For Halloween, I have been sharing a number of eerie stories from Jewish midrash in my “spooky midrash” series. So far we’ve encountered Torah zombies and Judah the Patriarch’s rattling bones. In this post I will introduce you to the desert dead.
Baba Batra-Discussions about Property Damages are Boring, So Let’s Tell Tall Tales
The story of the desert dead is found in the Babylonian Talmud, in a Tractate called Baba Batra, the “Last Gate” from the order of Nezikin, “Damages.” This is a section of the Talmud dedicated to questions of rights and responsibilities in regards to property. The Mishnah on which the Talmud is based has a lot to say about these things, so it divides them into three “gates.” Baba Batra is the last of these sections.
The property under discussion in BT Baba Batra 73B is technically ships and their tackle. The Mishnah is specifying here what equipment is included and what is not in the purchase of a ship. The Babylonian Talmud says, “Ships. Did someone say ships? Speaking of ships, I was on a ship once …” and then cuts loose with one tall tale after another about amazing things that this rabbi and that have seen at sea. The conversation continues to follow various rabbi rabbit trails until on page 73B, we hear all sorts of wonder stories that don’t have anything at all to do with ships at sea. Rabbah bar bar Hannah takes the opportunity to tell us a spooky story about the desert dead.
Rabbah bar bar Hannah’s Adventures in the Desert
But he starts off with a quite different kind of story. It seems that he was traveling through the Sinai desert, and they had an amazing guide to help them on their way. This guide had a very helpful olfactory talent.
BT Baba Batra 73B (Jacob Neusner’s translation)
A. And said Rabbah bar bar Hannah, “Once we were traveling in the desert, and a Tai-Arab joined us, who could pick up sand and smell it and tell us which was the road to one place and which to another. We said to him, ‘How far are we from water?’ He said to us, ‘Give me sand.’ We gave him some, and he said to us, ‘Eight parasangs.’ When we gave him some sand later, he told us that we were three parasangs off. I had changed the sand, but I was not able to confuse him.
That’s some trick! It reminds me of the old Western films I would watch as a boy, where the hero might be assisted by an intrepid Native American guide who could sniff the wind, look at the way the grass was crumpled, and tell him what direction the enemy had gone and how long ago.
The Desert Dead
It’s at this point that the guide offers to show Rabbah bar bar Hannah an amazing sight, the desert dead.
B. “He said to me, ‘Come on, and I’ll show you the dead of the wilderness’ (Num. 14:32ff).
They are in the wilderness of Sinai, and the guide wants to show Rabbah bar bar Hannah the corpses of those children of Israel who died in the wilderness due to their rebellion. Numbers 14 tells us that God cursed this generation. “32 But as for you, your dead bodies shall fall in this wilderness. 33 And your children shall be shepherds in the wilderness forty years, and shall suffer for your faithlessness, until the last of your dead bodies lies in the wilderness.” Evidently, because the text in Numbers does not specifically mention burial, a midrash developed that they were not buried, but lay where they fell. And the Babylonian Talmud develops this tradition further. God has preserved their bodies as a testimony to their rebellion. They are the desert dead.
I went with him and saw them. They looked as though they were exhilarated.
I’m not sure why Neusner translated the second sentence the way he did. The Aramaic pretty clearly says “drunk” for the word he translates “exhilarated.” I would translate it this way: “They looked as though they were in a drunken stupor.” I.e., they look more like people who have passed out than people who have died.
The Desert Dead Are Giants
[74A] They slept on their backs and the knee of one of them was raised. The Arab merchant passed under the knee, riding on a camel with a spear on high and did not touch it.
The “[74A]” tells us that we have gotten to the next page of the Babylonian Talmud. Ever since the Catholic printer Daniel Bomberg first printed the Talmud in the sixteenth century, folks have used the layout of his edition of the Talmud to find their way around this massive piece of literature.
Now we hear that the desert dead are actually giants. They are literally sleeping giants. They are so huge that the Arab guide can ride under one of their knees on his camel.
Dang. The Babylonian Talmud has some weird stuff in it. I really do not know what to make of this strange tradition.
Things really get spooky in the next bit.
I cut off one corner of the purple-blue cloak of one of them, but we could not move away. He said to me, ‘If you’ve taken something from them, return it, for we have a tradition that if anybody takes something from them, he cannot move away.’ I went and returned it and then we could move away.
So, that’s the chilling story of the desert dead.
The Prayer Shawls of the Desert Dead
Before we leave the tale entirely, the Talmud reminds us that this is a legal text, after all, and provides one last midrash concerning Rabbah bar bar Hannah’s motivations for taking the bit of fabric from the desert dead. Amazingly, he himself tells us about how the other rabbis ridiculed him when he shared this story with them.
C. “When I came before rabbis, they said to me, ‘Every Abba is an ass, and every son of Bar Hana is an idiot. What did you do that for? Was it to find out whether the law accords with the House of Shammai or the House of Hillel? You could have counted the threads and the joints [to find out the answer to your question].’”
So, it turns out that the cloak was actually a tallit, a prayer shawl. Rabbah bar bar Hannah had specifically cut off one of its fringes. There was a famous dispute between the two major pharisaical schools, that of Shammai, and that of Hillel, regarding the proper way to knot fringes. Rabbah bar bar Hannah happens to be in the vicinity of corpses wearing prayer shawls from the very generation that had originally received this commandment. (It appears in Numbers 15, the chapter directly following the one upon which this story is based). He decides to take advantage of this and settle the debate once and for all.
Unfortunately, he discovers that he can’t bring the fringe he has cut off back to the other rabbis after all. He tells them about the near opportunity that he had, and they ridicule him: “You big dope. You didn’t have to actually bring a fringe to us. Why didn’t you just count the threads and joints so you could describe them to us?”
Not Just a Ghost Story
There is something charming about this story in the end. The thought of the rebellious Israelites clutching their prayer shawls in repentance until resurrection day is deeply moving to me. God did not give them the grace to enter into the Land of Promise. But He did give the desert dead a lesser grace that is beautiful, nonetheless. No one can deprive them of their millennia long prayer session, as they lie dead but incorrupt in the wilderness of their wandering.
I recently shared a text from the Jerusalem Talmud that is perfect for Halloween. Keeping up with the Spooky Midrash series, here is another one from the Babylonian Talmud, about rattling bones and prayer for the dead.
Judah and Reuben and the Confession of Their Shameful Sins
This text is from Tractate Sotah 7b. The legal text in question is all about the “straying woman” (sotah in Hebrew) whose husband subjects her to the bitter water ordeal in Numbers 5. This is a challenging and difficult set of legal texts that I hope to deal with at a future time, but in the middle of the discussion, the rabbis share a ghost story about rattling bones.
