Battle of Siddim
Battle of Siddim | |
---|---|
Salt Sea ) | |
Result | Cities of the Jordan plain freed from Mesopotamian control; Lot and captives rescued |
Five Cities of the Plain
Unaligned:
- Abram's 318 elite force
Mesopotamian kingdoms
Five Kings
- King Bera
- King Birsha
- King Shinab
- King Shemeber
- King of Bela
Four Kings
- King Chedorlaomer
- King Amraphel
- King Arioch
- King Tidal
The Battle of the Vale of Siddim, also often called the War of Nine Kings or the Slaughter of Chedorlaomer, is an event in the
Whether this event occurred in history has been disputed by scholars.[1] According to Ronald Hendel, "The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis."[2]
Background
The
Location
The Vale of Siddim or Valley of Siddim, Hebrew: עֵ֖מֶק שִׂדִּים ‘emeq haś-Śiddim, equated with the "Salt Sea" in Genesis 14:3, itself equated with the "sea of the Arabah" in Deuteronomy 3:17, the same as the "Dead Sea"[4] is a biblical place name mentioned in the Book of Genesis Chapter 14: 'And the vale of Siddim was full of slime pits' (Genesis 14:3, 8, 10).
Siddim is thought to be located on the southern end of the Dead Sea. It has been suggested by theologians that the destruction of the cities of the Jordan Plain by divine fire and brimstone may have caused Siddim to become a salt sea, what is now the Dead Sea.[4]
The Dead Sea is also called the "east sea" in Ezekiel 47:18 (Compare Joel 2:20), Bahr Lut (the Sea of Lut) in Arabic, and Lake Asphaltites in the works of Josephus.
Aftermath
The Northern forces overwhelmed the Southern kings of the Jordan plain, driving some of them into the asphalt or tar pits that littered the valley. Those who escaped fled to the mountains, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. These two cities were then spoiled of their goods and provisions and some of their citizens were captured. Among the captives was Abram's nephew, Lot.[5]
When word reached Abram while he was staying in
After the battle, Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine and blessed Abram, who gave him a tenth of the plunder as tithes. Then Bera, king of Sodom, came to Abram and thanked him, requesting that he keep the plunder but return his people. Abram declined, saying, "I swore I would never take anything from you, so you can never say 'I have made Abram rich.'" What Abram accepted from Bera instead was food for his 318 men and his Amorite neighbours.[7]
Scholarly analysis
Identifying the Mesopotamian kings
Amraphel
Recently, David Rohl argued for an identification with Amar-Sin, the third ruler of the Ur III dynasty.[14] Some suggest that Amraphel is a semitic name that is composed of two elements, "Amar", which was also used by Sumerian King, Amar-Sin, and "a-p-l".[15] John Van Seters, in Abraham in History and Tradition, rejected the historical existence of Amraphel.[16]
Arioch
Arioch has been thought to have been a king of Larsa (Ellasar being an alternate version of this). It has also been suggested that it is URU KI, meaning "this place here". Others identify Ellasar with Ilan-Sura which is a city known from second millennium BC Mari archives in the vicinity of north of Mari, and Arioch with Arriwuk who appears in Mari archives as a subordinate of Zimri-Lim.[15][17] According to Genesis Apocryphon (col. 21), Arioh was king of Cappadocia.
Chedorlaomer
The
In the so-called "Chedorlaomer Tablets", from the Spartoli tablets collection in the British Museum, a "king of Elam" called Kudur-Laḫgumal is mentioned as defeating "Dur-ṣil-ilani, son of Eri-e-Aku" and "Tudḫula, son of Gazza-X". These tablets, written sometime between the 7th and 2nd centuries BC,
Tidal
Tidal
Geopolitical context
Alliances
It was common practice for vassals/allies to accompany a powerful king during their conquests. For example, in a letter from about 1770 BCE.
