ReViews

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I have been fortunate enough to have known Hayim and Miriam Tadmor since the end of my days as a graduate student at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where they spent two memorable years in the mid-1950s, and where we became instant friends. I may have encountered Miriam even earlier, in 1951, when she was digging at Rosh Haniqra and I, a summer volunteer at the nearby kibbutz of Matzuva, came to gawk at the excavations. Her report on these excavations, both in English and in Hebrew, leads off the list of her more than 40 publications. Hayim’s bibliography includes nearly 60 Hebrew and 70 English entries published since his earlier anniversary volume (Ah, Assyria … Studies in Assyrian and Ancient Near Eastern Historiography, [1991]).

This new Festschrift—a collection of articles in honor of a scholar—is unusual in two ways. First, rather than being dedicated to either Tadmor, the volume is dedicated to both as a couple. The second is its size. The editors note that it is “among the largest to be produced in the Eretz Israel series, both in terms of number of pages [560 in all] and scope.” Even after disqualifying all the contributors to the earlier Festschrift, this one attracted 55 contributions (25 in Hebrew, 28 in English, one in French and one in German) from 59 authors and coauthors.

The Festschrift’s size is a measure of the enormous respect in which the Tadmors are held by the worlds of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, history and literature, fields in which they have labored, together and separately, for a scholarly lifetime each. No one deserves such a tribute more, and nearly every one of the essays builds on foundations they have laid. Seventeen of the essays discuss archaeology or art history; sixteen deal with neo-Assyrian subjects, five with neo-Babylonian ones, two with both, and one each with Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian (Amarna) texts; eight consider Biblical and other West Semitic questions, two each Sumerian and Hittite issues, and one Egyptian ones. A number of the contributions straddle several fields, adding to their interest.

Many of the essays highlight the continuing importance of Near Eastern archaeology and Assyriology for the study of the Hebrew Bible. The very first chapter of the Bible, for example, is the subject of Baruch Halpern’s “The Assyrian Astronomy of Genesis I and the Birth of Milesian Philosophy.” Halpern marshals numeous Biblical citations in what he calls the first “scholarly discussion of the astronomy of Genesis 1.”

Another subject in Genesis that receives article-length treatment is “Deborah, Rebekah’s Nurse.” Martha Roth brings her considerable knowledge of neo-Babylonian dowries to bear on this obscure figure. The Biblical chapter about the wooing of Rebecca contains a passing reference to the unnamed wet nurse assigned to her (Genesis 24:59), and the passage about the reconciliation of Jacob and Esau makes reference to the death of the nurse, now identified as Deborah (Genesis 35:8). The comparative evidence fleshes out the sparse Biblical narrative.

The wider question of the relevance of extra-Biblical parallels to the patriarchal narratives is the subject of an important contribution by M.P. Maidman, entitled “Historiographic Reflections on Israel’s Origins: The Rise and Fall of the Patriarchal Age.” 057He reaches an essentially “minimalist” position regarding the patriarchal stories—he doesn’t think the patriarchs were historical figures—but it is refreshing to read that “it most certainly does not follow that one dismisses Biblical statements regarding the periods of the settlement, the united and then divided monarchies and the exile and post-exilic periods.”

Jeffrey H. Tigay deals with a single verse in “Divine Creation of the King in Psalms 2:6, ” while the entire Bible serves Joel Weinberg for a discussion of the question “Is the Bible a Book about Exile?” Weinberg differentiates carefully between divinely imposed exiles (albeit carried out by human agency) and voluntary flight. Only the former were named golah/galut.

In Weinberg’s survey one misses a reference to the Judaean exile of 701 B.C.E.;¹ that year, however, receives ample attention in Shlomo Bunimowitz and Zvi Lederman’s article, “The Last Days of Beth Shemesh and the Pax Assyriaca in the Shephelah of Judah.”² I take some credit for introducing that Latin term into the discussion³ and some satisfaction in the authors’ ability to bring strictly archaeological evidence to bear in deciding the question of the date of the destruction of this city, which they have excavated, in favor of 701 B.C.E.

From the Biblical point of view, of course, the main event of that fateful year was the confrontation between Sennacherib of Assyria and Hezekiah of Judah.⁴ This conflict was precipitated to some extent by Hezekiah’s removal of Padi from the throne of the Philistine city of Ekron and his restoration by Sennacherib. The discovery of an inscription at Ekron by a later king called Akhayus, son of Padi, reminds us that both names are dynastic names among the Philistines, since Akhayus clearly echoes the Achish known as king of Gath in the times of Saul and of Solomon. All this is illuminated by Seymour Gitin, one of the excavators of Ekron, in “Neo-Assyrian and Egyptian Hegemony over Ekron in the Seventh Century B.C.E.: A Response to Lawrence E. Stager.”

