Purity before Sinai 3: One Goat to Clean Them All - Episode 151

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel and this is the third episode in a little series where I am reading from a Mesopotamian exorcism text. I have been reading tablet 12 of the Udug-hul exorcism purification texts. These are ancient Sumerian and Akkadian texts that have been passed down through time, and I say pass down through time because that's why we have two different languages here. There's two different languages that are combined on the tablets, which means that these tablets have been used for a very long time.

[00:00:52] These tablets are all about purification from demon possession, which was causing some sort of health affliction. But the demon is also described as being something that destroys crops and animals. So it's both infectious and it acts like a destructive storm. And also, by the way, we saw that this entity is described as tall and radiant. And while we might not be able to make direct connections back to the Nephilim and all of that, it's certainly suggestive of some ideas that they had at the time, at minimum.

[00:01:27] And I think that's what our highest priority here is in looking at these texts, is asking what can this tell us about the ancient mindset.

[00:01:37] Now if you haven't listened to my last couple of episodes, you might wanna go back and do that, especially my last one because I'm pretty much just going to dive into the text here.

[00:01:48] Last time we ended on the initiation of the scapegoat ritual. I'm gonna go ahead and read that part again just so that we have that in mind.

[00:01:57] This is starting on line 59 of tablet 12. Quote, " Ea answers his son, Marduk. Go My son Marduk. Make a sacrifice in the daytime and call out the name of the victim's personal god. May the prayers and offerings, the path of mercy for the distraught man, son of his God, be there at the start and not cease. Speak of the matter to Shamash so that Shamash offers him renewed life.

[00:02:29] " Set up on a pedestal, a black goat, the face of witch is multicolored, or a knobbely horned sheep, strong, a splendid protector like a bison figurine and purify it. Recite an incantation to the black goat . With the Eridu incantation appearing in your pure mouth, may the scapegoat sustain the breath of life for the victim from your pure, august mouth. Let the victim exhale normally so that the Alu demon is removed from that man." End quote.

[00:03:05] The goat is supposed to sustain the breath of life for the person. And when the person who is afflicted breathes out, the evil demon is supposed to come out with that breath, but this is not the end of the exorcism. A lot more has to happen after this.

[00:03:21] Now, as a reminder as well, last week we talked about magic, which uses things like incantations, ritual, special actions, and magic really needs things just right and you have to use the right words. And I contrasted that with another idea of how we might see ritual in a biblical fashion. We'll be continuing that conversation a little bit today.

[00:03:47] But now that the demon is out of the man in this text, there is still more work to be done. So let's get into the next section here. Now we're gonna be seeing some embodied ritual actions and transfer mechanics. There's gonna be tactile things that the priest is going to do, the priest being the representative of Marduk.

[00:04:09] And we're gonna pay attention to the things that the priest does, the tools that the priest actually uses. And we're gonna notice a lot of protective symbolism. So we're gonna have a ritual sequence of events here. It's going to reinforce what's already been done through the divine speech and the incantation, but it's going to protect the man and his space from any kind of effects from the demon after this, at least for a short period of time.

[00:04:38] What we should be noticing here is that there is a visible reassertion of order, as opposed to the chaos that the demon was inflicting. We are gonna keep in mind the goat. The goat was chosen, was prepared, was purified, was empowered via an incantation. And then we're gonna see some other things happen with the goat after this.

[00:05:04] Now, in this text, there is only one goat. There is not two different goats, but the single goat seems to be performing multiple functions. And that seems to be a common thing in Mesopotamian ritual. One animal can play multiple roles in a particular kind of a sequence. In here, the goat is going to seem to be like a substitute, possibly, for the man, or he is at least a container that holds the man's breath.

[00:05:33] The goat is gonna become an offering, and overall the goat is functioning as an apotropaic object. Apotropaic magic is a kind of protective magic. It's magic that's intended to turn away harm or remove evil influences.

[00:05:54] So this kind of magic is going to deflect misfortune. And this is the kind of thing we're talking about when we're thinking of something like the idea of the evil eye. For those of you who listen to the Naked Bible Podcast, you might be a little bit familiar with the evil eye.

[00:06:12] Now there's a whole range of things that you could call apotropaic. And we might say that they're based in things like superstition, tradition. We have good luck charms, amulets actions like knocking on wood. It's a very old kind of magic. It's practiced throughout the ancient Near East as well as ancient Egypt.

[00:06:37] So people were scared of the darker side of the spiritual realm and they needed to protect themselves from that. And this is part of what I was talking about last time, regards to magic versus ritual in Scripture.

[00:06:53] And if we have any incantations of any type in Scripture, it's very few and far between . We might see something like the incident with Jacob and the goats that are breeding in front of the striped sticks in Genesis. We might say that is a kind of performative magic. It's not apotropaic because it's not warding away evil. It's just creating a situation of fertility in that sense.

[00:07:20] But you might say that it is performative magic, but that's very, very rare in Scripture. And even in that case, the reason he's doing that is because God has promised him something, and it seems like what he's doing is he's just living into his normal kind of a worldview to physically enact what's going on.

[00:07:44] Since it actually came out to be that he got the kind of goats that he wanted, some might worry that God is approving of such a method. But again, it's based on God's promise and not trying to manipulate God into something that he wasn't sure that God was even gonna offer. And that's part of the difference here.

