THE BIBLICAL CANON IN

COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Scripture in Context IV

Edited by

K. Lawson Younger, Jr.

William W. Hallo
Bernard F. Batto

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies

Volume 11

The Edwin Mellen Press

Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Biblical canon in comparativeby K. Utwson

Youn^ger^, Wiamure .^o,. 4) (AncientNear Eastern
textsandstudiesjv.il)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-7734-9648-3
1. Bible. O.T.-Criticism, interpretation, etc.-Congresses.
2. Bible-Canon-Congresses. 3. Middle East—Religious life and
customs-Congresses. I. Batto, Bernard F. II. Hallo, William W.
III. Younger, K. Lawson. IV. Series. V. Series: Ancient Near
Eastern texts and studies ; v. 11.
BS1192.B438 1991
221.6-dc20 91-28513
CIP

This is volume 11 in the continuing series

Ancient Near Eastern Texts and Studies
Volume 11 ISBN 0-7734-9648-3
ANETS Series ISBN 0-88946-085-X

A CIP catalog record for this book

is available from the British Library.

Copyright ® 1991 The Edwin Mellen Press

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 THE CONCEPT OF CANONICITY IN CUNEIFORM AND
BIBLICAL LITERATURE: A COMPARATIVE APPRAISAL

William W. Hallo'

Before we can speak of canonicity, we need a working definition of the concept

of canon. There are probably as many definitions as there are authorities on the
subject. Perhaps the most restrictive one is that of the Oxford English Dictionary,
which confines the term to "the collection or list of books of the Bible accepted
by the Christian church as genuine and inspired" or, in transferred meaning, "any
set of sacred books." A broader definition is offered by Webster’s, where canon
describes not only "a collection or authoritative list of books accepted as holy
scripture" but also "an accepted or sanctioned list of books (established in the
canon of literature)" or, finally, "the authentic works of a writer ([e.g.] the
Chaucer canon)." Both kinds of definition, the narrowly ecclesiastic and the
broadly literary one, agree in opposing "canonical" to "apocryphal."2
The religious connotation of the term probably goes back no further than about
the fourth century ce, when it was first applied to the New Testament.3 It has
long been fashionable to apply it similarly to the Hebrew Bible, but a new study
of the evidence by Daniel J. Silver reminds us that religious reverence for the
biblical text was a postbiblical phenomenon and slow to emerge even in the rab­
binic period. Silver largely avoids the term canon altogether, preferring to speak
instead of scripture (not Scripture), which he defines as "a volume or collection
of writings held by a particular community to be divinely inspired and, therefore,
authoritative. "4
The earlier study of the rabbinic evidence by Sid. Z. Leiman5 showed that the
concept of canonicity, if not the term itself, has enjoyed a much wider application
within Judaism. Not only the Hebrew Bible, but also such postbiblical classics
as the Scroll of Fasts (Megillat Ta'anit), the Mishnah, and eventually the entire
Talmud were accepted as authoritative and binding, to be observed, believed,
studied, and expounded.6 In the rabbinic view, all divinely inspired literature is
canonical, but not all canonical literature is inspired. What Leiman calls inspired
canonical literature is what rabbinic terminology called the Written Law, or
Written Torah, while his "uninspired canonical literature" is, in effect the Oral
 Scripture in Context IV
2
n 1 Torah The functional equivalence of Torah and Canon was recog.
Law, or Oral Sanders.
nized most explicitly J’ ’ over Esther, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of
As Leiman shows t e and jn any caS£ werg
Songs were more: theo g (he Wrjt(cn Torah ended up with t
tied in favor of their i? ■ correspond t0 thesei Leiman identifies up to
four canonical boo s. mentioned in the Bible.'" These non-canonical
twenty-""^ers> inc)uding the Aramaic Targumim, the Gos-

Z and Ben Sira survive. Even within the canon of inspired texts, the Rabbis
? •’ h a a^rM-s of canonicity, with the Pentateuch having more authority
toTeProphets or Writings.” In post-talmudic (medieval) times, the Prophets
were in turn assigned a higher degree of authority than the Writings.
These observations by Leiman regarding the Written Law can also usefully be
applied to the Oral Law. Traditions which, while not included in the Mishnah,
were nevertheless deemed worthy of preserving, were called beraitot in Aramaic
(equivalent to hisdnot in Hebrew) and quoted widely in both Talmudim, though
usually enjoying less authority than the comparable Mishnah, if it existed. Col­
lections of such beraitot were added to the canon. One of them, the Tosefta,
paralleled the Mishnah in structure and content, but went far beyond it in its
explicitness and in its citation of biblical proof texts. In the words of Jacob
Neusner, the translator of the Tosefta, "Mishnah is the trellis, Tosefta the
vine."'3 Thus Leiman’s definition of canonicity is broad enough to encompass
various degrees of authority, with the Pentateuch enjoying a higher status than the
rest of the Bible, and the Mishnah generally prevailing over the Tosefta and other
beraitot.
But even this broader definition of canon is still more specifically religious in
its connotation than the original sense of the term. For the Greek word KavrilV
was first applied to literature by the scholars of the famous library and museum
of Alexandria in the third century bce. The great librarians such as Zenodotus,
Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodus'4 not only used the plural KOlVOVEi; "for
collections of the old Greek authors ... as being models of excellence, cto-
Z’ . a ^.S° established “ entire "Alexandrian Canon"16 as "the authorita-
certain principles o7?rdL°?”he °f ‘he PaSt’ aCC°rd'ng “
one, which Vsnired'the S^?3’-11 th'S model> rather than the later Christian
add, it was the^still later Mosi™ * canonization-18 (Similarly, we might
Tiberian Masoretes). And Wl"Ch insPired the related activit? of 016
ordering of the canon a- he Alexandrian and the rabbinic impulse to the
or mg to Sarna, owed much to the needs of storage and
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
3

