get ready today we're gonna leave my
home in Yonkers New York and head into
Manhattan to one of the greatest Bible
libraries in the entire world
the Mendel Gottesman library of
yeshiva university at 185th Street
and Amsterdam Avenue
welcome to 929 chapters I'm your host
David Z moster PhD and rabbi so as you
can see I've got a great stack of books
in front of me today and what I'm going
to do is show you how I and many other
scholars try to compare and contrast the
Bible with the literature from the
Ancient Near East so I'm going to break
this video up into seven parts for the
first part we're gonna look at a book
called ancient texts for the study of
the Hebrew Bible by Sparks this will
lead us to two reference works Context
of Scripture and ancient Near Eastern
texts and pictures related to the Old
Testament then finally we're gonna dig
even deeper for an article by Jacobsen
and the first edition tablet by Poebel
then we're gonna get very modern by
looking at the cuneiform digital library
initiative CDLI and then finally I'm
gonna bring it all together with some
Bible verses at the very end what we're
looking at here is a book by Kenton L
Sparks called Ancient Texts for the
Study of the Hebrew Bible I bought it
for about $20 on Amazon I'll have a link
to it in the description of this video
and this book was published in 2005 and
really since then for me it has been a
must have really fantastic book now
there are thousands, hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of ancient
near-eastern texts what sparks does is
he only tells you the really important
ones for the study of the Bible so for
example chapter 2 is wisdom literature
that relates to a book such as Proverbs
chapter 3 he has ancient hymns prayers
and laments that relates to a book such
as Psalms and the Book of Lamentations
and then for example in chapter 4 he has
love poetry and that relates to a book
such as the Song of Songs so since we're
working on the book of Genesis right now
I thought it would be interesting to try
and find a text that relates to the book
of Genesis now the beginning of Genesis
is about creation so I want to study
chapter 10 which is about myths and I
want some of the very oldest myths so
we're gonna look at section 10.1.1
Sumerian myths when we look on
page 307 what we have here are the
Sumerian myths I picked one of them
known as the Eridu Genesis on page
310 what sparks will do is tell you what
this
text is how it relates to the Bible and
then he'll tell you where you can find
information about it
what we can see here is that sparks is
pointing us to some text here he has in
translations he tells us to go to "COS 1.158"
COS stands for Context of
Scripture and it's these three big books
right here a great title context of
Scripture what it does is it gives you
so many ancient Near Eastern and
Egyptian and texts that have to do with
the Bible it's divided into three
volumes
the first one is canonical compositions
the second one is monumental
inscriptions and then the third one is
archival documents now lucky for me I
actually have this entire three volume
set on my computer in a computer program
called Accordance so we could take a
look at it on our screens over here I
wish we can make this section bigger but
what I'm showing you is the table of
contents for the context of Scripture so
let's take a look at section 1.158
which is going to be the Eridu Genesis so it's going to be in
Sumerian canonical inscriptions gonna be
a divine focus it's going to be a myth
and we're going to get the Eridu
Genesis 1.158  and
we're gonna click on it right and so
what we see here translation by
Jacobsen of the Eridu Genesis and here
in the context of Scripture you're gonna
get a nice brief introduction here we
see that the fragment here translated
was written sometime around 1600 BC
and so on and so forth so let's jump
into the text of the Eridu Genesis so I'm
just going to point out a few key lines
of this text when An Enlil Enki and
Ninhursaga fashion the dark headed
people the Sumerians they had made the
small animals that come up from out of
the earth come from the earth in
abundance and so on and so forth so this
is just a brief mentioning of the
creation of humankind as well as animals
by the gods so at the beginning we have
a goddess named Nintur and what she
wants to do is give out cities to the
first men the earliest men in
Mesopotamia the firstling of those
cities Eridu she gave to the leader
Nudimmud now Eridu in other texts is
also known as the oldest or probably the
first ancient Mesopotamian city in this
text also we see that it's an ancient
city it's the first city the second city
Bad-tibira she gave to the prince and
the sacred one the third one Larak she
gave to Pahilsag and so on and so
forth and so what Nintur is doing is
she's giving out the first cities to
different kings then we get this
interesting line here these cities which
have been named by names and had been
allotted half bushel baskets what does
it mean that these cities have been allotted  in half bushel baskets I don't know
context of Scripture doesn't really tell
me so keep that in mind we're gonna try