The alliance of four states would have ruled over cities/countries that were spread over a wide area: from Elam at the extreme eastern end of the Fertile Crescent to Anatolia at the western edge of this region. Because of this, there is a limited range of time periods that match the Geopolitical context of Genesis 14. In this account, Chedorlaomer is described as the king to whom the cities of the plain pay tribute. Thus, Elam must be a dominant force in the region and the other three kings would therefore be vassals of Elam and/or trading partners.[10]
Trade
There were periods when Elam was allied with Mari through trade.[30] Mari also had connections to Syria and Anatolia, who, in turn, had political, cultural, linguistic and military connections to Canaan.[31] The earliest recorded empire was that of Sargon, which lasted until his grandson, Naram Sin.[10]
According to Kenneth Kitchen,[32] a better agreement with the conditions in the time of Chedorlaomer is provided by Ur Nammu. Mari had had links to the rest of Mesopotamia by Gulf trade as early as the Jemdet Nasr period but an expansion of political connections to Assyria did not occur until the time of Isbi-Erra.[10] The Amorites or MARTU were also linked to the Hittites of Anatolia by trade.[10]
Trade between the
The main trade route between Ashur and Kanesh running between the Tigris and Euphrates passed through
Rulers in the region in c. 1800 BCE
The relevant rulers in the region at this time were:
- The last king of Isin, Damiq-ilishu, ruled 1816–1794[10]
- Rim Sin I of Larsa ruled 1822–1763[10]
- The last king of Uruk, Nabiilishu, ruled 1802[10]
- In Babylon, Hammurabi ruled 1792–1750[10]
- In Eshnunna Ibal Pi-El II ruled c 1762[10]
- In Elam there was a king Kuduzulush[10]
- In Ashur, Shamsi Adad I ruled c 1813-1781[10]
- In Mari, Yasmah-Adad ruled 1796–1780 followed by Zimri-Lin 1779–1757.[10]
Dating of events
When cuneiform was first deciphered in the 19th century, Theophilus Pinches translated some Babylonian tablets which were part of the Spartoli collection in the British Museum and believed he had found in the "Chedorlaomer Tablets" the names of three of the "Kings of the East" named in Genesis 14. As this is the only part of Genesis which seems to set Abraham in wider political history, it seemed to many 19th and early 20th century exegetes and Assyriologists to offer an opening to date Abraham, if the kings in question could only be identified.
The translation of "Chedorlaomer Tablets" from the Spartoli collection:[35][36]
With their firm counsel, they established Kudur-Lagamar, king of Elam. Now, one who is pleasing to them [-] will exercise kingship in Babylon, the city of Babylonia (...) What king of Elam is there who provided for Esagila and ... ? The Babylonians ... and [-] their message: “(As for) [the wo]rds that you wrote: ‘I am a king, son of king, of [royal seed e]ternal, [indeed] the son of a king's daughter who sat upon the royal throne. [As for] Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Erie[A]ku, who [carried off] plunder of [-], he sat on the royal throne ... [-] [As for] us, let a king come whose [lineage is] firmly founded] from ancient days, he should be called lord of Babylon (...) When the guardian of well-being cries [-] The protective spirit of Esharra [-] was frightened away. The Elamite hastened to evil deeds, for the Lord devised evil for Babylon. When the protective genius of justice stood aside, the protective spirit of Esharra, temple of all the gods, was frightened away. The Elamite enemy took away his possessions, Enlil, who dwelt therein, became furious. When the heavens (?) changed their appearance, the fiery glare and ill wind obliterated their faces. Their gods were frightened off, they went down to the depths. Whirlwinds, ill wind engulfed the heavens. Anu (the gods') creator had become furious. He diminished their (celestial) appearances, he laid waste (?) his (own celestial) position, with the burning of the shrine E-ana he obliterated its designs. [-] Esharra, the netherworld trembled. [Enlil?] commanded total destruction. [The god had] become furious: he commanded for Sumer the smashing of En[lil]'s land. Which one is Kudur-Lagamar, the evil doer? He called therefore the Umman-man(da he level)led the land of Enlil, he laid waste (?) [-] at their side. When the [-] of Ê-zida, and Nabu, trustee of all [-] hastened to [-] He set [out] downstream, toward the ocean, Ibbi-Tutu, who was on the sea, hastened to the East, He (Nabu) crossed the sea and accupied a dwelling not his own. The rites of E-zida, the sure house, were deathly still. The Elamite [enemy] sent forth his chariotry, he headed dowstream toward Borsippa. He came down the dark way, he entered Borsippa. The vile Elamite toppled its sanctuary, he slew the nobles of ...with weapons, he plundered all the temples. He took their possessions and carried them off to Elam. He destroyed its wall, he filled the land [with weeping ...] (...) an improvident sovereign [-] he felled with weapons Dur-ṣil-ilani son of Eri-[e]Aku, he plundered [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, he slaughtered its [-] with his own weapon like sheep, [-] he burned with fire, old and young, [-] with weapons, [-] he cut down young and old. Tudḫula son of Gazza[-], plundered the [-] water over Babylon and Esagila, [-] his son smote his pate with his own weapon. [-] his lordship to the [rites] of Annunit[um] [king of] Elam [-] plundered the great ..., [-] he sent like the deluge, all the cult centers of Akkad and their sanctuaries he burned [with fi]re Kudur-Lagamar his son c[ut?] his middle and his heart with an iron dagger, [-] his enemy he took and sought out (?). The wicked kings, criminals, [-] captured. The king of the gods, Marduk, became angry at them (...) [The doer] of evil to him [-] his heart [-] the doer of sin must not [-]