retrieval in a library setting. Leiman disputes this notion, arguing that the
rabbinic impulse came rather from the equally practical question of the order in
which to inscribe two or more biblical books on a single scroll.1’ And the
whole subject of book-scrolls. Bible-scrolls and the related question of book size
has been a continuing pre-occupation of Menahem Haran in recent studies.20
But we may follow Sama in another regard, namely that both traditions ulti­
mately derive from Mesopotamian precedent. And since he bases himself on my
own earlier findings, 1 will follow him in turn in his definition of canonization,
which he describes in terms of four discrete manifestations, as follows: (1) "the
emergence of a recognized corpus of classical literature" (2) "the tendency to
produce a standardized text" (3) "a fixed arrangement of content" and (4) "an
established sequence in which the works were to be read or studied."21 This is
canonization "in the secular sense of the word" — precisely the way it has most
often been used in discussing the Mesopotamian evidence, to which I may now
at last turn.
In a recent thumbnail sketch of the history of the question by Miguel Civil,22
the first systematic application of the concept of canonization to cuneiform lexical
and literary texts is attributed to Benno Landsberger (1933)23 and his pupils.
Among the latter Civil lists L. MatouS (1933), W. von Soden (1936) and H. S.
Schuster (1938), although the last uses the concept only casually.21 He might
have begun the list with A. Falkenstein, who in his 1931 dissertation already
defined canonization as "a normatively valid sequence both of the individual
incantations with respect to each other, and of the series [we could say books]
composed of successive tablets [we could say chapters]."25
But it was W. G. Lambert who first gave the concept wider currency within
Assyriology. In a 1957 article entitled "Ancestors, authors and canonicity"26 he
discussed, i.a., the colophon of a medical text which claimed to be composed in
the second year of Enlil-bani of Isin (ca. 1859 bce) "according to the old sages
from before the flood" (Sa pi apkalle labiruti Sa lam abubi), and that of a
hemerology prepared in the time of NazimaruttaS of the Kassite dynasty (ca.
1307-1282 bce) "according to the seven s[ages],” and concluded: "There is a
Babylonian conception which is implicit in the colophons just cited and which is
stated plainly by Berossus: that the sum of the revealed knowledge was given
once and for all by the antediluvian sages.27 This is a remarkable parallel to the
rabbinic view that God’s revelation in its entirety is contained in the Torah.
Lambert’s concept of canonicity is still a severely restricted one. It involves
"systematic selection of literary works" and "a conscious attempt to produce au­
thoritative editions of works which were passed on. He sees no suggestion
of either activity in the explicit native statements on the subject, and as far as the
 Scripture in Context IV
4
d result is concerned, while "much Akkadian literature
implicit evidence of the en receplus, - other compositions did
did assume a fixed form, ,nteresting »The Gilgamesh Epic never reached
not. The exceptions cit circulated in several variant official edi-
a canonical form, and Enuma An
tions-"M u r^mesh Epic is concerned, this most famous of cuneiform
As far as the Gig unrivaIled illustration not only of the final
compositions p but of the evolution of such a text from its
fixauon o, a The evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic has been traced in
allZsTble detail by Jeffrey H. Tigay in what was originally his Yale disserta-
tion’■ and the implications of this and other ancient Near Eastern examples have
been considered by Tigay and others in his new volume on Empirical Models for
Biblical Criticism32 Suffice it to say that, leaving aside such peripheral
developments as translations or reflexes of Gilgamesh in Hurrian and Hittite,”
we can identify no less than four discrete stages in the evolution of the Epic,34
beginning with the separate Sumerian episodic compositions (some of them — like
"Gilgamesh and the Land of the Living" — themselves tradited in two distinct
recensions, one longer and the other shorter),35 that probably originated in neo­
Sumerian times (ca. twenty-first century bce), continuing with an Akkadian adap­
tation of Old Babylonian date (ca. eighteenth century bce) which was not a mere
translation from the Sumerian, and which may or may not have retained the epi­
sodic character of the Sumerian,36 and expanding in a third stage37 to what by
now was indubitably a continuous, unitary epic, with a unifying thread or theme,
complete in eleven tablets or chapters, augmented over the Old Babylonian recen­
sion by a prologue of twenty-six lines,38 including five that recurred verbatim
at the end of the eleventh tablet and thus provided a frame of sorts for the whole
composition, and no doubt by other, less obvious and, some might say, less felici­
tous expansions, traditionally assigned to Sin-liqi-unninni, an exorcist (masmas-
su) of the Kassite period. The final stage, sometimes loosely alluded to as the
anonic version, is the twelve-tablet recension best known from copies in the
exLnt7hnan h?TieS Of the seventh century but conceivably of older date, and
made un enT^ "!CaSSlte” recension by the addition41 i.a. of a twelfth tablet
mesh episodes^ th ** translatlon of the second half of one of the Gilga-
essentiaUv fdentiJr “T S™erian stage' This flnal "canonical" version is
or provincial libraries !XemplarS now known> whether from Nineveh, Assur
diverse Babylonian lihraC \ Ultan Tepe ne0‘Assyrian times, or from the
times.42 The verv fact COntinue<i int° Hellenistic or even Parthian
e survival of these exemplars and their uniformity
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
5

argues persuasively it circumstantially for just such a process of a selection and

