I attempt to make a fresh start on the subject of the interaction between the Isaiah prophets and Mesopotamian culture. The results will probably surprise and even alarm, since they threaten to overturn a great deal of previous scholarship and to gore a number of sacred cows. First is the idea that 1st Isaiah is either the work of the historical prophet or was composed, along with the rest of the Hebrew Bible, in the Persian or Hellenistic period. I have (...) no doubt that some passages are to be connected with the historical prophet, but not merely one or two but indeed the bulk of 1st Isaiah’s prophecies, albeit often pre-exilic in origin, are, in my view, too late to be contemporary with Isaiah himself. (shrink)

Bronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria. By Nicholas Postgate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 484, illus. $99.

In this article the impact of the Covid-19 virus will be used as a lens to read this Isaianic text. The collective threat of the corona-virus causes trauma on societies and communities on different levels: psychological, physical, existential and communal trauma. Isaiah 7:18–25 also tells us of an historic event which caused extreme trauma to its audience. Verse 18 describes the arrival of the Assyrian army. The prophet compares the Assyrian hosts to the flies “in the rivers of Egypt”, and (...) to the bees in Assyria; that is to say, the invaders will be the innumerable and speedy warriors of the Assyrian king. This portrayal is expanded stating that the flies and the bees will swarm all over the land, penetrate every corner and crack and it will be impossible to get rid of them. The plague of “flies” in the metaphor represents the large numbers, while the “bees” are clearly the aggressive and terrifying ones in this metaphor. Just as the Assyrians, who are about to appear as an unwanted and troublesome multitude of flies and bees from which Ahaz will be unable to free himself and his kingdom, the Covid-19 virus is causing havoc and wreckage to societies all over the world. Contribution: This article reflects theologically on the immense psychological and existential damage of trauma caused by the terrifying and laming fear this virus has on the mental well-being of a society. The theological reflections will engage with a biblical text which also reflects on the traumatic effects of threat and fear that lamed a society. (shrink)

The Royal Inscriptions of Tiglath-pileser III and Shalmaneser V, Kings of Assyria. By Hayim Tadmor and Shigeo Yamada. The Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period, vol. 1. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Pp. xxiii + 211. $59.50.

Reformation commentators were well aware of the allegorical referents for Leviathan and Behemoth in the book of Job, representing the powerful states of Ancient Egypt and Assyria, but played them down. Hobbes did not.

Assyria can be described as the founder of the imperial model of kingship in the ancient Near East. The Assyrian court itself, however, remains poorly understood. Scholarship has treated the court as a disembodied, textual entity, separated from the physical spaces it occupied – namely, the palaces. At the same time, architectural analyses have examined the physical structures of the Assyrian palaces, without consideration for how these structures were connected to people’s lives and works. The palaces are often described (...) as secluded, inaccessible locations. This study presents the first model of the Assyrian court contextualized in its actual palaces. It provides a nuanced model highlighting how the court organized the immense flow of information, people and goods entering the palace as a result of the empire’s increased size and complexity. It argues that access to the king was regulated by three gates of control which were manned by specific types of personnel and a more situational organization that moved within the physical spaces of the palace and was contingent on the king’s activity. (shrink)

Early communities and states -- Egypt -- Mesoptamia, Assyria, Babylon -- Iran -- Israel -- India -- China -- The Greeks -- Rome -- Graeco-Roman humanism -- The Kingdom of Heaven and the Church of Christ -- Themes : similarities and differences between cultures -- General conclusion.

O texto conhecido como “Conselho a um príncipe” é um texto sapiencial datado do período neo-assírio que aqui se traduz do acádico para língua portuguesa. Reflecte uma concepção ética do poder real e da justiça como um das suas vertentes fundamentais. Essa ética é sobretudo perspectivada no âmbito das relações entre o rei e o divino. A prosperidade no país e os êxitos do rei dependem essencialmente da avaliação que os deuses fazem da atitude e do desempenho da realeza. Esta (...) lógica mostra que o poder real tem os seus limites, os quais assentam na dinâmica das relações com o divino e no princípio da retribuição. (shrink)