In 1887, Schrader was the first to propose that Amraphel could be an alternate spelling for Hammurabi.[37] The terminal -bi on the end of Hammurabi's name was seen to parallel Amraphel since the cuneiform symbol for -bi can also be pronounced -pi. Tablets were known in which the initial symbol for Hammurabi, pronounced as kh to yield Khammurabi, had been dropped, so that Ammurapi was a viable pronunciation. If Hammurabi were deified in his lifetime or soon after (adding -il to his name to signify his divinity), this would produce something close to the Bible's Amraphel. A little later Jean-Vincent Scheil found a tablet in the Imperial Ottoman Museum in Istanbul from Hammurabi to a king named Kuder-Lagomer of Elam, which he identified with the same name in Pinches' tablet. Thus by the early 20th century many scholars had become convinced that the kings of Gen. 14:1 had been identified,[38][39] resulting in the following correspondences:[40]
Name from Gen. 14:1 | Name from Archaeology |
---|---|
Amraphel king of Shinar | Hammurabi (="Ammurapi") king of Sumer |
Ellasar
|
Eri-aku king of Larsa |
LXX )
|
Kudur-Lagamar king of Elam |
Tidal, king of nations (i.e. goyim, lit. 'nations') | Tudhaliya I (son of Gazza) king of the Hittites
|
Today these dating attempts are little more than a historical curiosity. On the one hand, as the scholarly consensus on Near Eastern ancient history moved towards placing Hammurabi in the late 18th century (or even later), and not the 19th, confessional and evangelical theologians found they had to choose between accepting these identifications or accepting the biblical chronology; most were disinclined to state that the Bible might be in error and so began synchronizing Abram with the empire of Sargon I, and the work of Schrader, Pinches and Scheil fell out of favour. Meanwhile, further research into Mesopotamia and Syria in the second millennium BCE undercut attempts to tie Abraham in with a definite century and to treat him as a strictly historical figure, and while linguistically not implausible, the identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now regarded as untenable.[41]
One modern interpretation of Genesis 14 is summed up by Michael Astour in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (s.v. "Amraphel", "Arioch" and "Chedorlaomer"), who explains the story as a product of anti-Babylonian propaganda during the 6th century Babylonian captivity of the Jews:
After Böhl's widely accepted, but wrong, identification of mTu-ud-hul-a with one of the Hittite kings named Tudhaliyas, Tadmor found the correct solution by equating him with the Assyrian king Sennacherib (see Tidal). Astour (1966) identified the remaining two kings of the Chedorlaomer texts with Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria (see Arioch) and with the Chaldean Merodach-baladan (see Amraphel). The common denominator between these four rulers is that each of them, independently, occupied Babylon, oppressed it to a greater or lesser degree, and took away its sacred divine images, including the statue of its chief god Marduk; furthermore, all of them came to a tragic end ... All attempts to reconstruct the link between the Chedorlaomer texts and Genesis 14 remain speculative. However, the available evidence seems consistent with the following hypothesis: A Jew in Babylon, versed in Akkadian language and cuneiform script, found in an early version of the Chedorlaomer texts certain things consistent with his anti-Babylonian feelings.[42]
The "Chedorlaomer tablets" are now thought to be from the 7th or 6th century BCE, a millennium after the time of Hammurabi, but at roughly the time when the main elements of Genesis are thought to have been set down. Another prominent scholar considers a relationship between the tablet and Genesis speculative, but identifies Tudhula as a veiled reference to Sennacherib of Assyria, and Chedorlaomer as "a recollection of a 12th century BCE king of Elam who briefly ruled Babylon."[43]
The last serious attempt to place a historical Abraham in the second millennium resulted from discovery of the name Abi-ramu on Babylonian contracts of about 2000 BCE, but this line of argument lost its force when it was shown that the name was also common in the first millennium,[44] leaving the patriarchal narratives in a relative biblical chronology but without an anchor in the known history of the Near East.