It begins with a citation from the Mishnah. There, the rabbis say that the priests conducting the ritual ordeal should tell the woman shameful accounts of past sinners, in an effort to get her to confess to adultery before going through the ordeal. The Babylonian Talmud asks what sort of accounts these are. (The translation that follows is from Jacob Neusner).
BT Sotah 7b A. And they tell her things… [M. 1:4C]: B. Our rabbis have taught on Tannaite authority: C. He tells her lessons of narrative and events that took place [and are recorded] in the earlier writings [of the Pentateuch]. D. For example “Which wise men have told and have not hid from their fathers [by confessing their sin]” (Job. 15:18).
Rewards for the Confession of Sin
First of all, I probably ought to explain what “Tannaite” means. The Tannaim are the sages of the period most referred to in the Mishnah. Their period roughly covers 10-220 AD. The first of the Tannaim are Hillel and Shammai, and the last of them was Judah the Prince, who compiled the Mishnah. The Mishnah is the record of oral Torah teaching from this period. “Mishnah” and “Tannai” are from the same Semitic root, although the first is Hebrew and the second is Aramaic. Mishnah means “recitation” and Tannai means “one who recites.” So this section of Tractate Sotah asserts that its tradition comes from this most venerable period of Pharisaic Torah teaching.
E. Specifically: Judah confessed and was not ashamed to do so. F. What was his destiny? He inherited the world to come. G. Reuben confessed and was not ashamed to do so. H. What was his destiny? He inherited the world to come. I. What was their reward? What was their reward?! It was as we have stated [F, H]. J. Rather, what was their reward in this world? K. “To them alone the land was given, and no stranger passed among them”(Job. 15:19).
Surprisingly, (perhaps), the shameful accounts are about two of the Patriarchs of Israel, Judah and Reuben. The Talmud only obliquely refers to them here. But you can go read all of the seamy details in Genesis 38 (Judah) and Genesis 35:22 and 49:4 (Reuben). I mean, they are shockingly scandalous stories. No one would want to know that their ancestors had done such things. The Bible is brutally honest in this way. This is not the sort of carefully edited propaganda that some critics have tried to depict it as being. But I digress.
Judah’s Good Example
Interestingly, the Talmud insists that there were both spiritual and material blessings for their confession of sin. They inherited the world to come, of course, but the rabbis produce a midrash based on Job 15, and imply that the inheritance of the tribes of Judah and Reuben in the land of Canaan was a direct result of confessing these sins.
But there is a bit of a problem. The Bible never tells us that Reuben confessed his sin. For the rabbis, who like for there to be a biblical foundation for all of their teachings, this is a major irritant. And so, the Babylonian Talmud provides us with a midrashic solution.
III.2. A. Now we find no problem in the case of Judah, for we find that he confessed, as it is written, “And Judah acknowledged them and said, She is more righteous than I” (Gen. 38:26). B. But how do we know that Reuben confessed? C. It is in accord with what R. Samuel bar Nahmani said R. Yohanan said, “What is the meaning of that which is written: ‘Let Reuben live and not die, and this for Judah’ (Deu. 33: 6-7)?
Rabbi Yohanan turns to Deuteronomy 33:6-7, where Moses blesses the tribe of Reuben, to find a hint that Reuben did indeed confess his sins. What he actually does here is fuse verse 7, which begins the next blessing, on to verse 6. By so doing, he generates a new text. Not only is Moses asking that Reuben be given life, but he is asking that Reuben be blessed for the sake of the confession prompted Judah.
Judah’s Rattling Bones
And now we get to the rattling bones. Here the Talmud provides a strange story to give testimony to the statement that Reuben confessed his sins because of Judah. You might expect a midrash that actually recounts Reuben’s confession. But no, this is the Babylonian Talmud, so it’s going to be delightfully weirder.
The story that follows depends on a non-biblical tradition. The Bible specifically tells us that the Hebrews brought the bones of Joseph the Patriarch with them out of Egypt. But it doesn’t tell us what happened to the bones of the other Patriarchs. So the midrash that follows assumes that all of their bones were also carried with their descendants throughout the wilderness wanderings. This is the premise for a wonderfully creepy story about Judah’s rattling bones.
D. “All those years that the Israelites were in the wilderness, the bones of Judah were rolling around in the coffin, until Moses went and sought mercy for him, saying before him, ‘Lord of the ages, who caused Reuben to confess? It was Judah [who set the example].’ E. “‘And this for Judah.’ Forthwith: ‘Hear, O Lord, the voice of Judah’ (Deu. 33: 7). F. “Each limb then entered its socket [and stopped rolling about]. G. “But they did not bring him up into the Torah-session in the firmament. H. “[Moses then prayed], ‘And bring him in to his people.’ I. “But he could not follow the give and take of the argument [that rabbis were discussing concerning the law]. J. “[Moses prayed]: ‘With his hands let him contend for himself’ (Deu. 33: 7). K. “He had no tradition in hand pertinent to what was under discussion in the law. L. “[Moses prayed:] ‘Be a help against his adversaries’ (Deu. 33: 7).”
Praying for the Dead-Settling Rattling Bones Down
There it is, the story about Judah’s rattling bones. And isn’t it fantastic? I’m telling you, rabbinic literature is a treasure trove of such wonderful things. I routinely find it to be deeply edifying for my own, specifically Christian spirituality. This story is just one good example. I especially like how the blessing for the tribe of Judah in Deuteronomy 33 has become a series of intercessions in the mouth of Moses for the deceased Patriarch. And, of course, this is colorful testimony that the ancient Christian practice of praying for the dead is a natural development from our Jewish roots.
The Tomb of Judah the Patriarch. Photo by Ariel Palmon, CC BY 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
I am a big fan of rabbinic literature, and I love sharing its delights with others. So, here is an eerie text from the Jerusalem Talmud that is perfect for the Halloween season. It’s all about Torah Zombies!
The translation below comes from Jacob Neusner’s monumental translation. “R.” is “Rabbi.”
Torah Zombies in Jerusalem Talmud, Seder Zera’im, Tractate Berakhot
[II:3 A] Now R. Yohanan required that [his students] attribute his teachings to him [whenever they repeated them]. [B] Accordingly, even King David [implied that a person who repeats his words attribute them to him]. He asked [God] for mercy, “Let me dwell in thy tent for ever!” [Ps. 61:4]. [C] [How should one interpret this verse?] R. Pinhas, R. Jeremiah in the name of R. Yohanan, “Did it ever cross David’s mind that he would live forever? Rather so said David, ‘Let me merit that my words be spoken in my name in the synagogues and in the study halls.’”
Don’t Plagiarize. It Makes the Sages Sad. Help Them to Become Torah Zombies!
