greenspahn - 1994 - mesopotamian proverb and its biblical context

8/12/2019 Greenspahn - 1994 - Mesopotamian Proverb and Its Biblical context

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A Mesopotamian Proverb and Its Biblical Reverberations

Author(s): Frederick E. GreenspahnSource: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 114, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1994), pp. 33-38Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/604950

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A MESOPOTAMIAN PROVERB AND ITSBIBLICAL REVERBERATIONS'

FREDERICKE. GREENSPAHNUNIVERSITY OF DENVER

A Mesopotamian proverb, The tallest man cannot reach heaven; the widest man cannot coverthe mountain (or 'earth'), uses themes andphrasesfound throughoutcuneiform literatureto expressthe limitations of human existence. Traces of this saying, which corresponds to the Biblical viewthat heaven is accessible only to God, can be found in several partsof the Hebrew Bible, includingDeut. 30:11-13 and the story of Jacob's dream. However, its most notable relevance is to the ac-count of the Tower of Babel, which includes language derived from this tradition. This thematicconnection supports those who have contended that the builders' sin was their effort to reachheaven, precisely the kind of hubris against which the proverbwarns.

AN ANCIENTROVERBASBEENound in several differ-ent cuneiform texts, written over a period that spansmore than a thousand years. The earliest occurrence isin a Sumerian composition:

sukud-daan-na-se nu-mu-un-da-la16dagal-la kur-ra a-ba-an-isu-sThe tallest (man) cannot reach heaven,The widest man cannot cover the mountains.2

The message of this saying is self-evident: human be-ings are limited by nature; no matter how strong theyare, there remain things they simply cannot do. Fromthis, the text draws a straightforward conclusion:

ti nig.dhg sa.bul-la su he-ni-ib-kar-kar-reThe pleasant life-let it elapse in joy.

The proverb was also incorporated into the story ofGilgamesh and the Land of the Living, where the hero

employs it before the sun god, Utu, in order to justify hisquest. After reciting the proverb, Gilgamesh describesthe purpose of his mission:

kur-raga-an-ku4mu-mu ga-am-gar

It is a pleasure to express my appreciation to Paul Kobel-ski and Peter Machinist for their assistance in preparingthispaperfor publication.2 Bendt Alster, Studies in SumerianProverbs, Mesopotamia3 (Copenhagen:Akademisk Forlag, 1975), 88, 11.17-18. Jeff-rey H. Tigay, The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic (Philadel-phia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), 165, renders kur-raland.

ki-mu-gub-bu-ba-ammu-mu ga-bi-ib-gubki-mu-nu-gub-bu-ba-am

mu-dingir-re-e-nega-bi-ib-gub

I would enter the land,I would set up my nameIn its places where names have been raised up,I would raise my name.In its places wherenames have not been raised upI would raise up the names of the gods.3This aspiration of making his name (m u) famous inorder to overcome mortality was retained when the epi-sode was woven into the classic epic during the Old

Babylonian period.4 Presented again by Gilgamesh, thistime the proverb about human limitations appears inAkkadian and is directed toward Enkidu, whom thehero seeks to persuade to join him in battling Humbaba.

3 S. N. Kramer, Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living,JCS 1 (1947): 10-11, 11.31-33; the proverb itself is in lines28-29. The meaning of this aspirationis discussed in S. DeanMcBride, The Deuteronomic Name Theology (Ph.D. diss.,Harvard University, 1969), 78-99. (I am grateful to DavidPetersen for this reference.) See especially pp. 122-23, wherenames are connected with monuments. Cf. with this the Jew-ish interpretationsof Gen. 11:4 (e.g., Tg. Ps.-J. Gen. 11:4 andGen. Rab. 38:38, cf. b. Sanh. 109a).4 suma sa ddri andku lustaknam (Old Babylonian version3:5.7; R. Campbell Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamesh: Text,Transliteration, and Notes [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930;reprinted,New York: AMS Press, 1981], 28).

