Table Of ContentJohn Pairman Brown
Israel and Hellas III
Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die
alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
Herausgegeben von
Otto Kaiser
Band 299
W
DE
G
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2001
John Pairman Brown
Israel and Hellas
Volume III
The Legacy of Iranian Imperialism and the Individual
with Cumulative Indexes to Vols. I — III
W
DE
G.
Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York
2001
© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI
to ensure permanence and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, John Pairman.
Israel and Hellas / John Pairman Brown,
xxii 407 p.; 24 cm. - (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alt-
testamentliche Wissenschaft ; 231)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
ISBN 3-11-016882-0
1. Bible. O.T. - Extra-canonical parallels. 2. Bible. O.T. -
Comparative studies. 3. Greek literature - Relation to the Old
Testament. 4. Jews - Civilization - To 70 A.D. 5. Greece -
Civilization. I. Title. II. Series.
BS410 ,Z5 vol. 231
[BS1171.2]
221.6 s - dc20
[880.9/42] 95-034023
Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Emheitsaufnahme
Brown, John Pairman:
Israel and Hellas / John Pairman Brown. - Berlin ; New York :
de Gruyter
(Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ; ...)
\ Vol. 3. The legacy of Iranian imperialism and the individual with
cumulative indexes to vols. I-III. - 2001
(Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft ;
Bd. 299)
ISBN 3-11-016882-0
© Copyright 2001 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin.
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Printed in Germany
Disk conversion: Readymade, Berlin
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Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer-GmbH, Berlin
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
Kind reader!—you now have in your hands the final volume of this
work on the two societies that underlie us all. Vol. I, some day to be
subtitled "The Vocabulary of Social Enterprises," appeared in 1995 as
BZAW 231. Here, more promptly than I dared hope, are just the
materials promised in Vol. II, "Sacred Institutions with Roman Coun-
terparts" (BZAW 276, 2000). The far-sightedness of Walter de Gruyter
enables me to add here cumulative indexes forming a comprehensive
atlas to the widely-scattered territories traversed in all three surveys.
As previously, the chapters appear in inductive rather than deduc-
tive format, with data before analysis; those who choose may adopt in
their own work the policy of the Queen of Hearts, "Sentence first—
verdict afterwards." Thus in Chapter 18 I record the switch in both
Israel and Hellas from a (men's) culture of honor and shame to one of
non-retaliation; and in Chapter 19 the growing urgency of a symbolic
answer to the puzzle of death. What has happened? A revived impe-
rialism (Chapter 20) has torn down the walls of the city-state, replac-
ing the old family solidarity by a new individualism; and simultane-
ously transforming the old particularity, "We are different from the
others," into a new universalism, "We are custodians of a treasure for
the others." (In place of "universalism" I could have written more
precisely "cosmopolitanism," but I hold to my original usage.) By the
"legacy of Iranian imperialism" I mean the offices, modes of legitima-
tion and sanctions developed by the Achaemenid Persian empire, in
part on an Akkadian basis; by its heirs I mean Alexander and the
Hellenistic kingdoms, Carthage, and Rome, as well as the Arsacid and
Sasanid dynasties on old Iranian territory. As always, political disrup-
tion is symbolized by the fear of cosmic disruption; and I chronicle
(Chapter 21) the increasingly supernatural character ascribed to the
cosmos in miniature at its best, the Iranian vision of paradise.
Those first 21 chapters (excepting the introductory Chapter 1 and
the linguistic Chapter 17) complete my gathering of data to document
the comparison of classical Israel and Hellas. As the two societies
approach confluence in the New Testament, their differences become
VI
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
more pronounced; and in Chapter 22 I reverse course and analyze their
complementarity, which monopolized the attention of earlier authors
(1.2-3). I document the confluence by a novel enterprise; a reconstruc-
tion (Chapter 23) of the foreign words in the Aramaic originals of
Jesus' sayings—the stratum of the New Testament where we are most
sure of an Aramaic base. And the surprising result is that his language
contains vocabulary naming institutions of the four successive empires
that occupied Palestine—Akkadian, Iranian, Greek and Latin—as their
linguistic legacy. The final Chapter 24 puts the materials of all three
volumes in logical and chronological order; Hebrew and Greek cita-
tions are no longer needed; and both the professional and the lay
reader may now wish to begin there for an overall view of the whole.