authoritative edition as Lambert requires of a true canon.43
The case of Enuma Anu Enlil is also instructive, if complex. Like most of the
mantic texts, the astrological omens stand out in the cuneiform corpus by the
thoroughness of their systematization. They are the end-product of a long and
deliberate critical effort which produced the ancient equivalent of tables of con­
tents, critical apparatus, commentaries and other elements of a scholarly and bib­
liographic apparatus. The mere survival of "several variant official editions" is
thus not necessarily an argument against their "canonical" status, as Lambert
held. But he has been followed closely in this regard by the specialists in
cuneiform astronomy themselves, most notably and most recently, Francesca
Rochberg-Halton. In two major studies, she considered, first "Canonicity in
cuneiform texts"44 in general and then the more specific application of the con­
cept to "the assumed 29th ahu [i.e., extraneous, non-canonical] tablet of Enuma
Anu Enlil.1,45 For Rochberg-Halton, the Jewish (and Christian) concept of ca­
nonicity implied "divine authority, the morally binding character of the texts, and
its fixed . . . nature"46 — hardly the hallmarks of the Akkadian canon. The only
shared features between the latter and the biblical canons are "text stability and
fixed sequence of tablets within a series."47 On this narrow basis, only the
series themselves (Akk. iskaru) are "our presumed ‘canonical texts’, or official
editions." The "non-canonical" literary texts include those described as "extrane­
ous" (ahu), orally transmitted (fa pi ummanT), commentaries (mukallimtu), ex­
planatory word lists (satu), excerpts (liqtu), "and other forms of scholia"48 —
presumably including catalogues of literary texts (which, themselves, acquired a
certain fixity).49
Concentrating on the "extraneous" texts, Rochberg-Halton noted that these are
attested for the following classes of literature:50 divination (celestial, terrestrial,
physiognomic, teratological); menologies (iqqur ipuf); medical prescriptions
(Hunger, Kolophone 329); lexicography (MSL 14:168) and lamentations
(4R53:34f = catalogue of balag’s);51 they are contrasted not only with the
(official) series (ifkaru) but with texts described as "good" (damqu) (ABL 453
rev. 14 and 13:25). Then she examined one of the few available pairs of "good"
and "extraneous" recensions, namely the 15th - 22nd chapter of the astronomical
omen series and the "assumed 29th" chapter of its "extraneous" counterpart. She
found very little overlap between the two, so that the extraneous "alju material
constitutes a genuinely separate tradition from that of the neo-Assyrian standard
series (ifkaru).”52 What can be said is that the "extraneous" material is just as
well organized and standardized as the "good" recension. Sometimes entries from
the "extraneous" series could even be inserted into the "good" series.53 In short,
 Scripture in Context IV
6

She rejects the recognized."

with "canonical' and e Hardly! If the Jewish (or Christian) canon is
Is this the end of the ma |iterature and if the cuneiform canon is
narrowly defined as divm1 recensions of traditional series, then indeed there
narrowly defined as the g concepts. But as we have seen, the rabbinic
is little in common betwcc broader, and I have long proposed a cor-
definitionoftheJewi of (he cuneiform canon, based on the literary
responding^ broa er theologica] one. This is not to admit, however,
sense of the term rath er th nits th g
‘hat j have been u mg the term jn tQ
^record s^gM. As early as 1958,1 announced, somewhat brashly: "I use the
terms archival, monumental, and canonical to distinguish the three major cate­
gories of the cuneiform literature [I would now say: documentation] of Meso­
potamia and regard the reconstruction of the cuneiform archives, monuments, and
canons as three of the main tasks of humanistic research."56 In 1961, I enlarged
on this view in an encyclopedia article that could hardly have caught the eye of
colleagues.57 But my programmatic article on "New viewpoints on cuneiform
literature" the following year58 had considerably more impact.59 Here I stress­
ed the fact "that many Akkadian works had assumed a fixed form by neo­
Assyrian times, and that their division into tablets, and in the case of longer
series into groups of tablets (pirsu) was fully standardized."60 And in 1968 I
expanded on this to define the criteria of canonicity as "an authoritative text, a
reasonably fixed number and sequence of individual compositions, and the
grouping of these compositions into recognizable books or subdivisions," and
suggested that at least some of these criteria were already met by the Sumerian
literary texts.61 I was hardly very far from Civil himself who, eleven years
later, wrote the criteria by which to define a [cuneiform] text as standard or
canonical are text stability and fixed sequence of tablets within a series"62
although he wishes to restrict the label of ‘canonical’ to those texts, transmitted
exc usively in writing, that were stabilized some time [but not much!] before the
t century in a form that lasted for over a millennium in Mesopotamia."63
nf iAY^°nCePu° canonicity was thus in line with views developed by the students
of sradual’fixar Clearly some of the ones which illustrate the processes
further merit of°h ° their se9llence most dramatically. It has the
suX by D o bp?gJr0Unded in the material itself. By contrast, a recent
syriologie erects a cat^ W' R°lllg the authoritative Reallexikon der As-
such major ge es asAkkadian "literature” which
genres as lextcal and other lists, medical, astronomical and all (other)
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
7

