Bible Review

Anne Drafkorn-Kilmer in a paper delivered at the 50th Rencontre assyriologique internationale conference, held at the Skukuza Wildlife Preserve, in South Africa, in August 2004, has compared this chariot and its movement with God’s chariot in the Book of Ezekiel.

Making crucial decisions at parties while under the influence of strong drink is reminiscent of how decisions are made in the court of King Ahaseurus according to the Book of Esther.

Scholars have disagreed over the date of the composition. Some, like Thorkild Jacobsen, put it in the Old Babylonian period (early second millennium B.C.E.), when the city of Babylon first gained prominence in Mesopotamia, and others, like Wilfred Lambert, date it to the time of Nebuchadrezzar I (end of the second millennium), when Babylon was again in ascendancy and the statue of Marduk was returned from its captivity in Elam.

Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1951).

Nahum Sarna, Understanding Genesis: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1966).

George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis Containing the Description of the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Times of the Patriarchs, and Nimrod; Babylonian Fables, and Legends of the Gods; From the Cuneiform Inscriptions (1876; photographic reproduction, Minneapolis: Wizards Book Shelf, 1977).

On music, see William Flynn, Medieval Music as Exegesis (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1999).

See Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harab Myth, Sources from the Ancient Near East 2:101 (Malibu: Undena, 1984) p. 7; see also Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1998), pp. 145–146.

Text from Sefati, Love Songs, Dumuzi-Inanna Song/Tablet P, side ii, lines 29–30.

Text from Sefati, Love Songs, Dumuzi-Inanna Song/Tablet P, side ii, lines 22–28.