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Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.1 (1994)

To sharpen its message, an explicit contrast is drawnwith the gods, who are immortal:mannu ibri elu sam[di3]iluma itti Samas ddris u[ssab]awilutummamant umusamimma sa iteneppest sadrumaWho,myfriend, an scale heaven?Onlythegodsdwell foreverwith[or: ike]Shamash.As formankind,heirdaysarenumbered.Whateverheyachieve s but wind.5

The tone of futility at the close of this passage is ech-oed in Ecclesiastes, which bases its own carpe diemphilosophy on the observation that our deeds are merewind, paralleling the logic of the proverb'searliest set-ting.6 Also noteworthy is the reference to mortality asthat which distinguishes human beings from deities, aposition widely attested in cuneiform literature and be-yond, including the Bible.7The original proverb occurs yet again in what hascome to be known as The Dialogue of Pessimism,when the servant responds to his master's inquiry,What is good? by saying:

ayu arku sa ana same eluayu rapsu sa ersetim ugammeruWho s so tallas to ascend o theheavens?Who s so broadas to compass he underworld?8

In this setting, the by-now millennium-old proverbplays a radically different role from that of its earlierattestations. No longer is its actual meaning of any di-rect importance; instead it serves as a stock saying,offered in response to a profound philosophical query.Its meaninglessness in this context, like that of theproverbial responses to earlier inquiries, demonstrates

5 OldBabylonianersion3:4.5-8 (ed.Thompson, 7) as re-constructedby J. Tigay, TheEvolution of the Gilgamesh Epic,164.6 Cf. Eccles. 2:24-26.7 E.g., Eccles.3:20 and9:2-3; cf. TheEpicof Gilgamesh,OldBabylonianersion,10:2.4and10:3.3-5,Assyrian ersion9:3.8-9 and 11:193-94(Thompson,TheEpic of Gilgamesh,51,53, and64)and he egendof Aqhat AndreeHerdner, or-

pus des tablettes en cuneiformesalphabetiques [Paris:Imprim-erieNationale,1963],no. 17vi 25-30 and35-36). Greek odsareoftencharacterizeds athanatoie.g., Odyssey11:312-16,as quotedbelow).8 W. G. Lambert, Babylonian WisdomLiterature (Oxford:Clarendon ress,1960), 148-49, 11. 3-84.

the vacuity the author imputes to the wisdom move-ment, which is presented as having been reduced tospouting traditional verities without concern for theirrelevance.9Cumulatively, these attestations demonstrate thisproverb'slong life and wide familiarity. Beginning as adepiction of humanlimitations, it came to highlight the

gulf between mortals and deities before finally beingused as a literaryclich6, mocked less for its inaccuracythan its triteness.Although these texts constitute the primary evi-dence, the saying itself draws on standardthemes and

phrases. For example, a famous hymn praises Inannaby pointing out:

You are as loftyas heavenYou are as broadas earth.10Ugaritic literature characterizes Baal similarly:

Baal sits as a mountain itsHadd s [ ] like theocean.Mountains, which the original proverb claimed weretoo wide for men to encompass, are also, of course, afamiliar image for great height. It is in-that sense thatthey are used for deities in the well-known epithet sadurabu ('greatmountain'),as is clear from the descriptionof IM.HUR.SAG as a great mountain whose peak ri-vals the heavens, whose foundations are laid in theholy apsu (sadu rabi dMINim-hur-sag sa res'asusa-maml sanna apsu ellim sursudi ussusu .12In light of the conventional status such terminologyachieved as a way to describe importantdeities, it is