omen texts, ritual prescriptions and recipes.61 The exclusion is presumably

based on a subjective judgement of the aesthetic merit of the genres in question,
but ignores the audience for which it was intended and its tastes. The excluded
genres are in fact the largest, and to that extent apparently the most important
portions of what the late A. L. Oppenheim called "the stream of tradition,"
meaning by that what can loosely be termed the corpus of literary texts maintain­
ed, controlled, and carefully kept alive by a tradition served by successive genera­
tions of learned and well-trained scribes."65 Oppenheim’s "stream of tradition"
is in fact the functional equivalent of my category of "canonical texts" though by
and large he avoided that term, using "canonization" as equivalent to the "stan­
dardization of the written tradition."66
My category has the further merit of being clearly delimited from the other
categories of cuneiform documentation, the monumental and the archival. I de­
scribed and analyzed the monumental category in 1962 in an article67 which,
with some modifications,68 has won wide acceptance.69 I have dealt with the
archival category in other articles and books™ and helped to establish a whole
school of "archival research” at Yale.71 In my Ancient Near East: a History
(1971), I provided a broader forum for my views72 (esp. pp. 154-56), and I have
refined and reapplied them periodically since then, most notably in "The House
of Ur-meme,"73 in "Sumerian historiography,"74 and in "Notes from the
Babylonian Collection."75
While thus defining and analyzing the concept of canonicity in cuneiform litera­
ture, I was also developing the concept of a succession of discrete canons. I dis­
tinguished four of these in 1968,76 and defended this chronology more explicitly
in 1976, tying each canon to a major phase in the cultural and linguistic history
of Mesopotamia.77 Specifically, I argued for the successive appearance of an
Old Sumerian, neo-Sumerian, Akkadian, and bilingual (Sumero-Akkadian) canon.
I followed each through its progression from the creation of its individual com­
ponents, though their adaptation, to their final "canonization," and set each of
these stages in its presumed context in the cultural and political history of
Mesopotamia. Much the same could be done, no doubt, with the briefer histories
of other corpora of cuneiform literature, notably those in Hittite and Ugaritic.
Having thus defined and reviewed the concept of canonicity as this has de­
veloped in the field of Assyriology, and more particularly my own notions about
it, I owe you a characterization, however brief, of the phenomenon. Allowing
for such changes as are inevitable in the course of the one and half millennia or
more that separate the first canonization (ca. 1750 bce) from the last (ca. 250
bce), we can nevertheless detect some common distinctive features. I will sum-
 Scripture in Context IV
8
criteria of canonization already identified
marize these in the order of the
above.™ u , miled the "systematic selection of literary works," I Prefer
A. What Lambert ..emergence of a recognized corpus of classical lite-
to regard (with Sami ), was not or not only, a winnowing out from
nature" because works (hose intended for preservation but
XXtaTnot, the "elevation" of^on-literaiywrics.MtT'.StMus-
simple selection of certain literary texts for the curricu-
Thus, in addition to the s. ,
of the canon to at least three other sources, as
lum, we can trace the emergence
follows:
imitation of existing archival™ or monumental
(1) The copying or
texts.10
(2) The creation of lexical lists (and other "scholarly' texts such as
model contracts, model letters, and mathematical problems) by (a)
systematic retrieval and abstraction from existing literary and
archival texts, (b) their logical rearrangement according to certain
principles of taxonomy, and (c) their suppletion by additional entries
generated by analogy and other principles.8'
(3) Conversely, the occasional creation of literary texts reflecting the
lexical lists or grammatical paradigms, or designed to teach lexicon
and grammar.82
B. The "tendency to produce a standardized text" or what Lambert describes
as "a conscious attempt to produce authoritative editions of works which were
passed" and Civil as "text stability" was accomplished by the following five
means, among others:
(1) Arrangement of poetry and of scholarly texts in verses or lines
marked by dividing lines, item signs, or other rubrics.
(2) Counting of the resulting lines, or entries, with every tenth line
marked in the margin or in the caesura of poetic lines, and the total
g'™" -n ?e co'°Pl’on- Lines inadvertently omitted were often
added tn the margin or other blank spaces of the writing surface.”
(3) nrnn|S|nS ' 6 b<>dy tbe text w*'*c*1 identify variant readings,
Pronunciations, meanings of difficult words, etc M
(4) traditions SUCh SS '’StS °f extraneous readings, orally transmitted
Con s f ’ ' ntTieS’ and exPlanatOTy glossaries.88
(5)
collation s ZE'n S °f different (usua"y Babylonian) sites, and
tolerance for a C°Py against the original, combined with some
Assyrian) shes “Ver8enCeS betwee" “pies of different (usually
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature 9

A startling new discovery has now given us the native terminology for this pro­
cedure. According to I. L. Finkel, "sur.gibil (=za-ra-a) sabdtu effectively
represents the process of ‘canonisation’ so often discussed by Assyriologists; a
text is established from disparate sources to represent the standard version of the
composition. In the text in question, Finkel translated the native term as
authorized edition.' 8 It recurs in a medical catalogue published, as chance
would have it, in the same volume.”
C. What has been variously described as "a fixed arrangement of content"
(Sama) or a "fixed sequence of tablets within a series" (Civil) or "a reasonably
fixed number and sequence of individual compositions" (Hallo) can best be studi­
ed together with the fourth criterion of canonization, namely "the grouping of
these compositions into recognizable books or subdivisions" (Hallo) or "an estab­
lished sequence in which the works were to be read or studied" (Sama), since
both purposes were served by the same means, including the following four:
(1) Exercise texts which excerpt canonical texts in a fixed order, possi­
bly reflecting the procedures of the (advanced) scribal curriculum.
Such exercise texts, previously noted for Assur, Sippar(?), and
Ur,50 can also be attested at Nippur’1 and Babylon.92 Such texts
were known as im.gid.da or im.li.gl.in in Sumerian and imgiddu,
Uginnu or later gittu in Akkadian.’3
(2) Miniature master copies of whole collections of Sumerian literary
texts, or what Wilcke has described as "Sammeltafel(n) im Postkar-
tenformat." On the basis of the latest finds from Old Babylonian
Isin, one such tablet contained some 770 lines (many of the lines
abbreviated!) constituting five entire compositions arranged in the
exact same sequence as they are entered, by title (i.e., incipit), in
two Old Babylonian literary catalogues, namely Nos. 6-10. In all
probability, a similar "postcard" existed for Nos. 1-5 with a total of
some 640 lines.94
(3) Colophons with such data as number of lines (above), date of the
exemplar, its scribe, and its owner.95 In addition, the later colo­
phons often include catchlines ("explicits"), i.e., the incipit of the
next tablet in the series or the next series in the canon. The latter
fact, which is particularly instructive for our inquiry, was first
pointed out by Landsberger,96 then noted by myself,97 and more
recently by Civil, who also observed the convergence of this evi­
dence with that of some of the catalogues, and took the practice
back to Old Babylonian times.” Many new instances can be added
to illustrate the point by now.99
(4) Catalogues with incipits of successive tablets (= chapters) in series
(= books), or of successive series in the canon. Some catalogues
 Scripture in Context IV
10
• n„ identify authors, an item of information notably ]acki
additionally id |(X/ ca(alogues themselves begin to assume a
r°'d or “canonical” form, that is, they list compositions in a fixed
" o ™ Similarly, the newly recovered accession lists" of the
library of Assurbanipal tend to list canonical senes in the same
order.11’2
all twelve technical features have thus been identified as contributing to the
cation textual fixation, and sequential ordering of cune.form literary texts, and
creation, w • as a cuneiform canon, or as a succession of cunei-
as?ustifying their d“crjPb™
Many of these features could also, mutatis mutandis, be said to
form canons. I— „Lh , canon in its masoretic shape, as well. What distinguishes
characterize the Jewish
larticular techniques of standardization employed, nor is it the
degr™XOhXP»d"he"nce authority, nor yet of divine inspiration and hence
Sy attached to each but rather the endpoint of the evolutionary process al
which each arrived.
In the Jewish as in the Christian experience, the process went all the way.
The biblical canon was closed and eventually this was true as well of Mishnah
and Talmud - both Talmudim. The Akkadian canon kept growing, as is illustrat­
ed by the astronomical omina, which were in part recorded from new observa­
tions on wax tablets allowing for alteration, or from the astronomical diary texts
which, beginning probably in 747 bce, were (as I think) intended to provide a
new database to replace the older astrology altogether.103 But such diaries were
still being created eight centuries later, when cuneiform writing ceased altogether
and the arts of the "Chaldeans" or diviners fell into disuse.104 And similarly,
all earlier canons fell victim to the destruction of the Mesopotamian cultures that
produced them before they had achieved fully canonical shape — i.e., the form of
a single compendium that included all "canonical" texts and excluded all others.
Parenthetically, it is an irony of modem scholarship that Assyriologists have been
striving for a century to finish this unfinished task, to produce such a final
cuneiform canon while, paradoxically, biblicists have been striving for over two
centuries (ever since Jean Astruc in 1753105) to break down the biblical canon
into its hypothetical documents. But that is an aside. What counts is that by the
broad definition, both cuneiform and biblical literature arose out of a wider
o text which also produced (and bequeathed to modem rediscovery) other kinds
(.vipn'11611,eV'^enCe best descr>bed, in the cuneiform case (where it is vastly more
limited^ 35 aiChlVal and monumental, in the biblical case (where it is extremely
limited) as occasional and monumental.106
scribed^TXonteVatefhenfS’ b°th CUneiform and biblical literature can bede-
vanomcal - the former authoritative by virtue of its relative fixabon
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
11