and figure that as we go along in our
journey today after a break in the text
we get the story of the god Enki telling
a king of Eridu Ziusudra about the
impending doom of a flood Enki says
may you heed my advice
by our hand a flood will sweep over the
cities of the half bushel baskets
remember that half bushel basket keep that in
mind what is that and the country the
decision that mankind is to be destroyed
has been made this verdict cannot be
turned over the world is going to be
destroyed by flood then we have a break
in the text and then the flood comes all
the evil winds all the stormy winds
gathered into one and with them then the
flood was sweeping over the cities of
the half bushel baskets -
keep that in mind again half bushel
baskets - for seven days and seven nights
after the flood have swept over their
country after the evil wind had tossed
the big boat about on the great waters
the Sun came out spreading light over
heaven and earth Ziusudra then drilled
an opening in the big boat and the
gallant Utu  sent his light into the
interior of the big boat and then
Ziusudra goes on to give some offerings
the king goes butchering off oxen was
being lavished with the sheep and so on
and then we get the break in the text so
this is the Eridu Genesis we saw that
there's a creation of man and animals by
gods we saw that there's a mention of
the creation of the first cities we saw
a flood we saw a flood survivor on a
boat and we saw some sacrifices and we
also had a question about those half
bushels we'll get to that in the future
so this is a really nice introduction to
this Eridu Genesis text. Context of
Scripture and Sparks really go
hand-in-hand with each other
now another important book ancient
Near Eastern text and pictures related
to the Old Testament by Prichard this
nice three-volume work this book which
came out in 1950 was hands-down one of
the most important books in biblical
studies
until context of Scripture came out and
many people had access to other newer
versions of the texts so you'll often
see in older books references to "ANET"
Ancient Near Eastern Texts by Pritchard
like context of Scripture it tells you
many different types of ancient
near-eastern
texts such as myths epics and legends in
the first section legal texts in the
second section historical texts in the
third section and so on and so forth
the Eridu Genesis can be found on
pages 42 to 44 and as you see here just
like context of Scripture it tells you a
lot of introductory text and then it
gives you a translation but bear in mind
this translation came out in 1950
whereas there have been updated
dictionaries there have been people
reading this translation and correcting
things so it's to be taken with a grain
of salt but still very good to have on
the Shelf and also another thing that
makes the ancient Near Eastern texts
really cool is that it has the second
volume these pictures which before the
internet and websites like www.Bibleplaces.com
this book would actually give you
fantastic photographs from museums and
museum pieces around the world okay so
now that we've done the first three
let's move on to an article by Jacobsen
 in our book by Sparks ancient
texts of the Hebrew Bible he tells us
that there are texts and translations if
we want to go a little bit deeper into
the text and we see here a text by
Thorkild Jakobsen "The Eridu Genesis" in JBL
the journal biblical literature 100 so
here it is if you have university access
you can really pull this up off of the
website JSTOR what we see here is that
we have a nice article about the text
and also the translation itself and it's
more in-depth and detailed in the
context of Scripture so just a few
things to point out  the first
one is that as you can see here in
footnote 6 here before the translation
what Jakobsen is going to do is
actually give you the actual Akkadian
old Babylonian text the words that he
found on the tablet which is good if you
understand Akkadian you can see how he
is translating the work and then he
gives us some nice commentary for
example what the bushel baskets were and
he basically says that in Sumerian times
money wasn't really existant or if it
was it wasn't really big yet so before
money
you would trade each other in
half bushel baskets so that's talking
about cities being the first place to
have money in monetary exchange so we
just learned a whole lot from that
article by Jacobsen and we want to go
even deeper so we're gonna use Sparks
and he's gonna tell us that there is an
original publication in 1914 by Arno
Poebel entitled historical and grammatical
texts PBS 5 that stands for publications
of the babylonians section of the
University of Pennsylvania Museum since
its from 1914 this book is in the public
domain and you can get it for free on
Google and what we're looking at here is
that Poebel book actually gives you what he
calls an autographed plate which is a
hand-drawn copy of the tablet what
you're able to see is the actual
cuneiform wedges of the script
so when Poebel tells you what he thinks
the text says and you kind of are
scratching your head and you're like hmmm....