In City of God 19.24, Augustine rejects Cicero's definition of res publica as a society founded on justice for a new definition focused on common objects of love. Robert Markus, Oliver O'Donovan, and a host of Augustinian political theologians have depicted this move as a positive gesture toward secular society. Yet this reading fails to account for why Augustine waited so long to address Cicero's definition, first discussed in Book 2, and for the radical dualism Augustine sets forth between the (...) two cities throughout his text. I argue, in line with Rowan Williams and John Milbank, for a minority reading of Book 19 that draws upon the narrative structure of City of God. In Books 3–5, Augustine recounts the history of the earthly city according to Rome's penchant for violence and idolatry, both a function of love for temporal goods. In Book 18, Augustine traces the history of the earthly city before Rome according to the same themes, completing a narrative argument that humanity has always been divided according to differing loves. Book 19 advances the idea that such idolatry is injustice—a failure to grant God the worship he is due. With the new definition of 19.24, Augustine retains Cicero's emphasis on the importance of virtue in civic society while characteristically shifting the terms of discussion from justice to love. While such a definition means that Rome can be called a res publica, it also prompts a negative judgment upon her history according to her objects of love. Given her violence and idolatry, Rome is no better than Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Greece—all subject to withering critique in Book 18. Thus, Augustine's new definition does not retract but extends the polemic of City of God. (shrink)

We will present the main characteristics of the decorative scheme from throne room in the palace of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II, whose reign extended from 883-859 BC, located in the ancient city of Kalhu, now north Iraq. We consider decorative scheme to be the presence of images and texts in an architectural setting. We believe that the creation of the decorative scheme may be in some way linked to political projects, and therefore, it would be an expression of the (...) royal ideology and rhetoric. Throughout the analysis of the decorative scheme, aided by textual and material sources, we will try to put into evidence the main aspects of the imperial policy in vigour. (shrink)

What is the redemptive power of art? More fundamentally, what are the assumptions which make it seem natural to think of art as having such powers? In attempting to answer these questions, I will first be turning to Proust, who embodies perhaps more clearly—in a sense, even more crudely—than any other major artist a certain tendency to think of cultural symbolizations in general as essentially reparative. This tendency, which had already been sanctified as a more or less explicit dogma of (...) modern high culture by Proust’s time, persists, I believe, in our own time as the enabling morality of a humanistic criticism. I will argue that the notion of art as salvaging somehow damaged experience has, furthermore, been served by psychoanalysis—more specifically, by a certain view of sublimation first proposed rather disconnectedly by Sigmund Freud and later developed more coherently and forcefully by Melanie Klein. The psychoanalytic theory I refer to makes normative—both for an individual and for a culture—the mortuary aesthetic of A la recherché du temps perdu.As everyone knows, involuntary memories play a crucial role in the Proustian narrator’s discovery of his vocation as a writer. Let’s begin with a somewhat untypical example of the genre, the passage in Sodome et Gomorrhe describing the “resurrection” of Marcel’s grandmother on the first evening of his second visit to Balbec. This passage reformulates the importance of memory for art in terms of another relation about which the theoretical passages that conclude Le Temps retrouvé will be at once prolific and evasive: the dependence of art on death. Leo Bersani is professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley. The Forms of Violence/Narrative in Ancient Assyria and Modern Culture, written in collaboration with Ulysse Dutoit, is his most recent publication. Professor’s The Freudian Body/Psychoanalysis and Art will be published this winter. (shrink)

The monograph considers the relationships of ethical systems in the ancient Near East through a study of warfare in Judah, Israel and Assyria in the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It argues that a common cosmological and ideological outlook generated similarities in ethical thinking. In all three societies, the mythological traditions surrounding creation reflect a strong connection between war, kingship and the establishment of order. Human kings’ military activities are legitimated through their identification with this cosmic struggle against chaos, (...) begun by the divine king at creation. Military violence is thereby cast not only as morally tolerable but as morally imperative. Deviations from this point of view reflect two phenomena: the preservation of variable social perspectives and the impact of historical changes on ethical thinking. The research begins the discussion of ancient Near Eastern ethics outside of Israel and Judah and fills a scholarly void by placing Israelite and Judahite ethics within this context, as well as contributing methodologically to future research in historical and comparative ethics. (shrink)