Its title could serve for the whole enterprise: the appearance of (non-
identical!) twin free societies rejoicing in their particularity, which
upon their overthrow by new empires gives way to a cosmopolitan
universalism.
What is the relation of the 19 substantive chapters to each other and
to the work as a whole? On the one hand, they have an underlying
unity·, each proceeds from one person's original vision of two new free
societies in joint emergence—a vision hardly anticipated by previous
authors known to him. On the other hand, each represents a fresh
beginning: it proposes a realm of connection or parallelism, and ex-
plores that realm on its own terms; while it is further illustrated by
other chapters, equally it offers something to them. With a couple of
exceptions, the comparison is always between speakers of West-Se-
mitic and Greek; only in the studies of the templum and saeculum
(Chapter 15), and of the Ark and Janus (Chapter 16), is Hellas sub-
stantially replaced by Etruscanized Rome.
Thus, while those chapters are much more than a miscellany of
"collected essays," they so far retain their original status as (actual or
potential) journal articles that each can be read on its own terms
without preconditions. Four (none previously published) in different
ways lay out general themes: Chapter 1, on the new societies as
revealed in their texts; Chapter 17, on historic and prehistoric levels of
connection between Greek and Hebrew; Chapter 22, on the comple-
mentary differences between the two societies; Chapter 24, a summary
of their evolution before and after imperial control. Throughout, the
coming confluence of the two in the New Testament can be descried
as a distant goal, explicitly treated in Chapter 23. The deepest penetra-
tion into the novelty of the two appears in Chapter 10 on the High God
as guarantor of justice; the deepest into the New Testament in Chapter
18, on the new laws of human nature under Grace.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE VII
Readers, like some reviewers, may feel (correctly!) that this work
fails to undertake three tasks: (1) an account of historical connections
between the two societies; (2) a comparison of narrative themes be-
tween their stories; and (3) a theological analysis.
(1) I would have been glad to lay out deeper historical connections
between Israel and Hellas if I had been able. The parallels in their
social structures, often expressed in common vocabulary, leap to the
eye (and ear); but I could form only general ideas of an explanation.
Unlike some "Old Testament" scholars, I cannot break the Hebrew
Bible down into strata, or date its materials to their proper century. My
general suspicion is that many books grew by slow accretion, and
contain both old and late materials; but mostly I cannot determine
which are which. Connections between the two societies were at sec-
ond or third hand, by sea and land, trade and war, dispersal of
technology and social institutions, foreign women and male collecti-
vities. Their shared features assume a common form because of the
new emergence which they jointly represent: a critique of social and
religious institutions expressed in alphabetic script. Perhaps a pro-
founder analysis of the archaeological record will more closely docu-
ment the dates and means of transmission.
(2) I have always had trouble keeping the plots of stories in my head,
and I have minimized the narrative parallels between the two litera-
tures here compared. Some of the most striking I owe to Martin West
(11.280-286). There are supposed to be only so many plots available to
world literature, and I lack fixed criteria to determine when narrative
parallels prove historical connection, and when they simply flow from
the general human condition. I suspect that there may exist a science
of narrative structure which can distinguish between vague and precise
parallels; if so, I have not found it.
(3) Above all, especially in this volume where it might be looked for,
I emphasize that this is not a work of theology! Here throughout I do
chronicle parallels between later Israel and Hellas in formulating the
meaning of existence and giving answers to the unavoidable reality of
death—that mystery (as Churchill is supposed to have said of the
former Soviet Union) wrapped up in a riddle inside an enigma. At times
my judgements are more positive, at times less so; but in general I find
myself unable to affirm absolutely whether or not the ancient formu-
lations are correct, inevitable, compelling.... My failure is compounded
when I can translate the activities earlier ascribed to the High God into
terms acceptable to environmentalism or sociology. Still I recognize
that an evaluative treatment of what the ancients say about God or
Vili AUTHOR'S PREFACE
death is a fully legitimate enterprise—very likely for somebody else,
with different methods, in other books.
