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En
ū
ma Elish
and Priestly Mimesis:Elite Emulation in Nascent Judaism
kenton l.sparks
ksparks@eastern.eduEastern University, St. Davids, PA 19312
Human development depends on our tacit inclination to imitate the culturalpatternsmodeledbyothers.Thoughthismimeticbehaviorisobviouswhenweareyoung, the tendency to replicate our neighbor’s conduct is very strong and contin-ues throughout our lifetime. In fact, we could accurately say that mimesis is anessential ingredient in the human experience. Given that tacit imitation plays sucha vital role in the development of human persons, it cannot be a surprise that moreexplicit, intentionalacts ofimitationare also important factors inthe developmentand perpetuation of human culture. I have in mind a phenomenon known in thetechnical literature as
elite emulation
.Elite emulation often appears in colonial or imperial contexts, when periph-eral social groups are oppressed and threatened, or at least feel threatened, by alargersocialcore.
1
Inthesecases,itiscommonforperipheralculturestoseeklegit-
This study was originally presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Litera-ture in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2004. I am very grateful for the thoughtful remarks of my colleagues in the Pentateuch Section, most especially for those offered by Victor Hurowitz(BenGurionUniversity),DavidWright(BrandeisUniversity)andJimWatts(SyracuseUniversity).
1
On elite emulation, see Carolyn R. Higginbotham,
Egyptianization and Elite Emulation inRamessidePalestine: Governanceand Accommodation on theImperial Periphery
(CultureandHis-tory of the Ancient Near East 2; Leiden: Brill, 2000). As for the literature on postcolonial theory,it is vast and always growing. For good introductions to the issue as it relates to both ancient andmodern cultures, see Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds.,
The Empire WritesBack: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
(New Accents; London: Routledge, 1989);eidem,
Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies
(Key Concepts; London: Routledge, 1998); PeterChilds and R. J. Patrick Williams, eds.,
Introduction to Post-Colonial Theory
(New York: Prentice-Hall, 1997); S. N. Eisenstat, “Observations and Queries about Sociological Aspects of Imperial-ismintheAncientWorld,”in
Power and Propaganda: A Symposiumon Ancient Empires
(ed.M.T.Larsen; Mesopotamia 7; Copenhagen: Akademisk, 1979), 21-33; K. Ekholm and J. Friedman,“Capital Imperialism and Exploitation in Ancient World Systems, in
Power and Propaganda
, 41-59; Immanuel Wallerstein,
The Modern World System,
vol. 1,
Capitalist Agriculture and the Ori- gins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century
(New York: Academic, 1974).
 JBL 126, no. 4 (2007): 625–648
625
 
imacybysymbolicallyimitatingtheprestigiousculturethatdominatesthem.Doingso is always an exercise in similarity and alterity, in seeking both to imitate and todifferentiate oneself from “the other.”
2
The Cuna natives of Panama are a notableand interesting success in this regard, having preserved their distinctive identity into the twenty-first century in the face of European colonialism.
3
A powerfulimageoftheirmimeticresponsetocolonialismisfoundinCunadress:themenareinclined to wear European attire with coats and ties, while the women wear tradi-tional dress, with their nose-rings, vivid and strikingly beautiful blouses, and headcoverings. Native and foreign imagery are here juxtaposed in a powerful mecha-nism of cultural survival. What I would like to explore in this article is a similarexpression of elite emulationfound in the Hebrew Bible, specifically in the Priestly material of the Pentateuch.On this nearly everyone will agree. One of the Priestly Writer’s most impor-tant textual interlocutors was the non-P material in the Pentateuch. This opinionis commonly held both by those who view P as supplemental and by those who view it as an originally independent composition. I have no interest in challengingthisverysensibleconsensus,butIbelievethatP’sintertextualrelationshipsaremorediverse and complex. This is one in a series of articles in which I will present evi-dence for the close relationship that obtained between the Hebrew Priestly Writerandthe literarytraditionsofMesopotamia. Iwill argue that the PriestlyWriter wasan avid student of ancient texts and that his anthology of Israelite tradition wasdeliberatelyshapedtofollowpatternsandmotifsfoundinMesopotamianliterature.To my mind, elite emulation provides the best explanation for this feature in thePriestly literature.Thepresentarticlefocusesonanexampleofthismimeticphenomenondrawnfrom P’s adaptation of the Babylonian
Ak
ī 
tu
festival. I am particularly interested inthe way that P has used the myth recited during the festival,
En
ū
ma Elish
, and alsocertainritualsusedinconjunctionwiththatmyth.Myargumentwillproceedasfol-lows. First, I will offer a few comments about the special problems and challengesthat inhere in evaluations of intertextuality. My aim will not be to resolve thoseproblems, which are in some respects intractable, but mainly to highlight them forpurposes of clarity. Second, I will adduce evidence to support the conclusion thatimportant aspects of P’s narrative, and also some of its rituals, were designed tomimic traditions from Mesopotamia, especially from the
Ak
ī 
tu
and
En
ū
ma Elish
.
2
The classic study of mimetic phenomena in human culture is still Erich Auerbach,
Mime-sis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
(Princeton: Princeton University Press,1953). Contemporary bibliography on the topic is immense. Rebecca Moore Howard of SyracuseUniversity providesanup-to-date bibliography at http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Bibs/Imitation.htm.
3
This example is from Michael T. Taussig,
Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of theSenses
(New York: Routledge, 1993). Taussig’s anthropological study of the Cuna provides a use-ful and practical introduction to the complexities and social dynamics of cultural mimesis.
626
Journal of Biblical Literature
126, no. 4 (2007)
 