Some scholars have disagreed: Kitchen asserts that the only known historical period in which a king of
See also
References
- Notes
- ISBN 978-90-04-15552-7.
- ISBN 978-90-04-22653-1.
The current consensus is that there is little or no historical memory of pre-Israelite events in Genesis
- ^ Genesis 14:1–7
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8028-2400-4), p. 1218, Siddim, Valley of
- ^ Genesis 14:10–12
- ^ Genesis 14:13–17
- ^ Genesis 14:18–20
- ^ Jewish Encyclopedia
- ^ Jewish Encyclopedia (1906), "Amraphel"
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Michael Roaf "Cambridge Atlas of Archaeology – king lists p 111 and pp 108–123
- ISBN 0-19-504645-5.
- ^ ISBN 978-3-11-022346-0.
- ^ Gruenthaner, Michael J. “ARCHAEOLOGICAL CORNER.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 1, 1943, p. 86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43719700. Accessed 17 Mar. 2024.
- ^ Rohl, David (2010). The Lords of Avaris. Random House. p. 294.
- ^ a b Walton, John H., and Craig S. Keener. NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible: Bringing to Life the Ancient World of Scripture. Zondervan, 2019. p. 39.
- ISBN 978-1-62654-910-4.
- ^ K.A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament [OROT], William B. Erdmans Publishing, 2003. p. 320.
- ^ 'Chedorlaomer' at JewishEncyclopedia.com
- ^ Kudur-Lagamar from History of Egypt by G. Maspero
- ^ K. A. Kitchen (2003). On the reliability of the Old Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans. p. 569.
- ^ Hindel, Ronald (1994). "Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives". Biblical Archaeology Review. 21 (4): 52–59, 70–72.
- ^ De Graef, Katrien. 2018. "In Taberna Quando Sumus: On Taverns, Nadītum Women, and the Cagum in Old Babylonian Sippar." In Gender and Methodology in the Ancient near East: Approaches from Assyriology and beyond, edited by Stephanie Lynn Budin et al., 136. Barcino monographica orientalia 10. Barcelona: University of Barcelona.
- ^ Potts, Daniel T. 2012. "The Elamites." In The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, edited by Touraj Daryaee and Tūraǧ Daryāyī, 43-44. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Charpin, Dominique. 2012a. "Ansi parle l' empereur' à propos de la correspondance des sukkal-mah." In Susa and Elam. Archaeological, Philological, Historical and Geographical Perspectives: Proceedings of the International Congress Held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009, edited by Katrien De Graef and Jan Tavernier, 352. Leiden: Brill.
- ^ Akkadian tD ("have stretched themselves")
- ^ (Akkadian verbal stem intensive, reflexive expressing the bringing about of a state)
- ^ tD
- ISBN 978-0-8028-2400-4), 2000, p.232
- ^ Walton, p. 39.
- ^ ISBN 0-7103-0112-X.
- ^ The Mari letters
- ^ a b c Kitchen, Kenneth A. "The Patriarchal Age: Myth or History?" Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine in Shanks, Hershel (ed.) Biblical Archaeology Review 21:02 (March/April 1995)
- ^ Nayeem, Dr. Muhammed Abdul (1990). Prehistory and Protohistory of the Arabian Peninsula. Hyderabad.
- ISBN 0-8160-2218-6.
- ISBN 978-1329553538.
- ^ Pinches, Theophilus (1908). The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (third ed.). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. pp. 223-233.
- ^ Orr, James, ed. (1915). "Hammurabi". International Standard Bible Encyclopedia.
- ^ "Amraphel". The Catholic Encyclopedia. 1917.
- ^ Pinches, Theophilus (1908). The Old Testament In the Light of The Historical Records and Legends of Assyria and Babylonia (third ed.). London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
- ^ MacKenzie, Donald (1915). "The Golden Age of Babylonia". Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. p. 247.
The identification of Hammurabi with Amraphel is now generally accepted
- ISBN 978-0-19-954399-1.]
The identification, once popular, that this Amraphel was the famous Hammurabi of Babylon (1728–1686 BCE) is not tenable ... Most scholars doubt whether Gen. 14 describes historical events.
[permanent dead link - ^ The Anchor Bible Dictionary, s.v. "Chedorlaomer"
- ^ Hindel, Ronald (1994). "Finding Historical Memories in the Patriarchal Narratives". Biblical Archaeology Review. 21 (4): 52–59, 70–72.
- ISBN 1-56338-389-6.