Das biblische Weltbild und seine altorientalischen Kontexte, ed. Bernd Janowski and Beate Ego, in collaboration with Annette Krüger. FAT 32. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001 (2004 reprint in a student edition). Pp. ix + 587. Paper. 49 Euros. ISBN 3-16-148251-4.

Ten of the fifteen essays in this volume were presented at a seminar in Tübingen in 1997-1998. The essays by Bartelmus, Bauks, Bieberstein, Hartenstein, and Keel were written specifically for this publication. Each essay has a substantial bibliography and there are numerous illustrations in the essay by Keel, but also similar drawings for several other essays.

The first three essays in Part I are introductory to the whole issue of the “picture of the world” in antiquity. Bernd Janowski discusses methodological questions and the relationship between empirical reality and symbolic interpretation. The ultimate goal of this investigation is to understand better the meaning of life. Othmar Keel describes Egyptian and biblical pictures of the world and relates them to the presocratic philosophers. While in Egypt and in the rest of the ancient Near East biological metaphors depicted the world as a living organism, the Bible presents God frequently as a handworker. The pre creation situation in Gen 1:2 can be illuminated by Egyptian traditions. The presocratic philosophers did not have to face the issue of theodicy since the world lying behind the real world was not considered better than it. On p. 57 Keel offers a unique picture of the biblical cosmos based on iconographic images from Israel’s environment. Annette Krüger argues that cosmogical formulas in the Old Testament. like heaven, earth, and the underworld, have a background in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Using these ideas as building blocks, Israelite writers constructed poems according to cosmological points of view in Psalms 104 and 148 and in Job 38.

The three essays in part II deal with God, the stars, and heaven. Rüdiger Bartelmus largely repeats the semantic and traditional historical aspects of the concept “heaven” that he wrote for ThWAT. Friedhelm Hartenstein insists that the Jerusalem temple in pre-exilic times was the place of Yahweh’s dwelling and theophany. The throne of God was in the temple on Zion. In the exilic deuteronomistic prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8 the divine throne is placed in heaven. Exodus 24:9-11 and Ezekiel 1 and 10 show how this concept was taken up in the exile and later under Mesopotamian influence. At Bethel, in the Northern Kingdom, there was a cosmic axis between heaven and earth, but the supplementary hymn in Am 9:5-6 describes the creation of heaven as the place of lordly rule. Matthias Albani discusses Job 38:32 and claims that God’s control of the Mazzaroth is a motif transferred from Marduk to Yahweh. Innocent suffering was also discussed in relation to Marduk by ancient Mesopotamians. In Mesopotamia and in the divine speeches in Job humans cannot ascertain the will of God.

The five essays in part III deal with the earth, noting both issues on the periphery and at the center. Bernd Janowski believes that the temple outside of Israel represents the cosmic mountain that emerged at the beginning of creation. The sun is born from the lap of Nut, who bends over the Hathor temple, and it returns to the mouth of the goddess at sunset. Some of these ideas about the temple recur in the Old Testament, but the priestly writer also makes room for new activities of God, such as the erection of the sanctuary on Sinai. Beate Pongratz-Leisten notes that in Sumerian and Assyrian-Babylonian texts space is divided politically and socially into center and periphery. The irrigated and cultivated territory housed the cultic center, but mountainous and desert regions were seen as places of enemies and anti-order. Through various means the kings tried to incorporate this anti-order into the cosmic order. Manfried Dietrich finds parallels between the garden of Eden and the mythology of human creation in Mesoptomia. An ivory plaque shows the God Ea/Enki standing in a garden and uniting in himself four streams of sweet water that come from four sources. The direction of the flow of the streams is reversed in the story of Eden, but the biblical garden may be inspired by the temple garden at Eridu. Herbert Niehr shows that there are three traditions for El’s dwelling at Ugarit, stemming from Anatolian, North Syrian, and Middle Syrian traditions. El’s residence in any case is on earth although one text mentions that his power extends to the heavens. Beate Ego observes that the waters of the city of God in the Bible are treated positively and symbolize the waters of life since God is in the midst of the city. With the destruction of the temple, the concept of the city of God is transformed and Psalm 87 shows that all peoples belong to Zion. The notion of the river in the city of God is treated eschatologically in Eze 47:1-12 and Sirach 24.

The four essays in Part IV deal with death, life and the underworld. Stefanie Gulde finds parallels to the Ugaritic notions of the sun passing through the underworld or the chaos battle in Anatolian, Egyptian, and Mesoptomian texts. But she also identifies distinctive elements at Ugarit and finds some continuity between this world and the other world in Ugaritic religion. Michaela Bauks describes chaos as the endangering of the world order. Outside the Bible the chaos battle deals not so much with cosmogony as with the threat to royal power and ideology. The Bible deals with the chaos battle before creation, but also transfers this motif to the battle against the sea. The chaos battle did not affect the earthly king in the Bible, but Yahweh deals with the people in past, present, and future. Angelika Berlejung studies life and death among the Israelites. While the Israelites portrayed the danger of death as similar to a hunted or trapped bird, the dead were not changed into birds after death as they were in the ancient Near East. Klaus Bieberstein reports that Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions locate the last judgment at a specific spot on the periphery of the city. In Isa 30:33, Jer 7:30-34 and 19:5-7 Hinnom as the place of sin becomes the place of punishment. In Joel 4, Zechariah 14 and subsequent texts the location of the last judgment is transferred from Hinnom to the Kidron valley.

Ego and Janowski supply sixteen pages of bibliography in Part V. There are three indexes. This rich volume provides many new insights into the picture of the world in the Bible itself and fascinating forrays into the realm of extra biblical parallels.

Ralph W. Klein

Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

Chicago, IL 60615