Introduction to the old testament part 4

In fact, in some ways it's the dissimilarity that is remarkably important to us, the biblical transformation of a common Near Eastern heritage in light of its radically new conceptions of God and the world and humankind.

We'll be dealing with this in some depth, but I'll give you one quick example. We have a Sumerian story about the third millennium BCE, going back 3000--third millennium, 3000 BCE. It's the story of Ziusudra, and it's very similar to the Genesis flood story of Noah. In both of these stories, the Sumerian and the Israelite story, you have a flood that is the result of a deliberate divine decision; one individual is chosen to be rescued; that individual is given very specific instructions on building a boat; he is given instructions about who to bring on board; the flood comes and exterminates all living things; the boat comes to rest on a mountaintop; the hero sends out birds to reconnoiter the land; when he comes out of the ark he offers a sacrifice to the god--the same narrative elements are in these two stories.

It's just wonderful when you read them side by side. So what is of great significance though is not simply that the biblical writer is retelling a story that clearly went around everywhere in ancient Mesopotamia; they were transforming the story so that it became a vehicle for the expression of their own values and their own views. In the Mesopotamian stories, for example, the gods act capriciously, the gods act on a whim. In fact, in one of the stories, the gods say, "Oh, people, they're so noisy, I can't sleep, let's wipe them all out." That's the rationale. There's no moral scruple. They destroy these helpless but stoic humans who are chafing under their tyrannical and unjust and uncaring rule. In the biblical story, when the Israelites told the story, they modified it. It's God's uncompromising ethical standards that lead him to bring the flood in an act of divine justice.

He's punishing the evil corruption of human beings that he has so lovingly created and whose degradation he can't bear to witness. So it's saying something different. It's providing a very different message. So when we compare the Bible with the literature of the Ancient Near East, we'll see not only the incredible cultural and literary heritage that was obviously common to them, but we'll see the ideological gulf that separated them and we'll see how biblical writers so beautifully and cleverly manipulated and used these stories, as I said, as a vehicle for the expression of a radically new idea. They drew upon these sources but they blended and shaped them in a particular way. And that brings us to a critical problem facing anyone who seeks to reconstruct ancient Israelite religion or culture on the basis of the biblical materials.

That problem is the conflicting perspective between the final editors of the text and some of the older sources that are incorporated into the Bible, some of the older sources that they were obviously drawing on.

Those who were responsible for the final editing, the final forms of the texts, had a decidedly monotheistic perspective, ethical monotheistic perspective, and they attempted to impose that perspective on their older source materials; and for the most part they were successful. But at times the result of their effort is a deeply conflicted, deeply ambiguous text. And again, that's going to be one of the most fun things for you as readers of this text, if you're alert to it, if you're ready to listen to the cacophony of voices that are within the text. In many respects, the Bible represents or expresses a basic discontent with the larger cultural milieu in which it was produced, and that's interesting for us, because a lot of modern people have a tendency to think of the Bible as an emblem of conservatism. Right? We tend to think of this as an old fuddy-duddy document, it's outdated, has outdated ideas, and I think the challenge of this course is that you read the Bible with fresh eyes so that you can appreciate it for what it was, in many ways what it continues to be: a revolutionary, cultural critique.  

To be continued in part 5.