The discussion about Torah Zombies begins with an innocuous enough teaching. It is well known that rabbinic literature piles attributions on one another. A sage rarely provides a teaching without citing the rabbi from whom he received it. Often the sage produces a chain of authority reaching back two or even three generations. (The text exemplifies this itself when it has Rabbi Pinhas citing Rabbi Jeremiah in the name of Rabbi Yohanan). Here the Jerusalem Talmud says plainly that Rabbi Yohanan actually required this style of attribution of his disciples.
Then the Jerusalem Talmud provides a scriptural midrash as support. It asserts that this is precisely what David is praying for in Psalm 61 when he begs God to allow him to live in His tent for ever. He is asking to have his words spoken in the synagogues and study halls of the Jewish people. And he is also asking that when his words are spoken, he be given proper attribution for them. (So, the Bible condemns plagiarism, kids).
Naturally enough, the audience wants to know why this should matter to sages after they die. What possible benefit could there be to attributing a teaching to a sage after he has gone to his reward? Doesn’t death remove you from the sphere of honor and reward? Apparently not. When someone teaches Torah in your name after you die, you have the distinct honor of becoming a Torah Zombie. Check out what the Jerusalem Talmud has to say about this.
Reciting the Tradition from the Grave
[D] And what benefit is there [in attributing a teaching to another sage]? [E] Levi bar Nezira said, “When one recites a tradition in the name of its original author [who has passed away], the author’s lips move in unison with him in the grave [reciting the tradition. On account of the attribution the author merits a moment of life after death in the world to come].”
The Cave-Tomb of Rabbi Hillel and His Disciples on Mt. Meron, Israel
Torah Zombies! The idea is that by providing proper attribution to your master after his death, you actually give him with a moment of resurrection. As a result, when you quote him, he revives, and speaks with you from the grave. Cool!
The idea of Torah Zombies is hard to swallow, of course. So the Jerusalem Talmud immediately provides another scriptural midrash.
[F] What is the scriptural basis for this teaching? “[And your kisses are like the best wine that goes down smoothly] gliding over the lips of sleepers [Song 7:9].”[After death one’s lips move] like the wine which glides off of grapes ripening in a basket [if someone recites a teaching in his name]. [G] R. Haninah bar Papai and R. Simon [explained the verse cited above]. [H] One said as follows, “Compare this [case in the verse] to one who drinks [spiced] conditon-wine.” [I] And the other said, “Compare this [case in the verse] to one who drinks aged wine.” Even though he finished drinking, the taste remains on his lips. [So too, one who recites Torah. The words remain on his lips after his death. When others repeat the tradition in his name, his lips move along with theirs.]
Torah’s After-Taste
So, teaching Torah is like drinking good wine with a pleasant after-taste. If we drink Torah in this life, we continue to taste it in the next one. And that turns you into a Torah Zombie.
In a previous post I explained how important the kerygmatic burden is for interpreting the Old Testament. The kerygmatic burden is the prophetic message that the author of the biblical text had for his specific, contemporary audience. In that post, I promised to revisit this topic, giving special attention to the implications for those Old Testament texts that we see fulfilled in the New Testament. So that’s what we will do here, using Isaiah 7:14 as a case study: “A virgin shall conceive.”
“Madonna and Child” by Raphael
The Traditional, Christian Interpretation of Isaiah 7:14
Just taking a look at several translations reveals different ways of interpreting Isaiah 7:14. The title of this post comes from the Douay translation, made from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate: “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel.” This is the traditional, Christian understanding of the text. In fact, the first chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew explicitly quotes this verse as a prophecy of the virgin birth:
18 Now the birth of Jesus Christtook place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; 19 and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; 21 she will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:
23 “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emman′u-el”
(which means, God with us). 24 When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, 25 but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.
Isaiah 7:14 in the RSV
I took that translation of Matthew 1:18-25 from the Revised Standard Version (my preferred English translation). But look at how the RSV translates the source text in Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son.” Obviously, though a “virgin” and a “young woman” can be the same person, they are not exactly synonyms. Not every virgin is a young woman, and not every young woman is a virgin.
Isaiah 7:14 in Modern Translations
You might suppose that this is just clumsy translation work, but scanning other translations demonstrates that the RSV is in good company. Plently of translations have something besides “the virgin shall conceive.” The New Jerusalem Bible, for instance, says, “the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son.” The 1917 Jewish Publication Society version has, “the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son.” (The reason that this is so close to the RSV has to do with their common history as revisions of the King James Version).
The 2011 Revised Edition of the New American Bible, the official Bible translation of the Catholic Church in the United States, really grabs our attention. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.” (The NABRE really over-translates, and creates more problems). So, let’s talk about what is going on in the original, Hebrew text of Isaiah 7:14.
The Hebrew of Isaiah 7:14
We’ll start with verse 14, and then telescope out to the broader context. The word that is causing all of the fuss is the Hebrew word “almah.” An almah, strictly speaking, is a young woman. For instance, it’s used to refer to Miriam, the young girl who watches over her baby brother Moses when he is placed in the basket on the Nile. An almah is probably a virgin, but this is not its technical sense. In fact, there is another Hebrew word that really does mean “virgin” that could easily have been used here if that had really been Isaiah’s intention, “betulah.” So, on points of technicality, these modern translations that use “young woman” or an equivalent thereof to translate almah really are more precise than “a virgin shall conceive.”
Context Is King
I’ll explain the fascinating steps that the Holy Spirit took to get us to Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14, with “a virgin shall conceive,” in a bit. But first, I think that it is important to properly receive Isaiah’s kerygmatic burden. If Isaiah is not prophesying the virgin birth of the Messiah, what is he prophesying?
In my biblical interpretation courses at Ozark Christian College, Mark Scott taught us that “context is king.” Most of the time that we misunderstand a text of Scripture it is because we have not given due consideration to that text’s broader context. Most of the time this is fairly innocuous. The throw pillows at Hobby Lobby or the motivational posters at your local Christian bookstore are examples of this.
But sometimes taking a verse out of context is the premise for a dangerous cult.
Vernon Wayne Howell, better known as David Koresh, took Revelation 5:2 out of context and identified himself as the Lamb who opens the seals of Revelation. This had tragic consequences for himself and his followers in Waco, Texas.
Context Is King in Isaiah 7:14
Isaiah 7:14 has a specific textual context that does not directly have to do with the birth of the Messiah at all. Christians often forget this because of Matthew’s use of verse fourteen in isolation. If we want to know what the prophet Isaiah’s original kerygmatic burden was, we have to give due consideration to the entire chapter.
7 In the days of Ahaz the son of Jotham, son of Uzzi′ah, king of Judah, Rezin the king of Syria and Pekah the son of Remali′ah the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it, but they could not conquer it. 2 When the house of David was told, “Syria is in league with E′phraim,” his heart and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.