9 E. A. Speiser, TheCaseof theObligingServant, n Ori-ental and Biblical Studies: Collected Writings of E. A. Speiser,ed. J. J.Finkelstein ndMosheGreenbergPhiladelphia:niv.of Pennsylvania ress,1967),363.10WilliamW.HalloandJ. J. A. vanDijk,TheExaltation fInanna,Yale NearEasternResearches, (New Haven:YaleUniv.Press,1968),30-31, 11.123-24.1 RS24.245,11.1-2 (C.Virolleaud, LesNouveauxTextesmythologiques t liturgiquesde Ras Shamra XXIVecam-pagne,1961], UgariticaV, MRS 16 [Paris: mprimerie a-tionale/PaulGeuthner, 968], 557). Mountains ndocean arejoined n thedescriptionf oneof theancestors f Gilgamesh.See Thorkild Jacobsen, The Sumerian King List, AS 11 (Chi-cago:Univ. of ChicagoPress,1939),86-87, 3.4-5.12IV R2 27 #2 as cited in W. G. Lambert,Babylonian Wis-dom Literature, 327; cf. Knut Tallqvist, Akkadische Gotter-epitheta(Helsinki:SocietasorientalisFennica,1938), 221;and MarvinPopeandJeffreyTigay, ADescription f Baal,UF 3 (1971):121.

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GREENSPAHN: A Mesopotamian Proverb and its Biblical Reverberations

hardly surprising that traces of this tradition can befound in the Hebrew Bible, which has a special interestin both divine uniqueness and human limitations.These themes play a particularly importantrole in thebook of Ecclesiastes, where the concept can surely bediscerned in Qohelet's assertion that God is in heavenwhile you are on earth (5:1), as well as in Zophar'sre-buke to Job: Can you find the limit of the Almighty?Higher than heaven-what can you do? Deeper thanSheol-what can you know? Its measure is longer thanthe earth and wider than the sea (Job 11:7-9). It isalso apparent in the psalmist's statement that heavenbelongs to God, but He has given the earth to humanbeings (Ps. 115:16). Although the poet's conclusion-that there is no worship after death (v. 17)-seems tolimit God in a way that contradicts the spirit of theproverb we have been tracing, it is a logical, if ratherliteralistic, reading of that saying.13Several other Biblical passages counter the implica-tion of divine limitation by allowing that God's reachextends not only upward to the heavens but to the un-derworld as well. According to Amos, for example,God warned that, Even if they dig down into Sheol,My hand shall take them from there, and if they ascendinto heaven, I shall bring them down from there(Amos 9:2), while a psalmist more explicitly asserts,If I ascend to heaven, You are there, and if I lie downin Sheol, behold-You are there too (Ps. 139:8).14The likelihood of these being conventional expressionsis supported by their presence in an Amarna letter inwhich a Canaanite ruler protests the limits of his ownpower by commenting to Pharaoh: If we go up to theheavens or if we go down to the earth [underworld],our heads are still in your hands. '5The number of such passages in the Bible and theirsimilarity to cuneiform texts make it impossible todismiss them as the invention of individual Israeliteauthors.Their point is the same as that of the Mesopo-tamianproverbwith which we began-that what distin-

13Cf. Pss. 6:6; 30:10; 88:11-13. The fact that 'eres canmean underworld s well as earth cf. the ambiguitynAmarnaetter264,citedbelow)mayhaveplayeda role n thisdevelopment.14Cf. Isa. 7:11; Ps. 116:3ff.;Job 26:6 and, less clearly,14:13-14.15Amarna etter 264, 11. 15-19 (J. A. Knudtzon,DieEl-AmarnaTafeln[Leipzig:J. C. Hinrichs,1915;reprinted,Aalen:OttoZellerVerlagsbuchhandlung,964], 1:826).

guishes humanity from the gods is its lack of heavenlyreach.Beyond the obvious Biblical parallels, this traditionmay also lie behind Deuteronomy's familiar exhorta-

tion, This commandment is not too wondrous nor toodistant. It is not in the sky, that you might say, 'Whowill ascend into the sky and get it for us? ' (Deut.30:11-12)16-a request that would have been inher-ently impossible in a culture that believed heaven ac-cessible only to God.17It may also be present in thepsalmist's description of sailors caught in a stormwhich carried them up to heaven [and] ... down tothe depths (Ps. 107:26)-both frightening venturesinto alien realms.

