Books in Brief
The Symbolism of the Biblical World
Othmar Keel, translated by Timothy J. Mallet
(New York: Crossroads, 1985) 422 pp., $29.50
Scholars argue about the age of the earliest parts of the Bible but even accepting the earliest dates proposed by responsible scholars, the Bible, as Othmar Keel graphically demonstrates, is only a chronological halfway house between us and the high culture of the ancient Near East.
The languages and literatures of these pre-Biblical cultures have already revealed some of the hidden roots of Biblical culture. Archaeology continues to expose the artifacts and even structures of those earlier societies.
In The Symbolism of the Biblical World, now translated from the German, Keel makes a new contribution. He has assembled an impressive collection of 556 well-documented illustrations, accompanied by commentary, analysis and Biblical references (chiefly to Psalms) that demonstrate the extent to which the Biblical authors borrowed symbols from these earlier cultures.
The paintings, reliefs, statues, seals and other artifacts Keel has collected, all reproduced in line drawings, are classified thematically, thus enabling the Bible student as well as the scholar to go beyond the historical perspective into the conceptual and symbolic zones of the ancient Near Eastern psyche that nourished Biblical imagery.
Let us look at an example. On page 73, figure 83, Keel illustrates a papyrus in which a dead person’s heart, thought by the ancients to be the center of thought and action, is being weighed before Maat, god of justice and order. The deceased stands on the right, holding his hands aloft, waving feathers (the sign of Maat) and wearing a heart amulet in order to impart by magic the correct weight to his deceased heart. Keel relates this motif, which can be traced back to the end of the third millennium B.C., to the judgment-weighing imagery of Psalm 62:9, where the soul is admonished to trust in God because, according to the Psalmist:
“Men are mere breath;
mortals, illusion;
placed on a scale all together
they weigh even less than a breath.”
In the papyrus picture, Thoth, the divine scribe with the head of an ibis, stands at the left of the scale and reports to Osiris, judge of the dead and lord of eternity, the result of the weighing. A crocodile, representing the chaos monster, waits at the feet of Osiris to devour the dead who do not pass Maat’s test. Being eaten by the crocodile or chaos monster is, in effect, the second death for those who do not measure up. Keel relates this second death to the Christian concept of second death found in Revelation.
There we read, for example:
“Then I saw a great white throne and him who sat upon it; from his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them.
“And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, by what they had done.
And the sea gave up the dead in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead in them, and all were judged by what they had done.
Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire; and if any one’s name was not found written on the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11–15).
And again:
“But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).
Thus, Egyptian iconography from the late third millennium B.C. and its conceptual imagery are hoary witnesses to the verbal imagery of the Hebrew scriptures and of the New Testament, and provide visual antecedents to medieval Christian art as well, 3,000 years removed.
All this from a single illustration in Keel’s book! But in this instance, it is even possible to elaborate on Keel.
The Hebrew Bible contains four different expressions for hardness of heart. One of them (kaved) really means heaviness of heart. It is especially striking because it occurs only in connection with Pharaoh and Israel in Egypt, where God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (or made it heavy), as a result of which he refused to let the children of Israel go. This word kaved occurs only once outside of Exodus (1 Samuel 6:6), but here too it refers to Pharaoh’s hardness or heaviness of heart. The Philistines ask their priests and sorcerers what they should do with the Israelite ark they have captured and which has brought them nothing but grief. The Philistine priests and sorcerers tell them to return the ark with offerings. Perhaps then, say the Philistine priests and sorcerers, the God of Israel “will lighten his hand from off you.” In this context the Philistine priests and sorcerers rhetorically ask their people, “Why should you harden [kaved] your heart as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts” (1 Samuel 6:6). Apparently, the Philistine priests and sorcerers were so impressed with the Egyptian concept and image of heaviness of heart that they too refer to it in connection with their own troubles.
The fact that this use of hardness of heart as heaviness is associated solely with the Egyptian experience led me to wonder if Egyptian iconography might shed some light on this imagery. I found the answer in the same papyrus picture we discussed earlier in this review. In that picture we see that only if the scale balances perfectly—the heart, on one side, against the feather, symbol of Maat, on the other—will the deceased be judged worthy of an afterlife. If the heart is too heavy (some scholars say too light), the deceased forfeits his immortality, and the chaos monster eats him, the second death. It is easy to visualize Pharaoh weighing his political decisions regarding the Israelites and their desire to leave Egypt, while at the same time watching, in his mind’s eye, his own heart on the scale of judgment: Will it balance when that inevitable day comes?
