also depicts the Assyrian warriors as roaring lions (Is 5:29) and Yahweh as a lion who will tear up His prey and carry it off to His lair (Hos 5:14, 15; 13:7, 8; Johnston 2001:294, 295).Ashurbanipal pouring out a libation on the lions (left) and Ashurbanipal holding a lion by the tail during a lion hunt. Note the defacement of the tail on the right.From the palace of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, now in the British Museum.According to Ashurbanipal’s annals, at the beginning of his reign, two deities, Adad and Ea, blessed the land of Assyria with plenty of rain. This rain caused the forests to thrive and the reeds in the marshes to flourish. This blessing resulted in a population explosion among the lions. They exerted their influence in the hills and on the plain by attacking herds of cattle, flocks of sheep and people. Many were killed (Luckenbill 1989, 2:363, ¶ 935). Ashurbanipal II, following in the footsteps of his predecessors, took charge of the lion hunts in order to control the lion population (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1025).Ashurbanipal also engaged in lion hunting as a sport. Apparently lions were captured alive and put in cages in the king’s garden in Nineveh and used for staged lion hunts (Weissert 1997:339–58). One relief that was found in Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh, apparently from a second floor, had three panels depicting a lion hunt. On the top panel, a lion is released from a cage and Ashurbanipal is shooting him with arrows. The central panel is interesting because it shows the bravery of the king. On the right side of the panel, soldiers are distracting a lion. On the left side, Ashurbanipal sneaks up and grabs the lion by the tail as he rears to his hind legs. The inscription above says,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport, I seized a lion of the plain by his tail and at the command of Urta, Nergal, the gods, my allies, I smashed his skull with the club of my hand (Luckenbill 1989, 2:391, ¶ 1023).The king attributes his bravery to the deities. Dr. J. E. Reade, one of the keepers of the Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum, has observed,It is notable that much of the lion’s tail has been chipped away, so that the lion had been, as it were, set loose; this defacement was probably the action, at once humorous and symbolic, of some enemy soldier busy ransacking the palace in 612 B.C. (Curtis and Reade 1995:87).On the lower panel, Ashurbanipal is pouring out a wine libation over the carcasses of four lions. In the inscription above, the king boasts of his power by saying,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, whom Assur and Ninlil have endowed with surpassing might. The lions which I slew, the terrible bow of Ishtar, lady of battle, I aimed at them. I brought an offering, I poured out wine over them (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1021).Once again the king attributes his mighty power to the gods, in this case Assur and Ninlil.In contrast, Ashurbanipal boasts that kings and lions are powerless before him. At the beginning of one of his annals (Cylinder F) he states,Among men, kings, and among the beasts, lions (?)
were powerless before my bow, I know (the art) of waging battle and combat...
A valiant hero, beloved of Assur and Ishtar, of royal lineage, am I (Luckenbill 1989, 2:347, ¶ 896).Dead bodies of the Assyrian enemies (left).The top body has its eyes being plucked out by a vulture, while the bottom body is beheaded. Assyrians forcing their enemies to grind the bones of their dead ancestors (right).Ashurbanipal has tied his lion hunting and military conquests together in one statement.In the vision of Nahum concerning Nineveh, Nahum asks a rhetorical question,Where is the dwelling of the lions, and the feeding place of the young lions, where the lion walked, the lioness and lion’s cub, and no one made them afraid? (2:11).He sees Nineveh as a lions’ den that has been destroyed and the lions are gone. The “prey” in verse 12 is apparently the booty that the Assyrians have taken from all the cities they conquered in recent memory.In verse 13, the LORD states directly,Behold, I am against you. I will burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions; I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messenger shall be heard no more.The phrase “the sword shall devour your young lions” draws our attention to another relief showing Ashurbanipal thrusting a sword through a lion. The inscription associated with this relief says,I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of Assyria, in my lordly sport, they let a fierce lion of the plain out of the cage and on foot...I stabbed him later with my iron girdle dagger and he died (Luckenbill 1989, 2:392, ¶ 1024).The book of Nahum sets forth an ironic reversal of the Assyrian usage of