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Biblical Studies Blog Carnival VII »
July 01, 2006
Conceiving and Giving Birth the Akkadian, Ugaritic and Hebrew Way
I'm working my way through the Akkadian of RS 25.130 and it's more fragmentary near equivalents RS 25.34+ and RS 25.434. I probably should have done this before I did my most recent post on how to identify a scribal school but I don't think it would have contributed much beyond what was said there and it would have made a very long post even longer. This tablet contains an interlinear Sumerian/Akkadian bilingual poem.
Anyway, I found something that might be of interest to bibliobloggers. The Akkadian of line 6' reads,
ul in-ni-ru-û ul [i''alladu ]
Which I translate,
"They no longer conceive; they no [longer give birth ]"
"They" in this case are "great kings" of old(?). Based on the Sumerian in line 5, Nougayrol's restoration of the Akkadian is all but assured.
What's interesting about this is that (assuming the restoration is correct) the common Semitic roots *hry and *yld occur in parallel in this couplet. Held, 78 n.63 (apud Dahood, 173) noted the conjunction of these two roots in the Ugaritc texts KTU 1.5 V:22 and KTU 1.11:5 and related them to the use of the roots in Job 3:3 and 15:35a. Fisher, 22, translates Job 3:3,
"Perish the day on which I was born;
The night that said, 'A hero (geber) is conceived.'"
And Fisher, 39, translates Job 15:35a,
"Pregnant with pain and giving birth to evil"
The order of the roots in Job 3:3 is reversed from our Sumerian/Akkadian poem. Dahood, 173-174, pointed out many other examples. Numbers 11:12, Isaiah 26:17, 18; 33:11; 59:4 and Psalm 7:15 (Psalm 7:14 in most translations) have the roots in the same order as the Job 3:3 example, while Genesis 21:2; 30:5,7; Exodus 2:2; I Samuel 1:20 and Hosea 1:3 among others demonstrate the order of RS 25.130:6'.
Now what can be made of these parallels? Not much. Our linage has been conceiving and giving birth for an extremely long time. That the two have become associated should be no surprise. RS 25.130:6' laments the end of a linage of great kings. Isaiah 26:17 and 18 contains the lament of a barren woman and is, therefore, a closer parallel to RS 25.130:6' than some of the other passages. Even so, it would be unwarranted to see borrowing at any level. Rather, I think we have here the linguistic equivalent of "convergent evolution," another example of what Daniel Dennett might call a "good trick," something that is reinvented over and over because it works.
References:
Fisher, Loren, The Rebel Job, Willits, CA: Fisher Publications, 2006
Nougayrol, Jean, "Textes Suméro-Accadiens des Archives et Bibliothèques Privées d'Ugarit," Ugaritica V, Mission de Ras Shamra, XVI, Paris: P. Geuthner, 1968, 293-299
Posted by DuaneSmith at July 1, 2006 02:11 PM | Read more on Ugarit |
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