In the Tower of Babel story (Gen. 11:1-9) the con-cept that heaven belongs to God is absolutely central.Although the story has long been understood as de-scribing an effort to reach heaven,18the narrative itselfis strangelyreticent about statingthe tower builders' in-tentions. Some have, therefore, taken its phrase about

reachingthe sky to be figurative,in the way it is else-where in the Bible.19 In fact, the project is never iden-tified as a sin nor God's response as a punishment;thescatteringof the participantsand the disruptionof theirlanguage arepresentedonly as efforts to preventthe un-acceptable consequence of a united undertaking(v. 6).Interpreterssince the time of Josephus have, therefore,proposed that it was not the tower itself which angeredGod so much as its builders' failure to carry out Hismandate to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth

16HeinrichZimmern links this passage to Etana in EberhardSchrader,Die Keilinschriftenund das Alte Testament,3rd ed.(Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1903), 565-66.17 The subsequentstatement that it is not across the sea, lestthe people say, Who will cross the sea to get it for us?(v. 13)recalls hewarning ivenGilgamesh bout he risksofcrossingthe waters of death(me muti), Assyrianversion,10:2.25,27; 10:3.50 (Thompson, The Epic of Gilgamesh, 56-57);cf. AdapaB 36-37 (SergioAngeloPicchioni,IPoemettodi Adapa [Budapest:Eotvos Lorand Tudomanyegyetem,1981], 116-17), wherememuti s juxtaposedwiththe breadof death akalasa muti),andB 76-78 (ibid.,120-21), whichmentions hebreadandwaterof life (balati).A similarviewis evident n 2 Sam.22:5-6; Ezek.26:19-21; Jon.2:3; andJob26:5.18E.g.,Jub.10:19andSyb.3:100(J.H. Charlesworth,d.,The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1 [Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday,1983], 364);regardinghe latter,see Jose-phus'comment tJ.Ant.1.4.3,?118.19Deut.1:28and9:1.

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(Gen. 9:1).20 This interpretationis supported by theirexplicit statement of concern lest we be scattered(Gen. 11:4)-a fear which God's response turns ironi-cally against them. Others, also struckby the ambiguityof the builders' motivation, have proposed that the realintention was to makea name for ourselves (naCdaeh-llanuisem, v. 4), a phrase well-known in Near Easternliterature, including the Epic of Gilgamesh, for whosehero it was almost as much of a goal as achievingimmortality.21However unrealistic one may consider humaneffortsto reach God, there is no reason to assume that thetower builders would have agreed. The Bible providesample evidence that heaven was conceived as thedwelling place of God, who is once explicitly identifiedas the God of heaven (Gen. 24:7) and often presentedasspeaking from the sky or descending to earth.22This

20 J.Ant.1.4.1, ?110;cf. R. Samuelben Meirat Gen. 11:4.WilliamHallopointsout thattheproverbwithwhich we be-gannotes the humannability o cover the land as well as toreach hesky(personal ommunication).21See nn. 3 and4 above,as well as Gilgamesh,OldBaby-lonianversion 3:4.13 and 25 (Thompson,TheEpic of Gil-gamesh, 27). See also George A. Barton,TheRoyalInscriptionsof Sumerand Akkad New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1929),230-31, Gudea#15, cylinderA, XXV.20;F. R. Steele, TheUniversityMuseumEsarhaddon rism, AOS71 (1951):6,V.15; and John V. KinnierWilson, TheLegend of Etana (Chi-cago: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1985), 100-101, 104-5, Late Ver-sion 11.140,III/A.14, and restored in IV/C.14 (ibid., 114-15).Therelationshipetween hismotiveanda buildingprojectsdiscussed by Christoph Uehlinger, Weltreich und 'Eine Rede,'Eine neue Deutung der sogenannten TurmbauerzdhlungGen11,1-9) (Freiburg:Universitatsverlag, 1990), 386-95. Pseudo-Philopreserves traditionhateachbuilder nscribed is nameon a brick (6:2, Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseude-pigrapha, 2:310). Within the Hebrew Bible, it is God who ismost commonly described as making a name for Himself(Isa. 63:12,14;Jer.32:20;andNeh.9:10,but note 2 Sam. 7:9and8:13;cf. Gen. 6:4and12:2).

