Some Wine and Honey for Simon

Biblical and Ugaritic Aperitifs in Memory of Simon B. Parker

A. Joseph Ferrara, Herbert B. Huffmon, A. Joseph Ferrara, Herbert B. Huffmon

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532692963, 9781532692970
• eBook ISBN: 9781532692987
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This volume celebrates the life and work of the late Simon B. Parker (1940-2006), the Harrell F. Beck Scholar of Hebrew Scripture at the School of Theology and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Boston University.ContributorsEdward L. GreensteinMark S. SmithKarel van der ToornSteve A. WigginsN. WyattKatheryn Pfisterer DarrDavid MarcusHerbert B. HuffmonBernard F. BattoTim KochF. W. Dobbs-AllsoppAmy Limpitlaw

1

Biblical Narrative and Canaanite Narrative1

Edward L. Greenstein

Little time had passed since the first discoveries of literary texts in the excavations of Ras Shamra—the site of the ancient north Syrian metropolis of Ugarit—before Umberto (Moshe David) Cassuto made a fairly bold claim concerning the relationship between this north Canaanite literature and the literary compositions of ancient Israel, dating hundreds of years later:

When we examine the initial stages of Biblical literature, we are struck by a fact that, at first, appears surprising: they do not give the impression of being “first steps” or “first-fruits,” and they show no signs of experimental groping or of searching for techniques. On the contrary, they are perfected and polished writings, which bear witness to the existence of an artistic tradition that had evolved in the course of many centuries.2

How might such a phenomenon be explained? Cassuto asked, and he answered his own question:

Now the problem is easily solved if we assume that the Bible is but a continuation of Canaanite literature, which antedates the former. Just as the Hebrew language is simply one of the dialects that grew from the ancient Canaanite stem, and just as it continues . . . the oldest and most homogeneous Canaanite idiom, so Hebrew literature is heir to the Canaanite literary tradition, which had already taken shape among the Canaanite-speaking populations before the people of Israel had come into being.3

In the view of many, if not most, scholars in the field, Cassuto’s thesis has the merit of explaining the correspondences between early Hebrew poetry and the Syro-Canaanite poetry that was unearthed at Ugarit. Scholars recognize the many resemblances between Israelite poetry and Ugaritic verse both in the vocabulary and in the diverse and well-known forms of parallelism that they share.4 Cassuto, however, discerned a historical link between Israelite and earlier Canaanite literature not only in their poetry but also in the area of prose. In this regard Cassuto cited in particular “rhetorical forms and ways of expression.”5 In the style of Biblical narrative he found distinctive signs of Canaanite epic style, and these features he tended to attribute to the early epic poetry of Israel, which has survived only in various embeddings within Biblical prose and in disparate verses within Biblical poetry.6 Cassuto, however, paid little attention to the narrative devices of Biblical prose, nor did he delineate the narrative strategies of the Ugaritic epics.

There is a tendency among scholars to see an unbridgeable gap between Canaanite epic and Biblical prose narrative. A line is drawn between them, analogous to the boundary that is marked between the literary modes of verse and prose. Scholars regard Biblical narrative written in prose as a revolutionary or at the very least innovative literary form in the ancient Near East. Some go so far as to ascribe to this putative revolution ideological motives. According to one view, ancient Hebrew prose was developed in an attempt to present the personalities of God and the human characters in their full complexity.7 This point of view rests on the assumption that Canaanite epic, in which characters are often described by means of formulaic epithets, without regard to their placement in the narrative, are lacking in complex, round personalities. In the Bible, by contrast, it is maintained, the character of the protagonists evolves in the course of a narrative, by way of their actions and their discourse.

According to another view, the ancient Hebrew scribes rejected the poetic form of epic that had served as the typical medium of pagan myth and replaced it with prose narrative, in order to relate the deeds of YHWH in a form distinct from the one that served the pagan bards.8 Yet a third view points out that the Biblical narrator leaves gaps in the course of a story concerning the motives and reasons for characters’ behaviors, gaps which the reader must fill in. The extra-Biblical narrator, by contrast, reveals the inner life of the protagonists by means of direct description.9 It follows from this contention that the Hebrew storyteller was interested in the moral character of the individual, while the pagan bard was interested in events that were thrust forward by...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Abbreviations
• General
• Preface
• A Narrative of Simon1
• Chapter 1: Biblical Narrative and Canaanite Narrative1
• Chapter 2: Baal as Warrior-King in the Baal Cycle97
• Cahpter 3: Baal in Boston, Bethel in Amherst218
• Chapter 4: Gods on the Mind at Ugarit
• Chapter 5: The Rumpelstiltskin Factor
• Chapter 6: To Be or Not To Be a Proverb
• Chapter 7: The Birth Announcement
• Chapter 8: 1 Kings 13
• Chapter 9: “Enthroned upon Donkeys”
• Chapter 10: Narrative-Ancestry-Dot-Com
• Chapter 11: A Song of Love
• Appendix: Isaiah 5:1–7