Cyrus the Persian, Anointed of the LORD, & the Making of the Bible

Something I dearly want to know: how & why was a collection of ritual, religious, political, and folktale texts edited and transformed into a Bible?

Something I dearly want to know: how & why was a collection of ritual, religious, political, and folktale texts edited and transformed into a Bible?

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A friend recommended to me Biblical scholar Jacob Wright’s appearance on the Dans McClellan & Beecher podcast <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/data-over-dogma/id1681418502> about his brand-new book Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins <https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/why-the-bible-began/0C4F52F4B68EB81337A38FAF5C7C4C7E>.

Wright’s main point is that the experience of conquest and exile—first to Nineveh, and then to Babylon, and then return—was absolutely essential to the creation of the Tanakh as we know it. Wright argues that only the Judahite exiles and then returnees produced anything like a Bible, only them in all world history. And it was the experience of defeat, destruction of their political communities, élite exile, and then return—but not as a nation, but rather as a subservient province of an empire—that led to the extraordinary acts of intellectual creation and community-building centered around not a dynasty or a god or a culture or a language but rather a text that have echoed down the past two and a half millennia.

And this made me wonder about Cyrus the Persian, and his policy of dismantling the Babylonian Empire after his conquest of it by returning cult statues, priests, and élites back to their original cities from which they had been taken to Babylon. We know, more or less how this worked for Jerusalem and what its cult had turned into during the Exile and Return:

Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut…. (Isaiah 45:1)

From the Persian point of view the LORD-cult propagandists then worked for Cyrus and his successors, saying that the Storm God of Moses would ensure that:

• the kings he fought against would shit themselves in terror,

• their warriors would simply open city gates when he asked. and

• his favor and blessing had passed from the dynasty of David son of Jesse of Judah to the dynasty of the Haximanishya of Persia.

But how did this work for other gods, other cults, other élites?

• In Babylon itself the god Marduk chose Cyrus to replace Nabonidus on the throne, and sustained him and his successors in their rule.

• In Egypt, conquered by Cambyses, Cambyses became the new and legitimate Pharaoh, “The Horus who Unites the Two Lands, King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Son of Ra, The Good God, Lord of the Two Lands” just as Cyrus became the Anointed of the LORD in Jerusalem, at least according to Fried (2002).

• (But there were no returning exiles in Babylon or Egypt, just an accommodation of elements of the existing priesthood and bureaucracy with the new conquering military power.)

Cyrus thus becomes the Anointed One of Marduk, of Ra, and of the Storm God of Moses. But only the Hebrew literati took the experience of Exile and the process of Return, and were motivated by it to create and construct a Bible. You can perhaps understand why without the shock of Exile the Egyptian and Babylonian literati élite did not feel pressed to construct a Bible to serve as a central orienting point for their civilization.

But there were other exiles in Babylon, and other captive gods, all of whom seem to have been returned, or so we think from what Cyrus himself writes on the Cyrus Cylinder:

Of Nin[eveh], Assur, and also of Susa, of Agade, of Esnunna, of Zamban, of Meturnu and of Der, up to the borders of Gutium, the cult centers beyond the Tigris, whose [cult] struc­tures had long remained in ruins, I returned to their place the gods who lived there and re­established them for eternity. I gathered all their people and returned their habitations. And the gods of Sumer and Akkad whom Nabonidus, to the wrath of the lord of the gods [Mar­duk], had transported to Babylon, I had them, on the order of Marduk, the great lord, joy­fully installed in their cella, in a dwelling for the joy of the heart…

The Elamites of Susa and Der, the Akkadians of Agade, the Amorites of Esnunna and Zamban, and whoever lived in Meturnu (wherever it was) had the same experience of exile-and-return. Why do we not have anything like a Bible from them?

And what literary-cultic documents were in the library of Ashurbanipal, King of the world, King of Assyria, in Nineveh, and how were those literary-cultic documents understood and used, anyway?

ChatGPT4 tells me:

• Literary Texts: Epic of Gilgamesh: A masterpiece of Mesopotamian literature, telling the story of the hero Gilgamesh. Enuma Elish (Babylonian Creation Epic): Describing the creation of the world and the rise of the god Marduk. Myth of Adapa: A story about Adapa, who gains and loses the chance for immortality. Epic of Erra (Erra and Ishum): A narrative of the god Erra’s destructive rage and its consequences. Epic of Creation (Enūma Anu Enlil): A series of tablets detailing cosmology and astrology. Myth of Anzu: A tale about the monstrous bird Anzu and the god Ninurta.

• Religious and Cultic Texts: Prayers and Hymns: Various prayers to Assyrian and Babylonian gods. Ritual Texts: Instructions for performing religious rituals and ceremonies. Lamentations: Including the city laments for the destruction of various cities. Incantations and Magical Texts: Spells and rituals for protection, healing, and cursing. Omens and Divination Texts: Extensive series on divination (e.g., hepatoscopy, lecanomancy).

• Scientific and Scholarly Texts: Astronomical and Astrological Texts: Including the 'Mul.Apin' series on celestial omens. Medical Texts: Descriptions of symptoms, diagnoses, and treatments. Mathematical Texts: Problems and solutions, including metrology and numerology. Lexical Lists and Dictionaries: For Sumerian, Akkadian, and other languages. Geographical Lists: Descriptions of regions, cities, and their characteristics.