22 Deut. 26:15; Ps. 102:20; cf. Gen. 11:7, 9; 18:21; 46:4;Exod. 3:8; 19:11, 18, 20; 20:22; 34:5, 9; Num. 11:17, 25;12:5; Deut. 4:36; Jud. 5:13; 2 Sam. 22:10; 1 Kings 18:38; Isa.31:4; 63:19; 64:2; Mic. 1:3; Pss. 14:2 (= 53:3); 18:10; 144:9;Lam. 3:50; Neh. 9:13. Note also references to God's heavenlythrone (Isa. 6:1; Pss. 2:4; 103:19) and the blue pavement un-der His feet (Exod.24:10 andLXXEzek.1:26;but see E. W.Nicholson, The Interpretationof Exodus xxiv 9-11, VT 24[1974]: 92).

concept underlies Psalm 82, where a sentence of mor-tality results in the denizens of the divine council fall-ing from heaven to die like man (v. 7). Here, heavenand immortalityarejoined in a now familiarjuxtaposi-tion as characteristicsof the divine. By trying to reachheaven, the tower builders sought to accomplish theopposite of what had been experienced by the divinebeings described in Psalm 82. Moreover, many of theMesopotamian ziggurats on which the Tower of Babelis patentlymodelled bore names explicitly acknowledg-ing their role as points of connection between the hu-man and divine realms. Those at Nippur and Larsa, forexample, were called links between heaven and earth.A similarconceptual background s apparent n descrip-tions of other Mesopotamian temples. Gudea's templeis said to have reached heaven, and those at Borsippa,Kish, and Ashur to have peaks which reachedthe sky.23This latterphrase, which resonates throughthe Biblicalstory of Babel, came to function as a virtual cliche inMesopotamianliterature,where it can also be discernedin the name of the temple Esagila (lit. 'house withraised head') atop the Babylonian ziggurat.24Given the

23 Several examples are listed in Morris Jastrow, The Reli-gion of Babylon and Assyria (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1898), 639;Andre Parrot, La Tour de Babel (Neuchatel: Delachaux &Niestle, 1953), 48; and Nahum M. Sarna, UnderstandingGenesis (New York: Schocken Books, 1966), 73; also Gudeacylinder A XXI.23 (in Barton, Royal Inscriptions, 226-27).Cf. Hammurabidate formula 36 in A. Ungnad, Datenlisten,RIA, 2:181; Steele, EsarhaddonPrism, 7, V.29-36; and theinscriptions provided in Stephen Langdon, Building Inscrip-tions of the Neo-Babylonian Empire,partI (Nabopolassar andNebuchadnezzar) (Paris:ErnestLeroux, 1905), 50-51, 62-63,and 72-73. Cf. the ErraEpic'sdescription f the mesutree,whoseroots reachedas deep down as the bottomof theunderworld... whose top reached as high as the sky ofAnu(m), 1.152-53. See Luigi Cagni, L'epopea die Erra(Rome: Istituto di Studi del Vicino Oriente, 1969), 74.B. Margulis has found a similar description in RS 24.245(Ugaritica V, 557), where he translates Csbrqy[c]rish in lines4-5 as a tree with its head in the firmament A Weltbaumin UgariticLiterature?, BL 1971]:481-82). Cf. Dan.4:7-8and Friedrich Kiichler, Beitrdge zur Kenntnis der assyrisch-babylonischen Medizin (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1904), 8:3.1,as cited in AHw, 718.

24 See Enuma Elish 6.47, where the Anunnaki are said tohave raised its head (ulli resisu) towardApsu (S. Langdon,The Babylonian Epic of Creation [Oxford: Clarendon Press,1923], 172). The Babylonian iggurat tself was calledEte-

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GREENSPAHN: A Mesopotamian Proverb and its Biblical Reverberations

fact that Mesopotamian tradition so often describesthese buildings as reaching to heaven, the Biblicalphrase roMso assamayim (Gen. 11:4) can hardlybe dis-missed as purely hyperbolic, however fossilized it mayhave been. On some level, these structures were be-lieved capable of serving as a bridgebetween the divineand human realms.