[00:08:06] So apotropaic magic is going to use objects and things in order to prevent bad things happening. We have it in ancient Egypt, we have it in ancient Greece, we have it in ancient Mesopotamia. We have it all over the ancient world. We even have it into the Christian era. In between the testaments as well, but we'll talk about that here in a little bit. I don't know if we'll get to it in this episode or not, because we have a lot to read here in this context of this text, but I just wanna put that onto your plate for consideration as we're going through it.

[00:08:44] Now, we can have a few comparisons of this text with the biblical text. I want to show that the ideas and the concepts are ubiquitous in the ancient Near East, and that goes for Mesopotamia as well as Scripture.

[00:08:59] But again, as always, we're gonna see Scripture kind of turn things on its head sometimes, but occasionally Scripture just kind of goes with the flow in the ancient world. So the two things you're gonna wanna look at when you're thinking about the text I'm reading today and Scripture are probably Leviticus 16 with the Day of Atonement and the two goats. We're also gonna be reminded of Numbers 19 with the Red Heifer.

[00:09:28] Let me go ahead and read just a few verses from Numbers 19 to get that into our head. Quote, "Now the Lord spoke to Moses and to Aaron saying this is the statute of the law that the Lord has commanded. Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer without defect in which there is no blemish and on which a yoke has never come. And you shall give it to Eliezer, the priest, and it shall be taken outside the camp and slaughtered before him. And Eliezer the priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and sprinkle some of its blood toward the front of the tent of meeting seven times.

[00:10:05] And the heifer shall be burned in his sight. Its skin, its flesh, and its blood with its dung shall be burned and the priest shall take cedarwood and hissop and scarlet yarn and throw them into the fire burning the heifer. Then the priest shall wash his clothes and bathe his body in water. And afterward he may come into the camp, but the priest shall be unclean until evening.

[00:10:31] " The one who burns the heifer shall wash his clothes in water and bathe his body in water and shall be unclean until evening. And a man who is clean shall gather up the ashes of the heifer and deposit them outside the camp in a clean place. And they shall be kept for the water for impurity, for the congregation of the people of Israel.

[00:10:51] "It is a sin offering, and the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. And this shall be a perpetual statute for the people of Israel and for the stranger who sojourns among them." End quote.

[00:11:08] Now again, Scripture really doesn't provide this litany or explanation of why they're doing these things, but what we can notice at minimum is that we have a lot of comparisons with this and other texts of the ancient world.

[00:11:24] So they had ideas of why they were including things like hissop and the color red, and why there's this distinction in clean space and unclean space, and they're doing something with the blood. This might seem kind of like a magical ritual. What is the difference in what we have going on here with what we have going on in the ancient Near East at large?

[00:11:49] And I'm going to suggest a difficult thing is that sometimes there's not very much difference. Sometimes they really are performing these rituals because they see them doing something. As I've said quite often recently, you don't do a ritual if you don't think it's going to do something. That doesn't make it an ontological magical reality.

[00:12:16] But here's why I really think we need to understand the difference between ritual as properly seen and magic. It is not that ritual does nothing. Because they're not performing all of these things if they think it has no purpose. But it is a ritual act. And the difference between a biblical ritual act, and one of these texts that we're looking at here is that there's no forcing of a spiritual entity to do anything here.

[00:12:50] What's going on is for the purification of space, purification of people. And so then what is the difference with this and what's going on in this Mesopotamian text we're reading? Well, for one thing, we have no suggestion here that they are chasing off the bad guys. There is no suggestion that if the people don't do this, then God is hampered in protecting them from evil, right? So in this Mesopotamian text that I'm doing, it's very clear there is an evil demonic influence, even a possession, and that demon has to be exorcized, and that demon has to be prevented from coming into sacred space.

[00:13:40] Or really what we have is probably a home here. They're protecting the home from evil spirits. That's what we have going on in this text from Mesopotamia. That is different than what we have going on in numbers 19. There's no suggestion that they're chasing away evil spirits, right? God is telling them to do this. God doesn't tell them why they're doing it, and presumably they would have a whole bunch of ideas that are going to be associated with all of these things. Why a heifer? Why is it red? Why are they using cedarwood and hissop and scarlet yarn? Why are they doing the burning action?

[00:14:25] All of those things would have meaning to the people at the time, and it's very hard for us to understand that. And in our modern categories of thinking, it's really hard to see how this isn't just a magical thing. And well, that's why I say there is actual crossover between the magic and the ritual, and we just have to be comfortable with that. Well, okay. We don't have to be comfortable with that, but it is the reality anyway.

[00:14:56] Okay, so the comparison between Leviticus 16, the Day of Atonement, and this Udug-hul tablet 12. In the tablet I'm reading, there's only one goat as opposed to two goats. In Leviticus 16, one goat carries sin and impurity into the wilderness. It's like casting it away to where it belongs. The other goat is killed. Whereas in the tablet 12 that I'm reading today, there's only one goat.

[00:15:25] In tablet 12, there is really a very definitive idea of some sort of representation by the goat. And we could say that about Leviticus 16 as well. The goat is bearing the sins of the people, but the goat is not the people. The goat is a goat, and the goat is carrying away the impurity.

[00:15:47] And in Leviticus 16, the goat that leaves and is carrying the sins is not killed. He's not destroyed in any way. He's just sent out as opposed to the other goat that stays, the other goat is killed, but the other goat functions as a sacrifice. Okay, so there's a little bit of crossover logic here, but they're also very different. And that's important to note here.