and its inclusion, in a fixed sequence, in the curriculum of the scribal schools at-
f 1
tached to temple or palace, ■ latter authoritative by virtue of its being studied
the
in the schools^ expounded in public, and made the basis for legislationand his-
toriography. Both enjoyed a lengthy history of transmission, but with significant
differences. The Mesopotamian environment probably provided a greater level
of literacy, a more durable writing medium, and a lesser reliance on oral trans­
mission (probably, indeed, a lower level of ability to memorize) than the Israelite
environment. Hence the processes of canonization may have been slower and less
effective in Mesopotamia in the sense that older or divergent textual traditions
were less readily eliminated.107 But both traditions ultimately evolved mechan­
isms for dealing with such divergent traditions as were found worthy of retention.
In the Jewish tradition, the concept of Torah grew to embrace all of the canon,
but the Written Torah was considered more inspired than the Oral Torah, and
within the Written Torah, the Torah proper, or the Pentateuch, took precedence
over the prophets and these, ultimately, over the Hagiographa; within the oral
law, the Mishnah enjoyed a comparable precedence over the Tosefta, and both
over the Gemarah; even within the Gemarah, the Babylonian Talmud enjoyed
priority over the Palestinian Talmud in most communities. Even non-canonical
writings such as Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and some of the sectarian texts
known from Qumran and elsewhere were not necessarily banned from normative
circles as seems clear from their appearance in the Cairo Genizah.
Similarly the Akkadian texts known as "extraneous" were carefully collected,
organized and tradited. Their status may have been less authoritative than those
described as "good" but they were deemed worthy of preservation in and incorpo­
ration into the cuneiform canon. Their very name suggests a link with the Jewish
tradition, for Akkadian alju (afyi’u) is a caique for Middle Hebrew hisoni and
Aramaic baraya, fem. barayta. In passing it may be noted that the antonyms of
aiji'u are on the one hand damqu, literally "good," and on the other Sa iSkarim,
literally "of the (official) series" — the latter cognate with Hebrew 3eSkar (Ps
72:10; Ezek 27:15) though used in a different sense. In turn, Sa iSkarim is used
as an antonym to the oral tradition, as when a report to the Assyrian king at
Nineveh (probably Esarhaddon) states: "this omen is not from the series but from
the oral tradition of the masters” (ffl pi ummani Su).m The report in question
is from Ishtar-shuma-eresh, himself a master and grandson of the renowned
master Nabu-zer-zuqip, whose library he had possibly inherited.'09 Finally, one
may note that Middle Hebrew paraia in the sense of a section of the Pentateuch
is probably cognate with Akkadian pirsu, subsection of a series, or a subse­
ries."0
 Scripture in Context IV
12
plural mtodfy th7"Xn preserved the shape of the shield-’i^

where in the sense of straight rod or bar; metaphoncally tt ts used for

standard,” and the like (Liddell-Scott s.v.). But the Greek Kavwv is generally
related to Greek KOtvva or K0CVVT], “pole/rced," and this in return to Hebrew
qanlh, Akkadian qand and thence perhaps ultimately to Sumerian gi (gin?) =
reed. While I am obviously not suggesting qan& or G|(N;
iggesting that qand QI(N) was the Akkadian
or Sumerian word for canon, or that the language of Mesopotamia had a word for
the corresponding concept, it is worth recalling that at least one biblical scholar
has traced the Tannaitic concern for the fixation of the order of the biblical
books, along with other elements of canonization, via the Alexandrian model to
the cuneiform precedents. Nahum Sama may then be my warrant for here intro­
ducing the Mesopotamian concept of canonicity into the discussion of the biblical
one. I leave it to others, largely if not wholly,'" to inject it into the growing
debate on the modem canon."2
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
13

NOTES

The substance of this paper was first presented to the symposium on ’The Hebrew Bible
in the Making: From Literature to Canon." National Humanities Center, Research Triangle Park,
North Carolina, on April 27, 1988. The paper by S. J. Lieberman, "Canonical and Official
Cuneiform Texts: Towards an Understanding of Assurbanipal's Personal Tablet Collection,"
appeared too late to be taken account of here; see Lingering over Words: Studies in Ancient Near
Eastern Literature in Honor of William L. Moran (ed. T. Abusch, et al.; Atlanta: Scholars Press,
1990) 305-336.

2Cf. e.g. Harry Shaw, Dictionary of Literary Terms (New York: McGraw Hill, 1972),
s.v. canon.

3Cf. B. S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress,

1979) 50.

