From: Peter Ruest (pruest@pop.mysunrise.ch)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 00:48:36 EST
This is in connection with Paul Seely's posts of Wed, 16 Oct 2002, and
Mon, 21 Oct 2002. Paul's references given on 16 Oct are quite dated:
G.R.Driver, Semitic Writing (1954); S.N.Kramer, History Begins at Sumer
(1959); Cambridge Ancient History 3rd edition vol 1:1 (1970). So I
discussed the question of early Mesopotamian writing with a specialist
for Akkadian and Sumerian at the University of Bern, with the following
results (giving, between dotted lines, his indications and judgment,
without any of my own comment):
...............................................................................
A more recent reference is: Jean-Jacques Glassner, "Ecrire ý Sumer:
l'invention du cunČiforme" (Paris: Seuil, 2000; ISBN 2-02-038506-6), 300
p.
Dating of the clay tablet texts found is still very imprecise, possible
errors amounting to perhaps +-100 years around 1800 B.C. and +-300 years
around 3000 B.C. One usually dated them on the basis of astronomical
data like solar eclipses mentioned, but also on the basis of comparing
them with how other, presumably better dated, texts look. It is hoped
that more precise dates, such as tree ring dates, will soon become
available.
Hebrew doesn't descend directly from Akkadian. There are various
different models of Semitic language classification. But all of them
class Akkadian as the only eastern-Semitic language, whereas Hebrew is a
northwestern-Semitic language (of the Canaanitic group). Akkadian
successively replaced the earlier Sumerian, a non-Semitic language. Some
Sumerian texts contain Akkadian words. But it isn't known when exactly
Sumerian ceased to be a living language. At the latest, this happened at
the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. (apart from a few conservative
Sumerian language islands like Nippur). Akkadian pronunciation tables of
Sumerian words help us to know, more or less, Sumerian pronunciation.
The origin of the Sumerian language (and the Sumerian people) is
unknown.
In early Sumerian, the words were written without modifiers / qualifyers
indicating tenses, cases etc. Later Sumerian had them as suffixes. But
this need not imply that early Sumerian was less powerful, as the forms
not expressed explicitely could nevertheless be understood implicitely
by the Sumerian reader. In a similar way, masoretic vocalization of
Hebrew did not make the language more powerful: "merely" consonantal
writing is fully capable of expressing the same contents and is equally
well understood by a Hebrew reader. Early Sumerian pictograms, e.g.
those of Uruk before 3000 B.C., were sufficiently complex for narrative.
The signs were already heavily stylized, i.e. they were the result of a
lengthy developmental history.
Among the early Sumerian clay tablets of Uruk IV/III (end of the 4th
millennium B.C.), not a single narrative has been found. The first known
text which is, with certainty, of a literary character dates from about
2800 B.C.; literary texts become more numerous after 2600 B.C. One
doesn't expect to find any narratives appreciably older than from about
2800 B.C., but neither is it completely impossible that some predating
3000 B.C. might yet be found. Some extensively elaborated narratives,
such as the "Instructions of Shuruppag", had a long prehistory of
simpler precursors (this doesn't apply to "Enuma Elish"). Different
sources were combined, texts modified, etc., as it is assumed for the
Pentateuch.
Wordplays like Gen.2:7 Adam and adamah (ground), 4:1 Cain and kanah
(acquire), 4:25 Sheth and shith (appoint, set) are very simple to find.
When a text is translated into a different language, they can often be
replaced by similar new wordplays. For "rib" (Gen.2:21), for instance, a
wordplay fitting into the context is possible in Sumerian.
...........................................................................
>From this, I conclude that Paul's description of the development of
writing in Mesopotamia and his datings hold up, more or less. But his
"impossible"'s have to be softened quite a bit. We just don't know
enough, as yet, to exclude the possibility of Wiseman's hypothesis of
Genesis in cuneiform on tablets.
Even if the presently accepted date of the earliest Sumerian syllabic
writing capable of formulating narratives (about 3000 B.C.), the
accepted date of the flood (2900 B.C.), and the numbers in the Gen.5
genealogy hold up, Wiseman's hypothesis would need only minimal
adjusting.
We may have to modify the interpretation of the colophon of the second,
or "Adam's tablet" (Gen.2:4b - 5:1a), e.g. by hypothesizing that Adam's
name in the colophon in 5:1a indicates "information obtained from Adam",
rather than Adam as owner or commissioner. The colophon of this tablet
has a peculiarity in that it is the only one containing the word
"sepher" (book, writing) before "toledot" (account, genealogy). Was this
to indicate that on this tablet, some information that previously had
been transmitted orally was now being committed to writing? According to
the genealogy in Gen.5:1b-32, Noah's father Lamech could have known Adam
personally. Lamech was 56 when Adam died, and he lived until shortly
before the flood in 2900 B.C. So he could have written (or commissioned)
a narrative in syllabic Sumerian on clay tablets.
The colophon of the first tablet (Gen.1:1 - 2:4a) is exceptional in that
it does not contain any name of a commissioner / writer / owner.
Furthermore, if this tablet contains any narrative at all (as I believe
it does), it is not a human narrative proper, but a direct divine
revelation to a prophet, as there could not have been any human
witnesses until the last part of "day" six. It may have been written in
Lamech's time, as well, or later.
Paul writes: "The first evidence of Akkadian in the tablets found thus
far is Semitic names in Sumerian documents c. 2600 BC...". As Noah died
350 years after the flood (Gen.9:28), i.e. about 2550 B.C., he may have
known Akkadian, so if we defer the writing of the second tablet to Noah
instead of Lamech, the Semitic wordplays with the names of Adam
(Gen.2:7), Cain (4:1), and Seth (4:25) may first have been formulated in
Akkadian by Noah. Or Noah may have translated Lamech's tablets from
Sumerian to Akkadian. In this case, he may even have replaced earlier
Sumerian names having particular etymological meanings by their Akkadian
equivalents (there might even have been corresponding wordplays in
Sumerian and Akkadian for the cases found on the second tablet). As
there was a time overlap of at least 600 years between Sumerian and
Akkadian, with extensive dictionaries on clay tablets found, such a
translation may also have happened later.
As for replacing names in a tradited text upon translation, Wiseman
suggests that Moses replaced earlier designations for God which were
more specific than the general "'elohim" (such as "El Elyon", "El
Shadday") by the newly revealed (Ex.6:3) specific name of God, "Yahweh",
wherever a precise designation, in contradistinction to heathen gods,
was needed (and implied by the original meanings of the designations
given in the source texts available to Moses) (cf. my initial post of 28
Sep 2002 starting this thread). Another example is the replacement of
the Aramaic name of "Kepha" by the Greek "Petros" (a stone), as
indicated in John 1:42.
I haven't yet been able to look at Glassner's book.
Peter
-- Dr. Peter Ruest, CH-3148 Lanzenhaeusern, Switzerland <pruest@dplanet.ch> - Biochemistry - Creation and evolution "..the work which God created to evolve it" (Genesis 2:3)
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