Jacob's dream of an earth-based sullam,25 with itshead reaching to the sky (wero'so maggiac hassa-mayemd),on which divine beings paraded up and downas God stood at its apex (Gen. 28:12-13) proves thatthis view existed in Israel, too. Furthersupportfor thelikelihood that the Tower of Babel was intended toreach heaven, whether or not the purpose was benign,can be gleaned from parallels to this story in other cul-tures, such as Homer's reference to an attemptto scaleheaven as part of a human war against the immortals(Odyssey 11:312-16).26 A particularly striking exampleof this genre is preserved in the Bible itself, where theprophetIsaiah alludes to the myth of Helel ben Shahar,who sought to ascend to heaven, above the divinestars for the express purpose of becoming like God(Isa. 14:13-14), an attempt which inverts the descrip-

menanki, which means House of the Foundation of Heavenand Earth.

25 Although the word, sulldm, has sometimes been linked tothe root sll, it is best compared with the Akkadian simmiltu( ladder, stair ),cf. CAD S, 273-74; note especially Namtar'sascent to heaven by way of a simmelat samdmi (stairway ofheaven) as described in the Myth of Nergal and Ereshkigal,v 13' and 42', and restored in i 53' and iv 26 (0. R. Gurney,The Sultantepe Tablets [VII], AnSt 10 [1960]: 122-25; seealso pp. 110, 118). Adapa is said to have reached heaven byway of a heavenly road (harran same, B 45, cf. C 17 and D14; see Picchioni II Poemetto di Adapa, 118-23). Egyptianpyramid texts include many references to a ladder (m3kt)by which a deceased king could reach the realm of Re(??390, 971-78, 1474, 2078-82 = utterances 271, 478, 572,688 in R. O. Faulkner, TheAncient Egyptian Pyramid Texts[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; reprinted, Oak Park, Ill.:Bolchazy-Carducci, 1985], 79, 165-66, 227, 296-97). ??365and 1090 refer to a stairway (rwd, utterances 267 and 505),ibid., 76, 181.

26 Other examples are cited in Theodor H. Gaster, Myth,Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (San Francisco:Harper & Row, 1975; reprinted, Gloucester, Mass.: PeterSmith, 1981), 132-35, and Stith Thompson, Motif Index ofFolk-Literature, vol. 1 (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ.Press, 1925; rev. ed. 1955-57), 537-38, under C 771.1 ( toohigh a tower ). Cf. Virgil, Georgics, 1.280.

tion of expulsion from heaven as a fall from divine tohuman status in Ps. 82:7.The Israelite belief that God dwells in heaven, cou-pled with descriptions of contact between the humanand divine realms in other traditions,demonstratesthatit is far from unthinkable that the Tower of Babel storyoriginally referred to an assault on heaven. The attitudeexpressed in the cuneiform proverb with which we be-gan provides both the builders' motivation and the rea-son for their failure. Widely known over a period ofcenturies, with traces evident in the Hebrew Bible itself,this saying gives expression to the belief that mortalsareby natureunable to reach heaven. Any effort such asthat described in Genesis 11 would not only, therefore,be inherentlyfutile, but also constitute prima facie evi-dence of its perpetrators'hubris. In this regard,the storyparallels the Garden of Eden account, where the re-moval of humaninhabitants from a centralized locationis not a punishment-that was accomplished throughthe imposition of agricultural labor and the pain ofchildbirth27-so much as a way of precluding access tothe garden's other tree, which offered the means forthem to become completely God-like (Gen. 3:22-24).It is of more than passing interest that knowledge andimmortalityare juxtaposed as that which distinguishesthe human fromthe divine in the story of Eden, much asthey are in Mesopotamian literature, including mostprominently the Epic of Gilgamesh where differencesbetween the human and the divine are a recurringcon-cern.28 In the accounts of both Eden and Babel, Godacts in order to keep men from becoming like Him,whether by gaining knowledge and immortality or byreaching the heavenly realm.This distinction between the human and the divinewas not always so zealously protected. Stories ofpeople ascending to heaven are widespread.29 The