[00:16:14] Okay, so starting in line 71 of tablet 12, quote, " May one sprinkle water on the head of the distraught man. May he be radiant like a star. May the protective spirit of the health approach the victim with the healthy goat. May the patient be wiped clean like copper. May the evil Utuku demon, ... and then the text is broken.

[00:16:39] " May the personal god of that patient be present at his head, and may they bind the goat to the head of the distraught patient. May that man be entrusted into the benevolent hands of his personal god through an offering to obtain mercy.

[00:16:55] " Make the healthy goat into a scapegoat, namely a black goat, a knobbely horned sheep, or a mountain goat, the face of which is colored. The healthy goat, fattened during domestication, literally pasture, is that man born to mother Bilet-ili. Sacrifice the healthy goat as a scapegoat. Recite an incantation over the scapegoat As for that man, cover him with the hood of his garment. Let the bell and eru wood ritual rod, Hero of Heaven, that turn away the evil spirits support the distraught man." End quote.

[00:17:40] Okay, so let's talk about all of the little pieces that I just read. Here we have the entrance of water into the ritual. Water is sprinkled on the head of the distraught man. This is the first direct action performed on the afflicted person, and before the focus was kind of on the goat.

[00:17:59] Sprinkling water is very widespread in the ancient Near Eastern texts as a purification practice. We see it a lot in Mesopotamia. We see it a lot in Egypt. It's definitely associated with cleansing, with sanctification or making something sacred or dedicated to the holy and warding off demonic influence.

[00:18:22] Of course, we also have water used in similar ways in Scripture, right? Water cleans, lepers. We had water in the red heifer water of purification. And people are who are handling all of the heifer stuff, they have to be purified.

[00:18:40] The next line is really interesting. It says, may he be radiant like a star. The protective spirit of health approach the victim with the healthy goat. So here's star language that might kind of pique our interest, especially if we understand that star language in Scripture is often connected to the spiritual realm.

[00:19:00] So this is probably connecting the man to the spiritual realm, like there is a reflection going on, and again, it's protective. The personal god is being called upon. Now unlike Scripture though, there is no suggestion that the man becoming radiant like a star, means that he has to behave in a moral way, right? There's no sense that there's anything moral about this. Is it all about health, all about fertility and preventing bad things from interfering with normal life.

[00:19:37] The patient is gonna be wiped clean like copper. Copper is very common ritual element or used in ritual instruments. The Bible talks about copper. Like if you're using a pottery vessel in some sort of ritual in the Bible, then you're gonna break it after it's done , but you don't wanna go and do that with a copper vessel all the time, so a copper vessel could be purified with water. We have the same kind of idea here.

[00:20:06] So we have the invocation and the asking of the personal god to be there. That might surprise us to see this relationality and things like that, but again, we just need to realize these are normal people who really did think that their gods could do good things for them. I think sometimes we forget that.

[00:20:26] So then the goat is going to be bound to the head of the distraught man. It doesn't really describe what that means, but there's a definite connection with the goat and the man. When you're looking at the idea of substitution in ancient texts as I have been doing, this is one of those instances that really stands out here. The goat is said to be the man.

[00:20:50] The goat and the man are connected back to the mother goddess, the source of divine life and restoration.

[00:20:57] I mean, it's interesting because previously in the section I read before, the man was the son of his personal deity, right? The man is generally usually the son of his lower tier deity, probably a much lower tier deity. Through the mediation of the goat, he can be made to be the son of the mother goddess herself. But there has to be that mediating proxy, and I find that really interesting.

[00:21:30] So then there's an offering. The offering suggested is the goat's life. So the goat is killed. There's not any detail as to what they do with the meat. Like is the meat burned to the god? Do they all eat the meat? It doesn't really say unfortunately, ' cause that would be interesting detail if it did, but it doesn't give that detail.

[00:21:53] But the hide is used. So we might recall back to numbers 19, with the red heifer, it's burned and its ashes are used. In this case, it's the hide of the goat that becomes the ritual object. There's another incantation over the hide. Now in Levitical sacrifices, we have burning eating, sending away, and probably the hide is just burnt. And so the hide of the animal is not used and, again, I think it gives another indication of magic versus ritual.

[00:22:28] Now, of course, we could go back to that numbers 19 and say, well, the ashes of the red heifer are used in the purification water, and that's true. That could be some sort of similarity to what we have here.

[00:22:44] In this section we have the re clothing of the man, kind of the idea of restoring dignity, the fact that you're now pure, you can wear your normal clothes. There's a bell that's rung. And we know that the spirits don't like the noisy bell, and there is a wooden rod of some sort. And those are elements of apotropaic magic. They are to ward off the evil spirits.

[00:23:12] Okay, so we're gonna read the next part here. We're gonna go a little bit deeper into the symbolic and apotropaic containment phase of the ritual. This is where we're gonna make absolute sure that everything is all clear and that all evil has been cast out.

[00:23:30] We should be thinking of sacred boundaries and objects. Purification is a big part of that. Now there's some concern probably about vulnerability after all of what's gone on up to this point has happened. Like, sure, we've cast out the demon, we've cleansed the man, we've redressed him, and we've scared some things away, but we're not quite sure that he's not gonna just get reattacked immediately. So we have to do some containment and boundary making.

[00:24:04] Starting in line 86 of tablet 12, quote, " As for that man, he is renewed. May the bell, Hero of Heaven, increase its awesome clamor. Wrap a multicolored cord around the four legs of the bed and surround the sides of his bed with incense and a censer. Within the protective covering of that man's garment, lift him in the reed bundles, encircle him with zizzeru flo and next to the zizzeru flour, encircle him with the liquid extract of dark clay.