While this volume follows close on its predecessor, there are still
new works to note. I have read the second edition of the Dictionary of
Deities and Demons in the Bible (DDD2) with more care than the first:
users will always discover something new, and I have lifted a number
of citations with credit. I have consulted the materials, old and new,
in the Textbook of Aramaic Documents from ancient Egypt (TAD) less
than I should. I have learned quite a bit from the New Companion to
Homer; but I miss in it articles on the role of the gods, characterization,
the use of Homer by Vergil.... Margaret Williams' Diasporan Hand-
book has proved a very useful resource. German readers (I presume)
will already have been looking up Ancient Near Eastern texts in the
comprehensive TUAT, which shares its more-than-industrious editor
with the BZAW; for English readers, perhaps the new enterprise Con-
text of Scripture will one day supplement or replace ANET; but there
is no substitute for the task I long ago gave up on—knowledge of the
difficult original scripts.
This volume enters on new academic areas. Chapter 21 notes such
materials for Iranian studies as have come my way; I am confident
there is much more I have missed. But readers should note the value
of the trilingual "Res Gestae Divi Saporis" for Iranian realities. The
novel Chapter 23 makes much more extensive use of Rabbinic mate-
rials than the others; as of the Syriac and Latin versions of the Gospels,
more for historical than for textual purposes.
In both preceding volumes, I unaccountably failed to credit Prof.
Saul Levin for the elegant printouts of Arabic texts from his highly
educated computer. Once again here he has taken time away from his
own work to provide the reader with phrases from the Quran. In
addition, readers owe to him the transcriptions of some vocalized
Mishna texts from the Kaufmann codex in Appendix 4—to the best of
my knowledge, not elsewhere available in print. Further, he read the
chapters of this volume in MS at very short notice, and much improved
them.
In December of 1999 I enjoyed the hospitality of the two institu-
tions which have sponsored this enterprise: the Philipps-Universität at
Marburg an der Lahn (founded 1527), which hosted a symposium for
the 75th birthday of my editor Otto Kaiser; and Walter de Gruyter in
Berlin (which I can now think of only as a city of snow...), beginning
its second quarter-millennium, with special appreciation to Volker
Gebhardt of the Division of Humanities, and Klaus Otterburig. Much
thanks to my genial driver and companion Karl-Wilhelm Dahm. It was
AUTHOR'S PREFACE IX
amazing for this American, after finding several doors closed in the
States, to have others swing wide open in Germany! I know no easy
way to express my indebtedness. And I suppose I should thank the
inventors of WordPerfect for making possible a disk of the letter-text;
much more then, de Gruyter's learned staff for transcribing the endless
Greek and Hebrew font off my untidy hand, no better than it used
to be.
Even text-editions of single authors may fall short of total correct-
ness, and the reader should not expect the citations here from hundreds
of authors in many languages to be absolutely error-free. (I know my
unsystematic compromises between American and German typographi-
cal usage will satisfy no-one.) To have hired a very energetic and
learned person to sit in a very large library checking everything on the
proofs was out of the question, for expense and even more for time.
More far-reaching are the author's defects of knowledge and interpre-
tation, which only future research will amend. Many saving qualifica-
tions late in a paragraph are due to Levin's vigilant presence, "Do we
really have the Besserwissen to correct two millennia later what the
ancients affirmed about themselves?" With less pressure on me now to
keep current in the literature, authors who wish assurance that I know
about their works will receive warm thanks if they take the initiative
to send me reprints or notices (at the address in the directories of APA
or SBL).
I would be remiss not to thank Prof. Edward Lipinski here for the
sumptuous gift of his "Dieux et déesses de l'univers phénicien et
punique". This work would be longer and better if I entered at each
relevant place what I should have learned from him; I will just say that
wherever we treat the same topic, he knows more than I do. And
special thanks to appreciative readers, who have made unique contri-
butions which each will recognize: Louis Feldman, Margaret Miles,
Bennett Simon, Zeph Stewart.
As always, Emily's silent example has reduced clutter, and would
have done more if I had let it. Besides an immense relief now at seeing
my manuscript in good hands and generating proofs, I feel also some
sadness at writing FINIS to an investigation which began in Beirut
already in 1960. My friend Cyrus Gordon had then just published
"Homer and Bible"; and everybody (whether they admit it or not)
owes the largest part of their formation to both Israel and Hellas. If I
have succeeded to some degree in elucidating their connection, and
setting up a cairn pointing future mountaineers further along the same
trail, I shall be more than satisfied.