4D. J. Silver, The Story of Scripture: From Oral Tradition to the Written Word (New
York: Basic Books, 1990), esp. p. 22.

sThe Canonization of Hebrew Scripture: The Talmudic and Midrashic Evidence

(=Transactions [of] the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 47/1 [Hamden, CT: Archon],
1976). Cf. idem, "Inspiration and Canonicity: Reflections on the Formation of the Biblical
Canon," Jewish and Christian Self-Definition II (ed. E. P. Sanders; 1981) 56-63, 315-318.

6Canonization, 14.

1 Torah and Canon (2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974).

^Canonization, 102-124.

’Ibid., 53-56.

l0Ibid., 17f.

“Ibid., 15.

12Ibid., 66 and 169f., n. 294.

"Neziqin (New York: Ktav, 1981), p. xiii. Neusner has also illustrated the relationships
of Mishnah, Tosefta and Talmud by means of a single instance involving the Sabbath liturgy; cf.
Formative Judaism 3 (= Brown University Studies 46; Chico: Scholars, 1983). 156-68.

"F. E. Peters, The Harvest of Hellenism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970). esp.
pp. 194-96.

^Liddell-Scott s.v.
'“Edward A. Parsons. Tbe Alexandrian Library 223’28'
For the Latin equivalent, cf. Quintilian. Insrilutto Oralona I-IV-3, cited tbrd.. 225, n.2.
 Scripture in Context IV
14
ruder of «he Books,• Studies in Jewish Bibliography, Hl
17Nahum M. Sarnl‘’; Ch“r'“ BerliD; NCW 1971,411
and Literature i------- -

••ibid.
^Canonization, 162, n. 258.
x"Book-Scrolls Papyrus to Skins,• Xclfc

the Beginning of the Secon e P Western Jewish Communities from Qumran to the
(1983) 111-122; (1985) 21-62; "Book-Size and the Device of Catch-Lines in the
High Middle Ages," H "Book-Size and the Thematic Cycles in the Pentateuch,'Die

et al.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neuk.rchener, 1990)

21 "Order," 413 nn. 15f.

nMSL 14 (1979) 168f.

a"Die Liste der Menschenklassen im babylonischen Kanon," ZA 41 (1933) 184-92. (Note

that Civil erroneously dates this article to 1923).

ME.g., ZA 44 (1938) 238f.

vDie Haupttypen der sumerischen Beschwtirung literarisch untersucht (= LSS n. F. 1;

Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1931; reprint 1968) lOf (my translation). In notes If. (to p. 11), Falkenstein
allows for divergences in the sequence due to local or chronological differences.

*JCS 11 (1957) 1-14, 112.

27For the passage cited here by Lambert, see now Stanley M. Burstein, "The Babyloniaca
of Berossus," SANE 1 (1978) 13f. S. J. Lieberman informs me that, according to collation, the
colophon of the hemerology can be restored as 7 um-[ma-ni] ("7 scholars") or 7 DUB.[MES] ("7
tablets”) but not as 7 ap-[kal-lej. Cf. Hallo, "Nippur Originals," DUMU.E^DUB.BA.A: Studies
in Honor ofAke W. Sjdberg (ed. H. Behrens, et al.; Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah
Kramer Fund 11; Philadelphia, 1989) 239, n. 30.

a"Ancestors," 9.

”lbid.

Babylonische unIZnrislhe’7l aS,SeSSn’e"‘ of ,he Nazi-maruttaS colophon see H. Hunger,

6 n. 1. °? one AOAT 2; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1968)

ne Evolution of,he Gilgantesh Epic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1982).

’’(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1985).

 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
15

MSee the convenient summary by Tigay in his Empirical Models, 35-46, from which mine
diverges in details only.

”"As to the appropriateness of these terms" see M. def. Ellis, AfO 28 (1981-82) 129-131.

36On this point see also Hope Nash Wolff, "Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the heroic life,’
JAOS 89 (1969) 393 n. 2; J. H. Tigay, "Was There an Integrated Gilgamesh Epic in the Old
Babylonian Period?" Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor ofJ. J. Finkelstein (ed. M. del. Ellis;
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Transactions 1977) 215-18. See n. 83 below.

3 Middle Babylonian according to Tigay, late Old Babylonian according to Lambert, JCS
16 (1962) 77. For the 14th century (?) Akkadian Gilgamesh fragments from Hattusha, of which
Tigay had only one (Evolution, 121-123), the 1983 excavations turned up six more, including one
with "weiteghend wortliche Ubereinstimmungen zur altbabylonischen Fassung der Pennsylvania-
Tafel, womit fur die Uberlieferungsgeschichte dieser bedeutsamen epischen Dichtung ein neuer,
wichtiger Hinweis gewonnen ist," according to H. Otten, Archdologischer Anzeiger (1984/3) 375.

38A. Shaffer apud D. J. Wiseman, "A Gilgamesh Epic Fragment from Nimrud," Iraq 37
(1975) 158 n. 22.

39Cf. e.g. Jerrold S. Cooper, "Gilgamesh Dreams of Enkidu: the Evolution and Dilution
of Narrative," Finkelstein AV (1977) 39-44.

"Lambert, JCS 16 (1962) 66f vi 10.

4IA trivial illustration of such expansion may be seen in the winds (of Shamash) with
whose help Gilgamesh and Enkidu overpower Huwawa. In the Sumerian version ("Gilgamesh and
the Land of the Living") there are seven, in the Hittite version (based on the Middle Babylonian
one?) eight, in the neo-Babylonian version thirteen. See J. Renger, "Zur Funften Tafel des
Gilgameschepos," Language, Literature, and History: Philological and Historical Studies
Presented to Erica Reiner (ed. Francesa Rochberg-Halton; AOS 67; New Haven, 1987) 320.

“Tigay, Empirical Models, 39; Evolution, 251 and n. 2; CT 46:30; Hunger, Kolophone,
No. 148.

43Tigay, Empirical Models, 43 and n. 191, where the late version is described as "nearly
a textus receptus." For the contrary view see Lambert, "Ancestors," 9 and n. 34. J. Renger,
"Zur funften Tafel des Gilgameschepos," Reiner AV, 317, also considers the possibility that a
newly excavated Uruk fragment, and other exemplars in neo-Babylonian script, represent a
recension diverging from the "canonical" version.

