Thursday, March 10, 2022

Excerpts from the Akkadian Text "Vision of the Netherworld" (VAT 10057)

In the Assyrian text “Vision of the Netherworld” (VAT 10057), we read of the following, which might add some light on the issue of “black” and “white” in the Book of Mormon and other texts:

 

The “Vision of the Netherworld” was first published by EBERLING ([Tod und Leben nach den Vorstellungen der Babylonier I] 1931: 1-19). . . . The content of the “Vision of the Netherworld” is as follows: It opens with the identification of the report as a night-vision or dream. In autobiographical style the visionary describes fifteen hybrid gods of the netherworld, as he starts to recount the contents of his dream. The enumeration of these gods follows a static picture: “One man [ištēn eṭlu] his body was black like pitch. His face was similar to that of an Anzu-bird. He was wearing a red rob. In his left hand he was holding up a bow. In his right hand he was hol[ding] a sword. [With his left foot he was treading on]” (line 50). In a new scene, the visionary watches as the warrior god Nergal is seated on a royal throne to hold judgment over the dreamer, who is brought into the presence of Nergal, who delivers a long speech. In the first part of this speech the visionary is threatened with the death-sentence because he has dishonoured Nergal’s wife. However the sentence is finally commuted—due to the intercession of the divine counsellor—into the prospect that the visionary’s future will bring disturbance, dishonesty, and rebellion instead of immediate death. The second part of Nergal’s speech is introduced with a description of a spirit in the netherworld who is the “exalted shepherd; to whom my father [], the king of the gods, gives/gave full responsibility; whom from sunrise to sunset he allows to look over the lands in their totality [], and he r[ul]es over everything; to [w]hom in view of his priesthood, Aššur [decr]ees the celebration of the holy New-Years festival in the open country, in the garden of fertility, an image of Lebanon [] in all eternity” (lines 62B-64) This ideal king is then set in contrast with a rebel king, the father of the visionary. Of both is predicted that they will suffer together because of the crime they committed. As the dreamer awakes he describes his feelings resulting from the just-experienced dream to conclude his account with praises for Nergal and the divine queen. The epilogue tells how the dream changed the scribe’s corrupt attitude into the willingness to do all that Nergal commands. (Jürg Eggler, Influences and Traditions Underlying the Vision of Daniel 7:2-14: The Research from the End of the 19th Century to the Present [Orbis Biblicus et Orentalis 177; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2000], 23 n. 77, emphasis in bold added)