How empty and barren would life be if all our art and literature were taken away. What a calamity!Beyond the circle of the reading room are the world's greatest collection of books and the finest works of art from all places and times—sculpture from the Parthenon, Ming vases, Viking jewelry, great stone bulls and lions from Assyria, Egyptian mummies, medieval tapestries—brought together and taken out of context and time, like Keats's Grecian urn, because in themselves and in conjunction they (...) create—they are—art. In the courtyard before the huge pillars of the classical front of a Greek temple, thousands of people waited in long lines, like pilgrims at a shrine, to be admitted to look for a few moments at the rare .. (shrink)

Die assyrischen Königstitel und -epitheta vom Anfang bis Tukulti-Ninurta I. und seinen Nachfolgern. By Vladimir Sazonov. State Archives of Assyria Studies, vol. 25. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus ProJect, 2016. Pp. xiii + 139. $59. [Distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, IN].

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt (...) and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt (...) and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Abraham, Planter of Mathematics":Histories of Mathematics and Astrology in Early Modern EuropeNicholas PopperFrancis Bacon's 1605 Advancement of Learning proposed to dedicatee James I a massive reorganization of the institutions, goals, and methods of generating and transmitting knowledge. The numerous defects crippling the contemporary educational regime, Bacon claimed, should be addressed by strengthening emphasis on philosophy and natural knowledge. To that end, university positions were to be created devoted to (...) "Artes and Sciences at large," rather than to the professions. High salaries would render lecturers "able and sufficient," undistracted from their task. Most famously, he argued that teaching of the "operatiue studie of many Scyences" should involve sophisticated technical education. The study of natural philosophy demanded not only books, but globes, astrolabes, and other "instrumentals." Most significantly, yielding reliable and meaningful knowledge from experiential gleanings required a rigorous system of deductive reasoning.The legacy of this colossal proposal has earned Bacon honored status as devisor of the scientific method.1 But Bacon's educational reform extended [End Page 87] beyond the methods of producing and transmitting knowledge. To facilitate more efficient "vse and administration" of the knowledge produced by his system, he also demanded a searching examination of the history of learning. This history would provide a mirror enabling his contemporaries to deploy the fruits of his method, by considering how learning in the past had been used successfully or ill-advisedly. Producing this history was the ambition of the Advancement, for he explained: "no man hath propounded to himselfe the generall state of learning to bee described and represented from age to age, as many have done the works of Nature, & the State civile and Ecclesiastical." He continued:And yet I am not ignorant that in divers particular sciences, as of the Iurisconsults, the Mathematicians, the Rhetoricians, the Philosophers, there are set down some smal memorials of the Schooles, Authors, and Bookes: and so likewise some barren relations touching the Invention of Arts, or usages. But a iust story of learning, containing the Antiquities and Originalls of Knowledges, & their Sects; their Inventions, their Traditions; their diverse Administrations and Managings; their Flourishings, their Oppositions, Decayes, Depressions, Oblivions, Removes, with the causes, and occasions of them, and all other events concerning learning, throughout the ages of the world; I may truly affirme to be wanting.2Bacon thus positioned himself not only as a Father of Modern Science, but also a Father of the History of Science.Following Bacon's suggestion, I will examine the "small memorials" of the history of mathematics—and particularly the mathematical art of astrology—in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. My conclusion, however, will not bear out Bacon's claims. Despite his frustration, Bacon was only one of many early modern scholars appraising the role of mathematics within history. And he devoted less energy than others to mapping its origins and tracing its transmissions between communities. In fact, Bacon's 1605 proposal for a history of mathematics was already out-of-date. Discussions [End Page 88] of the history of mathematics had been rife on the continent and in England throughout the previous century.3The evidence that Renaissance scholars inherited was sprawling and inconclusive. Several genealogies for mathematics could be found within classical Greek, Latin, and patristic references. One lineage claimed mathematics began in ancient Assyria, where the priestly caste, the Chaldeans, practiced a form of mathematics that seemed a corrupt admixture of philosophy, medicine, and religion, and relied heavily on observation of the heavens. Other scholars traced the origins to Egypt, claiming that the field developed to survey lands frequently flooded by the Nile. The real problem for ancient, late antique, and medieval scholars had not been the origins of mathematics, but what exactly mathematics were. For some, the term strictly referred to the quadrivium: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music. But for others, mathematics' origins amongst the Egyptians or Chaldeans inextricably linked it to forms of astrological divination, augury, and necromancy that were unsavory to both Latin and Christian traditions. Mathematici were included alongside ghastly lists of Magi, Brahmins, Aruspices, Genethliaci, and other diabolic practitioners of idolatrous magic. These might or might not be distinguished from mathematici such as Pythagoras... (shrink)

