Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near East

445 Pages·2008·1.87 MB·English

by  Jan N. Bremmer

Greek Religion and Culture,
the Bible and the Ancient Near East
Jerusalem Studies in
Religion and Culture
Editors
Guy Stroumsa
David Shulman
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Department of Comparative Religion
VOLUME 8
Greek Religion and Culture,
the Bible and the Ancient
Near East
By
Jan N. Bremmer
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2008
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bremmer, Jan N.
Greek religion and culture, the Bible, and the ancient Near East / by Jan N.
Bremmer.
p. cm. — (Jerusalem studies in religion and culture ; v. 8)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes.
ISBN 978-90-04-16473-4 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Mythology, Greek. 2. Mythology,
Greek—Infl uence. 3. Greece—Civilization. 4. Mythology, Middle Eastern. 5. Mythology,
Middle Eastern—Infl uence. 6. Middle East—Civilization. 7. Bible stories. I. Title.
BL783.B74 2008
292.08—dc22
2008005742
ISSN 1570-078X
ISBN 978 90 04 16473 4
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CONTENTS
Preface .......................................................................................... ix
Acknowledgements ...................................................................... xv
Conventions and Abbreviations .................................................. xvii
Chapter 1 Canonical and Alternative Creation Myths ......... 1
Chapter 2 Pandora or the Creation of a Greek Eve ............ 19
Chapter 3 The Birth of Paradise ........................................... 35
Chapter 4 The First Crime: Brothers and Fratricide in the
Ancient Mediterranean ......................................... 57
Chapter 5 Greek Fallen Angels: Kronos and the Titans ....... 73
Chapter 6 Near Eastern and Native Traditions in
Apollodorus’ Account of the Flood ..................... 101
Chapter 7 Don’t Look Back: From the Wife of Lot to
Orpheus and Eurydice .......................................... 117
Chapter 8 Balaam, Mopsus and Melampous: Tales of
Travelling Seers ..................................................... 133
Chapter 9 Hebrew Lishkah and Greek Leschê ......................... 153
Chapter 10 The Scapegoat between Northern Syria,
Hittites, Israelites, Greeks and Early Christians ... 169
Chapter 11 Close Encounters of the Third Kind:
Heliodorus in the Temple and Paul on the Road
to Damascus .......................................................... 215
Chapter 12 Persian Magoi and the Birth of the Term
‘Magic’ ................................................................... 235
viii contents
Chapter 13 Anaphe, Apollo Aiglêtês and the Origin
of Asclepius ........................................................ 249
Chapter 14 Attis: A Greek God in Anatolian Pessinous
and Catullan Rome ............................................ 267
Chapter 15 The Myth of the Golden Fleece ....................... 303
Appendix I Genesis 1.1: A Jewish Response to a Persian
Challenge? ........................................................... 339
Appendix II Magic and Religion? ............................................ 347
Appendix III The Spelling and Meaning of the Name
Megabyxos .......................................................... 353
Bibliography ................................................................................. 357
Index of Names, Subjects and Passages ..................................... 401
PREFACE
It is about 730 BC. Somewhere in the area of Tyre and Sidon, an
offi cial of the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III (744–727 BC) sat down
behind his desk and dictated the following letter:
To the king my lord,
your servant Qurdi-Aššur-lamur:
The ‘Ionians’ have [a]ppear[ed].
They have battled at the city of Samsim[uruna?],
at the city of Harisu, and at the ci[ty of . . .]
A ca[valryman] [c]ame to the city of Dana[bu?] (to report this to me).
I gathered up regular soldiers and conscripted men
and went after them. Not anything
did they (the Ionians) carry away. As soon as they [sa]w
my soldiers they [fl ed] on their boats. In the midst of the sea
they [disappeared].1
This cuneiform tablet, in which we immediately recognise the typical
civil servant, picturing himself as energetic and vigilant, is the very
fi rst certain surviving mention of the Greeks in Oriental sources.2
That does not mean to say that these pirates were the fi rst Greeks to
be encountered by the Orient. The letter itself mentions them as a
1 For text and translation see R. Rollinger, “The Ancient Greeks and the Impact
of the Ancient Near East: textual evidence and historical perspective (ca. 750–650
BC),” in R.M. Whiting (ed.), Mythology and Mythologies = Melammu Symposia II (Helsinki,
2001) 233–64 at 237. For early mentions of the Ionians see also J.A. Brinkman, “The
Akkadian Words for ‘Ionia’ and ‘Ionian’,” in R.F. Sutton, Jr (ed.), Daidalikon. Studies in
Memory of Raymond V. Schoder, S.J. (Wauconda, 1989) 53–71; A. Kuhrt, “Greek Contact
with the Levant and Mesopotamia in the First Half of the First Millennium BC: A
View from the East,” in G.R. Tsetskhladze and A. Snodgrass (eds.), Greek Settlements in
the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea (Oxford, 2002) 17–25; R. Zadok, “On Ana-
tolians, Greeks and Egyptians in ‘Chaldean’ and Achaemenid Babylonia,” Tel Aviv 32
(2005) 76–106 at 79–80; add ιωναγγο, ‘Greek (Ionian)’, in a Bactrian text, as noticed
by N. Sims-Williams, “Ancient Afghanistan and its invaders: linguistic evidence from
the Bactrian documents and inscriptions,” in idem (ed.), Indo-Iranian Languages and Peoples
(Oxford, 2002) 225–42 at 228, which must go back to Achaemenid times, as is argued
in the review of this book by R. Schmitt, Kratylos 50 (2005) 78 note 20.
2 The case for Hittite Ahhijawa as the land of the Achaeans is not yet decided,
cf. S. Heinbold-Kramer, “Ahhijawa—Land der homerischen Achäer im Krieg mit
Wiluša?,” in C. Ulf (ed.), Der neue Streit um Troia. Ein Bilanz (Munich, 2003) 190–214;
W.-D. Niemeier, “Minoans, Mycenaeans, Hittites and Ionians in Western Asia Minor:
New Excavations in Bronze Age Miletus-Millawanda,” in A. Villing (ed.), The Greeks
in the East (London, 2005) 1–36 at 16–21.