The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries

373 Pages·2016·2.19 MB·English

by  Uri Gabbay

The Exegetical Terminology of Akkadian Commentaries
Culture and History of the
Ancient Near East
Founding Editor
M.H.E. Weippert
Editor-in-Chief
Jonathan Stökl
Editors
Eckart Frahm
W. Randall Garr
Baruch Halpern
Theo P.J. van den Hout
Leslie Anne Warden
Irene J. Winter

VOLUME 82
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/chan
The Exegetical Terminology of
Akkadian Commentaries
By
Uri Gabbay
LEIDEN | BOSTON
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Gabbay, Uri, 1975– author.
Title: The exegetical terminology of Akkadian commentaries / by Uri Gabbay.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2016. | Series: Culture and history of
 the ancient Near East ; volume 82 | Includes bibliographical references
 and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016016914 (print) | LCCN 2016021439 (ebook) | ISBN
 9789004323469 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9789004323476 (E-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Assyro-Babylonian literature—Criticism,
 Textual—Terminology.
Classification: LCC PJ3611 .G33 2016 (print) | LCC PJ3611 (ebook) | DDC
 892/.1—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016016914
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
issn 1566-2055
isbn 978-90-04-32346-9 (hardback)
isbn 978-90-04-32347-6 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands.
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To Carmel, Yotam, and Naomi
⸪

Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1 Akkadian Commentaries 1
2 The Study of Akkadian Commentaries: Base Text, Motivation,
Terminology 2
2.1 The Base Text: Commentaries and Canonization 4
2.2 Hermeneutical Technique versus Hermeneutical Motivation 8
2.3 Exegetical Terminology 9
3 Structure and Content of the Book 11
1 The Reality Behind Commentaries: Terms for Study, Discourse, Sources,
and Compilation 13
1 Introduction: The Sitz im Leben of the Study Process 13
1.1 The Scholarly Study Environment 15
1.2 Attitude toward the Sources of the Commentary 16
2 The Sitz im Leben of the Learning Environment: The Lesson 18
2.1 “Genre” Designations Related to the Sitz im Leben of Study 20
2.2 S cribal Remarks Related to the Sitz im Leben of Study and the
Compilation of Commentaries 24
2.3 T erms Referring to Discourse in the Study Environment and the
Teacher-Student Relation: Dialogue, Direct Speech (mā),
Interrogatives, and Conjunctive Adverbs 31
3 Referring to the Reader of the Text in the Second Person 35
3.1 “(not) knowing” (idû) the Text 36
3.2 Having the Text “before you” 38
4 The Sitz im Leben of Compiling Commentaries: Oral and Written
Sources for the Compilation of the Commentary 51
4.1 Rubrics: ṣâtu, šūt pî, maš’altu (ša pī) ummâni, malsûtu 51
4.2 mā Indicating a Source of Interpretation in Assyrian
Commentaries 52
4.3 S cribal Remarks on Written and Oral Sources of the
Commentaries 54
4.4 Sources Cited in Support of a Commentary 66
4.5 The Enumeration and Presentation of Assembled Sources 70
viii contents
2 “What?”: Interpretation Through Definition (Equation and
Description) 84
1 Equation 85
1.1 Pronouns 85
1.2 šumšu, “its name” 88
1.3 ištēn(-ma), “(is/are) one” 92
1.4 pān(ī) (. . . šakin), “corresponding”(?) 94
1.5 lū, “it is indeed” 99
1.6 (apālu, “to correspond”) 100
1.7 Multi-option Equation: lū . . . (u) lū, “(whether/either . . .) or” 100
1.8 ṣâtu, “word correspondences” 101
2 Description 104
2.1 D escription Referring to the Essence of the Commented Word,
Object, or Phenomenon 104
2.2 Qualitative Description 112
2.3 Quantitative Description 113
2.4 Comparative Description 117
2.5 Multi-Option Description 122
3 “How, Why?”: Terms for Contextual Explanations 127
1 Comparative Contextualization: libbū, “as in” 128
1.1 libbū with Homophones 129
1.2 libbū in Phenomenal Specifications or Descriptions 129
1.3 libbū with a Semantic Equation or a Specification in the Form of a
Paraphrase 130
1.4 libbū with Textual Citation 131
2 Referential Contextualization: ana, “to, for” 133
2.1 Non-linguistic Use of ana 133
2.2 ana, “to,” in Linguistic-lexical Context 134
3 Referential Contextualization: ana muḫḫi, “on account of,
concerning” 137
3.1 Non-linguistic Use of ana muḫḫi 137
3.2 ana muḫḫi, “on account of,” in Linguistic and Lexical Contexts 138
4 kī . . . kī . . ., “if . . ., if . . .” 141
5 lišānu ša, “language of” 142
6 Between Contextualization and Reasoning: aššu, “concerning,
because” 144
6.1 aššu in Phenomenal Contextualization, Specification, and
Reasoning 144
6.2 aššu in a Phenomenal Specification through Harmonization 147
Contents ix
6.3 aššu in Contextualizations and Specifications of the Semantic
Field of the Base Text 149
6.4 aššu as a Linguistic Indicator in Lexical Contextualizations 151
6.5 aššu in the Contextualization of a Phenomenon to a Specific
Reality Based on a Lexical Equation 157
6.6 Paraphrase through aššu 160
6.7 aššu in a Specification with a (Symbolic) Change of Textual
Referent 162
7 Reasoning and its Result: ina annî and aššu annî “because of this,
therefore” 165
8 Reasoning: ina libbi (ša), “because” 167
4 Terms for the Nature of the Text and Hermeneutic Awareness 169
1 References to the Nature of the Text 169
1.1 Reference to a Textual Phenomenon 169
1.2 Terms Relating to the Order of Words or Signs 171
1.3 Reference to the Character of the Text 177
1.4 kayyān(u), “regular, actual”: Reference to the Literal Meaning of
the Text 182
2 “Thus!”: References to Active Hermeneutics 194
2.1 Second-Person Present-Future Verbs 194
2.2 umma, “thus”: Active Interpretation through Paraphrase 195
2.3 Terms for the Act of Interpretation 198
5 The Verb qabû, “to say,” in Akkadian Commentaries 201
1 ša iqbû, “which it said”: Reference to the Wording of the Text in the
Commentary 201
1.1 First Citation of a Text 204
1.2 Re-citation 207
1.3 Variants of ša iqbû 212
1.4 Expansion of the Term ša iqbû 213
2 (libbū) ina . . . qabi, “(as) it is said in . . .” 224
2.1 ina ṣâti/lišāni/arê (šumšu) qabi, “it(s entry) is said in the word-
lists/vocabulary/calculation-text” 224
2.2 ina . . . qabi, “it is said in . . .” 226
2.3 libbū . . . ina . . . qabi, “as in . . . ; it is said in . . .” 227
2.4 libbū . . . ša ina . . . iqbû, “as in . . . , which it said in . . .” 228
2.5 libbū . . . ša itti . . . iqbû, “as in . . . , which it said with . . .” 228
2.6 ina(?) . . . iqtabi ina libbi ša, “it said (this) in . . . , since” 230