Evaluation of a volume of English renderings of Akkadian-language texts con- cerning treatment of illness in ancient Assyria and Babylonia.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 139-147 [Access article in PDF] A Mahayana Theology of Salvation History John P. Keenan Middlebury College Salvation history is a Western theological strategy based on biblical ideas about how God acts in history to bring about the salvation/deliverance of God's people. It begins with the scriptural accounts of creation as the inception of God's plan. It moves to describe Israel's deliverance from slavery in Egypt (...) and goes on to depict the guidance the Lord Yahweh provides for his people throughout their journeys and despite their trials and reverses.Israel may be idealized in scripture as God's domain, sovereign among the nations, but in fact it was a small country sandwiched between the two superpowers of the day—Egypt and Assyria (or Babylon), and subject to the rise and fall of those empires. 1 The New Testament goes on to describe God's plan in sending his son Jesus to effect salvation and unite all people in him (Eph. 1:1-16). The passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus comprise the central drama, in which we all are invited to participate. The author of Luke/Acts gives an account of how God moves through the teachings and the life and death of Jesus to establish his Church and how that Church evolves from a small and marginal community to enter and permeate the very heart of the Empire at Rome. The story continues in postscriptural Christian history, from Constantine's vision at Milvian Bridge to the Christianization of Europe, and further to the missionary endeavors to convert all peoples to the path of the Gospel. In the twentieth century, Liberation theology is heir to these notions, insisting that conversion means not simply becoming Christian, but the furtherance of justice and peace among all peoples, even non-Christians.A Mahayana reading of this schema is not at first glance very promising. Mahayana knows nothing of God, much less of God acting in history. Nor, indeed, of history itself as a purposeful unfolding of events. Indian thought is known for its ahistoricity. No histories were produced in ancient India at all. No Herodotus, no Thucydides. The first Buddhist histories were written not in India but in Tibet, some thousand years after the birth of the Buddha Sakyamuni. Indian traditions in their focus on the eternal truth (sanatana dharma) turned away from the concrete flow of events and from any recording of their progression. [End Page 139]The task before us is challenging. To tackle it best, I will divide this essay into three parts, and thus attempt to argue for a Mahayana reading of salvation history. The first part will treat Mahayana philosophy and argue that despite its Indian lack of historical consciousness, it does possess the tools for writing history. Its teaching that all events are empty (sunyata) is coterminous with its teaching that all events arise in dependence upon a host of causes and conditions (pratitya-samutpada). In a word, emptiness itself entails a radical insight into the contingent and conventional historicity of events (dharmas). Beyond this, since all events are seen as empty of any abiding core essence, Mahayana deconstructs the very idea of an eternal world truth over and apart from the everyday world of events. It proclaims, rather, that to an awakened person, all is "worldly convention-only" (samvrti-matra). 2 This focus on the radical conventionality of events can serve, I would argue, as a needed corrective to a literalistic reading of salvation history. Looked at from this perspective, the story of the New Testament writers can perhaps become more apparent—how they are writing of God's design, purpose, and plan in order to counter the regnant patterns of Greek and Roman arrogance, and to substitute insight into the mystery of our being and of our being here.The second part of this article will address the Western doctrine of salvation history, focusing on the New Testament, particularly Pauline theology as expressed in one passage from Ephesians about how salvation is attained through Jesus as the unfolding plan of God's purpose... (shrink)

Overturned Boat: Intertextuality of the Adapa Myth and Exorcist Literature. By Amar Annus. State Archives of Assyria Studies, vol. 24. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2016. Pp. xii + 144. $59.