3 And the Lord said to Isaiah, “Go forth to meet Ahaz, you and She′ar-jash′ub your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the Fuller’s Field, 4 and say to him, ‘Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remali′ah. 5 Because Syria, with E′phraim and the son of Remali′ah, has devised evil against you, saying, 6 ‘Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Ta′be-el as king in the midst of it,’ 7 thus says the Lord God:
It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass. 8 For the head of Syria is Damascus, and the head of Damascus is Rezin.
(Within sixty-five years E′phraim will be broken to pieces so that it will no longer be a people.)
9 And the head of E′phraim is Samar′ia, and the head of Samar′ia is the son of Remali′ah. If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established.’”
10 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, 11 “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.” 12 But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” 13 And he said, “Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary men, that you weary my God also? 14 Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Imman′u-el. 15 He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good. 16 For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.”
Ahaz’s Crisis
Isaiah 7 is about a crisis facing Ahaz, the king of the Southern Kingdom of Judah. He has just found out about a conspiracy between two of his most dangerous enemies, Syria and the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Usually these two powers were too occupied with their own personal feuds to bother with Judah. Ahaz had real cause for concern. These were not empty threats. He desperately needed encouragement, so God sent Isaiah to him with just that.
There are two messages in this portion of Isaiah 7. The first is recorded in verses 3-9. It is very clear: Ahaz has no cause to worry. Their conspiracy will not come to pass. Evidently Ahaz was not very reassured by this message, because God sends Isaiah back to him with another one, and this one is accompanied by a prophetic sign.
Isaiah’s Kerygmatic Burden
Pay attention to the meaning of the sign of the birth of this “Immanuel.” “Before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.” In other words, the birth of this child establishes a timeline for Ahaz. Before the child in question has reached the age of moral accountability, these foreign powers will have suffered their own disasters, and will no longer pose a threat to Judah. It is easier to exercise the virtue of hope when their is an end in sight. The prophetic sign is not that a virgin shall conceive, but that the child of this young woman will still be quite young when Rezin and Pekah will meet their demise.
So, this is the kerygmatic burden of Isaiah: Ahaz, have hope in God’s managing of this difficult political situation! And here is a sign to build hope on, a child named Immanuel, “God is with us.”
The Problem
Here’s the problem for traditional Christian readings of this text. Isaiah had to have delivered these messages before 715 BC, the year that King Ahaz died. How could the promise that a virgin shall conceive the Messiah 700 years later possibly provide any perceptible hope for doubtful Ahaz’s immediate situation? (NB: I am not saying that the promise of the Messiah’s birth is irrelevant to Ahaz. More on that in a bit). If the only proper interpretation of Isaiah’s Immanuel prophecy is the Christian one, it raises difficult questions. Sure, 700 years after the prophecy, Rezin and Pekah were no longer troubling Ahaz! But Ahaz wasn’t worried about them anymore for quite other reasons!
The point is, the birth of Jesus 700 years in the future couldn’t possibly bear any kerygmatic burden for Ahaz.
Isaiah’s Intent-Not “A Virgin Shall Conceive”
So, if Isaiah is not intending to predict that a virgin shall conceive the Messiah in Isaiah 7:14, what is his intent? It really does seem as though he is predicting the conception and birth of a child in months immediately following his message to Ahaz. Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly who the young woman in verse fourteen is. Some commentators have suggested that it is Isaiah’s own wife, or perhaps a wife or concubine of Ahaz. Personally, I think that Isaiah is pointing to a young woman serving in the palace of Ahaz when he says these words.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. At this stage in the prophetic message, the real point of the sign has little to do with the identity and career of little Immanuel. His name is the most important thing about him. “God is with” Ahaz and the people of Judah. Before Immanuel is old enough to eat solid food and be held accountable for wrong choices, Rezin and Pekah will disappear.
What Isaiah’s Kerygmatic Burden Means for Us Today
The Holy Spirit has a whole lot more to say here. But let’s pause and resist the temptation to rush on to greater things. Because the Holy Spirit has plenty to say in this original, literal sense of the text as Isaiah originally conceived of it. Let’s consider what Isaiah’s kerygmatic burden has to teach us today.
The immediate message of Isaiah 7 to Ahaz and Judah has a lot to say to us today. In texts like this, the literal sense is not aimed directly to us. Instead, it invites us to overhear it, and the indirect message has immense benefit. God is telling Judah that no matter what the political circumstances seem to indicate, He is with them. He is directing history to a certain goal. Ahaz and his people can trust God to accompany them through this crisis and protect them from every threat. Paranoia and despair are not an option for God’s people.
Now would be a good time to pause. Go back to the beginning of Isaiah 7 and read through the text again. Then read my brief interpretation of the literal sense of that text. Does that original sense of Isaiah 7 bear any relevance to our own life in the midst of today?
A Virgin Shall Conceive
This would be a gift on its own, but the Holy Spirit had more to say. About 200 years before the birth of Jesus, Greek-speaking Jews living in Alexandria produced a translation of Isaiah. This was later incorporated into the Greek version of the Old Testament. We call this translation the “Septuagint.” When those translators came to verse fourteen, they made an interesting choice. They translated almah with the Greek word parthenos. Unlike almah, parthenos technically does mean “virgin.” “A virgin shall conceive” is properly a translation of the Septuagint text of Isaiah 7:14.
What “A Virgin Shall Conceive” Meant for the Early Church
It is difficult to conceive of what the human translators had in mind when they did this. But for Matthew and the rest of the Christian community, the Holy Spirit’s intent is obvious. Beyond the political context of Ahaz’s day, God is sending another Child as a sign. This Child really is Immanuel, “God with us,” and not just named Immanuel. And this child, born miraculously of the Virgin Mary, in fact is the goal of history. He is the One who delivers God’s people through every crisis and from every threat. And yet again, paranoia and despair are not an option for God’s people. How can they be, when “God is with us” in Jesus?
Isaiah’s Kerygmatic Burden: “A Virgin Shall Conceive” and Its Ultimate Fulfillment in Jesus
Though Ahaz and Isaiah could not possibly know it, Jesus is the answer to the crises of their own day. The real problem with human history is that bullies like Rezin and Pekah keep showing up. One generation of political threats moves on only to have another, even more threatening one replace it. Our human existence is fraught with this recurring trope of conflict and anxiety. Peace is hard-won and ephemeral. This is true of the cheaper version of peace that our political commentators refer to. Think of all of the reporting on “peace talks” between warring factions. The more substantial peace referred to in the Hebrew word shalom is even more elusive. This is the real flourishing of a culture and the individuals who live in it,
A Virgin Shall Conceive “God with Us”
All of this is the result of sin, our rebellion and alienation from God. That is the real problem that Jesus comes to solve. But Christians know that just because we experience redemption does not mean that suddenly we become impervious to bullying. From the very beginning the Church has produced an army of martyrs. The machinery of coercion and violence has mutilated and mangled their bodies. Still, they have triumphed spiritually over these political forces. Rezin and Pekah are always with us. And yet, Christians know a “peace that passes understanding” because of Immanuel. God, in Jesus, is also always with us. And this is never so true as when we suffer, taking our place of fellowship with Jesus on His cross.
