Religionsgeschichtliche Beziehungen zwischen Kleinasien, Nordsyrien und dem Alten Testament: Internationales Symposion Hamburg, 17-21. Marz 1990.

• Author: Singer, Itamar

The eighteen articles gathered in this volume are devoted to religious contacts between Anatolia, Syria, and Israel. Early Israelite religion is usually traced back to Canaan, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, with only few nods in the direction of the Hittite world. This situation is changing, and this volume attempts to sketch out some of the common cultural traits of an eastern Mediterranean koine, a dry-farming "Levantine Crescent" encompassing Anatolia, Syria, and Palestine, and occasionally stretching as far as the Aegean.

The theoretical framework for ritual analogies is set out by David E Wright. His warning against simplistic parallels should be heeded: "It is easy to find parallels but difficult to verify an actual hereditary relationship. . . . Only when form and content tightly overlap can we begin to think of historical connections" (p. 104).

Two articles deal with Ebla and Hatti. Alfonso Archi, a leading expert in both domains, examines two cases of composite pantheons consisting of autochthonous and immigrant gods: the Hattian-Hittite symbiosis in northern Anatolia and the Old Syrian pantheon of Ebla, which includes deities of West Semitic, Mesopotamian, Human, and a still-unidentified substrate origin. A direct link between the two cultures is indicated in the recently discovered Human-Hittite bilingual from Bogazkoy. Erich Neu, who published the text (StBot 22), attempts to define here its central theme. The connecting thread in this intriguing composition (which has the appearance of wisdom literature) seems to be Hittite para tarnumar = Hurrian kirenzi, "setting free, liberating," referring to the town of Ikinkali, probably identical with Ikakali in the annals of Hattusili I.

Hittite-Hurrian rituals from southern Anatolia and northern Syria serve as a source of comparison for various biblical rites and customs. Moshe Weinfeld, who in the past has found traces of Hittite-Hurrian influences in the cult of the royal temples of Jerusalem and Bethel, seeks to extend these contacts to the pre-monarchic sanctuary at Shiloh. Volkert Haas examines contexts in which animal blood serves as a ritual detergent (such as the hatta t) and ritual procedures for the disposal of impurity; cf. Zechariah's seventh vision). Berndt Janowski and Gernot Wilhelm search for the origins of the scapegoat motif of Leviticus 16. In place of the current theories they suggest a comparison with Hittite substitute rituals (tarpalli and nakkussi), and with an even...