the lion motif. Gordon Johnston has observed.The extended lion metaphor in Nahum 2:11–13 includes the two major varieties of the Neo-Assyrian lion motif: the depiction of the Assyrian king and his warriors as mighty lions, and the royal lion hunt theme. While the Assyrians kept these two motifs separate, Nahum dovetailed the two, but in doing so he also reversed their original significance. While the Assyrian warriors loved to depict themselves as mighty lions hunting their prey, Nahum pictured them as lions that would be hunted down. The Assyrian kings also boasted that they were mighty hunters in royal lion hunts; Nahum pictured them as the lions being hunted in the lion hunt. By these reversals Nahum created an unexpected twist on Assyrian usage. According to Nahum the Assyrians were like lions, to be sure; however, not in the way that they depicted themselves; rather than being like lions on the prowl for prey, the hunters would become the hunted! (2001:304).Ashurbanipal stabbing a lion with his sword.Nahum was keenly aware of the culture that he was writing to and was able to effectively use it to convey a powerful message from the LORD.Nineveh, a Bloody City (Na 3:1)Nahum pronounces: “woe to the bloody city (of Nineveh)” (3:1). The city and the Assyrian Empire had a well-earned reputation for being bloody. Just a casual glance at the reliefs from the palaces of Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal shows the “gory and bloodcurdling history as we know it” (Bleibtreu. 1991:52). There are reliefs with people being impaled, decapitated, flayed, and tongues pulled out. Other reliefs show the Assyrians making people grind the bones of their dead ancestors, and even vultures plucking out the eyes of the dead!One panel graphically shows their disrespect for human life. On it, a commander is presenting a bracelet to an Assyrian soldier who had decapitated the five or six heads at his feet. There are two scribes behind him recording the event. This bracelet, perhaps a medal of valor, is worth five or six lives! In Assyrian thinking, life was cheap.Countless Corpses (Na 3:3)There is an old adage that says, “What goes around, comes around.” The Bible would use an agricultural metaphor, “You reap what you sow” (cf. Gal 6:7). This is true in the geo-political realm as well as the personal realm. The Assyrians, over their long history, were brutal and barbaric people. Yet learn french
2011年3月17日星期四
narratives of Joshua and Judges: the defeat of cities (Josh 11:12; Judg 11:33), the extermination of peoples (Josh 11:20), and the acquisition of land
the service of Moses and Joshua. In the introduction to the king list, a common type of record kept by Ancient Near Eastern (hereafter ANE) conquerors, the text notes that “these are the kings of the land, whom the sons of Israel killed, and whose land they possessed” (Josh 12:1). For the biblical writer of Joshua, the smiting of a king is inextricably bound to the acquisition and possession of his land. Should the writer of Judges be expected to depart from this standard? Surely the territorial land controlled by Hazor was the prize that Israel won, and it could not have been acquired without “military action against Hazor itself.”Thus Wood is exactly correct when stating, “The destruction of Jabin implies the destruction of his capital city Hazor,”[22] unless one were to theorize that the Israelites somehow frightened the entire city’s population into fleeing in panic, never to return. Undoubtedly, Hoffmeier’s aversion to this reality is due to his need to reconcile the archaeological remains at Hazor with the late-Exodus theory, since a destruction under Deborah and Barak would require the archaeology of Hazor to reveal two later destructions—one at the end of the Late Bronze Age, and a subsequent one before the first Israelite occupation—if this theory were to remain credible. Yet as the spade has shown, Hazor—after the destruction of the final Bronze Age city in a massive conflagration—remained completely abandoned until the initial Israelite settlement of the 12th century BC.As for the destruction under Joshua, Josh 11:11 clearly states that “he [Joshua] burned the city [of Hazor] with fire.” Most archaeologists who accept the historicity of the biblical account thus link the massive conflagration of the final Late Bronze Age city of Hazor to the fiery destruction accomplished under Joshua. Moreover, they commonly connect the later story of the seemingly independent defeat of Hazor’s King Jabin, which is recorded in Judges 4, to the destruction described in Joshua 11. Yadin betrays his commitment to this conclusion when he notes that “[t]he narrative in the Book of Joshua is therefore the true historical nucleus, while the mention of Jabin in Judges 4 must have been a later editorial interpolation.”