Somehow, the peace that Isaiah proclaims to Ahaz draws mysteriously from the peace offered by the second Immanuel. The Immanuel born of the Virgin truly is “God with Us.” Isaiah’s kerygmatic burden is blind to the greater intent of the Holy Spirit. And yet, it depends upon it for its full force. Christians can read the story of Ahaz and Immanuel with the eyes of faith. We can thank God that in our current political anxieties, Jesus is still “God with us.”
Jack Korbel writes and records beautiful music. His songs are about faith, Kansas history, and personal tragedy and growth. This, his latest, is a gospel rock anthem. And it participates in the grand American tradition of prison songs. So, give it a listen!
I had the great benefit of growing up in a deeply religious family. This meant that we were in church every Sunday, said grace before meal times, and regularly had spiritual conversations. My parents gave me a Bible for my seventh birthday. I read it through from cover to cover by the time that I was ten. It was only natural that I should decide to attend Bible college and prepare for ministry as a preacher and missionary. So, when I experienced a crisis of faith years later, it was a truly excruciating experience.
In my church and Bible college there were certain assumptions about the parameters of biblical research. There was a simple logic behind it all that went something like this. We can recognize that there is a God because of the world around us. We can perceive that this God is wise, all-powerful and that He is good from the same testaments of creation. If God is wise and good, then surely He would communicate with us.
The Bible is the record of that communication. If the Bible is the message from the all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful God, then surely He has preserved it from errors of every kind. Consequently, anyone who is trying to provide an alternative to the history and scientific information in the Bible is actually attempting to undermine the Bible’s credibility. We portrayed the people doing this as having a well-thought out agenda. We also labeled them “liberals.”
My Fundamentalist Upbringing
I learned that the world is only about 6000 years old, in accord with a strictly literal acceptance of the biblical chronology. The scientific establishment manufactured their so-called evidence for evolution as part of a vast conspiracy. Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Isaiah wrote Isaiah. David wrote the Psalms ascribed to him. Anyone who suggested otherwise was a liberal, chipping away at the foundation of faith in the Bible as God’s Word.
This is what I learned, taught and preached up until I was nearly thirty years old. This was an extremely chaotic period in my life. We were living overseas. Exposure to Judaism, the ancient churches of the Holy Land, and the Church Fathers had caused my wife and me to begin the difficult journey into the Catholic Church. And then, late one night, I decided to investigate a developing suspicion that kept niggling at me. So began my crisis of faith.
How I Met Nyū Nesshii
When I was very young, I attended a Creation Science seminar. It was quite sensational. In one of the slideshows, there were pictures of human footprints alongside of dinosaur footprints from Glen Rose, Texas. The speaker regaled us with amazing eyewitness testimonies of cowboys encountering pteranodons in the Old West. And then he showed us this:
Many creationists claim that this is a picture of a plesiosaur, but it has been proven to be a basking shark.
Nyū Nesshii: A Plesiosaur?
That is a picture of a cryptid that the Japanese call Nyū Nesshii, i.e., “New Nessie.” The Japanese fishing trawler, the Zuiyō-Maru, hoisted it up off the coast of New Zealand in 1977. Unfortunately, after the crew took a small sample of its corpse, they tossed Nyū Nesshi back into the ocean because it smelled so terrible. But this photo created a minor sensation, because based on appearances alone, it really does look like a plesiosaur.
Reconstructed skeleton of a plesiosaur. Photo by Kim Alaniz / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paleo_Hall_at_HMNS_plesiosaur.jpg.
The speaker acknowledged that the scientific community had determined that the Zuiyō-Maru carcass was a basking shark, not a plesiosaur. He did not tell us how they had determined this. (More on that in a bit). But who were we going to trust, after all? These scientists were obviously in cahoots with the other scientists driving the evolution narrative. We could not trust these ideologues. I mean, look at that picture of the rotting corpse. Does that look like a basking shark to you?
Just your run-of-the-mill basking shark. Photo by Greg Skomal / NOAA Fisheries Service / Public domain. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cetorhinus_maximus_by_greg_skomal.JPG.
I loved this sort of thing when I was a kid. The idea that dinosaurs could still be living in the ocean depths filled me with wonder. I thrilled to the pictures of baby brontosauruses on Noah’s Ark. And of course, it was comforting to be able to read the Bible and accept everything I read uncritically and at face value, especially as I grew older and life became more and more confusing.
I Research Nyū Nesshii As an Adult
For some reason or other, when I was about thirty years old, I dredged up all of this stuff about the Zuiyō-Maru carcass again. (Did you see what I did there?). I don’t remember if it was something I came across on the Internet late at night, or if it came up in conversation with a fellow that I drank coffee with back in those days. But someone somewhere challenged my easy-going belief that the the Zuiyō-Maru had pulled up a plesiosaur from the ocean in 1977. I was heading for a crisis of faith.
It was time to do some research. I googled “plesiosaur, Japanese fishing boat” and began to sift through the information. I wanted to reassure myself that the evidence for this being a basking shark was questionable, at best. What I found was something quite different.
Nyū Nesshii: Not a Plesiosaur
It turns out that the research done on the Zuiyō-Maru carcass extended well beyond “hunches” that it was a basking shark. Scientists extensively examined the tissue sample that the fishing boat took from the carcass.
There have been several publications that have dealt with this. The most complete and accessible one that I know of is an article by Glen Kuban, “Sea-monster or Shark? An Analysis of a Supposed Plesiosaur Carcass Netted in 1977,” published in Reports of the National Center for Science Education, May/June 1997, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 16-28.
There is a whole lot in that article, but two things really convinced me that this was a basking shark, and not a plesiosaur. First of all, the cell structure of the flesh was in the form of “horny fibers” that were “rigid, needle-like structures that tapered toward both ends and had a translucent light-brown color.”
This structure is exactly what researchers find in the cartilage of basking sharks. Secondly, scientists conducted a gross amino acid analysis of the samples from the carcass, and discovered that they were full of elastoidin, “a collagenous protein known only from sharks and rays (not reptiles or even other fish).”
What Young Earth Creationists Have Done with this Research
These studies were conducted in the late seventies, immediately after the discovery of the Zuiyō-Maru carcass. They seem to have conclusively proven that what those fishermen hauled up was a basking shark, not a plesiosaur. And yet, the speaker at that seminar, and numerous other sources that I encountered later, assured me that the claim that the carcass was a basking shark was really only a clumsy guess, motivated by the incredulity of scientists that this was indeed a plesiosaur.