[00:24:42] " Put it around the outside gate on the right and left sides, and ensure healing at its gate. Invoke the unbreakable oath. Whatever evil, may it persist for one day. In the evening, draw the scapegoat near to the body of the man, son of his god. Bind the sash of the scapegoat on his head." End quote.

[00:25:06] Okay, so this last part, it says, draw the scapegoat near. So the man is renewed. He's restored to health. And again, we have the loud bell. It's gonna scare away the evil bad guys. And interestingly, there are bells on the high priest's robe in Scripture, but they're not said to be for spirit expulsion. They don't seem to be functioning in that way.

[00:25:31] So they wrap this multicolored cord around the four legs of the bed. There's a few things that the cord might symbolize, like containment, protection, like sealing the area, perhaps. As for the use of multicolors in like the cord as well as the goat, we can't exactly know, because again, they don't describe or explain it outright, but there's probably some sort of connection with the cosmic realm when we have that going on, right? Like the meeting of two things together, the meeting of the heavens and the earth, that would be my suggestion for it.

[00:26:11] The four corners of the bed, it's probably kind of equating to the four corners of the world, like the total enclosure or protection from all sides.

[00:26:22] We have incense and they're burning something in a censer. So this is probably like a, a fragrant barrier that is going to be impassable for the evil entities. And we do have connections like that with Scripture. We have incense in sacred space, and there is suggestion that it accompanies divine presence, but in Scripture, it's a good thing, right? It's going to accompany the good divine presence.

[00:26:50] And actually there's that story with the plague. And Aaron has to run out in the middle of the people with the incense, and he's turning away God's wrath by doing that. Probably quite a similar idea going on here. That makes us a little bit uncomfortable though, doesn't it? Because well that sounds like we're appeasing God and we're turning his wrath away, well, it probably is very similar kind of logic here.

[00:27:17] Very interestingly, the man is lifted with reed bundles and he's lifted with his own garment. Probably a symbol of personal restoration. Along with this idea of reeds connecting to living water, probably. Then he is encircled with a ring of flour and with liquid clay forming some sort of protective barrier.

[00:27:42] We don't really have magic circles in Scripture, but we do have boundary markers in Scripture. We do have clean areas, unclean areas. We have space that is more and more holy as you go into sacred space.

[00:28:00] And the phrase that they are to ensure healing at the gate. It's not just restoration for the person, but for the entire space, the evil has to be stopped, and that corresponds to the description of the demon we have early on in the tablet where he's not just afflicting the health of the person, but he's afflicting the fertility of the land.

[00:28:24] Okay, so the last thing we have going on here is that there's a sash of the scapegoat on the man's head. It's probably further connecting the man to the goat, and he's supposed to be keeping that on so that he remains protected.

[00:28:39] Okay, so further on in this text, beginning at line 99 of tablet 12, quote, " Evil Utuku demon, alu demon, ghost, sheriff demon, bailiff demon, Lamastu Labasu, and jaundice demons. The Utuku, captive of the man, the ghost of the seized man, the evil one whose face is evil, mouth is evil, and tongue is evil. Headache, toothache, internal illness, heartburn. May they all be removed from his head through this incantation. May Ishulm, great herald, supreme protector of the gods, be present at the victim's head and not cease to be present. May it be said in your pure august mouth, the evil has already withdrawn from the body of the distraught man.

[00:29:34] " Get up, whatever evil, and go out to Erishigal's province. Carry off the hide of the scapegoat from the distraught man's body. Quietly remove the hide from the square so that whatever evil could be removed into the netherworld, and let the enormous be turned into the trivial. May the evil alu demon, which is inflicted on a man alternative be taken into the netherworld." End quote.

[00:30:03] Okay, so you can probably see why I am comparing this text with Leviticus 16. Even though we only have one goat, the goat was helping the man and being the man's representative. Being his kind of a proxy, connecting the man with the mother goddess so that he can be healed.

[00:30:22] Then it seems like his hide is going to function in that way. So as far as I can tell, what's going on here is that after the sacrifice, they have the hide, and the hide then is going to carry away the evil. There's still this little bit about the sash about the man's head. So the sash around the man's head is only partly from the goat or something. It's, again, it's not all that clear. What we have though, is the idea of taking away the evil and sending it to where it belongs. It's to go to the netherworld, get away from us. We don't want you here anymore.

[00:31:01] In Leviticus 16, of course, we have sin, actual moral things and other impurities, and I think that in Leviticus 16 we could say that something a little bit broader is going on than what we have here. This is only about the healing and the sending out of the demon to no longer afflict the land. And anyway, it's hard to compare these two texts because they aren't exactly the same. They're not functioning in the same way. But these similarities are really interesting.

[00:31:36] The whole list that I read at the beginning of that section, one of the oldest and most powerful forms of ancient Near Eastern magic is ritual naming formulas. By naming the demons and the afflictions, the priest gains conceptual control over them. This is a little bit like Adam naming the creatures in Genesis two. He's going to have dominion over those creatures because he named them.

[00:32:04] The Utuku is probably a set of malevolent spirits, kind of shade kind of creatures. The Alu is associated with sleep paralysis and suffocation in other ancient texts. The Lamasu is a fearsome female demon. She would kill infants. The Labasu was a demon who brought on fever. Jaundice demons were probably associated with skin diseases. And then we have those two interesting ones, right? The Sheriff demon and the Bailiff demon. Those may be more along the lines of territorial spirits of some sort.

