Saturday, December 23, 2023

Is Knowledge of Babylonian Gods and Religion in Isaiah 40-55 Evidence for Multiple Authorship?

  

The inclusion of occasional references to the history, culture, and religion of Mesopotamia would not be unusual for an Israelite prophet writing during the Neo-Assyrian or the Neo-Babylonian periods. During these times Jehu submitted to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III, Ahaz submitted to Tiglath-pileser III (2 Kgs 16:2; 2 Chr 28), Hezekiah formed a coalition with Mreodach-baladan of Babylon (Isa 39), Manasseh was a vassal of Assyria and spent some time in Assyria (2 Chr 33:10-13), and Judah was controlled by Babylon from 605 until the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE (2 Kgs 24-25; Jer 39:40; 52).

 

When Isa 46:1-2 and 47:12-13 refer, derogatorily, to Babylonian gods and religious officials (see also 44:25), this is not surprising, since one would expect the Israelite prophets to know the names of the gods of other nations. Determining precise historical background(s) of such texts is not so easy, however. When foreign religious officials are mentioned, for example, it is not always easy to determine if they are Assyrian or Babylonian (44:25). It is difficult to distinguish religious and cultural features from the time of Tiglath-pileser III (the overlord of Ahaz) and the time of Sennacherib (during Hezekiah’s reign), and to distinguish either from Babylonian religious and cultural features from the time of Nebuchadnezzar (the time of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah). Based on the long period of contact between Judah and the Mesopotamian empires, the prophets in Judah probably had more than a rudimentary knowledge of the religions of Mesopotamia and the methods its peoples used to divine the will of their gods (44:25; 47:12-13). This kind of religious knowledge would not require a prophet or his audience to live in Assyria or Babylon.

 

In contrast, James Muilenburg believes that the movement of the two main Babylonian gods, Bel and Nebo, as described in 46:1-2, represents the experience of “one who has seen the sacred procession” in Babylon, and Klaus Baltzer views this text as a parody of the New Year’s Festival. Although Babylon’s akītu festival was likely well known in all the surrounding nations and could have been the object of a parody, it seems unlikely that Isa 46:1-2 describes this festival, for this text does not depict the idols being joyfully paraded in a procession. Instead, they are burdens carried into captivity, a common image in the ancient Near East for communicating the defeat of a nation’s gods. (Gary V. Smith, “Cyrus or Sennacherib? Historical Issues Involved in the Interpretation of Isaiah 40-55,” in Bind Up the Testimony: Explorations in the Genesis of the Book of Isaiah, ed. Daniel I. Block and Richard L. Schultz [Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2015], 178-79)

 

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