The other excavator of Ekron, Trude Dothan, also contributes an article based on their excavations, “A Decorated Ivory Lid from Tel Miqne-Ekron.” And Stager, who has been digging Ashkelon, another one of the five cities of the original Philistine pentapolis, and who is the subject of Gitin’s “Response,” also has an article. Here he is not, however, defending his theory about the economic importance of the oil industry at Ekron and the date of its peak; rather, he deals with a smaller detail of material culture, the door locks of the Biblical world. In “Key Passages,” Stager uses the archaeological evidence to illuminate numerous Biblical passages, particularly Judges 3:25, the story of Eglon of Moab and his assassination by Judge Ehud. Stager critiques Halpern’s previous solution to the puzzle of how Ehud managed to escape the royal guards and proposes a solution of his own.

Doors are also the subject of a substantial article by Piotr Michalowski, “The Doors of the Past.” The “doors” to which his title alludes are not, however, elements of a house but rather writing boards. His reading and translation follow Paul-Alain Beaulieu, who in turn relied on the comparative evidence assembled from a mixture of Sumerian, Ammonite and Biblical sources by Lansing Hicks.⁵ He refers, for example, to Jeremiah 36:23, where the daltot are clearly columns of the scroll being consigned to the fire by King Jehojakim, while also noting the Greek evidence.⁶

Beaulieu himself leads off the non-Hebrew section with an essay on “Nabopolassar and the Antiquity of Babylon.” Of course, speculations about this subject go back long before the beginnings of the Chaldean dynasty. It may be useful to cite in this connection a recent volume on foundation myths of ancient cities, in which I collected the evidence for Mesopotamia and Israel⁷ and which also contains articles on Mesopotamia by J.-C. Margueron, R.S. Ellis, C.E. Suter and Joan 058Goodnick Westenholz. Westenholz is represented in the Tadmor Festschrift in a joint article with Wayne Horowitz entitled “A Literary Account of Sennacherib’s Seventh Campaign in the Birmingham City Museum.” It deals with events after Sennacherib’s campaign against Jerusalem, particularly the campaign of 694–693 B.C.E.

Some essays in this volume serve as implicit commentaries on the Biblical passage in their titles. Thus Nili Wazana deals with “‘I Removed the Boundaries of Nations’ (Isaiah 10:13): Border Shifts as a Neo-Assyrian Tool of Political Control in Hattu,” where Hattu is used in the neo-Assyrian sense of Syria-Palestine as well as Anatolia. Baruch A. Levine, who also deals with the siege of Jerusalem in 701 B.C.E., cites “‘Ah, Assyria! Rod of My Rage’ (Isaiah 10:15): Biblical Monotheism as Seen in an International Political Perspective.” This is not meant as a reprise of the first Tadmor Festschrift, but as the preface to a major new attempt at a field theory of Biblical prophecy and theology. Characterizing previous research into Biblical monotheism as addressing the question “One God or Many?”⁸ Levine might have cited a recent book by that title that was edited by Barbara N. Porter,⁹ herself a contributor to the present volume. Irene J. Winter takes as her motto Deuteronomy 8:9 (“a land … where you will lack for nothing”) for her study of “Ornament and the ‘Rhetoric of Abundance’ in Assyria.”

A few other Biblical passages, from articles not previously cited, may be mentioned here almost at random. Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., cites 2 Samuel 19:36 (“Your servant is far too old to go up with your majesty to Jerusalem …”), in reference to old age in Hittite society, and Exodus 21:21 (“When a man strikes his slave … he is not to be punished if the slave survives for one day or two, for the slave is his property”), in connection with the master’s permission in Hittite law to mutilate a slave who angers him. Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron cite Numbers 13:28 (“the people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large”) and Deuteronomy 1:28 in connection with the monumentality of Gezer in the Middle Bronze Age II period (1650–1550 B.C.E.). Dominique Collon recalls 2 Kings 20:12–19 and Isaiah 39 in reference to Merodach-Baladan and his seals. In a footnote, Eckart Frahm mentions Ecclesiastes 8:15 and 9:7–10 as Biblical examples of the common ancient motif of “invitations to drinking, eating and enjoyment.”

The volume has been edited carefully, one may say almost lovingly, by Israel Eph’al (one of Hayim Tadmor’s students), Amnon Ben-Tor and Peter Machinist.¹⁰ Machinist and Yaacov Meshorer each contributed an opening tribute to the honorees. Ben-Tor takes an editor’s privilege to respond in his article on “Old Canaan-New Israel” to the article by Israel Finkelstein in this very volume entitled “New Canaan,” extending the great academic debate about the tenth century back to the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age in about 1200 B.C.E. Given how many of the contributors, whether archaeologists or philologists, interact not only with the honorees but also with each other, readers may well wish they could assemble them all at one gathering and watch the sparks fly. This volume is the next best thing!

I have been fortunate enough to have known Hayim and Miriam Tadmor since the end of my days as a graduate student at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, where they spent two memorable years in the mid-1950s, and where we became instant friends. I may have encountered Miriam even earlier, in 1951, when she was digging at Rosh Haniqra and I, a summer volunteer at the nearby kibbutz of Matzuva, came to gawk at the excavations. Her report on these excavations, both in English and in Hebrew, leads off the list of her more than 40 […]