[00:32:47] And so, okay, we don't have the Old Testament cataloging demons like this. But we do have disease lists and we have like Psalm 91 and we probably will not get to that today, but we have personified evil: Azazel, Satan, the principalities and power and sin as described in Romans.

[00:33:10] So it's very similar, but we do not have this list like this. If you're doing a magical incantation and you don't say the right spirit, well maybe he's going to hang on because you did not actually cast that spirit out.

[00:33:26] Right. So for the ancient world, you had to find the right thing to say, the right thing to do. You had to name the right spirit. But in Scripture, we do have some naming of spirits like in Legion, but to cast them out wasn't to call upon their name, but to call upon Jesus's name, right? That's a distinctive difference there. And when you're using Jesus's name, it's not the same as having dominion over him. In that sense, you're putting yourself under Jesus and submitting yourself to Jesus' power.

[00:34:06] The head was seen as kind of a seat of oppression and a focal point of a lot of problems, which, you know, makes sense when you're having problems with sleep, when you can't breathe, when you can't speak because you're sick or whatever.

[00:34:21] So the demons are associated with the head, but then the protector gods are going to be at the man's head, as well, kind of like a divine bodyguard.

[00:34:30] We had that kind of bodily language in Scripture as well. Like in the Psalms where Yahweh is at your right hand and things like that. We have the armor of God in Ephesians six, which is very connected to anatomical ideas, right? So part of the point of that would be that the ancient world would have different conceptions of what's going on in different parts of your body.

[00:34:56] All right, so we ended this section with taking out all of the nasty stuff over to the netherworld using the goats hide.

[00:35:06] Let's go on to the next section of this tablet. We're gonna see ongoing spiritual maintenance, continued restoration through temple objects and sacred craftsmanship. So now we're not doing this aggressive expulsion. We've turned to stability and sacred space kind of ideas, embodying the practices and protection of the gods.

[00:35:31] Line one 12 from tablet 12, quote, " May the goat, acting as a good demon, not be released from his head by its being present night and day, may the goat grant him life. On behalf of that man, on the lofty dais of Kusu, may the pure statue at the place of healing face the sunrise. Oh craftsman, wise and great important work of heaven, bring a refined silver saw to the pure grove of ample shade. Let him apply the eru wood, ritual scepter, to the ritual adz and something in the forest." End quote.

[00:36:14] Okay, so again, it's not real clear, but it seems like most of the goat hide was sent out away from town, but there's still part of this goat, this sash. And the goat is acting as a protective demon, a good guy, and the man is supposed to have this with him so that he remains protected. So again, one goat fulfilling multiple functions.

[00:36:38] We have a shift to temple space where there is a statue or some sort of object that represents the man placed there. The statue is placed on some sort of platform, and it's supposed to face east toward the sunrise.

[00:36:54] The sunrise is a symbol of life order, cosmic renewal every day. So as long as the statue is here in the temple room, then that is part of the protection over the man. Now we have very similar ideas of the direction of East in scripture. The uses of the cardinal direction in Scripture is really interesting to me. There is a lot of meaning embedded into those, but we don't have any idea of healing mediated or sustained through statues or objects in the Bible like we do here.

[00:37:29] We do have prayer, sacrifice, and calling upon God's mercy as channels of restoration in Scripture. Again, it's just not magic in Scripture. Even though ritual objects and things might be used, those are not the way you sustain those things, right?

[00:37:49] There's some sort of a sacred forest here, and whether that is a particular place they were thinking of or maybe a source of holy materials or whatever, it kind of parallels what we see in Scripture when the Scripture talks about idol makers, so that's kind of an interesting connective point there.

[00:38:11] Because you know, you have the priests who are obviously connected to sacred space and idolatry, but you have the craftsmen who are creating the idols. And in the ancient Near East, when a craftsman is creating an idol, he isn't described as doing the same things that you would do just in any other kind of craft. Because we have language like the god is born or the god lives, right, they're kind of disassociating the craft from what's actually going on ritually.

[00:38:47] And certainly we have biblical craftsmen who build things for Yahweh's glory in Scripture, but they're not said to be giving God any sort of life or anything like that. It seems to me that in Scripture we have craftsmen who are honored for the work they're doing and not kind of used as, yeah, we know that they're really carving wood, but we're gonna pretend that that's not really what's going on.

[00:39:16] Some of you might be really interested in the fact that it uses particular types of wood, because wood is definitely a material that shows up very often in Scripture. There's no distinction in Hebrew when they're talking about a live tree versus a piece of wood from a dead tree. So there's a lot of crossover in idea there, which is very interesting.

[00:39:41] Okay, so we talked about a statue that they would set up in the temple for this man. Now we're gonna go on into this motif of the seven. There's seven figures or deities or spiritual beings who are linked to divine healing, judgment, possibly resurrection, but probably not in an embodied sense because it doesn't come out and say anything like that. And they're just generally connected with protection and provision.

[00:40:12] These seven divine beings are very concerned with the man who is afflicted. They are probably represented in divine figures, they're linked to Ishtar, and they're linked to the man's personal god. So lots of divine council imagery here, but these are to intercede and protect the man.