• Administrative and Legal Documents: State Correspondence: Letters between Ashurbanipal and his officials. Administrative Records: Including texts related to agriculture, tribute, and trade. Legal Documents: Contracts, wills, and legal decisions.

• Historical and Royal Inscriptions: Annals of Ashurbanipal: Chronicles of his military campaigns and achievements. Royal Inscriptions: Celebrating the deeds of Assyrian kings.

• Miscellaneous Texts: Fables and Proverbs: Short moral stories and sayings. Bilingual and Trilingual Texts: Used for scholarly study of languages…

But I know of no source detailing the use of technologies of writing in the Iron Age Mideast for understanding the world, understanding humanity, and coördinating civilization. All I have to go on are the observations of Ernst Gellner—how writing was utilized by ruling elites to solidify and maintain social order. He emphasizes the role of literacy in reinforcing the power structures of civilizations as a key tool in governing and perpetuating their dominance. Writing was not merely a means of memory, imagination, communication, and record-keeping, but also a significant instrument of power and social control.

Gellner writes—but these are his guesses based on his perceptions of patterns, rather than conclusions based on actual thick description of Iron-Age civilizational patterns:

Agrarian societies tend to develop complex social differentiation, an elaborate division of labour. Two specialisms in particular become of paramount importance: the emergence of a specialized ruling class, and of a specialized clerisy (specialists in cognition, legitimation, salvation, ritual)… (p. 1)

Two very profound revolutions have transformed the human condition so thoroughly that it is tempting to speak of radically different species, at least of societies…. Food production and storage has led to vastly increased size and complexity… [and the] hiving-off of rulers, coercion specialists, and of human markers, or guardians of symbolic markers, in other words of a clerisy…. p=Production, coercion and cognition have become separated, especially since the initiation of conceptual storage by writing… (p. 68)

The truly crucial step in the cognitive development of mankind is the introduction of literacy, and its deployment in religion (i.e. scripturalism)…. The mysterious power of writing in recording, transmitting and freezing affirmations and commands soon endows it with an awe-inspiring prestige, and causes it to be fused with the authority of ritual specialists. The priest takes over writing from the accountant. Just as literacy facilitates bureaucratic, administrative centralization, it also makes possible the codification and logical centralization of doctrine… (p. 71)

Alignments… given the ambiguities of loyalties and the unpredictability of outcomes… depend in large measure on the legitimacy of contestants…. This in turn gives considerable indirect power to those who, through a mixture of literacy and ritual competence, possess the near-monopoly of legitimacy-ascription… bureaucratic office-holders… linked to revelation… an open class of scholars… [knowing] codified divine rules… hereditary members of a caste… [providing] ritual services…. The pen is not mightier than the sword; but the pen sustained by ritual does impose great constraints on the sword. It alone can help the swordsmen decide how to gang up to the greatest advantage… (p. 99)

A clerisy oriented towards codified, circumscribed doctrine by its tendency to play up its own monopoly of literacy… is useful enough to the political authorities eager to enlist its help…. The clerisy may also be capable of avoiding total or permanent subjection to the state (e.g. by possessing a territorial base not under the control of any one state).... Rivalry with shamans leads clerics to stress doctrine, internal rivalry to codify the said doctrine and endow it with a single Apex; extra-territoriality may enable it to escape political control… (p. 257)

But this, in my view at least, is not even the beginning of understanding.

And what did happen to the Ark of the Covenant in and after the Babylonian conquest, anyway?:

And they shall make an ark of shittim wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof.

¹¹ And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four corners thereof; and two rings shall be in the one side of it, and two rings in the other side of it. And thou shalt make staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them. The staves shall be in the rings of the ark: they shall not be taken from it.

And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee.

And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof. And the cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubims be.

And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee.

And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubims which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel…

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References:

• Briant, Pierre: 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire. Translated by Peter T. Daniels. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. <https://archive.org/details/fromcyrustoalexa0000bria>

• Cyrus: ca. -539. “An incompetent person was installed to exercise lordship…” Trans. Mordechai Cogan. In Hallo, William W., & K. Lawson Younger, eds.: 2003. The Context of Scripture: Volume II—Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World. Leiden: Brill. Pp. 314-6. <https://archive.org/details/the-context-of-scripture>

• Fried, Lisbeth S.: 2002. "Cyrus the Messiah? The Historical Background to Isaiah 45:1." The Harvard Theological Review Vol. 95, No. 4: pp. 373-393. <https://archive.org/details/CyrusTheMessiahTheHistoricalBackgroundToIsaiah451>

• Gellner, Ernest: 1988. Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. <https://archive.org/details/ploughswordbooks0000gell>.

• McClellan, Dan, & Dan Beecher: 2023. "The Why Question—with Jacob Wright." Data Over Dogma. December 10 (Episode 14).

• Saggs, H.W.F.: 1984. The Might That Was Assyria. London: Sidgwick & Jackson. <https://archive.org/details/mightthatwasassy0000sagg>

• Wright, Jacob L.: 2023. Why the Bible Began: An Alternative History of Scripture and its Origins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. <https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/why-the-bible-began/0C4F52F4B68EB81337A38FAF5C7C4C7E>.