that doesn't sound right you can
actually look at the actual tablet and
figure out exactly what you think it
says and you could say maybe that wasn't
the right sign that he picked I would
have picked a different sign so what we
see here the text was a six column text
3 on the obverse and three columns on
the reverse and the top half of the
obverse was broken off which means that
the bottom half of the reverse was
broken off that's because an ancient
tablet wasn't like a modern page here we
have side 1 of the page and we turn it
to the other side of the page but
ancient tablet was actually you would
have obverse and you would flip it over
to reverse so that whereas the top of
the obverse is broken off it's the
bottom of the reverse that's broken off
another cool thing that Poebel does is he
gives you the transliteration of the
Akkadian and he tells you what Akkadian
words he sees on the tablet and then he
gives you his own translation this is
actually helpful if you're comparing and
contrasting what Jacobsen how he
understands the text versus how Poebel
originally understood the text so this
is just another way to go deeper into
the Eridu Genesis so we've looked at
an article by Jacobsen and we've also
looked at a first edition tablet by
Poebel but this isn't the only way to
look at the actual cuneiform Akkadian
old babylonian text if you really want
to go deep
into it and you study Akkadian then you
want to go to the cuneiform digital
library initiative the cuneiform digital
library initiative is a website it
puts actual photographs of cuneiform
tablets up online from multiple
university archives when you're
searching the CDLI it's a little
difficult to find exactly what you're
looking for often you really need to
know the exact call number
so what you can often do for a famous
text and if you're studying the Bible in
light of the ancient Near East there's a
good chance you're looking at a famous
text you can just google so for example
you can google "Eridu Genesis CDLI"
and then someone will tell you where in
the CDLI to find it so let's take a
look what we see here is our text it is
Arno Poebel  PBS 5 (1914)  number one
that's what we have and then also
there's some more information that makes
it interesting like over here it calls
it the flood story at the bottom there's
a nice picture of the tablet itself and
not only do we have the obverse and the
reverse of the tablet we also have the
top and the sides so you get multiple
angles for the tablet and when we click
on it we can actually get a really nice
clean clear high definition image of the
Eridu Genesis so if you disagree with
Poebel and you're like hmm Poebel's
transliteration and Jacobsens
transliteration they got the cuneiform a
little bit wrong I think they saw two
wedge marks when really I see three you
can go into CDLI and offer a new
reading yourself you can really dig
deep here so that was our brief
introduction to the cuneiform digital
library initiative now what I want to do
to end this study of the Eridu Genesis
is to now look at the Bible in light of
everything we've just seen so let's take
a look at a few verses we see in Genesis 1:27
[Hebrew]  
God created man in His image
[Hebrew]  he created
him in the image of God [Hebrew]
he created them male and female so
we have God creating in Genesis just as
we saw the gods creating in the Eridu
Genesis then if we move into some other
verses such as in Genesis 4:17 we have
the phrase [Hebrew]  and Cain
built a city
[Hebrew]  and
he named the city like the name of his
son  Enoch so here we have Cain
building a first city we also have in 10:11
[Hebrew]  and Assyria left that land
and he built the city
called Nineveh  [Hebrew] and the
city called Rehovot Ir  [Hebrew] and the
city of Calah so just like in the Eridu Genesis
we have the earliest cities
being attributed to ancient figures and
then just like in the Eridu Genesis
when there's a flood and a person who
survives the flood we have in Genesis
6:17 God speaking
[Hebrew]
and I behold I am
bringing a flood of water on the land to
destroy all flesh that has in it the
spirit of life from everything
underneath the heavens everything on the
land it will die
[Hebrew]  and I will
establish my covenant with you with Noah
[Hebrew] 
you'll come to the ship
[Hebrew]  you your children your
wife and the wives of your children  with you just like we had in the Eridu
Genesis we have this story of a person
surviving the flood and then finally
just like we saw in the Eridu Genesis
where there were sacrifices at the end
after the flood we have in Genesis 8:20
 [Hebrew]  and Noah
built a altar to Yahweh [Hebrew] and he took from all of
the pure animals [Hebrew] 
and from all of the pure birds
[Hebrew]  and he offered burnt
offerings on the altar so what we see
here is that just like the Eridu
Genesis the book of Genesis has certain
themes such as the creation of man and
animals by gods the creation of the
first cities by important people a flood
a flood survivor on a boat and
sacrifices and the reason we were able
to learn all this was because we started
with Ancient Texts for the Study
of the Hebrew Bible by Sparks that led
us to Context of Scripture and ANET and
then finally we dug a little bit deeper
by looking at the articles of
Jaconsen and Poebel from a hundred
years ago and then finally we were able
to look at the High Definition images of
the cuneiform digital library initiative
and so this is how scholars such as
myself find ancient Near Eastern texts
that are relevant to specific biblical
passages and then by digging deeper and
deeper we are able to look at the actual
cuneiform study the Akkadian and look at
how exactly to compare and contrast
ancient texts such as the Eridu
Genesis with an ancient text such as the
book of Genesis for more on the Bible
and the ancient Near East be sure to
check out my website www.929chapters.com
and I look forward to seeing you for
another special topic