[00:40:32] Starting in line one 20 of tablet 12, quote, " A living statue was born of the seven of them. The statue's name, Decider of Fates Among the Gods. May the wise unrivaled seven statues stand at his head with Ishtar. May they recite the prayer of the personal god of the man. The seven of them are wise, august, foremost scion, who grant life to the dead turning back evil." End quote.

[00:41:05] Okay, so I did mention resurrection and we have this phrase here, who grant life to the dead. Is that referring to bodily resurrection of some sort? I would not say so unless we have a reason to believe that this is what they're thinking at the time, and we simply do not. Being granted life to the dead could mean a variety of things.

[00:41:33] It could mean the restoration of somebody who's sick. It could mean the sustaining of life in the underworld because there is a suggestion that it's possible that you really do just cease to exist down there. If you cease to exist in the underworld, then you're pretty much gone. So life still needs to be maintained down there on some form, but it's not embodied human life.

[00:42:04] There can be a very distinctive difference in there because if it's true that they are seeing this idea that even in the underworld you can cease to be, there is some form of quote unquote life down there, but it's not embodied human life, we should not just jump to the idea that, oh, they're presuming that people are going to be resurrected from the dead.

[00:42:29] Now, it could be that we have a situation like, say, Lazarus, where somebody is granted life from the dead, but that person is then going to die again. I'm just pointing all of these things out because I think it's essential for us to understand that we should not put later ideas into earlier texts. and That's a real danger when we have the idea of resurrection, the idea of embodied resurrection. We think, oh, well, obviously we have the idea of bodily resurrection. We know that now. So obviously people before the first century, before Jesus, were also thinking that. We can't say that unless we have proof that they were actually thinking that.

[00:43:19] Just because they might not have had an idea of bodily resurrection in the Old Testament, or I should say the earlier Old Testament, like the Torah, if they didn't have that idea in hand, that doesn't mean that what Torah is talking about does not lead to the ultimate restoration of things and resurrection because that doesn't happen until we have Jesus.

[00:43:48] So we need Jesus for that. So because of that, it should not surprise us to see that people in like Torah time weren't thinking bodily resurrection. Like that wasn't their idea of hope. They had other ideas of hope. And even if we're like, well, we don't like those ideas as much, well too bad. We can't, we don't have the right to import our ideas onto the past. We just don't. That's bad hermeneutics.

[00:44:22] But this idol is going to recite prayers for the man to his own personal god. And do you see the complexity here? The layers of mediation, representation, intercession here is just incredible. So if you're living in this world and you have all of these ideas in the air, this is your cultural river, is it really all that surprising that in Scripture we have the people of the Bible who, they don't necessarily turn away from Yahweh to worshiping other deities, but they will include all of the other deities with Yahweh.

[00:45:06] This is just the kind of thing they did and nobody seems to have a problem with it here in Mesopotamia, but in Scripture it's like, no, this isn't what you do. There's only one that you turn to. There's only one who is going to sustain you and that one who's going to sustain you, guess what? He's not worshiped via idols.

[00:45:30] In fact, you are the idol of the most high God. You are the image of God. That is explosive to this kind of a worldview. Can you see that? It's incredible.

[00:45:44] Okay, let's go on to the next section of the text. We're gonna have poetic invocation of the seven protective storm demons. We've got seven protective storm demons and they are tied to major Sumerian cities. They have distinct personalities and functions. And here's the interesting thing, they are gonna be called storm demons. But unlike the storm demon who is afflicting the man, they're not destructive.

[00:46:13] They are healing life-giving agents that are going to be invoked like guardian deities and very interesting that it's tied to geography.

[00:46:24] Okay, starting in line 1 25 of tablet 12, quote, " Storm demon of life, born in Ur. Storm demon of abundance, of the good Denison of Nippur. Storm demon of celebration, growing up in Eridu. Benevolent storm demon, which came forth in Kulab. Storm Demon with the fair face, offspring of Kesh. Just storm demon, a guest judge of Lagash. Storm demon which grants a threatened man life, the protection of Shuripak.

[00:47:04] " They are the wise seven who are unrivaled. May they be present at his head. May they recite the prayers of the personal god of that man. They are the seven who cast the spell in order to heal the deathly ill and whatever evil has turned away. They are the seven who are unrivaled. May they be present at his side." End quote.

[00:47:29] Okay. So we have all of these figures and geography and all of this, right? Ur was one of the most ancient and sacred cities, associated with the moon god Sin. And Ur is also connected to giving life.

[00:47:45] We have a storm demon of abundance from Nippur. Nippur was the religious capital and the city of Enil, who is chief of the Pantheon. And now this abundance theme fits with Nippur's mythic role in maintaining order and plenty. So this figure might be imagined as bringing fertility or sustenance. Probably associated with rain.

[00:48:09] The storm demon of celebration growing up in Eridu. Eridu, again, was the oldest Sumerian city and the seat of Enki or Ea, the god of wisdom and ritual. We have him mentioned several times in this text. So celebration is probably connected to festival, ritual performance of feasts and things like that.

[00:48:32] A benevolent storm demon coming forth from Kulab. Kulab is an ancient district of Uruk and it's associated with Gilgamesh. So the coming forth language is picturing like a birth or emergence.

[00:48:48] A storm demon with a fair face, the offspring of Kesh. Now, Kesh was a city associated with Ninhurnsag, the mother goddess. The fair face obviously implies beauty. And maybe this idea of shining. We might think of the peace after a storm in this kind of idea here.