[23] Therefore, at least according to Hazor’s principal excavator, only one Israelite destruction by fire is commonly theorized.[24]However, the picture painted in the biblical text does not allow for such a link between the great conflagration described in Joshua 11 and the destruction of the Late Bronze IIB (ca. 1300–1200 BC) city of Hazor. As biblical chronologist Rodger Young firmly established, 1446 BC is the correct year of the Exodus,[25] and as the present writer demonstrated elsewhere, the Exodus can be dated even more precisely to 25 April, 1446 BC.[26] Thus, the conquest of the Promised Land began in 1406 BC, 40 years after the Exodus (Num 32:13).III. TEXTUAL OBJECTIONS TO JOSHUA 11 AND JUDGES 4 DESCRIBING THE SAME ATTACK1. The Lengthy Gap between Narratives. The first textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 describe the same attack is that a large and undeniable gap in time separates the two narratives. The destruction of Hazor under Joshua transpired in ca. 1400 BC, given that the conquest of Canaan—to the extent that it actually was carried out as divinely outlined—required six years to complete.[27] With this date secured, the account of Hazor’s demise in Judges 4 must be dated, even if only approximately, because unquestionably the dating of the period of the judges is one of the most intriguing challenges related to biblical chronology.To begin the determination of the dating, Joshua seemingly died in ca. 1384 BC, and the Israelites’ faithfulness to God extended only to the time of the deaths of the elders who survived him (Josh 24:29, 31).[28] Given that the exact survival-span of these faithful elders cannot be quantified precisely, this period will not be included in the measurement of time between Joshua’s death and the victory over Hazor’s king during the days of Deborah and Barak (Judg 4:24).[29] Assuming that the unfaithful, subsequent generation began immediately after the deaths of the elders of Joshua’s generation who outlived him, the first chronological reference is to eight years of oppression (Judg 3:8), followed by 40 years of rest (Judg 3:11).A second oppression, this one of 18 years (Judg 3:14), was followed by 80 years of rest (Judg 3:30). A third oppression and period of rest, related to Shamgar (Judg 3:31), is not documented as to its duration. This undefined number also may be ignored safely for the purpose of the present study. The final number necessary is 20 years (Judg 4:3) for the period of oppression under “Jabin, King of Canaan, who reigned in Hazor” (Judg 4:1). When all of these numbers are added, the total comes to 166 years. The imprecision of this length of time, already obvious from the above discussion, is further complicated by how the required length of the period of the judges—which totals 341 years, if using Joshua’s death (ca. 1384 BC) for its inception, and the conservative date of ca. 1043 BC for the start of Saul’s reign—does not match evenly with the 410 years derived when adding together all of the years of oppression and rest that transpired throughout the narrative of Judges.[30]This apparent contradiction is resolved simply by understanding that the oppressions and periods of rest, which transpired throughout Israel and at various times, did not run consecutively but concurrently (i.e. with unspecified overlaps).[31] However, another problem arises: the 166 years must be both lengthened by the undefined years of the faithful generation that survived Joshua and by Shamgar’s judgeship, and shortened by the unspecified overlapping of the judgeships. Assuming that the adjustment for the overlapping of the judgeships is somewhat lengthier, 150 years may be used as a rough number for the time between Joshua’s death and the events of Judges 4. This would mean that the latter event occurred in ca. 1234 BC, which matches well with Yadin’s dating of the destruction of the final Bronze Age city. Because the Hazor of Joshua 11 was destroyed in ca. 1400 BC, in this scenario the difference between the two destructions of Hazor would be ca. 166 years.[32] Thus with such a lengthy interval between the events of these two narratives, the demises of Hazor in Joshua 11 and Judges 4 are chronologically far too distant from one another to be fused into a single event.2. The Identification of “Jabin” as a Dynastic Title. The second textual objection to the theory that Joshua 11 and Judges 4 record the same attack on Hazor is that the name “Jabin, King of Hazor” in these independent narratives does not refer to the same king. Yadin asks, “If Joshua, who lived before Deborah, had already destroyed Hazor and killed Jabin, how is it possible that (at least) several decades later, Jabin was still alive and his commander in chief engaged in battle as far away from
Hazor as the valley of Megiddo?
Rosetta Stone Chinese
Hazor as the valley of Megiddo?
Rosetta Stone Chinese
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