"Sonne der Gerechtigkeit": Studien zur Solarisierung der Jahweh-Religion im Lichte von Psalm 72.

• Author: Miller, Patrick D.
• Position: Book Review

"Sonne der Gerechtigkeit": Studien zur Solarisierung der Jahweh-Religion im Lichte von Psalm 72. By MARTIN ARNETH. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur Altorientalische und Biblische Rechtstgeschichte, vol. 1. Wiesbaden: HARRASSOWITZ VERLAG, 2000. Pp. ix + 244. DM 98.

One of the notable developments in the study of Israelite religion in the last decade or so has been the investigation of possible solar elements in that religion, particularly in the conception of Israel's God YHWH. One thinks particularly of the monographs by Stahli (Solare Elemente im Jahweglauben des Alten Testaments, 1985), Janowski (Rettungsgewissheit und Epiphanie des Heils, 1989), and Taylor (Yahweh and the Sun, 1993), as well as several essays by Mark Smith and especially the important iconographic investigation in Keel and Uehlinger's Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (1998). Much of the attention has been devoted to the epigraphic and iconographic evidence suggesting an association of solar features and of sun worship with YHWH and the Yahwistic cult as well as to the background of this development in Syro-Palestinian mythic and religious elements. The biblical evidence is varied and often ambiguous. Much of it is examined in Taylor's book.

Psalm 72 receives only a single citation and without comment. It has not been a natural focus of attention in examining sun cult and sun imagery in relation to Israel's God. That gap has been filled now by the book under review here, which also has the merit of drawing upon another body of comparative data, in this case Neo-Assyrian royal ideology, particularly as evidenced in the loyalty oaths of Esarhaddon, published by Wiseman in The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon, and a coronation hymn for Assurbanipal. Indeed, it is the similarity of what Arneth sees as the Vorlage of Psalm 72 to the coronation hymn that opens up this psalm as a witness to solar influences in Yahwistic imagery and royal ideology. The book is the outcome of a dissertation prepared under the supervision of Eckart Otto, who has himself published essays drawing upon the same material and following directions similar to those of his student.

Arneth's main intention is to show that Psalm 72 is not a purely Judean creation but in its earliest form reflects an explicit appropriation of the coronation hymn of Assurbanipal, while subversively undercutting it so that the exaltation here is not of the human king, Assyrian or otherwise, but of the deity YHWH...