[00:49:09] We have a just storm demon from Lagash. Lagash was known for kingship and justice. Now, this figure probably represents judicial integrity, but unlike understanding that in a way where we have legal code, we should be understanding that as upholding right order, punishing evil where it needs to be punished, bringing healing where it needs to be brought. If we're inserting all of our ideas of the legal system into this, we're going to be mistaken.

[00:49:44] And then we have a storm demon which grants a threatened man life. This is from Shurripak, which is interestingly the home of Ziusudra, the Sumerian flood hero.

[00:49:56] Now what's really interesting, we have this term demon here. The demon at the first obviously was described as a storm demon, and yet we have these storm demons who are good. This is one of the reasons why it's hard to read ancient Near Eastern cosmological ideas and ancient texts. ' cause their categories just don't map exactly onto how we're thinking of things.

[00:50:21] So in Mesopotamian religious logic, the same class of being could be dangerous or protective depending on ritual context, divine commission, and who that being is in alignment with. Is it obeying the will of a high god like Ea or Marduk? Or has it been ritually redirected to act in behalf of the person?

[00:50:47] So these demons here, they're not gods, but they're empowered spirits who actually impact the world in some way. So that could be either good or bad. And again, a storm can be good or bad depending on whether you want it or not. Is it destroying your crops because it's coming at a bad time during harvest? Or is it providing the water that you need in order to grow that harvest?

[00:51:14] Okay, so we're gonna go ahead and try and finish up this tablet. We're turning back into the tangible healing acts here. Starting in line 1 36 of tablet 12, quote, " May the torch and pure censer approach him. May the incantation priest rub the patient with fat of a pure cow and cow's milk. May the good demon from whom whatever evil does not escape, be present at his head. May the evil Utuku go out from you. May he stand aside. The two wrestlers, the sages and scapegoat." End quote.

[00:51:56] So you see this tablet is so interesting because of the number of things that it has going on here. You have the goat, you have the water, you have the incense, you have the cords wrapped around the bed. You have the circles drawn around the bed. You have protection at the gate, you have the bell, you have the piece of wood that is protective. Now we have fat from a pure cow. We have milk and those are rubbed on the person. And we have these two wrestlers, the sages and the scapegoat. Fire, incense, torch, probably all of that combined with smell and light and smoke.

[00:52:41] So fire is another thing that we're gonna see in our series of purification because water will purify and wash away things, but fire will also burn away impurity. And we see the same thing in Scripture. And the way that water and fire are related in these texts and kind of in a chronological way, it seems to me as I'm doing this survey, water comes before fire in purification.

[00:53:11] And that is absolutely fascinating because what do we see in Scripture? The flood, water, destruction of creation happens before the description in Revelation where we have fire. So interesting. So very interesting, these things when you actually track them. Now again, I may be jumping the gun on this connection between water and fire and how water always comes before fire.

[00:53:42] As I'm doing the survey, it really seems like there's more water imagery in purification than there is fire. But regardless, we have, it seems, all of the things here. The man is anointed with fat and milk, which are both obviously animal substances, and they probably represent the idea of a rich full life, right?

[00:54:08] You're not eating fat unless you can afford to eat fat. Milk is obviously nurturing and life giving, evokes the ideas of motherhood, restoration, abundance. I mean, we don't have the direct comparison here with the mother goddess, but the idea is there. Again, probably apotropaic, repelling evil, and keeping that purification going on, perhaps sealing the body of some sort in this anointing.

[00:54:39] We don't have milk or fat used like this way in biblical purification, although we do have oil that's used as an anointment in Scripture. We might think about in the book of James, where we have sick who are anointed with oil, they're prayed over. Again, is that magical healing or is it not? I'll let you think about that for a little bit.

[00:55:03] But again, it's so interesting, all of the layers. We wanna make sure that this guy is healed, that all of the evil is cast out and trapped and bound away from us.

[00:55:15] Continuing on in the text, line one 40 from tablet 12, quote, " Fashion two bitumen statues of interlocked wrestlers. Set them there on the threshold, recite the incantation. As for that man, may he be commended to the benevolent hands of his personal god. May the goat acting as a force for good not be released from his head. But in its being present night and day may it grant him life. Regarding the personal god of that man, when Shamash comes out from the cellah, may the seven of them, wise ones who are unrivaled, like the personal god of the man, at whose head may they be present. May they recite the prayer of the personal god of that man." End quote.

[00:56:06] So the previous section I mentioned two wrestlers. Well that's what we have here. We have two statues of interlocked wrestlers and they are also to provide protection.

[00:56:17] Now you have to wonder if this text is like kind of a compilation of a whole bunch of different things because of all of the different ideas we have here.

[00:56:27] The purification rituals at the home, the statue from the seven, these two wrestlers, now we have all of these ideas combined. It's like we're not quite sure what's gonna work, so we're going to do all of the things. That also is an element that you see in magical type thinking. I am not really sure that I am getting the results I want, so I'm gonna hedge my bets and do all of the things.

[00:56:58] And this is what we see in idolatrous worship in Scripture. It's why the people were exiled out of the land because they were not just worshiping another deity, they were doing all of the things because we just don't know what's gonna work.

[00:57:16] Line 1 48 and tablet 12, " In the temple where the incantation was recited, through the magical formula that activates the incantation. The way of mercy of a distraught man, son of his god, is through supplication and offering. May his food offering approach Shamash. It is up to you Marduk, foremost son of the Apsu, to act kindly and favorably. It is an Udug-hul incantation." End quote.

