Footnote 1 – BAR Interviews Giovanni Pettinato

“I cannot conclude this contribution dedicated especially to the readers of our beloved Rivista Biblica Italiana without pointing out what may be expected for the study of the Bible in the wake of the discovery of the Royal Archives of Ebla. Particularly the news leaked by the press, but also the interference of colleagues on the other side of the ocean has exposed a tendency and a danger from which I not only feel a need to keep away from but also to put scholars on guard. Even if it is true that especially in the onomastics of the texts from Ebla there are clear parallels with biblical onomastics of periods later than that of the history of Ebla, it does not authorize us to make the Eblaites “predecessors of Israel.” That the Northwest Semitic onomasticon of Ebla presents such characteristics, like comparing our own names to those of all the Northwest Semitic cultures, is a fact so natural as not to cause any surprise. But particularly wanting to restudy the Old Testament in the light of Ebla would be a methodological error that would only repeat errors previously committed. All the dangers and interpretive distortions of the Bible provoked by pan-Babylonianism of one hundred years ago or more recently by pan-Ugaritism are known.

“My wish in concluding this contribution actually is that such abnormal phase would indeed not follow the third phase and hence, the third error of pan-Eblaitism is as much unjustified as it is unscientific.”