On the Origins of Judaism by Philip R. Davies;

Author:Philip R. Davies; [Davies, Philip R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781134945092
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2022-05-20T00:00:00+00:00

6 the god of cyrus and the god of israel

DOI: 10.4324/9781315539270-8

“Second Isaiah” or “Deutero-Isaiah” (Isaiah 40–55) has, like Deuteronomy, secured a virtual scholarly unanimity over its time and place of composition. This chapter is a contribution to recent efforts at dislodging this poetry, also, from its assigned place, and so to revise some notions about the history of the cult of Yhwh and the origins of “early Judaism.”

I begin with the explicit historical references in Isaiah 40–55, namely the mention of Cyrus in 44:28 and 45:1–7. The relationship between these passages and the famous inscription of the Persian king now housed in the British Museum (for the text see, e.g., Oppenheim in Pritchard, 1969: 315–16; Fish in Winton Thomas, 1958: 92) has been invoked and examined many times. According to the Cyrus Inscription the “lord of the gods” (Marduk), also “protector of his people,” searched for a “righteous ruler to take his hand” and pronounced the name of Cyrus as future ruler of the world. Marduk “beheld Cyrus's good deeds and upright heart,” as a result of which Babylon was overcome without any battle, and subsequently “all the kings of the world brought tributes” to Cyrus, while the new ruler of the world rebuilt cities and sanctuaries. Similarly, in Isaiah 45 Yhwh “grasps Cyrus's hand,” to empower him to “subdue nations” and “open gates”; as a result, the wealth of Egypt and the Sabaeans will come to Cyrus.

These parallels, first noted almost a century ago (see Kittel, 1898) continue to be noted, but almost inevitably with the demurrer that the writer of the Hebrew poems cannot have been dependent on the inscription; they must have been written before Cyrus's capture of Babylon. This assertion carries the implication that the poetry is a genuine prediction, though only by a short period. At all events, the similarities between the texts tend for the most part to be regarded as each dependent on either a “Babylonian court style” (Gressmann, 1929: 59–60) or, with greater form-critical precision, the genre of “royal oracle” (Westermann, 1969: 154). Morton Smith (1963) proposed a more precise definition of the relationship, arguing that the parallels between the biblical texts and the inscription all involve only the first part of the inscription, which speaks of the king in the third person, and which, on Smith's view, represents propaganda from the Babylonian priesthood, originating from before Cyrus's arrival in Babylon, and paralleled only in Isaiah 40–48, whereas to the second part of the inscription there are “almost no parallels in II Isaiah” (415).

Smith's verdict is that “the parallels demonstrate literary dependence” (417). However, since the statements of Second Isaiah about the capture of Babylon are inaccurate, they must, he concludes, have been written before the peaceful capture of that city. The lack of parallels with the second part of the inscription, which tells of the favourable treatment of Babylon by its new ruler, are claimed to support this contention. Thus, the sentiments of the author of the Hebrew text are the result of successful Persian propaganda.

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