"JCS 36 (1984) 127-44.

"Reiner A V (1987) 327-50.

46" Canonicity," 128 n. 3.

“Civil, MSL 14 (1979) 168, cited ibid., 129 n. 8.

“Ibid., 130; cf. CAD s.v. liqtu (2), and below, note 85.
 Scripture in Context IV
16
168 for "a canonical version of the catalogues themself.
*Cf. Hallo. JAOS 83 (1963) signjflcance of "duplicates of a catalogue." Cf. below
and Civil. AS 20 (1976) M5 -•
note 101.
»-Canonicity." 137f.
E Cohen Sumerian Hymnology: ihe ErSemma (HUCAS 2-
’’Last edited by , slandard" lamentations, see now ,dem, The Commit
Cincinnati, 1981) 42f. Jor (PotomhC, MD: Capital Decisions, 1988) vol. 1, 17-19; vo|.
CamenlalionsofAncienlMes p c(jmmon with lhe -standard" versions beyond thar
2^f«coZtcZ ™y have served, in certain circ.es, to reptace them.

«Ibid., 140; cf. in detail Rochberg-Halton in Reiner AV.

J3"Canonicity," 142f.

“Ibid., 144.

5SMSL 14 (1979) 168.

56JNES 17 (1958) 210 n. 6; cited in part by E. Kingsbury, HUCA 34 (1963) 1 n. 1.

S7"Sumerian Language and Literature," American Peoples Encyclopedia vol. 18 cols. 3-7.

^lEJ 12 (1962) 13-26, esp. 21-26.

59Among others, see e.g. the favorable citation by I. J. Gelb in Current Trends in
Linguistics 11 (1973) 254, and below, note 69.

“"New Viewpoints," 23. But see below, at note 110, on pirsu.

6iJAOS 88 (1968) 74. "Compositions" was L. here used of individual, and in part short,
poems in an effort to test for the possible existence of
A a "Sumerian psalter."
62MSL 14 (1979) 168.

“Ibid., 169.

46 (1989) 346-34^’ (1987) 35-66, esp. 35f and 48. Cf. my review of RLA IH-l mBiOr

“Aneien, Mesopotamia (chicago;

“Ibid., 22.

""The Royal Inscriptions

Of Ur: A Typology,- HUCA 33 (1962) 1-43.

Md 'Triumphal' Inscriptions," Symbolae biblia"

Liagre Bohl dedicalae (ed. M. A. Beek, el «>•>
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature 17

Leiden: Bnll, 1972) 99-106; idem, JAOS 93 (1973) 67-74- A

and Or 49 (1980) I56f. ' A‘ K. Grayson, JAOS 90 (1970) 529

. ... Sollberger and J.-R, Kupper, Inscriptions royales sumeriennes et akkadiennes

(=Literatures anciennes du Proche-Orient 3; Paris: Cerf, 1971) 24-36.

J^.g. Sumerian Archival Texts (- TLB 3; Leiden: Netherlands Institute for the Near
East, 1973).

, G,°.d’ K'"S “d M“n at Yale’“ S"'"' and TmP!e Economy in the Ancient Near
East 1 (ed. E. Ltpilfekt; OLA 5; Leuven, 1979) 91-111. On archives cf. also RAI 30 and M. de
J. Ellis, AJA 87 (1983) 497-507.

^See esp. pp. 154-56: "Archives, Monuments and the Schools."

nJNES 31 (1972) 87-95.

^History, Historiography, and Interpretation (ed. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld;

Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983) 9-20, esp. pp. 10-12.

15JCS 31 (1979) 161-65, esp. 161; 34 (1982) 81-93, esp. pp. 84f.

’‘"Individual Prayer in Sumerian: The Continuity of a Tradition," JAOS 88 (1968) 72f.

77"Toward a History of Sumerian Literature," Sumerological Studies in Honor of Thorkild

Jacobsen (AS 20; Chicago, 1976) 181-203, esp. 197-201 with fig. 1; cf. also SIC 1 (1980) 13.
My scheme has been adopted in its essentials by W. H. Ph. Romer, Einfilhrung in die Sumerologie
(4th ed.; Nijmegen, Netherlands: Katholieke Universiteit, 1983) 32f.

^See above, at n. 21 (Sama); at n. 29 (Lambert); and at nn. 61f (Civil and Hallo).

”E.g., "the literary collection of legal decisions," for which see Hallo, Stu­
dies... Oppenheim (1964) 105; M. T. Roth, Studies... Kramer (=AOS 65, 1984 = JAOS 103
[1983]) 279-82. For a comparable phenomenon in biblical literature, see already J. A.
Montgomery, "Archival Data in the Book of Kings," JBL 53 (1934) 46-52; cf. Hallo, "Compare
and Contrast: the Contextual Approach to Biblical Literature," SIC 3, (1990) 9-16.

“See Hallo, RAI 17 (1970) 120-22; more recently Jacob Klein, Beer-Sheva 2 (1985) 8*
(with note 8), 9* (with note 15); idem, "On Writing Monumental Inscriptions in Ur in Scribal
Curriculum,' RA 80 (1986) 1-7. For a comparable phenomenon in biblical literature, see Hallo,
'The Royal Correspondence of Larsa: I. A Sumerian Prototype for the Prayer of Hezekiah?,"
Kramer Anniversary Volume: Cuneiform Studies in Honor of Samuel Noah Kramer (AOAT 25;
ed. Barry L. Eichler, etal.; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 1976)209-24; PAAJR 46-47(1979-
80) 318-21; "Compare and Contrast," lOf.

81 See most recerrntly Hallo, JAOS 103 (1983) 177f; BiOr 42 (1985) 636f.

KH. Sauren "E,-dub-ba-Literatur: Lehrbucher des Sumerischen, OLP 10(1979)97-107;

H. L. J. Vanstiphout, "Lipit-Eshtar’s Praise in the Edubba," JCS 30 (1978) 33-61; idem, "How
Did They Learn Sumerian?" JCS 31 (1979) 118-26; Hallo, JCS 34 (1982) 91.
 Scripture in Context IV
18
“Ct. Hallo "Haplographic Marginalia," Finkelstein AV (1977) 101-3.