[00:57:47] This is quite likely to be a very carefully constructed text, just like we have in the Bible where you have like a chiasm, for instance, and the text is structured very carefully to have a particular design pattern, and there is meaning embedded into this design pattern. And unfortunately when we're reading it in English, we do tend to miss a lot of that.

[00:58:13] So the repetition might seem like, why is it saying the same thing again? But it's probably part of that structure and that meaning of the text. And by doing that, it's going to highlight particular deities mentioned at particular times and things like that. So again, supplication, offering. Food offerings here are to Shamash, who is the sun deity. So we had Marduk at the beginning. Now we have Marduk here called upon again at the end as a final plea.

[00:58:48] We have one final segment here that I'll read. It's like a recapitulation and ritual echo of earlier themes. With a very strong focus and emphasis on the priest's speech, the animal rites, the goal of restoration, and a really interesting line here at the end.

[00:59:07] Let's go ahead and read from line 1 54 of tablet 12, quote," Incantation. That which comes out of his mouth is intended for wellbeing. In the house or temple, where the incantation is recited, through the magical formula that activates the incantation, that the lord might improve the state of his limbs, and that the lord might learn about the sick man. He tied a goat to the patient's head at the front of his bed. He set up a standard at the patient's head, taking the fat of a pure cow and cow's milk. A black goat and a horned sheep whose face is colored. The incantation priest touched its throat and sacrificed it. Lay out the pure goat properly above him, he glorified the black goat in the incantation formula, according to the command of Billet-ili the incantation of Eridu of Ea, lord of the Apsu is in her pure and famous mouth.

[01:00:09] " As for the man, son of his god, may he become holy like heaven and clean like the earth. May he become pure like the middle of heaven and may the evil reputation stand aside. It is an Udug-hul incantation." End quote.

[01:00:29] All right, so here we are finally the end of tablet 12. The end is kind of summarizing the sacred speech that drives the entire ritual.

[01:00:38] And it's fascinating, isn't it? Because even in Scripture, God's word does things. He speaks and it becomes, and there's this echo of that here. The spoken words have to come from the divine realm, but they're spoken in order to manipulate the divine realm.

[01:00:59] Very interesting that we have this emphasis on, we've also gotta do this because otherwise the deity might not even know that this guy exists or that he's sick. We have to tell them about it. So then we can think, oh, well of course the God of the Bible is omniscient. It's not quite so clear that people early on were thinking that God could know everything.

[01:01:25] But on the other hand, I'm not saying the idea is not there in Scripture, especially in Torah, because the idea that God is over everything and that he presides over a cosmic temple probably presumes this idea. But I don't think it would properly map exactly onto divine omniscience as we understand it later on, because that idea is developed through time. It's explained through philosophy and things like that.

[01:01:56] It says that the man is to become holy, like heaven and clean like the earth. Well, first of all, I want to point out that we have this picture of the mirroring of heaven and earth right there. Holy like heaven and clean like the earth. But what is that saying?

[01:02:14] Is it providing the same kind of information that we see in Scripture where we know that in scripture being holy, like God does accompany right action and proper behavior? Is this a moral thing that we're seeing here? And to that, I would just point out that there is literally nothing else in this text that would suggest that.

[01:02:41] The man is not being blamed for anything here. It's not like, well, we know that you made the gods mad and that's why you're afflicted. The fault is at the feet of the demonic spirits. The fault is not at the man, so there's no suggestion that he sinned and therefore he's gotta do something to rectify that, and he's got to also be a better person in the future to prevent that.

[01:03:09] There is no suggestion like that here at all. So to become holy like heaven probably just means that he is in alignment with the gods in a fruitful way.

[01:03:23] This is a very rare instance of holiness being applied to humans in Mesopotamian texts though. But it's probably ritual holiness, meaning that he's fit for presence and he is fit for being provided for by the deities, and he is being protected. That is the emphasis here.

[01:03:45] It is not a moral type of holiness, but it is about restoration, healing, and being able to live your life like a functioning human being, basically.

[01:03:57] So in other words, I think we could say that this is a ritual status. And it has nothing to do with transformation of one's heart or moral, ethical behavior. It's very different.

[01:04:11] Alright, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap up here. We're gonna continue the conversation next time, probably, drawing upon some of these ideas and looking at other ancient texts, looking deeper into Scripture at comparisons, and trying to see what we can see here and wrestle with these ideas that there is a crossover in ritual and magical thinking, but it's not a full crossover. And I think we'll see that in the biblical text.

[01:04:41] But I'm also gonna say just because the Bible says something doesn't mean the people of God actually follow along with what the Bible says.

[01:04:51] I'm going to suggest that in between the testaments and in the church age, we do have magical thinking. And so maybe that's something that we do need to be on guard for. Are we hedging our bets and are we moving into magical thinking instead of fully trusting in the work of Yahweh?

[01:05:13] That's a question I will leave for you today and we will talk about further. And I appreciate all of the responses I've gotten from people in this little mini series. It's been fun for me to read this text and I hope you've been enlightened and informed as well.

[01:05:31] As always, I will welcome you into my biblical theology community at On This Rock. I will leave a link to that in my show notes. You can find me on Facebook, at On This Rock, or you can contact me through my website at genesis marks the spot.com. And a big shout out and thank you to all of my supporters who share the episodes or who support me financially. You can find out how to do that at my websites that I'll link in the show notes. At any rate, I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.