Judgment Studies

Mene in Daniel 6   Judgment in Cuneiform, Daniel and the Ancient Near East

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

27 December  2011

           Niniveh is the origin of an enormous library that contained texts that spanned centuries before and after Ashurbanipal (650 BCE). Even texts of Nebuchadnezzar II were found at Niniveh: K1661, K1682, K1683, K1684, K1685, K1686, K1687, K1688, 1693, 1694, 2799, 3423. Texts from the time of Nabonidus are K1689 with duplicates K1690, K1691, K1692. These texts are all in the British Museum. Ashurbanipal reigned between 668-625 BCE. Nabonidus reigned between 555-539 BCE. Some texts from the time of the prophet Samuel in the Bible, namely of Tiglath-Pilezer I, around 1098-1081 BCE, were also found (e.g. K1621, K1624, K1625, K1627, K1628, K1629, K1630, K1631, K1740, K1803, K1804). Stephen Langdon explained in his 1913 book on liturgies that the Sumerian liturgies that he presented in that year are all from Niniveh and none are predating the time of the Kassites (1595-1155 BCE, the date given by John Brinkman in his dissertation on the Kassites 1976: vii). The Kassites were in control of Babylon.

           One gets an idea of the stretch of the lifespan of the Niniveh library. Niniveh was excavated after 1848 and by the time Stephen Langdon published his books and discussed some texts (1875), many texts were already published. The discovery of Niniveh library was revolutionary for Old Testament and biblical scholarship, in particular mentioned here. The comparisons with biblical phraseology led scholars to a delusion of parallelomania, a disease to read everything from Babylon into the Bible. Assyriologist after Assyriologist and scholar after scholar fell into the same trap. What they all overlooked, is the presence of thousands of Jews deported there after 723 BCE and later again after 605 BCE, 597 BCE and 586 BCE. Old Testament concepts, themes, phraseology, from Genesis to Daniel, Jeremiah and Ezechiel, is bound to be present at Niniveh for inculturation works two directions, not only in one direction. This important anthropological-sociological phenomenon was overlooked by all these scholars like Hugo Radau, Herman Gunkel et al (others before and after and even unto our own day!) on their descriptions of the finds. Hugo Radau wrote a book to systematically claim that anything in Genesis 1 was actually copied or reworked from a Babylonian precursor. Unless one can prove that Israelites and the book of Moses were not in Ashur and Niniveh since 723 BCE and in Babylon since 605 BCE, 597 BCE and 586 BCE, there is no point in getting excited in cuneiform similarities with the Old Testament text. Even the seventh-day Sabbath existed on cuneiform texts dating to the days of Nabonidus, Cyrus and Cambyses. No less than 30 of these texts exist at Yale Babylonian Collection and at the Louvre in France. Methodologically, Radau et al is placing the cart before the horse: Moses wrote Genesis in 1490-1450 BCE and the texts cited for the Flood, creation, Fall of Man, Rebellion in Heaven cuneiform texts, are all dating from the library of Ashurbanipal at Niniveh in 650 BCE. This is a serious error by scholars.

           From the library of Niniveh came many cuneiform texts that one can call Word-lists, dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, bilingual word-lists, etymological dictionaries. We have already discussed the etymology of the word Sabbath in cuneiform, on http://www.egw.org at VAN WYK NOTE. Other examples of synonymous word-lists are: K2020, K2036, K2040, K3291, K3410, K3411. Dictionaries did not originate at Niniveh. Ever since the Tower of Babel miracle of diversity in languages in 2523 BCE, or shortly after, dictionaries were necessary to communicate. One finds them at ancient Ebla also. The Hittites also had lexical texts (e.g. CTH 310-320). This is in the times of the Judges of the Bible. We find the same tendency for example in the book of Job by Moses that there are lists of astronomy in Job 38:4,7, 22, 25, 31, 39; of Zoology in Job 39:1, 5, 9, 13, 19, 26, 27. Animals also in Job 40:15 and Job 41:1.

           There is a word-list published by Stephen Langdon in 1917 coming from the library of Nippur, thus earlier than Niniveh, mentioning judgment, judge, and similar legal jargon. What we learn from the word-list which has Sumerian in the left column and Akkadian in the right column, is that the word used by the angel’s hand in Belshazzar’s banquet on the wall, mene, mene is a legal term used in judgment and in the court by the judge. The Akkadian word appeared in the Wordlist of PBS4595 as manu in line 16 of column II, which means “counted” (Stephen Langdon, Sumerian Grammatical Texts in University of Pennsylvania, The University Museum, Publications of the Babylonian Section, vol. XII no. 1 [Philadelphia: Published by the University Museum, 1917], 30-31 and plate 18, only the left column in Sumerian though).

           The name of Daniel means “my God is judge”. In line 17 appears the Akkadian word dinu meaning “judgment” and in line 18 the word daianu meaning “judge”.

           In line 24 we learn in the Akkadian column II that a witness is called šibu. There are different kinds of witnesses: the king’s witness; witness of the city; witness of the judge; their witnesses. The role of witnesses to the crime and witnesses to the jurisprudence procedures are part of the concept of mene, mene tekel ufarsin that was written about Belshazzar. In Daniel 7 a court-scene is outlined in the vision when the Ancient of Days sat and one like the Son of Man appeared before him. The Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven not to the earth but to the Ancient of Days, thus in heaven (Daniel 7:13). These are the cloud of witnesses that the New Testament also understood correctly. A court is not only in front of a despot, king, judge or an one-man show. It is a corporate action like in a theater with an audience watching, weighing, deciding, agreeing, confirming. That is what we call in Daniel 7 the heavenly judgment scene. 

           The last aspect of a proper judicial system is the penal aspect or police system. In the text one can see it with the term rabisu, watchman. There is a watchman for the king, the judge, the city and the people. The concept of the executive judgment in the Scriptures, or Hell, is the police system of the penal process of God’s judgment.

PBS 4595 translated by Stephen Langdon lines 15-34

COLUMN  I                                         COLUMN  II

SUMERIAN                                           AKKADIAN