There are more than a few delights and surprises among the 556 visual treasures in this book. What, for example, is a “firmament”? When God says, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters” (Genesis 1:6), many of us have difficulty visualizing the image. The Hebrew root of the word for firmament refers to something hammered out in metal. We can understand at once why firmament is associated with a hammered metal by looking at figure 21 of Keel (p. 28). The sky supported by the king is shown twice, once as the sun with a pair of wings, and once as a flat roof. The latter is the thin strip of heaven set upon the earth like the lid covering a pot.
In an illustration from an ivory inlay in Keel’s book, figure 153A, four cosmic streams flow out of the mountain deity. This is of course reminiscent of the four streams of the river flowing out of Paradise (Genesis 2:10–11). But it is also a reflection of the universal image in which there is a sacred center from which branches divide the world into four parts. A variation on this motif can be seen in figure 185, page 140.
Thus, through abundant specifics Keel makes a major body of comparative material easily accessible.
Hildi Keel, the author’s wife, deserves special credit for her sensitive rendering of 225 of the line drawings. I must admit my disappointment, however, when I saw how much larger and clearer they are in the original larger-format German edition than in the English edition.
Keel is not alone in his use of ancient Near Eastern iconography to illuminate scripture. His own introduction attests an extensive selection of pictorial material easily accessible in J. B. Pritchard’s The Ancient Near East in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament (ANEP) (1954, with supplement, 1969). Of the 882 illustrations in ANEP, 130 are also found in Keel. The difference is that ANEP fails to make the specific connection between illustration and scripture. In ANEP, this is left to the erudition of the reader. The closest thing we have had to Keel in the past is the five-volume work, Views of the Biblical World, edited by Benjamin Mazar and others (1958–61). Although this work does make the connection between the iconography and specific Biblical passages, the examples are few and the book lacks a thematic index. Keel can be justly proud of his thematic classification, containing six main topics, broken down into numerous subsections. Unfortunately, the book lacks a subject index, which would immeasurably increase the usefulness of the motif classifications. Despite that significant deficiency, I know of no other work of comparable scope and achievement.
Treasures from Bible Times
Alan Millard
(Belleville, Michigan: Lion Publishing, 1985), 189 pp., $14.95
Do not expect to find any new gems among the treasures from Biblical times that Alan Millard has assembled in this book. This is yet another of the seemingly endless flow of books relating archaeological discoveries to the Bible. The treasures the author has in mind include not only silver and gold, but much more. Silver and gold there are, too, from the treasure trove of Tutankhamun’s tomb to the jewelry of the Royal Tombs of Ur. But the bulk of the treasure consists of information and illustrations of more mundane materials—inscriptions, carved ivories and fallen walls. From such diverse places as Ur, Amarna and Ebla they come, and those of us who collect books of this genre have seen all these treasures before.
So why did Millard bring another book like this into print? His purpose is spelled out on the flyleaf of the dust jacket more exactly than in his preface, “Discoveries such as the great 4,000-year-old temple tower at Ur, tomb-pictures of brick-making in Egypt, palace ivories, letters, inscriptions, all increase our knowledge of the world in which the Bible was written, throwing fresh light on its unique message.” (Italics are mine.) Millard writes from a conservative point of view, but unapologetically and honestly. For example, after discussing “The Writing on the Wall, Belshazzar—Man or Myth?” he concludes: “The cylinders from Ur and other Babylonian texts do not tell us any more about ‘Belshazzar’s Feast.’ But they do tell us about Belshazzar. They show that Daniel was not just telling fables. And if he got these odd details right, perhaps we should listen to his message, too: God was in control. And even with kings, God knew the end from the beginning.” Here is a competent, conservative scholar who is willing to share frankly with readers his knowledge of a selection of discoveries from the Biblical world and his personal understanding of the implications of those discoveries for understanding and appreciating the Bible.
This work is not filled with detailed information. It is not intended for specialists, but for a general audience. It does, however, have a number of attractive features. The maps are placed at the beginning rather than at the end of the text. Millard writes in a clean, clear, succinct style. He covers the history of the development of archaeology and indicates the major practical purposes of the discipline in two pages of text. Interesting vignettes flesh out the story. This book is beautifully illustrated. The photographs are mostly in color, and some cover the complete page. The book design complements the text, with border lines setting the text off from the margin and separating one “treasure” from another. The content is arranged in short, independent articles of one to five pages in length. This allows for easy, selective reading. An index, as well as the table of contents, enables the reader to pick and choose topics of interest. Many readers of BAR will, in my opinion, find this book of interest and value, and the price is extremely attractive in light of the quality of the paper and printing and the large quantity of color illustrations.
