occurred in 164. The time element of six years is likely a reference to the period in between two of these events.
5. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 10. This section describes Epicurus, and 10.131–32 describes his Letter to Menoeceus, which states explicitly that his philosophy “is not an unbroken succession of drinking-bouts and of revelry, not sexual love, not the enjoyment of the fish and other delicacies of a luxurious table, which produce a pleasant life,” but rather, “it is sober reasoning, searching out the grounds of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest tumults take possession of the soul.”
6. We know of Porphyry’s Against the Christians only from those early (mostly Christian) authors citing it for the purpose of refuting it. You can read the known excerpts at http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/porphyry_against_christians_02_fragments.htm.
7. Qohelet is the Hebrew name of Ecclesiastes. It is derived from the second word of the book, which means “teacher,” or more literally “one who convenes or addresses an assembly,” as is derived from the Hebrew root (qhl), meaning “to assemble.” The word Ecclesiastes is actually the Greek translation of Qohelet, made up of the words ἐκ (ek, meaning “out”) and καλέω (kaleō, meaning “to call, call forth”), similar to the word for “church,” ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía, meaning “called out”).
8. Mishnah Yadayim (“Hands”) 3:5 reads:
“The Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes render the hands impure. Rabbi Yehudah says: The Song of Songs renders the hands impure, but there is a dispute regarding Ecclesiastes. Rabbi Yose says: Ecclesiastes does not render the hands impure, and there is a dispute regarding the Song of Songs. Rabbi Shimon says: Ecclesiastes is among the [relative] leniencies of Beit Shammai and the [relative] stringencies of Beit Hillel. Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai said, ‘I have a received tradition from the mouths of seventy-two elders, on the day they inducted Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria into his seat [as head] at the Academy, that the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes render the hands impure.’ Rabbi Akiva said, ‘Mercy forbid! No one in Israel ever disputed that the Song of Songs renders the hands impure, since nothing in the entire world is worthy but for that day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel; for all the Scriptures are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies! And if they did dispute, there was only a dispute regarding Ecclesiastes.’ Rabbi Yochanan ben Yehoshua, the son of Rabbi Akiva’s father-in-law, said, ‘In accordance with words of Ben Azzai, thus did they dispute, and thus did they conclude.’” To “make the hands impure” was a euphemism for “canonical” or “holy.” Jews do not touch scrolls of scripture out of respect for their holiness and instead use a pointer called a yad (“hand”) to move along the text as it is read. Therefore, touching a biblical text is problematic because of its sanctity or holiness, while a noncanonical, common, or “profane” text can be easily touched because it isn’t holy.
9. See also Eccl. 2:15–17.
10. Gehenna (Gk. γέεννα) is the hellenization of the Hebrew word for the “Valley of (Ben-)Hinnom” (, gai ben-hinom). The Valley of Hinnom runs from the southwest of Jerusalem to the south of the City of David, where it intersects the Kidron Valley. This was where Cana‘anites and some Israelites (’Aḥaz in 2 Chron. 28:3; Manasseh in 33:6) sacrificed their children by fire to deities (Jer. 7:31), including Molech (32:35). The place was later considered to be cursed (19:2–6).
11. Matt. 5:22, 29–30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15, 33; Mark 9:43, 45, 47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6.
The Cities That Built the Bible Page 28
