Born in heaven, made on earth: the making of the cult image in the ancient near east.

• Author: Hurowitz, Victor Auigdror
• Position: Review

Born in Heaven, Made on Earth: The Making of the Cult Image in the Ancient Near East. Edited by MICHAEL B. DICK. Winona Lake, Ind.: EISENBRAUNS, 1999. Pp. xii + 243. $35.00.

This is a collection of cssays on the manufacture of cult statues in various religions. Each study explains how the religion at hand confronted the problem of turning lifeless material into a living divine body, fit for worship.

Michael Dick, editor of the volume, Sets the stage by surveying the history of iconoclastic practice and legislation in ancient Israel. He depends heavily on Christopher Dohmen's studies which suggested that the Decalogue's prohibition on idols is not the beginning but the culmination of a long historical process. He then addresses the prophetic polemics against cult statues, in particular by Jeremiah and Deutero-Isaiah. In a treatment informed by the Mesopotamian "Mouth Washing" ceremony on which he worked with Christopher Walker (see below), he provides detailed philological commentary on their diatribes, and points to similar taunts in Apocryphal and Hellenistic literature. The brunt of the polemics is that the idols remain non-divine works of human hands, made of profane materials. He rejects Yehezkiel Kaufman's famous claim that the biblical authors were unaware of their neighbors' authentic religious beliefs, and concludes that the polemics are methodologically flawed because they consciously distort an d intentionally ignore the idolater's theology. His assertion that the prophetic polemics resemble the Apocryphal and Hellenistic ones and were therefore not "original" is puzzling.

Christopher Walker, with Dick's collaboration, then studies the Mesopotamian "Mouth Washing" (mis pi) ritual, employed for turning a new cult-statue into a god. This chapter surveys texts that record performance of the ceremony, analyzing Nabu-apla-iddina's "Sun-disk" inscription (BBSt 36) and an Esharhaddon inscription (Borger, Esarh. [section]53, AsBbA rev. 2-38) describing the restoration of some divine statues to Babylon. It then presents a normalized, annotated transliteration and translation of three versions of the Mis pi ritual, followed by translations of two component incantations including the crucial STT 200. This ritual is shown to be a birthing process for the new god in which the divine role in fabricating the statue is emphasized, even while human participation is negated by ritual action and proclamation.

David Lorton, in the volume's longest...