Alan Millard is Rankin Senior Lecturer in Hebrew and Ancient Semitic Languages at the University of Liverpool. He has studied at Oxford, the University of London and Hebrew University. He served as assistant keeper of the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, as well as librarian of the Tyndale Library, Cambridge. He has helped excavate at Arpad, Petra, Nimrud and Qadesh. Because he has these credentials, we can respect his work. As he has noted in his preface, “Opinions change and new discoveries bring fresh information, so there is always a place for another book to describe what has been found and to show its value.” Particularly for the interested newcomer to the fascination of Biblical archaeology, Alan Millard’s Treasures from Bible Times is a good place to discover the treasures and the author’s opinions.
Archaeological Commentary on the Bible
Gonzalo Báez-Camargo
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984) 288 pp., $17.95
Several worthwhile commentaries of the traditional variety have appeared in recent years: The Anchor Bible (Doubleday), Hermeneia (Fortress), and the Old Testament Library (Westminster). These series of Bible commentaries are traditional in their focus on historical, literary and philological concerns. Seldom do they address archaeological considerations arising from the Biblical text. When archaeological explanations are given, they are sometimes uncritical or misinformed.
The spate of archaeological evidence available today makes it hard to understand why Bible commentaries often neglect such an important source. A partial explanation may be that relevant archaeological data are scattered in preliminary reports or in other comparatively inaccessible publications.
If Bible scholars do not make the correlation between the archaeological evidence and the Biblical text, it will not happen, because archaeologists themselves are ordinarily not engaged in this process. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the Bible scholar to do this. In the future, the danger of neglect will be even greater, as the two disciplines of Bible and archaeology continue to develop independently.
After three decades of intensive field work in the Near East, especially in Israel, the time is ripe to bring the archaeological data to bear on the Biblical text. Archaeology can contribute to the Bible by illuminating its historical setting and by reconstructing the life and culture of Biblical peoples. In addition to providing the physical context in time and place, archaeology can give a better understanding of the social, economic and religious environments of the ancient Near East.
Bible scholars and lay persons alike have expressed a need for a synthetic, critical, up-to-date commentary that would present the results of archaeological activity in the Near East as they bear on the Biblical text.
Among the recent attempts to correlate archaeology and the Bible is Báez-Camargo’s Archaeological Commentary on the Bible. The result, however, is inadequate. In trying to do too much, the author has done too little. This commentary starts with Genesis and ends with Revelation. No single author can do justice to the whole Bible (Old and New Testament); nor can a single volume contain all the pertinent material.
In Báez-Camargo’s book, for example, Amos is treated in less than two pages. At least 50 realia are mentioned in Amos, and these warrant detailed treatment. (The most obvious are the ivories, which have so much to say about economy and trade in the eighth century B.C.) Báez-Camargo has not even chosen the more significant artifacts for comment.
Moreover, much of the information in this commentary does not really pertain to the rubric “archaeological”; it is more properly epigraphical, historical or geographical. Many sections of the commentary read like an exegesis of Biblical passages. And in some cases the information supplied is inaccurate or out of date. This may be inevitable, however, in view of the fast-moving pace of archaeology in our time. The bibliography, too, is not the most current. But, then, this English translation from the Spanish is a partially updated and abridged version of the original work of 1979.
The concrete nature of the material treated in an archaeological commentary requires superior graphics to make the discussions clear. The photographs in this volume are uniformly blurred and not always well chosen.
The most serious problem with this book is that it could give the uninitiated the erroneous impression that archaeology’s function is to prove the Bible; this is not the author’s purpose and it would be a disservice to him to attribute this motivation to him. Nevertheless, a statement of purpose at the beginning of the book might have avoided the problem. Also, his attribution “traditional site” is made so frequently that the implication becomes that the place in question is not “traditional” but known with certainty.
On the positive side, it must be said that the author has done his research in painstaking fashion. Although he makes no independent judgments, he does present a great deal of useful information. Anyone who has worked through the pertinent archaeological data for even one book of the Bible can empathize with Báez-Camargo and will thank him (posthumously) for his great effort. At least, this commentary is a step in the right direction, which may spur others to produce more substantive and authentic archaeological commentaries on the Bible.