Once the Luwian hieroglyphics for God “” and Gate “” were discovered at Göbekli Tepe, this author was able to directly link the site’s carved pillars and pillar enclosures to the Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God”,. Archaeologists and anthropologists have long viewed the Bible as mankind’s best guide to prehistoric religion, however, archaeologist Klaus Schmidt had no reason to believe that the site he spent years excavating at Göbekli Tepe might be the legendary “Pillars of Enoch”, carved by the first Biblical (...) holy man and scribe. To make this connection, the author first had to decipher Judaism’s Razah D’Oraytah (Secret of Knowledge) from the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation). The Book of Creation is the only text to explain the Secret of Knowledge, and the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham within the rabbinical community. The Zohar, Judaism’s most accessible Kabbalistic text, admits that it lacks knowledge of “deep and hidden things which issue from God’s thought and are taken up by the Voice [of God] which are not disclosed till the Word [] reveals them”. Abrahamic/Mosaic “Word of God” encrypts the mathematics of sound that emanates from God’s “Voice” in terms of ancient string theory. Just as modern string theory defines a Theory of Everything (ToE) within theoretical physics, so too does this ancient string theory define the Theory of Everything that Abraham named the “Living God”. The author’s previous paper ties Jewish sources to Göbekli Tepe, while the current paper applies this sonic “God Table” to the textual exegesis and hermeneutics structuring all religious creation allegories, including the writings of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia, Vedic India, pre-Dynastic Egypt, Ugarit, and Israel. This paper will apply Göbekli Tepe’s structural template to archaeology’s oldest legible cuneiform tablets, including the Kesh Temple Hymn, Sumerian King List, and the Akkadian Ark Tablet. It will also be demonstrated that Göbekli Tepe holds the key to the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest text, and defines the essence of Plato’s metaphysics. (shrink)