To this day, creationists continue to gloss over the compelling evidence that the Zuiyō-Maru carcass is actually a basking shark. This site is just one example. This is unconscionable and deceitful. The Ten Commandments command us, “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:17). That some Christians continue to bear false witness in regards to the Zuiyō-Maru carcass is a cause of scandal.
Bearing False Witness
That some Christians continued to bear false witness in regards to the Zuiyō-Maru carcass was a cause of scandal to me, personally. It instigated a crisis of faith. When I discovered that there was more to the story of the plesiosaur, information that seemed to have been intentionally withheld in those seminars, books, courses, Sunday School classes, etc., I felt betrayed. I was extremely angry.
But a terrible thought generated in the back of my brain, and grew in intensity until it screamed in my mind day and night: if people that I knew, loved and trusted had lied to me about a stupid, fake plesiosaur, what hadn’t they lied to me about? If this wasn’t true, what was? Was anything that I had believed true? Now my crisis of faith was edging into doubt.
Cast Into the Furnace: My Crisis of Faith
As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, a whole lot was going on at this time in my life to contribute to this crisis of faith. We were living overseas. We were considering becoming Catholic. I was working on a graduate degree in Hebrew Bible. Studying Church history and the writings of the Church Fathers brought up all kinds of other questions about things that I had heard about the Catholic Church, things that I was finding out were just not true. And studying the Hebrew Bible was convincing me that the old, traditional claims for authorship of many books of the Bible were extremely problematic.
All of this underlined my deepening suspicions that for much of my religious education, my teachers had given me a carefully constructed version of reality. As this version of reality began to crumble, I began to feel paranoid and alone.
Trying to remember this experience is difficult now. My crisis of faith comes to me in images. I see myself falling through space, as though the bottom has been pulled out of everything. I picture myself in a dark cave, unaware of a way out.
For a few days, the terrifying possibility that I was going to become an atheist loomed large before me.
The Burning Furnace of Doubt
This was absolutely excruciating. Since faith was such an intrinsic part of my personal identity, I didn’t know how I would carry on. What would my life look like without it? I was tempted to retreat into an easy and assured Fundamentalism, and abandon my no-holds-barred search for truth. But the incongruence of ignoring certain truths for the sake of religious Truth stared me in the face, and so I carried on through my crisis of faith.
I took stock of what I did and did not know for sure. Had any of my religious teachers been completely honest with me? I was in the middle of considering a transition to a new set of teachers in the Catholic Church. There was no assurance that they were any more worthy of my trust.
And now the possibility emerged that even the Bible, up till that moment the foundation of my faith, might not provide an exit from my doubt. The human authorship of the Bible was becoming more and more apparent, and the old proofs for its divine authorship that I had learned in church and college now appeared tattered and thin.
The Burning Furnace of Doubt Begins to Swallow Up Everything
For all that, I wasn’t ready to trust other human authorities, like the scientific establishment, either. If people in the church could lie, people in lab coats could, too. And I had audited a course in the philosophy of science. I knew that scientists had their own blind spots. Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions played an important role in that regard.
And I certainly wasn’t prepared to go relativist. I trusted my own instincts and perception least of all. As much as the Zuiyō-Maru carcass had eroded my confidence in my creationist instructors, it had made me aware of my own incapabilities to discern what was true.
I was adrift in a sea of doubt, sinking into despair.
The Familiar Presence in the Furnace of Doubt
And that’s when I was enveloped in a familiar grace. In the midst of this ocean of skepticism, as I was desperately attempting to tread water, there was one reality that imposed itself so strongly on my mind and emotions that I simply could not cast it aside with everything else. Any rational arguments for belief in God seemed hollow now in contrast with my indisputable experience of His presence and work in my life. And that presence and work was especially palpable in the person of Jesus.
Existentially, I simply could not apply the same radical skepticism to Him that everything else was just crumbling under. With Him it would not work. Past experience of miraculous intervention was compelling enough on its own terms. (Perhaps I will share a few of those stories here). But at this moment in my life, what I found most indisputable was the undeniable sense of His presence.
So, together, we started to make our way back to solid ground. Beginning not with any teachers, or a particular church, or even the Bible, but with Jesus Himself, I was able to recover my faith. My faith was different. It had been stripped down, and built back up. Lots of things that I would have regarded as essential to my faith before the crisis were gone. But there was also continuity.
Jesus is the Foundation of My Faith
One of the things that I had learned in my Young Earth Creationist days was that modern scientific theories were an attack on the very foundation of our faith. This image, from Ken Ham’s “Answers in Genesis,” is illustrative.
“Castles in Conflict” from Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis. Young Earth Creationism is presented as the foundation of Christianity.
This particular image is from a 2004 publication. But I remember an almost identical one from materials that I saw in the 80s and in my Creation Science course in the 90s.
In the gradually accumulating peace that followed my crisis of faith, I thought about this image many times. I realized that folks like Ken Ham would now perceive me as one of the foolish Christians firing away at the foundation of the Christian faith. And then I realized what a terrible lie this piece of propaganda is. No single theory of human origins or cosmology could ever be the foundation of our faith, no matter how biblical it was. Jesus is the foundation of our faith. In fact, St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:11, “For no other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”
The Freedom of Making Jesus My Foundation
Making a determined effort to live with Jesus as the foundation of my faith, and, really, every other aspect of my life, has proven to be remarkably freeing. I don’t have to force science to fit a preconceived notion of what I think the Bible is saying about it. I can be more flexible with different possibilities proposed by biblical scholarship. Since my faith is not founded on the Bible, but on Jesus, I don’t have to be threatened by ideas that challenge what I have thought the Bible was saying. I’m not attempting to force the Bible to bear a burden that it was never intended to carry. The result has been that I now believe more than ever that the Bible is a faithful testament to Jesus.
I realize that my own interpretations of the Scriptures are prone to error. As a Catholic, I am thankful for the guidance the Holy Spirit provides through His Church, but even so, there is room for doubt. The only thing that I know for absolute certain is that Jesus has personally intervened time and time again in my life to envelope me in His grace. To date, the most dramatic evidence that I have for Jesus’ faithfulness is His presence during those horrifying few days when I wondered whether or not I actually believed anything.
Old Testament interpretation is difficult. Something that has helped me has been the recognition of the “kerygmatic burden of the Old Testament.” In this article, I will share this concept with you, so that you can use it in your own biblical study.
When reading any text, it is important to establish as nearly as possible what the author’s intent with that text is. It is very true that the text may bear more personal meanings for you that the author could never have imagined, but if you completely disregard what she was trying to say and what motivated her to write in the first place, you have not honored her as the author who has gifted you with the text. A great deal of the authorial intent is dictated by the audience to whom the text is addressed. The author has a message which she wishes a particular set of people in a particular time and a particular place to receive. This is true of poems, novels, newspaper stories … and the Bible.