Iwillthenconcludemydiscussionbyexploringtheimplicationsofmyworkforourunderstanding of P, giving special attention to the still-debated question of whenand to whom it was written.
I.The Problem of Intertextuality
Whether one embraces the radical deconstruction of Jacques Derrida or thetamerpostmodernismofHans-GeorgGadamer,thereisgeneralagreementamongtheoriststhatalltextsareintertextual,thatwrittenwordsalwaysdrawontheprece-dent of earlier discourse and then become the fodder for future discourse.
4
Thatmuch is clear. But it would be reductionistic to leave things at that, as though therewere no possibledifferencesbetweenthe unconsciousaping ofinheriteddiscourseand self-conscious efforts to take up that discourse and make explicit uses of it. Itwould be very significant if we could determine, for instance, that the Priestly tra-ditions of the Pentateuch were intentionally shaped to compete with the traditionsof Mesopotamia. Evidence confirming this would help us to understand better notonly certain features in the biblical literature itself but also something more of therich social context that gave rise to it.Nowthepresentarticleheadsinpreciselythisdirection,insofarasitarguesfora close literary relationship between the Priestly Pentateuch and Mesopotamiantradition. But making an argument of this kind is fraught with difficulties. I can-notciteverbatimquotationsofonetextbyanother—ofMesopotamiantextsbyP—but onlyclose similarities that require bothdescriptions andexplanations. Suitabledescriptions of the intertextual relationship might include “allusion,” “imitation,”“influence,” and “echo,” with the added dimension of deciding whether the weakertextuallinks—theso-calledechoes—aredeliberateorunconscious.
5
Iwouldliketoskirt the thorny detail of defining these terms by laying out the central claim of my study: that in some important respects, the Priestly Pentateuch is what GérardGenette has called a “mimotext,” which imitates specific Mesopotamian textual
4
Some scholars employ the term “intertextuality” in a general sense and others more nar-rowly. In its restricted sense, intertextuality may refer only to those instances in which one textexplicitly quotes from or alludes to another text (so Genette), whereas its general sense has to dowith a text’s relationship to all other discourse, whether written or verbal, obvious or concealed(so Elam). Here I intend the more general sense of the term. For discussion, see Gérard Genette,
Palimpsests:LiteratureintheSecondDegree
(Lincoln/London:UniversityofNebraskaPress,1997),1–7; Helen R. Elam, “Intertextuality,”
New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
(ed. A.Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 620–22.
5
My list of possibilities is borrowed from Benjamin Sommer, but my approach to the mat-ter is very different from what he suggests in his valuable discussion of intertextuality. See Ben- jamin D. Sommer,
A Prophet Reads Scripture: Allusion in Isaiah 40–66 
(Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1998), 6–31.
Sparks:
En
ū
ma Elish
and Priestly Mimesis
627
of 00

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