“J. Krecher, "Glossen," RLA 3 (1969) 431-40 (with VI. Soucek).

“Above, note 48.

86Cf. Hallo, "Nippur Originals," 2391.

“"Adad-apla-iddina, Esagil-kin-apli. and the Series SA.GIG," A Scientific Humani,,.

Studies in Memory of Abraham Sachs (ed. E. Leichty et al.; Occasional Publications of n,
Samuel Noah Kramer Fund 9; Philadelphia, 1988) 143-159, esp. p. 150.

“Ibid., 148, n. 38 and 149, lines 18’ and 25’.

“G. Beckman and B. R. Foster, "Assyrian Scholarly Texts in the Yale Babylonia
Collection," ibid., 1-26, esp. pp. 3f. and 11 rev. 1.5’.

nJCS 31 (1979) 161, notes 4-8. For the examples cited from balag (lamentation)
literature, see now M. E. Cohen, Sumerian Hymnology: the Ersemma, 43, n. 180; idem The
Canonical Lamentations of Ancient Mesopotamia, 17 and n. 28.

9IPBS 1/2:116; cf. R. Borger, HKL I-II ad loc.

”M. Civil, MSL 14 (1979) 156f.

“CAD s.w.; cf. J. J. Finkelstein, RA 63 (1969) 24 and nn. 1-5.

“Claus Wilcke, Isin-lsdn Bahnydt 3 (B. Hrouda, ed.; = Bayerische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Abhandlungen n.F. 94, 1987) 85-89. For other examples of
■abbreviated lines," cf. J. van Dijk, HSAO (1967) 267f and VS 10:94 (Krecher, Z4 58 [1967] 30-
65), both cited by Krecher, RLA 5 (1980) 478; M. Civil, Or 54 (1985) 37-45.

“Hermann Hunger, Babylonische utul Assyrische Kolophone (= AOAT 2, 1968).

“MSL 1 (1937) vii.

”/£/ 12 (1962) 24.

’/IS 20 (1976) 145 n. 36(3); cf.

- 1Z1 (both lexical texts) at Emar. Idem, Aula Orientalis 7 (1989) 20 for the sequence Li)

For die latest illustration of this point, see the newly discovered exemplar of the
cZ, Wikk r°! M^rOm Is“' Which has ,he Ca,ch,ine °fth<= vocabulary NlG.GA according to

“^x^Xdcm irAsj6bw"u h <i963) 2 m- e- c°he°’ni

85 n. 1. ’”KreCher’ "Kat«l<>se. Hterarische," RLA 5 (1980) 478-85. Add Wilcke, Bin 3 (198’)
 HALLO: Canonicity in Cuneiform and Biblical Literature
19

in rJ'lKa"^ '2 ('962) 24 “nd JAOS 83 <1963> l68f: by Civil, AS

20 (!’76) 145 "■ 36'™ost recently by Wilcko, tsin 3 (1987) 89. Cf. above, note 49. For the
J n^Ttl 1 the craft of the lamentation-priest (kalu.u), see J. A. Black,
Dl(Jf (IVOI) J l"j3,

,02Simo Parpola, "Assyrian Library Records," JNES 42 (1983) 1-29, esp. p. 6 and n. 15.

103 See now Abraham J. Sachs and Hermann Hunger, Astronomical Diaries and Related
Textsfrom Babylonia, vol. 1: Diaries from 652 B.C. to 262 B.C. (Osterreichische Akademie der
Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Denkschriften 195, 1988).

Hallo, The Nabonassar Era and Other Epochs in Mesopotamian Chronology and
Chronography," Sachs AV (1988) 175-190, esp. p. 188.

Conjectures on the Reminiscences which Moses Appears to Have Used in Composing

the Book of Genesis-, cited by Edgar Krentz, The Historical-Critical Method (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1975) 19. Original title: Conjectures sur les memoires originaux, dont il parait que
Moise s ’est servi pour composer le livre de la Gentse.

106Alan R. Millard, "The Question of Israelite Literacy," Bible Review 3/3 (Fall 1987)
22-31, esp. p. 22: "Ancient Hebrew inscriptions can be divided into three classes — monumental,
formal and occasional." His "occasional" category is reserved for graffiti, which have no obvious
analogue in cuneiform, while his "formal" category combines texts that I would regard as
monumental (e.g. seals and seal impressions, inscriptions on objects) with those best seen as
archival (e.g. accounts on ostraca). Cf. also idem, "The Practice of Writing in Ancient Israel,"
BA 35 (1972) 98-111; BA Reader 4 (1983) 181-95; "An Assessment of the Evidence for Writing
in Ancient Israel," Biblical Archaeology Today (ed. A. Biram; Jerusalem, Israel Exploration
Society, 1985) 301-312.

IO7Here I part company with S. Talmon’s otherwise excellent exposition of the contrast
between the evolution of biblical and Mesopotamian literature in "Heiliges Schrifttum und
kanonische Bucher aus judischer Sicht — Uberlegungen zur Ausbildung der Grosse ‘Die Schnft’
im Judentum," Die Mitte der Schriji (Judaica et Christiana II; ed. M. Klopfenstein, U. Luz, S.
Talmon, E. Tov; Bem-Frankfurt/M-New York-Paris: Lang, 1987) 45-79, esp. p. 64.

108ABL 519 = LAS 13.

IO9S. J. Lieberman, "Why Did Assurbanipal Collect Cuneiform Tablets?" American

Oriental Society Meeting, Chicago, March 20, 1988.

ll0Cf. also CAD s.v. nisfru (3).

‘Hallo,
nii "Assyriology and the Canon," The American Scholar 59/1 (Winter 1990) 105-
108.
"’See most recently Jan Gorak, The Making of the Modern Canon: Genesis and Crists
of a Literary Idea (London: Athlone, 1991). This is the first volume m a new project entitled
Vision, Division and Revision: The Athlone Series on Canons.