For Old Testament texts, I call this dynamic relationship of author, message, and original audience the “kerygmatic burden of Old Testament texts.”
“Kerygma”
“Kerygma” is a Greek word meaning “proclamation.” It only shows up a few times in the Septuagint. An important example is Proverbs 9:3-4, where Lady Wisdom sends out a proclamation to the simple: “She has sent out her maids to call from the highest places in the town, ‘Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!'”
Icon of Holy Wisdom. Note the resemblance to Christ.
In the New Testament, “kerygma” was used to describe the act of heralding the Gospel message that God’s Kingdom had been established by the coming of Jesus the Messiah. Romans 16 is a beautiful example, where Paul says this:
25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages 26 but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory for evermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Some New Testament theologians over the course of the last century proposed that the Gospel was itself a new genre, which they labeled “kerygma.” They said that before the Gospels were written down, their contents were formalized in the oral presentation of Jesus’ ministry and teachings. The distilled core of this Gospel message is also referred to as kerygma.
The Kerygmatic Burden of the Old Testament
The kerygma is rightly associated with the New Testament. But I believe that a similar phenomenon already occurred in the Old Testament. These texts, after all, formed the basis for the revelation that came in Jesus. Even texts that do not formally fall into the category of “prophecy” assume a prophetic character. This is by virtue of their inclusion in the Old Testament Canon. That prophetic character is the message that the authors and editors of the Old Testament were struggling to convey. This strikes close to what I mean by “kerygmatic burden.”
Another approach is to consider something my Bible college professor Mark Scott taught me to look for. This is the “A.I.M.” of the text. A.I.M. stands for the “Author’s Intended Meaning.” The kerygmatic burden of the Old Testament also considers the original audience. This is particular to a specific time and place.
Last week I shared my interpretation of the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. An old friend of mine, Jason Shaver, chimed in with some excellent questions in the comments. He asked why most scholars no longer accept the traditional view that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Personally, I am partial to those traditional perspectives. But the biggest reason that I believe someone else composed Genesis 11 is this kerygmatic burden of the Old Testament. Genesis 11 makes most sense as a prophetic message to the Jewish people in exile under Nebuchadnezzar.
Cyrus the Great in Isaiah 40-55
I began to think this way years ago. I was desperately trying as a Fundamentalist to defend the original authorship of Isaiah the Prophet for Isaiah 40-55. Biblical scholars call these chapters “Deutero-Isaiah.” This is because they mention Cyrus the Great by name. He lived more than a century after the original Prophet Isaiah. Here is one example, from chapter 45:
1Thus says the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have grasped,
to subdue nations before him
and ungird the loins of kings,
to open doors before him
that gates may not be closed:
2 “I will go before you
and level the mountains,
I will break in pieces the doors of bronze
and cut asunder the bars of iron,
3 I will give you the treasures of darkness
and the hoards in secret places,
that you may know that it is I, the Lord,
the God of Israel, who call you by your name.
4 For the sake of my servant Jacob,
and Israel my chosen,
I call you by your name,
I surname you, though you do not know me.’
In Sunday School and Bible college, I was taught that this was an amazing prediction on the part of Isaiah. Consequently, it was a manifest demonstration of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Any argument for later authorship was part of a nefarious effort to chip away at faith in the Bible. Unfortunately, the original arguments for Deutero-Isaiah do have roots in a post-Enlightenment dismissal of the possibility of predictive prophecy.
The Kerygmatic Burden of Deutero-Isaiah
I studied these chapters of Isaiah in graduate school. There I became aware that the arguments for Deutero-Isaiah were much more sophisticated than I had been led to believe. This greatly contributed to a crisis of faith that I was suffering through at the time. (I will probably write about that later. Suffice it to say that personal experience of Jesus and His mercies in my life secured me in my faith). And that’s when, by God’s grace, the kerygmatic burden of Deutero-Isaiah came in to save the day.
Consider. Isaiah receives a prophetic word about Cyrus in 700 BC, let’s say. (That’s exactly 100 years before the birth of Cyrus the Great!). He comes before King Hezekiah with this word of encouragement. What could Hezekiah’s response be other than, “Who the @#$ is Cyrus?” In other words, this message would have absolutely no kerygmatic burden for Isaiah and the people to whom he ministered.
Prophecy, Not Prediction
The Holy Spirit could have predicted Cyrus the Great by name a full 100 years before he was born. After all, I joyfully attempt from day to day to be a faithful, practicing Catholic. Catholics believe in far greater miracles of Grace than a simple bit of predictive prophecy. (Come to Mass with me sometime, and you can see for yourself). The real question is why the Holy Spirit would have predicted Cyrus the Great by name to that audience. They could derive absolutely no spiritual benefit from this revelation. That’s what I mean by the kerygmatic burden of the Old Testament.
The Holy Spirit does not do the Nostradamus shtick. He speaks clearly to His people in ways that will challenge and comfort them where they are. He directly addresses the trials and temptations of their particular experience. Today I recognize that another author besides Isaiah wrote these chapters about Cyrus the Great. But that does not mean that God did not inspire these texts. On the contrary, this has actually helped me contemplate how God speaks to His people in an even more profound manner.
Of course, the Scriptures speak beyond their original audience. Often they do so in amazing ways that the original authors could never have imagined. Isaiah 7:14 and Psalm 22 immediately come to mind. In these texts, the original kerygmatic burden has developed into an even greater message, precisely because these are inspired Scriptures. Those texts can indeed speak to us at a deeper level. But first we must see what they originally meant for their human authors and the audiences that received them. I hope to write more about that in the future.
Here is my translation of an ancient prayer for this season from the Siddur of Sa’adia Gaon:
May the Lord Our God remember the covenant and the loving-kindness and the oath which He swore to our fathers on Mount Moriah, and may the binding with which Abraham our father bound Isaac his son on the altar appear before you, and may His mercies overcome to fulfill your desire. Yes, may Your mercies overcome Your anger and may Your great goodness turn away Your wrath from Your people Israel and Your inheritance, and fulfill for us, Lord Our God the word that you promised in Your Torah by the hand of Moses Your servant, “And I will remember My former covenant with them, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt before the eyes of the nations to be their God. I am the Lord.” Because You remember the things that are forgotten. You are from eternity and there is nothing forgotten before the throne of Your glory. And You will remember the binding of Isaac for his seed. Blessed are You O Lord, Who remembers the covenant.
Like many stories in Genesis, the tale of the Tower of Babel seems to have drawn inspiration from older ancient Near Eastern stories and culture. One example is the story of Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. In this story, Enmerkar forces the people of Aratta to erect a palace or temple that resembles a mountain. One of his ambitions is to unite the diverse peoples of Sumer in the worship of Enlil. “May they all address Enlil together in a single language!” To achieve this monolingualism, he plans to enlist the help of the god Enki. He “shall change the speech in their mouths, as many as he had placed there, and so the speech of mankind is truly one.”