The article starts with a clarification of the economic importance of certain material elements which underlie the agricultural labor process — land and water. Artificial irrigation has the significance of a primary determining factor, for, by requiring relatively intense forms of labor, it excludes slave labor as an essential element. The true „oriental“ form of production first arises when waterworks must be undertaken on a larger scale (for purposes of protection and irrigation). On a lower level of technical development, the (...) state then acquires a specific economic function : public works and astronomy. A differentiated form of society comes into being ; at its base are the peasants, either bound to the village or — later — free ; the upper ranks comprise the autocratic sovereign and an administrative, religious, and military bureaucracy. The pure oriental type in its simple form is exemplified by the old Inca society before its destruction. The higher form (with the development of inner contradictions) was attained by India, Babylonia, Assyria, Egypt, China, among others. The concentrated irrigational type, e.g. Babylonia, displays a different form of crisis from the less compact „B“ type of China. In the latter, the agricultural crisis is conditioned by extensive mobilization of arable land and by the cooperation of commercial capitalists with the centrifugal upper strata of society. Feudal or pseudo-feudal traits may be operative in creating a crisis, as in Egypt or China, but they are not the basis of the society, which is different from feudalism in its system of production, social organization, and state. Japan is feudal, or more correctly, „Asiatic“ - feudal. At most, the true oriental societies pass through an early feudal stage before developing into their own specific form based on large scale water works.The analysis of the organization of the productive forces makes it possible to explain the stagnation of the oriental agricultural society from the particular, centralized structure of the system of production based on irrigation. This is in contrast to the decentralized non-irrigational agriculture of feudal society, which did not hinder the development of towns and of an industrial capitalism fostered by late feudal absolutism.The theory of oriental society constitutes an attempt to describe both the western and eastern worlds as sectors of one human society, which develops and stagnates as movements of the same total historical process.L'article commence par éclaircir le rôle des deux éléments qui constituent le processus de travail agricole : la terre et l'eau. L'irrigation artificielle, premier facteur spécifique, exclut le travail des esclaves comme forme prédominante, du fait qu'il implique un mode de travail relativement intense. Cependant le type de production authentiquement „oriental“ apparaît seulement lorsque sont entreprises des constructions de grande envergure aux fins de protection ou d'irrigation. L'état assume alors une fonction économique propre : travaux publics et astronomie. C'est l'origine d'une société hiérarchisée qui va des paysans — liés d'abord au village, libres par la suite — au souverain autocrate, en passant par la bureaucratie administrative, sacerdotale et guerrière. La vieille société péruvienne des Incas représentait le type oriental pur dans sa forme simple. Les Indes, Babylone, l'Assyrie, l'Égypte, la Chine — entre autres — atteignirent une forme plus élevée avec développement des contradictions internes. Le type à technique hydraulique concentrée, exemple Babylone, manifeste des crises d'un autre caractère que le type à technique plus dispersée comme la Chine. Dans ce dernier pays, la crise était déterminée par une large mobilisation des terres cultivables et par l'action des capitalistes commerçants, jointe à celle du groupe supérieur centrifuge. Des caractères féodaux, ou pseudo-féodaux, peuvent bien contribuer — comme en Égypte et en Chine — à déterminer des crises, mais ne deviennent pas le fondement de la société qui, par la production, l'ordre social et l'État, diffère essentiellement de la féodalité. (Le Japon est féodal : c'est une féodalité „asiatique“ ; les sociétés authentiquement orientales traversent tout au plus une étape „pré-féodale“ avant de développer leur forme spécifique liée à la technique hydraulique.)L'analyse sociologique permet d'expliquer la stagnation de la société agraire orientale à partir de la structure spécifique centralisée du système de production inséparable de la technique hydraulique. En revanche, l'agriculture sans technique hydraulique de la société féodale n'oppose pas d'obstacles au développement des villes bourgeoises et d'un capitalisme industriel, favorisé, au terme de l'époque féodale, par l'absolutisme.La théorie de la Société orientale essaie d'esquisser un tableau où le monde occidental et le monde oriental sont comme des secteurs d'une société humaine. L'évolution de cette société aussi bien que sa stagnation représentent des mouvements partiels du même devenir historique total. (shrink)

This essay dates portions of the “Burden of Egypt” prophecy in Isaiah 19 to the Neo-Assyrian period, based on its borrowing of motifs from Assyrian royal inscriptions. These include the unique motif of the establishment of a monument on the border with Egypt and Assyrian attempts to dominate Egypt by controlling its trade. The essay also demonstrates the dependence of parts of Isaiah 19 on material in Exodus 1–15, integrating specific phrases from these Exodus chapters with motifs known to us (...) from Assyrian royal inscriptions. This integration could only have taken place during the Assyrian period, and this has obvious implications for the dating of the Exodus text. The essay understands the prophecy as a re-envisioning of the Assyrian campaign of 734, part of which was directed at Egypt. In this re-envisioned campaign, YHWH Himself is directing the Assyrian attack on Egypt. The essay focusses on 19:19–25, which describe how the Egyptians suffer as a result of the Assyrian attack. In their despair, they acknowledge the sovereignty of YHWH. This recognition is based on the Assyrian model of recognizing the Assyrian king as universal sovereign, and the monument described in v. 22 is based on the monument established by the Assyrians on the Egyptian border. The behavior of the Egyptians in vv. 20–22 provokes the unique theological statements of vv. 23–25, in which Egypt and Assyria join Israel in the triad blessed by YHWH. This passage demonstrates Isaiah’s use of a sort of “replacement theology” in which the universal sovereignty of YHWH is imagined and described based on Assyrian claims of universal dominion. (shrink)

By demonstrating that many of the concepts and styles associated with Modernism were actually derived directly from cultures such as Japan, China, Korea, India, Egypt, Assyria, West Africa, and the Pacific Islands, this book provides an entirely new way of looking at the evolution of Modernist art and literature in the West.

The Babylonian Theodicy. By Takayoshi Oshima. State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts, vol. 9. Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2013. Pp. lxiii + 63. $39. [Distributed by Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake, Ind.].