27 ContraCarol Meyers, Discovering Eve: Ancient IsraeliteWomen in Context (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988),95-109.28 Cf. Assyrian version 1:4.34; 9:3.8-9, Old Babylonianversion 2:2.11; 10:2.4; and especially 10:3.3-5 (Thompson,The Epic of Gilgamesh, 14, 21, 51, 53). Cf. also Old Babylo-nian version 3:4.6-8, Assyrian version 11.193-94 (ibid.,

pp. 27 and 64), and Adapa A i.14 and B 76-83 (Picchioni, IIPoemetto di Adapa, 112-13 and 120-21). Note Hesiod's de-scription of Zeus whose wisdom is everlasting (Theogony545; cf. Iliad 24.88. Cf. also Gen. 3:22; 6:3; Hab. 1:12; Pss.82:7; 90:10; and Job 14:1-2,10.29 E.g., Etana, Late Version IV B 39 (ed. J. V. Kinnier Wil-son), 112-13; cf. Stith Thompson, Motif Index, A 761 (1:155),

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Bible itself describes Elijah as having been taken up byGod's own wish (2 Kings 2:1), and Enoch enjoyed asimilar fate (Gen. 5:24). Other Biblical figures are saidto have had access to God's council, even if only meta-phorically,30while the sulldm of Jacob's dreampermitsmovement back and forth, albeit only by divine beings,it would seem. Other traditionsare less rigorous in dis-tinguishing the human from the divine. Some pagangods do die, and various humans achieve immortality.Gilgamesh himself was two-thirds divine,31 and theBible allows God to have walked in the Garden ofEden and describes human beings as created in Hisimage.32

F 53 and 60 (3:11-14). Mohammad'snightjourney is a famil-iar example (cf. B. Schrieke and J. Horovitz, MiCradj, nThe Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. C. E. Bosworth et al. [Lei-den: E. J. Brill, 19901, vol. 7, fascicles 115-16, pp. 97-101.The closing of access to heaven to humanbeings in the Hymnto Shamash (iii.42; see Clifton D. Gray, The Samas ReligiousTexts [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1901], 20-21) sug-gests that it was, in theory, available; cf. also apparentlyAdapa (in Erica Reiner, The Etiological Myth of the SevenSages, Or 30 [1961]: 2-4) and KAR375 ii 42f., as quoted inCAD E, 79: eldt game tepusma mamman ul illi ( you havebuilt the heights of heaven, nobody ascends there ).30 E.g., Jer. 23:18,22. Cf. 1 Kings 22:19 and Job 15:8; 29:4.31 Gilgamesh, Assyrian version 1:2.1, 9:2.16 (Thompson,The Epic of Gilgamesh, 11 and 50).32 ContrastIsa. 40:18, which claims that God has no image.Cf. Deut. 33:26; 2 Sam. 7:22; Pss. 40:6; 86:8; and 1 Chr.17:20.

In the Tower of Babel story these two positions meetface to face as the builders encounter God's anger. Inthe end, however, humans must not enter the divinerealm. In this, the narrative conforms to the Bible'swidespread effort to maintain distinctions, an approachfound also in the Genesis portrayal of creation aslargely a matter of separation(between light and dark-ness, land and water, etc.) and those laws which seekto maintain demarcations between various kinds of ani-mals, cloth, crops, and the like.33For the Bible, the line between the humanand the di-vine may not be breached-at least not by humans,whomust stay in their place and wait for God to make Hispresence known. Presented in poetry and in prose, thisconcept was often communicatedusing the language ofan ancient Mesopotamian proverb, which provided theimagerywith which Biblical authorsexpressed this pro-found conviction of Israelite theology.

33E.g., Lev. 19:19 and Deut. 22:11. See MaryDouglas,Purity and Danger, An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution andTaboo (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 454-57; andJean Soler, The Dietary Prohibitions of the Hebrews, NewYorkReview of Books, June 14, 1979, 24-30.

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greenspahn - 1994 - mesopotamian proverb and its biblical context

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