É.TEMEN.AN.KI-The Foundation House of Heaven and Earth
But the more proximate source of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel is surely É.TEMEN.AN.KI, “the foundation house of heaven and earth”. This was a massive ziggurat, 90 feet tall, likely built centuries before Saul or David reigned in Israel, maybe even by the great Hammurabi, c. 1790 BC.
Arial View of All That Is Left of É.TEMEN.AN.KI Lyaschuchenko / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)
This temple is probably mentioned in Enûma Eliš, the Babylonian creation myth. Tablet VI 63 mentions “ziqqurrat apsî elite,” the “upper ziggurat of Apsu.” It seems as though there was a fresh water lake (“apsu” in Akkadian) dedicated to Enki (believed to dwell in the cosmic well of freshwater beneath the earth’s surface) in the vicinity of É.TEMEN.AN.KI. The ziggurat was destroyed in 689 BC by Sennacherib. But it was rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar II as part of his series of impressive construction projects. É.TEMEN.AN.KI was surely a centerpiece of Nebuchadnezzar’s ideological architecture, because of what it represented for the Babylonians.
Here is a stele that Nebuchadnezzar probably had placed around the ziggurat’s foundation:
From https://www.schoyencollection.com/history-collection-introduction/babylonian-history-collection/tower-babel-stele-ms-2063.
Here’s a clearer view of it:
That’s a portrait of Nebuchadnezzar you’re looking at there. This is the same Nebuchadnezzar that, according to the Bible, burned down the Temple in Jerusalem, threw the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace, and spent seven years of his life in madness, behaving like a beast of the field. And there beside him is the É.TEMEN.AN.KI.
“I Mobilized All Countries Everywhere”
This is what part of the cuneiform text on the stele says:
“Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon am I. In order to complete E-TEMEN-ANKI and E-UR-ME-IMIN-ANKI I mobilized all countries everywhere, each and every ruler who had been raised to prominence over all the people of the world–loved by Marduk, from the upper sea to the lower sea, the distant nations, the teeming people of the world, kings of remote mountains and far-flung islands. The base I filled in to make a high terrace. I built their structures with bitumen and baked brick throughout. I completed it, raising its top to the heaven, making it gleam bright as the sun” (translation from https://www.schoyencollection.com/history-collection-introduction/babylonian-history-collection/tower-babel-stele-ms-2063).
Nebuchadnezzar and Enmerkar
Nebuchadnezzar sounds very much like his ancient, Sumerian counterpart, Enmerkar. He is boastful and determined to unite all of the peoples in his empire in the construction of this ziggurat. He certainly emulates Enmerkar’s prideful attitude. Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar knew of Enmerkar, and was intentionally imitating him. But if you are familiar with Genesis 11, you should be drawing all kinds of parallels to this short text. Of course the most explicit link to be drawn is the mention of “bitumen and baked brick” on the stele with the “brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar” in Genesis 11:3.
Ziggurats and Mesopotamian Religion
The purpose of ziggurats, and Babylonian religion in general, was primarily to maintain order and hold chaos at bay. The year revolved around the Akitu festival in the Spring. That is when Enûma Eliš was read in a liturgical ceremony.
Enûma Eliš is the story of how Marduk became the lord of Babylon by conquering his ancestress, Tiamat the chaos-dragon. It also tells of how he constructed the cosmos out of her corpse. The story concludes with Marduk creating human beings as slaves to serve the gods. Their first task is to build a city with shrines that the gods will inhabit. These slaves are to provide the gods with sacrifices for their sustenance. This city is Bab-ilani, the “gate of the gods.” É.TEMEN.AN.KI was the most important and impressive of Babylon’s ziggurats. At every Akitu festival, as a result of the sacrifices and liturgical reading of Enûma Eliš, Tiamat was kept in the grave for another year. It was also when the annual destinies for Babylon were decreed by the gods.
The Tower of Babel
Sometimes I come across a commentary or journal article on Genesis 11 with a snarky tone. It might say something like this: “This is an etiological narrative explaining how Babylon came to have its name. Since the author did not know Akkadian, he has supplied his own interpretation of ‘Babel,’ based on a Hebrew root meaning ‘confusion’.”
I don’t think that’s what is going on in this story at all. In fact, I think that the author of this text, at least in its current form, knew Akkadian quite well. He was probably living in Babylon as part of the Jewish community in exile there. If he was an author, he had surely been pressed into service for the government as a scribe. Maybe he had to write and copy texts similar to the one inscribed on Nebuchadnezzar’s stele.
What Genesis 11 Is Trying to Say
The author of Genesis 11 knew that Bab-ilani means “gate of the gods.” But he also knew that the gods referred to in the name of his new city were not the real lords of creation and order. So, he decided to compose a piece of protest literature. He synthesized the older traditions of the origin of languages, and maybe even an older text or two, with the residual memory of Enmerkar and his construction of the mountain of divine decrees. And then he intentionally drew verbal connections with the architectural propaganda of Nebuchadnezzar. The author knew that Nebuchadnezzar was styling himself as a new Enmerkar. But he remembered some things that Nebuchadnezzar had forgotten.
Nebuchadnezzar Will Go the Way of Enmerkar
Enmerkar’s building project had been powerful. His imperial reign once was overwhelming. By imposing a divine language, he had seemingly unified the peoples under his dominion. But all of that had disappeared. The winds of history eventually erased Enmerkar’s ziggurat. The same would happen to Nebuchadnezzar’s. (Alexander razed the ruins of É.TEMEN.AN.KI to the ground a few centuries later). The empire of Enmerkar disappeared. The same would happen to the Babylonian Empire. (Cyrus made sure of that in the space of half a century). All of the peoples forced to speak one language under Enmerkar eventually dispersed into their various ethnic groups and cherished their own mother-tongues. It wouldn’t be long before the peoples of the Babylonian empire would return to their own languages and literatures. (It has been a very, very long time since anyone ever spoke Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian dialect of Akkadian).
The Tower of Babel: A Monument to Chaos and Confusion
All of the efforts of these kings to secure order for their empires in opposition to the reign of the Creator God resulted, ultimately, in confusion. É.TEMEN.AN.KI, the “foundation house of heaven and earth,” is really nothing more than the Tower of Babel, a monument to chaos and confusion.
The Babylonians styled their capital city as Bab-ilani, the “gate of the gods.” They viewed it to be the geographical epitome of cosmic order. But the author of Genesis 11 knows that “Babel,” the Hebrew name for Babylon, sounds like the Hebrew word for confusion. So, he runs with it, and writes a divinely inspired joke. “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9).
